“Do I take shortcuts to make me look smart? And the answer is yes. Yes I absolutely do all the time. I did it in school, I do it now, I will do it forever.”
“But you are super smart. Why do you need to pretend?”
“Everybody pretends, Tate. Even actually clever people.”
“You’re shitting me. Are you…are you shitting me?”
“No. Who really wants to read the whole of…” She searched for and held up the book she was most dreading. “Theoretical Dynamics in Cinematic Interpretation?”
It didn’t calm him down, however. If anything, it made him more animated.
And animated Tate was a ridiculously funny and marvelous sight to behold. He waved his arms. He somehow made a shrug seem sarcastic. He feigned sadness and outrage in the most delightful of ways, with every inch of his eyebrows and the most beautiful downturned mouthand all while he said things that were more than enough on their own.
“You mean to tell me I just sat here and read about the alien in Aliens representing my anus for nothing? I can never now undo that mental image, Letty. You have forever tainted a major part of Jim Cameron’s filmography for me. All I wanted to do was have fun watching movies when I took this elective, and instead I now know way too much about buttholes and how obsessed every director seemingly is with them,” he said, and now she couldn’t suppress the laugh if she tried. It wriggled out the second he stopped speaking, and it shot right through the middle of her next words.
“Hey, I didn’t order you to read an essay called ‘James Cameron’s Butthole’!”
“I know, I get that, but I thought it would impress you. I’m trying to pull my weight here only to discover that you don’t give a hot fuck about any of this stuff at all. This whole time we could have been baking on the couch in front of Dirty Dancing, goddamn it.”
Now it was her turn to be animated.
She practically fist pumped. Her grin was unstoppable.
“I knew you liked Dirty Dancing. I fucking knew.”
“Hell yeah I like Dirty Dancingbecause it’s the best fucking movie there ever was! Now are we going to get the fuck out of here and watch it or what?”
“Okay, maybe we could do that.”
“That doesn’t seem enthusiastic enoughlemme hear that enthusiasm.”
“Fuck yeah, we can totally fucking do that.”
“Now give me a high five,” he said, so het up she couldn’t resist.
But man oh man, did she live to regret it.
Chapter 10
She first knew she had made a major miscalculation when they got to his place. Images of cool lofts and fraternity houses danced through her mind, until they got to the building at the tail end of campus and she realized. He was living in a dorm. Tate Sullivan, king of cool, was in a tiny one-person dorm room like hersin fact, his dorm room was smaller. He had to turn sideways to get between the desk and his bed, and said bed barely looked big enough for his enormous body. She was willing to bet every dollar she had that his feet hung over the end when he lay down. When he sat his knees touched the leg of his desk.
It was ridiculous.
But also wholly terrifying. Somehow she was supposed to sit in this tiny room with him, and not on the couch he had mentioned. He had lied about that, or else thought his bed countedwhich she supposed in most ways it did. It was couch shaped and people could easily sit side by side on it. What was the big deal?
She didn’t know.
She only knew that she was fidgeting, and not really listening to anything he was saying.
“Okay, so all I got is my laptop, but it’s super big so it should be fine to watch. Do you think? I mean I guess we could see if the AV department has, like, a TV we could borrow or”
He stopped short of finishing his sentence the second he saw her.
She couldn’t blame him, however. She knew she looked…off.
“Letty? You still with me?”
“Oh. Yeah. The laptop. Cool.”
“You seem weird.”
“Don’t I always?”
She let out a little laugh, but knew how it sounded. She read it from his uncertain, baffled expression, as clearly as if he had told her what he thought.
It was as hollow and desolate as a haunted auditorium.
“No. No not really. That was just something I said in high school because some asshole had briefly taken over my body. Remember? You have to remember. I said it like twenty minutes ago.”
“I remember. But really there’s nothing wrong. I’m fine.”
“Okay. Great. So you’re gonna sit down now.”
“Sure I am. Any second. Definitely about to happen.”
“Oh definitely. Yeah, I can see that you sitting next to me poses no problems for you at all,” he said, in a way that should have seemed nasty. Only it didn’t, and he made sure it stayed that way. “Or you know I could just take my desk chair and move it into the bathroom doorway, so we can both see my laptop without ever making you look as horrified as you do now.”