Everything That Makes You(33)

Thirty minutes later, Fi was still on the hood, curling in on herself  against the cold and wishing she'd brought a coat, or at least dry  clothes. At four thirty, the sun was setting. Winter sucked.

She'd about given up and was digging through her bag for her keys when from behind her a voice said, "Fi?"

Trent stood at the side of her car, a few guys behind him, a girl right  by his side. He looked older-collegiate-even though he wore only jeans  and an Ole Miss sweatshirt that looked comfy enough to steal. He had the  same backpack from high school.

"Hey," she said.

"Uh, hey," he drawled, looking at her like she was unstable. "What the heck are you doing here?"

Fi looked past him to the people she didn't know. "Um-"

Trent followed her gaze. Quickly he gestured to the guys. "This is Zach,  Brian, and Chris. Lacrosse." Then to the girl. "And Lindsey."

Fi held up a hand. "Hi."

Trent waved his friends on, saying he'd catch up with them later.  Lindsey looked over her shoulder at Fi as she went to the dorm.

Hopping onto the hood, Trent slid beside her. "So, Crazy, why are you here?"

Fi sighed and slumped against the windshield. Trent followed suit. Her  shoulder rested against his upper arm; her head lolled onto it as well.  "I don't know. Bad day, I guess."

"How bad are we talking?"

Fi sighed. "My grades suck. Mom and Dad harass me daily. The lacrosse team hates me."

"Why do they hate you?" he asked.

She groaned, looking up at the sky. "They are terrible."

Trent was silent a moment. "And my role here is?" he eventually said.

"I don't know. I just drove down. I needed to . . . get some fresh air or something."

"The hermit has left its-what do hermits live in anyway? Tree trunks? Shells?"

"That's a crab. And I'm not a hermit."

He looked sideways at her, smirked, and then slid off the car. "Time to find out," he said, holding out a hand.

She studied his hand a minute before taking it. He gave a quick tug,  pulling her across the hood to land just in front of him. "There's an  ice cream social in the dorm lobby."

"An ice cream social? Have we time-warped back to 1923?"

"Every second Thursday. It's some crazy old tradition-maybe since 1923, I  don't know. Anyway, they don't skimp on the sprinkles, so what do I  care?"

Fi walked beside Trent, her hand still in his. She felt like a fourth  grader, holding hands while crossing the street-on the way to an ice  cream social, no less.

Trent scanned his card, and they left the cold of the parking lot for  the overheated warmth of the dorm. They turned the corner and walked  into a packed lobby-there had to be at least a hundred people.

She'd forgotten what her mom had told her about Ole Miss, how the girls  went to football games in dresses and heels, the boys in coats and ties.  People dressed here, and everything-even an ice cream social,  apparently-was an event. There were maybe forty girls, all with updos  and makeup and designer tops over skinny jeans. The place looked more  like a club in Manhattan than a dorm lobby in Oxford, Mississippi.                       
       
           



       

Fi still had on her sweats.

Glaring at Trent, she snapped her hand out of his. "I can't go in there."

He grimaced, looking down at her and back to the room. The girl he'd  been walking with, Lindsey, looked back at them. She'd shucked her coat  to reveal a cute, off-the-shoulder tunic over leggings. She flashed Fi  an unfriendly look.

Trent frowned. "You can't be mad at me! I would have told you to shower at least."

"Never mind." Fi turned back to the door. "I'll call you later."

He stepped in front of her. "Stop being melodramatic. We'll go to my room."

"What about the sprinkles?"

"Hey, Lindsey," he called. "Bring me some later, okay?"

Lindsey gave a fake smile and a quick nod. As they climbed the stairs, Fi asked, "What's up with the girl?"

"Nothing. We're just hanging out," he said, unlocking the door.

Trent's dorm room smelled like a larger, less-ventilated version of his  car-old food, dried sweat, and boy. Dirty clothes sat in messy clumps on  the floor, and take-out containers overflowed from the trash can. Fi  picked her way through the mess, looking for a semi-sanitary place to  sit. "You are a pig."

"It's my roommate." Trent kicked a few clothes piles toward one wall,  making a path, and pointed between the two desks, one fairly organized  and the other lost in the mess of papers, convenience store cups, books,  and Fi couldn't even tell what else. "He's disgusting. And hardly ever  here, only long enough to deposit more crap."

"Open a window at least."

Trent cracked a window. Cold air blew in, but at least it took the smell  back out with it. He pointed to the neater of the two beds, and Fi sat,  scooting across to rest her back against the wall. Trent joined her,  the two of them side by side against cold, painted, concrete blocks.  "It's a Doyle kind of day," he said. "Ryan called this morning."

"Yeah? What'd he have to say?"

"He quit the lacrosse team," Trent said.

She jerked straight up. "What?"

"Can't say I'm shocked. All Christmas break, he wouldn't shut up about  that intramural soccer team over fall semester. He'd never talked about  lacrosse like that."

"When did he talk about soccer?"

"Uh, the entire break."

"Not with me. I only got the here's-all-the-ways-you're-screwing-up-your-life lecture."

"He's just worried about you"-Trent nudged her shoulder-"because you crazy."

"I'm not crazy," she mumbled. Just pitiful.

"Anyway, he said lacrosse was a ton of work and a pain with his  schedule, and since he wasn't getting a ride either way, he'd rather  play soccer."

"How could he just give it up like that?" she asked.

Trent looked at her with a single raised eyebrow.

"Shut up," she said.

Someone knocked on the door. "Trent? Are you in there?" a girl's voice called from the other side.

Trent slid off the bed and opened the door to Lindsey. She held a cup of ice cream out to him with a perfectly manicured hand.

"Thanks, Lindsey," he said, taking it. "Hey, we're still, uh, talking and stuff. Catch you later?"

Lindsey forced a smile across her face. "Sure. I was on my way to  Chris's anyway." She waved bright-pink fingers toward Fi and drawled,  "It was nice to meet you."

The Chris comment-a pretty blatant attempt to get him jealous, Fi  thought-didn't hit its mark. "Great. Thanks again for this," he said,  over the spoonful of ice cream in his mouth. He closed the door on  Lindsey's pageant queen smile.

"She's so going to dump you."

He offered her the spoon. "She can't dump me if we never dated."

"Well, she wanted to."

Trent shook his head, looking dramatically forlorn. "Wanting does not a relationship make."

"So profound." She took the spoon from him, scraping another bite. "You weren't lying about the sprinkles."

"I know, right?"

"She's cute, though. Why aren't you interested?"

He spooned the last bit directly into Fi's mouth. "Not my type."

Fi took the cup from him, running her finger along the inside rim and  sucking off the captured sprinkles. "Have you figured it out yet?"

"Getting there." He stretched out, so that Fi nestled between the wall  and the nook created by his hips. She draped her legs over his-which  hung over the edge, just like she'd imagined. "A girl who's naturally  pretty, without tons of makeup and hair spray but not all hippie either.  Funny. Sophisticated but not stuck-up. She has to be an impossible  mixture of high and low maintenance-easy but not too easy, so as to keep  me on my toes."                       
       
           



       

"Sounds complicated." She tossed the empty cup toward the trash can. It clattered to the ground, since there was no room.

"I'm a complicated man, Fiona Grace Doyle."

"You didn't used to be, Trenton Alexander McKinnon the Third. There was a  time when you thought fart jokes were the height of comedy."

He wagged a finger at her. "Never underestimate the timelessness of the fart joke."

"Remember when we played in the backyard, and Ryan and I would  trash-talk each other, and you'd try to keep up with those sad yo'  mamas?"

Trent smiled with that single raised eyebrow. "What do you mean, you and  Ryan trash-talked each other? The only one I remember doing the  trash-talking was you."

Fi shoved him with her foot. "Figured you'd take his side."