The chances of my great-hair guy being in the same lab I was in were minimal. The idea that he might actually notice me was ludicrous. And if I thought for one second he would ever speak to me I really was living in fantasy land.
I tried so hard not to care.
And my heart beat such a rapid tattoo against my chest when he walked in the door of lab I was afraid he’d notice. And think I was some kind of freak.
He didn’t notice. My heart rate. Or me.
I was Tara Gumser. I read books.
And I hated geology.
But boy oh boy, did I like my great-hair guy.
I knew where he was every second during lab. It was like I was connected to him. I could feel when he moved. Hear when he talked. It was me I didn’t recognize. What was the matter with me?
I was focused. Determined.
I didn’t waste time on childish endeavors.
The teacher had papers to hand out. Who cared?
What? Wait! My great-hair guy was handing them out. He was coming my way. Handing a sheet to the guy in front of me. I was going to be next. I was going to make a fool of myself.
I couldn’t look at him.
I saw the bottoms of his jeans. Saw the sheet of paper coming toward me.
I looked up.
And saw him.
He saw me, too.
I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t be cool and nonchalant. Had no hope whatsoever of sexy.
And he moved on.
I was going to die.
I wanted to die.
And I had to get out of that class so I could relive the encounter, analyze every second again and again. Had I made a fool of myself? Had he noticed me even a little bit? Would he remember that second our eyes had met?
“His name’s Tim.” I turned to see Ann, a girl I sometimes carpooled with, coming up beside me as I walked down the hall after leaving the lab. I knew Ann from high school. And she knew I had a thing for Great-Hair Guy.
“I saw his notebook,” Ann said. She was in lab, too. And she knew I’d never dated.
Tim.
Ann got a kick out of my newly painful state. In a compassionate kind of way.
“Don’t look now, but your Tim is behind us,” she continued as we walked toward the door of the building.
I didn’t look. But I could feel him there.
My Tim.
Two
THERE WAS A TRADITION at Wright State University. A fall party on campus—a welcome to students. October Daze. It was held outside in the field next to the Rathskeller—a pizza-and-beer place on campus. There were booths with food and club paraphernalia. Live bands and lots of beer.
It was exactly the kind of gathering I avoided. I’d made it all the way through high school without attending a single party. Not one. I didn’t drink outside of my home, where my dad would occasionally share a sip of his very smooth and expensive scotch whiskey with me because I was the only one in the family besides him who liked it, or my mom would allow me a taste or two from her glass of wine.
“Come on, Tara,” Ann said the first Friday afternoon in October— the day after our first geology lab. I was huddled in my raincoat, the bottoms of my jeans dragging on the wet ground, and telling her I wanted to go home. The drizzling had stopped for the moment, but I had a romance novel burning a hole in my purse. I’d had a hard day at school, gotten a paper back in my writing class that the teacher hadn’t absolutely loved, and I just wanted to crawl into a story and stay there.
“We have to go,” Ann was saying. She was trying to talk me into going to October Daze. Because she wanted to go. She wanted to meet up with some guys she knew. “What if he’s there?” she continued haranguing me about Great-Hair Guy. “You don’t want him to find some other girl without you even having a chance, do you?”
Of course I didn’t. “I don’t even like beer.”
“Have you ever had it?”
“Well . . . no, but I know I don’t like it.” I liked smooth, expensive scotch. My dad did not drink beer. And I was his drinking buddy. Me with my sip or two on the occasions when he actually had a drink.
“It doesn’t matter if you like it or not,” Ann laughed and hooked her arm in mine, dragging me down the hill away from my little blue Manta and the school books that she’d ordered we leave there. “You just drink it,” she explained.
I let her pull me along. And I laughed, too. I didn’t know why. I just did.
I was changing. Life was changing. Anything could happen.
The day was cool, overcast, and misting rain. A typical early October day in Ohio. He was barely eighteen and a bit overwhelmed, but no one was going to know that. He’d made it out of high school. Out of the small town where he’d grown up—even if only during the day. He’d made it to college and to a college party. He was going to enjoy himself.
Even so, the smell of wet grass on the cool air took him back to earlier days of football and playing in the mud. Back to a time when getting dirty was funny—the dirtier the funnier.
When had he left those days behind? When had being respectable become important?
And earning a degree even more important?
He made his way to the twenty-five-cent beer wagons and placed his order. His first college beer, and it was out of a plastic cup.
Silently toasting the college life, he drank. Stroh’s had never tasted so good. Looking out over the hundreds of students huddled together, listening to the hippie-looking guys up on stage, he chuckled to himself. He was a long way from his home on Maple Street. His brothers would be proud.
Two of the band members were hopping around, one on electric guitar, the other dragging a mic stand with him. The third guy was beating on drums as though he could somehow change the world with those sticks.
And all the while, the college students laughed and drank their beer as fast as they could pour it down. It was so different from the small town he’d grown up in.
A different universe.
In Eaton, he knew everyone. Or at least knew someone who knew everyone. Here he didn’t know a single person. He was out of place.
But he was staying.
The youngest of five boys—three of whom were at least a full generation older than he, two old enough to be his parent—he’d learned early that he had to tackle life and wrestle from it what he wanted.
His mother, widowed when he was only five, had sacrificed much to get him there. He wasn’t going to forget that.
He was going to succeed. Graduate. Make something of his life. He wasn’t going to spend his entire life as he’d spent much of his youth, eating well enough at the beginning of the month and being grateful for the beans that were on the table by month’s end.
He was going to own a home. And a washing machine.
He sipped his beer—feeling rich just being there—being welcome to the cheap beer and entertainment. They were for him as much as for any other person filling up the expanse of grass and food booths.
He’d had his first geology lab the day before. Held in a rectangular room made of cement block, with a long table in the center of the room, he’d entered slowly. Of the twenty-five seats, there had only been one that he wanted because the desk was strategically placed in direct view of the windows leading to the outside. If lab was boring, he wouldn’t be completely cut off from the world.
He’d staked his claim, adjusted his belongings, and noticed the two girls sitting across the aisle.
They were both blonde. Slim. One was blue-eyed. Sweet looking. The other, a made-up and hair-sprayed rendition of the girlfriend every guy wanted.
The sweet looking one had looked out of place.
He’d wanted to meet her.
Thinking about it now, he cringed and took another big gulp of beer.
Lab had begun and the professor had asked for a volunteer to pass out the syllabus. Tim had seen his chance immediately and raised his hand. Passing out the papers would give him a chance to strut his stuff past the blonde—the on
e who was different. She’d captured his attention.
He’d approached her, smiled his best smile.
And got . . . next to nothing. She’d taken the paper he’d handed her.
Humbled, he’d taken his seat.
He was still thinking about her, though, while he consumed his first college beer, so that when he turned on the grass and saw her, at first he thought he was conjuring her up.
He wouldn’t have created the shivering. Or the blue raincoat. But those jeans . . .
He was cold too, but only because he hadn’t pulled his sweater on over his T-shirt. Soon the beer would be warming him up just fine. He’d been drinking it since he was a kid.
He’d done his share of cigarette smoking, too. But he was done with that nonsense.
He watched the girl. She was standing with some other people. The made-up girl from geology lab, who was speaking with a couple of guys. If he had his guess, he’d say the blonde in the blue raincoat wasn’t hearing a word they were saying. She was looking off over the crowd.
He could approach her. It was a party. People did that.
But he’d tried his charms on her once. And wasn’t eager for another . . . nothing.
The made-up blonde wandered off with the two guys. Baseball players, if he had his guess.
He’d made the tennis team. An individual sport. Which suited him just fine. Besides, he was good at it. Had played for his high school, too.
He waited for the girl in the blue raincoat to move along with the rest of her small crowd.
She didn’t.
With another sip of beer for courage, he edged his way toward her.
“Hi.”
“Hi.” She looked straight at him. Like she knew him, or something.
“You look cold.” He stood there in his T-shirt, beer in hand, looking warm. He hoped.
“Yeah. I am.”
“Aren’t you in my geology lab?” He was aiming for casual.
“I don’t know, maybe.”
“You were sitting with that girl in the blue sweater, right?”
She glanced off in the crowd. “Ann? Yeah.” Then she was looking straight at him again with those beautiful blue eyes. She had a grin on her face. And a half-full plastic beer cup in her right hand. Her left arm was folded across her chest, her free hand firmly clinched to her right arm about the elbow, as though hugging away the chill.
“I’m Tim.”
She nodded. “I’m Tara.”
“You from around here?”
“Huber Heights. How about you?”
“Eaton.”
“Where’s that?”
“Close to the Indiana border.”
“Is it in Ohio?”
He’d been asked before. “Yeah.”
“How long does it take you to get here?”
“Forty-five minutes.”
“You drive back and forth every day?”
“Yeah, or I catch a ride.”
“Wow. I thought my twenty minutes was far.”
“It’s not so bad.” But then, he’d only been at it for a few weeks.
“Is this your first year here?”
“Yeah, I graduated in May.”
“I did, too.”
She was his age. Good.
Tim didn’t want to leave her, but he couldn’t think of anything else to say, either.
“Well, I gotta go,” he said before things turned bad.
“Yeah, me, too. I’m freezing out here.” She didn’t move, though.
“Okay, well see you around.”
“Okay.”
He walked away, feeling as though he was caught in some time warp. Had that really happened? Had he actually just met the girl that he’d noticed in lab?
And that grin she’d given him—stuff like that didn’t happen. Especially not to him.
She was cute. Quiet. And she seemed so sweet. Not the type to play with a guy’s head, or jump from guy to guy. Tara was the type of young woman mothers approved of.
I didn’t tell Ann I’d met him. I didn’t tell anyone. Tim was my secret. I didn’t want anyone else giving me their opinions about him. He hadn’t asked for my phone number. Which I knew would be the first question out of Ann’s mouth, and her prognosis, upon hearing the answer, would not be good.
I couldn’t bear Ann’s sympathy.
Besides, he’d said “See you around,” and that could mean that he wanted to see me again. Couldn’t it?
I hoped so.
God, I hoped so.
Because thoughts of Tara popped up randomly over the weekend while he was at home on Maple Street, Tim looked for her on campus all day Monday, but she seemed to have dropped off the face of the earth. Then Tuesday morning he turned the corner outside the library and there she was not more than twenty yards away and heading straight toward him.
That girl, Ann, was with her, but he wasn’t going to lose his chance.
“Hi,” he said.
“Hi.” Even he couldn’t miss the welcoming smile on her face. She was glad to see him. It was all the encouragement he needed.
“Hey, you want to wait for me before geology lecture today and we can sit together?”
He could feel Ann’s stare, but he ignored her.
“Sure.”
Score.
Tim was standing in the hallway outside the lecture room, early for a change, when Tara walked up an hour later.
“Hi.”
“Hi.”
They had that down. It was about all they seemed to say to each other.
“Ready to go in?”
“Yeah.”
He held the door open and she walked off with purpose ahead of him, stopping at a seat a lot closer to the front than he would have chosen. Saying nothing, he sat.
She took notes in class. He hadn’t expected that, either. There were more important things at hand to talk about. Who cared about rocks?
The more he sat there, taking in her deep powdery smell, the less he wanted to be sitting in class. He had to get out of there before he embarrassed himself. Jeans didn’t leave room to hide pertinent evidence.
Class ended and Tara was gathering up her stuff like she had someplace to be. He had to make his move.
She turned, looked him straight in the eye, and he forgot what he’d been about to say.
“You want to sit together on Thursday?” he asked.
“Okay.” Her smile had him going all over again.
Kids were leaving around them. Some guy knocked into him. “You busy after class on Thursday?” he blurted next, not quite the way he’d planned.
“No.”
“You want to hang out?”
“Okay.”
“I don’t have a car.” He had to tell her. She’d find out soon enough, anyway. “I’m getting one, but I don’t have it yet.”
“How do you get to and from school?”
“A friend of mine. We graduated together.”
“He lives in Eaton, too?” They were walking down the steps of the lecture hall, Tara in front of him, and she turned to look at him.
“Yeah.”
“So what’s your friend going to do if we hang out after class?”
“He works on Thursdays. I usually just wait around here for him.”
“That’s no fun. You want to come to my house? You can meet my mom and we can hang out there.”
Hell yes, he wanted that. But . . . “I have to be here to meet my friend when he gets off work.”
“What time is that?”
“Five.”
“I can have you back by then.”
She was offering him a piece of heaven. And hell, too. What guy wanted a girl driving him back and forth places? Especially on a first date?
Still, his mom hadn’t raised a stupid son. “You sure you don’t mind?”
“Of course not.”
“Okay then.”
“Okay.” They were outside class, and Ann was a few steps away, waiting for Tara.
“See
you Thursday.”
“Okay.”
He watched her walk away, noticing how hot her butt looked in her jeans. And then he realized he was grinning.
He’d only been in college for a month and he had a date.
Three
THE TWO DAYS UNTIL THURSDAY WERE INTERMINABLE. Everyone I knew—my family, Ann, and Rebecca, my closest friend from high school—knew I had a date. In my world, this was almost as big as graduation.
And yet I wanted everyone to act, I wanted me to act, as though the occasion was no big deal.
A boy was coming over. It happened to girls all the time.
I was a nervous wreck all through class, and excited, too, and didn’t hear a single word of the lecture. Tim looked fabulous in his jeans and sweater.
And on a completely different wavelength, I couldn’t wait for my mom to meet him.
By the time we were in my car, I was shaking. Didn’t know what to do with my hands. Or any other part of me. I was a foreigner in my own land. Sitting in my own car. Alone with a boy. A man.
I was outside myself, watching me. I had a man in my car. And I was driving.
Who was this girl?
And how in the hell had the world spun so completely on its axis? In the space of a week I’d transformed from the bookish girl who no one noticed, to sitting alone with the man of my dreams. My Tim.
I had no idea what to say.
I knew about romance novels. About dukes and earls and worldly businessmen who flew their own jets and ate girls like me for their afternoon snacks.
And . . .
I knew boys. Of course I did. I lived every day of my life with two of them. They liked sports. And I was the best darn Little League scorekeeper I knew.
“You sure your mom’s not going to care that you’re bringing me home?”
“Yes.” I was positive about that. My parents had despaired over my lack of interest in dating. I’d heard “Get your nose out of that book” so often, I’d started hiding out in the bathroom to read when my parents were still up. Didn’t seem to matter how long I took in there, they never bothered me.
It Happened on Maple Street Page 2