He kept his eyes on me when he said, “Is there anyone in this room who suspects Olivia Kaspen is avoiding them?”
Caleb raised his hand.
I dropped my head until my chin was touching my chest.
“Mr. Drake?” Professor Grubbs was openly surprised. “Please come and take a seat next to Olivia so I can watch her squirm.”
I heard his footsteps, then felt his presence next to me as he slid into a chair. I kept my head down.
“You’re quite a handsome boy,” Professor Grubbs said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you this close before.”
I lifted my head and snorted. Professor Grubbs stared us down, his eyes traveling from Caleb to me with unveiled curiosity.
“I have a newfound hunger for knowledge, sir. I think I’ll be sitting this close from now on.”
“Now, I know that the rumors are true, Mr. Drake.”
“What rumors, Professor?” Caleb’s voice was cheerful, teasing even.
“You’re full of shit.” There was a rippling of laughter across the student body. Caleb smiled undaunted. He was basking in the attention.
“Feeling better?” he said, quietly, as the lecture had now begun.
“Yes. I’m fine.” I stared straight ahead and held my breath against his cologne.
As he reached into his bag, his leg brushed against mine. I jerked away, but it was too late, I already had that fairy wing feeling in my stomach.
“Sorry,” he mouthed, grinning. I scowled at him and slapped my textbook so hard on my desk that Professor Grubbs paused in his lecture to look over at me.
“Easy Slick,” he said under his breath. “If you start acting out every time you’re around me, people will catch on to how much you like me.”
My jaw unhinged.
I tried to listen to the lecture, I honestly did, but at the end of the fifty-minute class, I couldn’t recall a single thing that had been said. I had the smell of his cologne memorized, however, and I could tell you in detail about the patterns of movement that he made: tapping his pencil on his book in sequences of three, shifting his legs out from under his desk so that one bounced up and down on the toe of his foot and the other stretched lazily in front of him. When we were dismissed, I shot out of my seat like a live cannon ball and headed for the door. He didn’t pursue me. In fact, when I turned back to get a look at where he was, I couldn’t see him at all. My first reaction was that of relief and then disappointment. Perhaps, he finally got the message, and he was out of my hair for good.
He was waiting for me in front of my dorm building later that day. I straightened my back and took the next few seconds to get my emotions under control. Breathe, Olivia, he’s just another boy and they’re all made of the same junk. I stopped a few feet away from where he was standing, if I smelled him, I knew I would lose resolve. This was picturesque. Us standing under a streetlight in an emotional face-off, messenger bags crossed across our chests.
“Caleb,” I said my voice too high, “I’m going to be honest.” He nodded blinking slowly.
“I’m just not interested…in what you’re…interested in. I like you, but just as a friend.” I stopped to check his face, which was as unreadable as War and Peace, and threw in one last jab to bring my point home. “I just don’t think we’re compatible.”
“That’s not how it feels to me.” He looked alarmingly intense and I had to stare at my shoes to avoid being sucked into his eyes.
“Um, well I’m sorry. I guess we’re just on two different wave lengths,” I stammered.
“No, that’s not what I meant. I know you like me just as much as I like you. But, it’s your choice, and I am a gentleman. You want me to back off-okay. Goodbye, Olivia.” He walked away.
I looked after him in dismay. Had I really just done that? I wanted to chase after him and tell him that I only partially meant it and that every time I was around him I felt intoxicated, and if he could please just kiss me one more time so I could be sure I was doing the right thing.
I didn’t of course.
Caleb, true to his word, steered clear of me for the next five months. So clear, in fact, that sometimes when we passed each other around campus he would stare right through me.
I kept thinking about what my mother would have said about this situation.
“A real chunk of man meat and you screw it up because you’re afraid. You’re too much like your father, Olivia.”
I was a relationship retard. I kicked, shoved, and punched people out of my life, so they never had a chance to hurt me.
Life carried on, but all of a sudden it wasn’t the same. There was a change in me. I couldn’t put my finger on it but somewhere in my brain a new door had appeared and despite my hardest efforts to keep it closed, my thoughts kept going there, wandering around in the empty room, putting up images of Caleb. Sometimes I felt sad for days, then my mood would swing and I would feel incredible rage towards him for messing with my head. Around the second month of my emotional torture, I gave up the fight. Obviously, I no longer wanted to be an island. Maybe it was time to open up and experiment with relationships.
I became interested in boys almost overnight. I enlisted Cammie’s help and she gave me lessons on blow-drying my hair, doing my make-up, and, like any true friend, introduced me to the padded bra. This new, smooth and puckered look, along with great effort on my part not to be dour, got me one date and then two. By month four, I owned my very own pair of hot rollers and had accumulated a small group of ardent admirers.