David: Sophomore Year (Three Daves #1) (3 page)

David poked his head under the blanket. “Is everything okay in here?”

Jen shrugged.

“Here, chocolate will make you feel better.” He held up a bag of M&Ms.

She reached in to grab a few candies and felt something warm and thick inside. The thing moved and Jen realized it was a human finger! She gasped and yanked her hand out. David laughed, so Jen investigated and saw that he’d pushed his finger through a hole at the bottom of the bag. “Not funny,” she grumbled, smacking him in the chest.

“I don’t know,” he whispered. “If you could’ve seen your face, you’d probably think it was pretty funny.”

Jen tried not to smile as she leveled a glare at him. David’s impish grin played all the way into his eyes, giving them a sudden brilliance, even under the dark blanket. As Jen stared at him, caught in his gaze, his grin faded into something more serious. Then, just like in a movie—one more to Jen’s tastes―they slowly leaned into a long, tentative kiss.

David touched his fingers delicately to Jen’s face, as if checking to make sure she was real. Jen wondered the same thing―was this really her David? She figured it must be him, because his lips were every bit as soft as they looked. She pressed her mouth more firmly to his, and he responded by pulling her to him, running his hands down her spine. David tasted like M&Ms.

Something soft and lumpy thumped against Jen’s head from outside the blanket. “Get a room!” It sounded like Beano’s voice.

Jen and David broke apart, exchanging shy, conspiratorial smiles as they pulled the blanket from over their heads. For the rest of the movie, she leaned on him while they interlaced their fingers. The rest of the terrorizing movie plot flowed like a barely-noticed fog through Jen’s mind. She was much too preoccupied with David’s thumb rubbing slow, methodical lines up and down the side of her hand. Someone had told them to get a room!

Chapter 4

“I always knew you and David would get together,” Chris insisted as she and Jen stepped out of the showers in their shared dorm bathroom. It was their first Friday back on campus after Thanksgiving break, and the girls were getting ready to go out. They planned to meet up with David and some other guys at the Romans house where a live band was supposed to play.

“You’re so much better for him than
she
was,” Chris continued.

“I thought you liked Ashley,” Jen said.

“Nah. She’s a fake bitch.”

“Then why were you always so friendly with her?”

“I don’t know.” Chris shrugged. “Guess I’m a fake bitch, too.”

One of Chris’s sorority sisters picked Jen and Chris up at their dorm. Jen was excited to see David again. They’d exchanged a few texts over break, but nothing in them gave her a solid indication of where they stood. He’d called her earlier that week to tell her about the party, which was a good sign, but being with him in person would do a better job of allaying her tiny, unspoken fears that he might regret the kiss.

The girls entered the house and made their way up the stairs to the dark attic. Jen spotted David and the other guys standing along a wall not far from where the band was setting up. Within seconds of the girls walking up to join them, David came to stand next to Jen. He slipped his warm hand around hers and she breathed a silent sigh of relief.

Before they had a chance to say much to each other, the band flooded the dark room with heavy bass and thumping percussion. The wild-haired lead singer stepped up to the mic and belted out plaintive lyrics in a rich, somber voice. Before long, a crowd had converged in the center of the room, pulsating with the beat. Jen and David stayed by the wall, watching the throng and letting the music vibrate in their chests.

The makeshift dance floor looked to Jen like a roiling, black sea. It seemed all color had been drained from the room, creating a completely different atmosphere from the peppy Romans nights. She watched shadows play on David’s serious face while he watched the band. She was anxious to kiss him again but knew she’d have to wait. David wasn’t one for public displays of affection,, which made the kiss under the blanket an extra special moment. In all the times she’d seen him and Ashley together, she’d never noticed him give his girlfriend more than a light peck on the lips—though she knew from suggestive remarks from Ashley that far more than kissing had gone on when the two were in private.

The room was packed to bursting by ten thirty, and David had been gone a long time on a beer run. He finally pushed his way through the press of people near Jen and handed her a half-filled cup; it was wet along the sides. He wiped his hands on his jeans, scowling.

“What’s wrong?” she shouted over the amplifiers. Her ears were starting to ring with static from the barrage of noise.

David shook his head to indicate everything was fine, but Jen didn’t believe him. The crease between his eyebrows was deeper than a few drops of spilled beer should warrant. Every couple of minutes, his eyes would dart around the room. Jen wondered if he purposely avoided looking at her. She’d had it with the second guessing and didn’t want to fall back into that pit, so she decided to make him tell her right then and there what bothered him. When she turned to talk to him, he shot his hand out and grasped the back of her head, pulling her to him. His tensed mouth pressed onto hers.

She was completely unprepared for the kiss. Her first instinct was to push away, but she’d been longing to kiss him ever since the VCR night, so she went with it. But something didn’t feel right. This was nothing like his soft touch under the blanket. Tonight his lips were more like an iron clamp. His grasp behind her head was too firm, too desperate. Jen opened an eye to look at David and saw that he, too, had an eye cocked, but he wasn’t looking at her. He was looking past her, across the room. Jen instinctively thrust her head back and broke away from him, turning to see what he was looking at.

She saw Ashley.

Jen turned back to David, who at first kept staring across the room. He eventually tore his eyes from Ashley and looked at Jen as if surprised to see her standing there.

“Unbelievable,” Jen said unevenly. Her heart raced. Their conversation at Mike’s came spilling into her mind.
No way. David wouldn’t do that. No way!
“Was this all pretend?”

“What?”

“You set me up!” Jen tossed her half-filled cup to the side, sending the people standing near her into a tumult.

David glanced back and forth between Jen and Ashley. “Can we go talk about this somewhere else?”

Any more words were impossible for Jen. He hadn’t denied her accusation, which Jen took as confirmation that he’d used her to get to Ashley. She turned and pushed her way through the crowd while the band’s lamentations rang throughout the room. Once she’d cleared the press of bodies, she dashed down the steps and out of the house. She didn’t stop running until she was three blocks away. Though she’d slowed her pace, she continued moving away from the party at a brisk pace, worried David would catch up to her.

When she turned to see how close he was, he wasn’t there at all. He hadn’t even tried to stop her. Jen stilled, bending forward with her hands on her knees, catching her breath. The music still throbbed in her eardrums. Humiliation dominated her emotions; sadness and anger were only beginning to bud. She felt utterly stupid. He’d laid the plan right out in front of her—no, she’d laid the plan out to him—and when she’d said no, he’d tricked her into it.
How could I have believed he was actually interested in me?
She became desperate to get back to her room so she could bury her head under her pillow.

“Jen! What the hell?” Chris called from down the block. Jen didn’t move, forcing her friend to come all the way down the sidewalk. “Why’d you leave? David told me to come out and get you.”

“I’m not going back in,” Jen said, shaking her head back and forth like a stubborn toddler.

“What happened?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.” She kept her steady gaze on the sidewalk.

“So, you want to go to a different party?”

“No. I want to go home.” Jen fought back the tears that raged to burst out.

Chris sighed. “Let me go back in and get Heather.”

Jen shook her head, her tears leaking out. She didn’t want to stick around any longer and risk seeing David. She continued shaking her head and backed toward the street that would lead her home. “I’m just going to walk.”

Chris groaned. “Fine, but you’re going to owe me. It’s a long ass haul.”

“You don’t have to come. I just want to be alone.”

“Sorry, chicky. You’re stuck with me.” Chris threw an arm over Jen’s shoulder and led her to Heather’s car, where they pulled their puffy jackets out from the backseat and started the journey home.

Jen spilled every mortifying detail to Chris during the long walk. As she told the story, it didn’t feel real. Chris consoled Jen by coming up with creative strings of curse words to describe David. By the time Jen fell into her bed, she was completely exhausted. That was the only reason she’d been able to sleep at all that night.

When she woke the next morning, her fresh, renewed mind tried to put a more palatable spin on the David situation. She told herself she’d probably overreacted and that things weren’t how they seemed. Yet David hadn’t said anything to defend himself—but perhaps he would’ve if she hadn’t run away. She turned onto her back and stared at her ceiling while her internal debate raged. He could’ve come after her, though, and he hadn’t. But he’d sent Chris. She leaned onto her side and reached over her head to grab her phone from the desk. No texts awaited her, nor did any voice messages. No new e-mails from David, either. The whole night had gone by and he’d never checked in to make sure she was okay. That was the part she couldn’t get past.

The door to the room creaked open. Kate stepped in with a towel wrapped around her long, blond hair. She was returning from the shower down the hall, singing
“Tainted Love” under her breath. It was one of Kate’s favorites from the retro Romans nights. Jen threw her pillow over her head and moaned, “Could you sing something else? Please?”

Two kisses—two stupid kisses—had changed everything. It was bad enough David had broken her heart, but he’d hurt her far more by ruining their friendship. Forever. How could she ever again be friends with someone who’d used her like that? Even if she hadn’t known what to expect from David as a boyfriend, she’d trusted him as a friend. Not anymore. Not ever again.

As Jen lay in her bed, feeling no urge to get up and start the day, she tortured herself by thinking that at that very moment, David was probably lying in bed with his beloved Ashley.
Unless…
There was a chance his plan hadn’t worked. When she thought about it, Jen realized she had no idea what had happened at the party after she’d left. Maybe Ashley still wouldn’t want David back. Honestly, could anyone, even Ashley, be shallow and transparent enough to fall for such a trick? Jen raised herself up onto her elbows at the idea. A small bubble of hope rose within her. The bubble popped when Jen realized it didn’t matter whether or not Ashley took him back. Either way, David was a duplicitous bastard. She flopped back down onto the bed.

***

Jen hadn’t felt much like talking when Kate finally dragged her from bed to meet Chris and Maria in the dining hall for lunch. Chris was kind enough to relay the story of the night before, with Jen only interrupting to temper Chris’s more outrageous exaggerations. Kate and Maria were furious with David, and Jen was grateful for the support. Loyal friends like these three girls were worth more than a hundred Davids.

At dinner the following night, Chris returned with the news that David and Ashley were, indeed, back together. Jen took the news stoically, but didn’t eat any more of the pile of meat and starch on her tray.

“It serves him right,” Kate said, a fiery gleam in her typically cool blue eyes. “She’s just going to cheat on him again.”

“Yeah,” Maria chimed in, looking at Jen with extra softness in her dark, almond-shaped eyes. “And we all know who he’ll coming crawling back to then.”

Jen shook her head. “There’s nothing to come crawling back to. He was never really my boyfriend, and now he’s not even my friend.” Jen read the pity on her friends’ faces. “I don’t care what happens with him and Ashley. He’s a jerk, and I’m done with him.”

“You want me to have Tom beat him up?” Maria asked. Tom was the guy she’d met at happy hour at the beginning of the school year. Jen cringed with the realization that while her own love life had sputtered and died, Maria’s new relationship had cruised along to the point of Maria freely offering the guy up as a goon.

Chapter 5

The very next day, as Jen headed toward her dorm after class, she watched a flock of blackbirds scatter and regroup in the high, bare branches that arched over her path. She didn’t see David until milliseconds before she slammed into him. He caught the sides of her arms in both of his hands to keep her from falling.

“Sorry,” she mumbled.

“My fault,” David said. “I wasn’t watching where I was going.”

Jen glanced sideways, noticing he’d come from the short sidewalk leading from Rosings Hall—Ashley’s dorm. “Yeah, it is your fault.” She made a move to brush past him but one of his hands grasped more firmly around her arm.

“I’ve been meaning to call you,” he said.

Jen glared at him.

“You’re still mad, then?” he asked.

“Mad? More like humiliated. How could you do that to me?” She shook free of his grip.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for any of it to turn out the way it did. She just…she was there, and—”

“And you thought you’d use me to get her back. Congratulations on winning yourself a shallow girlfriend.”

David scoffed. “If she’s so shallow, why did you offer to help me get her back?”

“I didn’t offer!”

“You’re the one who said I should make her jealous.”

Her mouth opened and closed but she was too furious to make anything other than an indignant squeak come out.

“Look. I don’t want to fight,” he said. “Getting back together had nothing to do with her being jealous, anyhow. She was missing me, too.”

Jen wished Ashley would’ve shared this information with David a lot sooner, like before Jen wasted so much time consoling him, before she let herself believe anything with David could be real.

“She was relieved you and I weren’t serious,” he continued. “She thinks you’re really pretty and the kind of girl who could succeed in stealing me away from her.”

Was that supposed to make Jen feel better? It did, actually, a little bit, but that was beside the point. “She thinks I’m pretty. Wow.” Her tone dripped with sarcasm. “Maybe I’ll start fake-dating someone and then she’ll want
me!
”

“You don’t have to be a bitch about it,” David snapped, a hard look coming over his face. “It’s not like it would’ve been tough for you to figure out. I ask you to be my fake girlfriend and a week later we start dating. It’s not rocket science.”

Jen gasped. “Gee, David, thanks for putting it in perspective for me. ’Cuz I didn’t already feel like a giant enough of an idiot!”

David pressed his lips into a tight frown and peered intently at Jen. His dark eyes burned, but something about the crinkle in his brow made Jen wonder if he was feeling something other than anger. A touch of remorse, perhaps? In Jen’s opinion, it was too late for that. Way too late.

“Have a nice life, David.” She turned and resumed walking toward her dorm. She was a good ten yards away before he called out to her.

“Jen. Jen! C’mon. Let’s calm down and just talk about it.”

She couldn’t turn back now. Giant tears had started streaming down her face. She quickened her pace and practically ran the rest of the way to Longbourn.

***

The week before Christmas break, Jen checked her mail cubby in the dorm lobby and found a CD with a note taped to the case:
Please listen to this. ~David

She suspected the CD was one of David’s retro playlists. It had been a while since he’d made her one. She walked past a trash bin and considered tossing the disk into it, but didn’t. Kate left for class right after breakfast, so Jen had the room to herself. She popped the disk into her laptop and started the player, recognizing the beginning chords immediately. It was The Cure’s
“Boys Don’t Cry.” She stepped back to listen to Robert Smith whine his apologies.

The band always reminded her of David, since he was the one who’d introduced her to them. A familiar jumble of happy instrumentals mixed with somber lyrics brought flashes of freshman year, of meeting David, of hanging out with him and laughing. Of him making her that first playlist and her feelling the first tingle of “what if.”

Jen jumped to the computer and popped out the disk. Heartache radiated from the center of her chest and clambered up her throat, bringing with it a flood of tears. She sank to the floor, pressing her hands to her face. It was so perfect for David to try to reconcile this way. She wanted to forgive him and go back to the way things were, but how could she? The damage was done, and it was irreversible. He’d shown her exactly how little their friendship meant to him.

Jen’s tears eventually subsided, and she pulled herself up and went to her desk to write a note to David. She attached it to the CD and walked it over to David’s dorm mailbox on her way to class. All the note said was:
No
.

***

Jen and the rest of the students returned from Christmas break to a campus that alternated between slushy and frozen solid. Every day was gray, and the slush turned black with all the students tromping through it. When the filthy crystals refroze, the sidewalks transformed into virtual deathtraps. The slick, uneven lumps were nearly impossible to traverse.

The unfriendly conditions kept CIU’s students dorm-bound, except for excursions to class and the library, and even then, only when absolutely necessary. One chilly day, Jen was just beginning to unwrap her scarf from around her head when she found a hot pink sheet of paper taped to her door.

Beat the Winter Blues
Get Away to Daytona Beach this Spring Break
GREAT STUDENT RATES!!!

We’re going!
Was scrawled across the bottom. A few hours later, Maria bounced into Jen’s room. “Are you in? My cousin just got a car, so she’ll drive us down to Daytona, and we won’t have to take some hellish bus.”

“Oh, it was you,” Kate said, waving the pink form.

“Who else?” Maria flung her arms into the air.

“Why isn’t Tom driving?” Jen asked.

Maria and Tom had become practically inseparable. He seemed like a really nice guy, and as a bonus, he had a car on campus. These two traits combined meant transportation was rarely a problem for the girls of Longbourn Hall—assuming they were going somewhere with Maria.

“Who?” Maria winked. “I told you, my cousin’s got a car, so what do we need him for?”

Jen quirked an eyebrow. Maria always seemed so smitten whenever her preppy new boyfriend was around, and it was obvious he was bigtime into Maria. They were an “opposites attract” situation. Tom was tall, thin, and reserved while Maria was short, curvy, and vivacious. Even their coloring was at alternate ends of the spectrum with Tom being fair and Maria being dark. Jen thought they balanced each other out nicely, but now she wondered if Maria was getting bored with him.

“Relax,” her friend said. “I’m just joking. This is going to be a girls-only trip. Tom’s cool with it. So are you coming or not?”

“I though Daytona was so nineteen-eighty-seven,” Kate said. “Why not Mexico?”

“Daytona is cheap, cheap, cheap. And it’s making a comeback,” Maria said. “I looked up videos of last year’s spring break to make sure.”

Jen wanted to go, but… “I’m going to have to run it past my parents.” She expected a battle with her conservative mother and father.

“We have to get our deposits in by the end of the week, so find out soon.” Maria snapped her fingers in a bossy sort of way and left the room.

Jen spent the next hour figuring out how to best sell the trip to her parents. Then she placed the call. “Hi, mom.”

“Hi, honey. Did you happen to accidentally pack the leather driving gloves I put in your father’s stocking? He can’t find them anywhere.”

“Maybe they’re still in the stocking.”

“No, I packed those up weeks ago…oh, but I suppose you could be right. I don’t remember taking the gloves out.”

“Mom, I have a question to ask you.”

“Yes?”

“Would you mind if instead of coming home for spring break I went with Maria to visit her cousin in Florida?”

“Where in Florida?”

“Um, I can’t remember the name of the town. By Naples, I think.” She’d make the other girls promise not to tag her in any incriminating pictures online.

“How would you get there?”

“Maria said something about a bus. A few of us would travel together, so it’d be safe.” She let out a calculated cough. “I just really need the incentive of warm sunshine to get through the first half of this semester. It’s been tough.”

“Let me talk to your father.”

“Okay, thanks.” Her mom went on to give her some family updates. Later that evening, her mother called back to say it was fine with Mr. Whitney as long as she had enough money in her savings account to cover the cost of the bus and expenses.

As Jen had expected, Kate opted out of the trip in order to go home and see Jake. But Chris was in. Soon it was settled that on the Saturday before break, Maria’s cousin Celia would drive down to CIU to pick up Maria, Jen, and Chris for the big trip to Daytona. Thus, the winter began to brighten in central Illinois.

Another spot of sunshine arrived in February by way of Chris. She came down to breakfast wearing wide grin—too wide for so early in the morning. “You’re not going to believe this.” She slammed her tray on the table, joining Jen and Kate.

“You look like you’ve got some dirt. Tell us, tell us,” demanded Kate.

“David and Ashley broke up!”

“No,” Kate gasped with a sideways glance toward Jen.

Jen said nothing. A chunk of pancake seemed to be blocking a critical passageway. But her disbelief spoke clearly in her widened eyes.

“She was at Romans last night,” Chris explained, “really drunk and all over this other guy. So I was like, ‘What’s up?’ and her roommate told me Ashley came home a couple days ago crying that she and David were through. Apparently he’s the one who did the breaking up.” Chris chomped on a sausage. With at least half of it still in her mouth, she announced to Jen, “So, he’s avaiwabul.”

“No, thanks” was Jen’s immediate response. She meant it, but she couldn’t help wondering what had happened to make the renewed relationship so short lived. Then she wondered why she should care. He was still a deceitful jerk. She was diverted from these thoughts by talk of apartment hunting. The girls planned to move out of the dorms next school year.

“We gotta move toward downtown and be close to the bars,” Chris said. That sounded good to Jen.

“But those are all party apartments or old, dingy houses,” complained Kate. “I’d rather get something nicer and close to campus.” Jen thought that made sense, too.

***

The following week, when Jen emerged from the basement stacks at the library, she ran into David at the top of the stairs. They exchanged awkward hellos. The last time they’d seen each other was when Jen had laid into him in front of Ashley’s dorm. David’s gaze dropped from hers, and they ducked around each other, with him heading toward the steps she’d just ascended.

“Hey,” she heard from behind her and turned. David stood at the top step, looking at her. Jen noted subtle changes in his appearance during the two months since she’d last seen him. He’d always been a jeans and T-shirt kind of guy and still was, but his shirt was tighter and darker than what she was used to seeing him in, and his jeans seemed more worn than usual. He’d traded in his high tops for black biker boots, and although he still wore his denim jacket, it now sported bleached out symbols and safety pins. His mussed bangs hung nearly into his eyes. As much as she didn’t want to, Jen thought his evolving look suited him.

“So, Ashley and I broke up,” he said.

“Yeah, I heard,” Jen replied in a way she hoped conveyed her “Who cares?” attitude.

“Oh.” He glanced down at his boots.

Jen felt a stab of guilt for being so cold when he must be hurting. Contrary to her assertions that she didn’t care, she asked, “How’re you doing?”

David let out a small, bitter grunt. “It’s crazy, but I’m actually doing great.” Jen shot him a skeptical look, to which he replied, “No, really. She’s kind of a bitch. I don’t know why I didn’t see it before.”

In mock exasperation, Jen said, “Well, I could have told you that a long time ago and saved us both a lot of trouble.”

David laughed, and they both smiled. He watched Jen for a few moments, and then added in a quiet, tentative voice, “Now you and I can be friends again.”

Jen’s smile faded. “I don’t think so.” She averted her gaze back to the floor. “It actually kind of makes things worse, because you did that to me for someone who was so not worth it.” She raised her eyelids and watched David’s expression fall. “I can’t be friends with someone who’d treat me like that.”

“Jen, please. I told you I’m sorry and that I didn’t mean for anything to turn out the way it did. I don’t know what else you expect me to do.” The pleading in his soft, brown eyes threatened to make her waver.

“Honestly, David, I don’t expect anything from you.” She shook her head slowly from side to side. “Not anymore.”

David’s mouth tightened. Jen could see he was holding back from saying more. She held his injured gaze in silence for a few moments before turning and walking away. There was nothing else to do. She couldn’t simply forgive him and go back to the way things were.

Jen didn’t know whether he turned to go down into the stacks or stood and watched her, but he didn’t say another word. She appreciated his reserve and kept walking, leaving the warm glow of the library behind as she stepped into the dark night. Waiting for the thrill of vindication, she instead felt something far different. The flicker of friendship had re-opened the wound of losing him. It almost physically hurt to walk away.