Adrian Lessons (3 page)

He squeezes a couple drops of the food coloring onto the cotton ball, reaches out, and dabs my tongue. Then he places a tiny O-shaped paper circle in the center. He’s close enough that his breath sweeps gently over my chin. His eyes angle down toward my mouth, providing me with ample opportunity to stare at his strong, dark brows, his eyelashes.

Then he looks up and his eyes lock on mine. Shit.

“You’re a supertaster,” he says.

Yes, he probably would taste super.

The sexiest line appears at the edge of his lips as the slight smile returns. “The experiment, remember? If you have more than twenty-five tastebuds in the circle, you’re a supertaster.”

He hasn’t moved back at all. There’s only three inches of cursed space between his face and mine. I never thought anyone could look good under the psych lab’s fluorescent lighting. We live to be proved wrong, I guess.

“I’ve always hated bitter foods,” I mumble, as my entry for this year’s Annual Idiot Competition.

“You look like you like things sweet,” he says in his low voice.

What the hell is happening? Five minutes ago I was in Intro to Psych at Statham College, Massachusetts. Now where am I? The moon?

The first judge at the Annual Idiot Competition nods, whispers to the other judges, and holds up an eight. I try to recover my faculties. “It’s my turn to do you.”

“Is it, now?” he smirks. Goodbye, faculties. Enjoy your all-expense-paid trip to Hawaii, along with my sanity and this pair of panties.

I must be ovulating. Damn you, uterus.

Who is this guy?

“Maybe I should just do a taste test to find out if I’m a supertaster.” His grin is positively wicked. “I wonder if anyone wants to volunteer to be tasted.”

“I volunteer as tribute,” I say in one breath.

The second judge of the AIC holds up a nine to raucous applause.

He blinks, and for a second I think he’s going to take me up on it. Then he laughs. “I was kidding. It’s how I figure out if I’ll get along with new people—I see if they can handle my sense of humor. Trial by fire.”

I rest my chin on my hands and nod solemnly like I’m not contemplating the nearest and easiest object with which to kill myself. “Right. I feel you.”

Damn it. I accidentally said ‘I feel you’ completely unironically. What the hell was in those pills?

“Feel free,” he says, offering his arm.

I feel his bicep, giving it a little squeeze. It’s like a rock encased in human skin. Warm boy skin, specifically. “Feels…nice.”

His smile is so freakishly cute. “You’re a funny girl, Cleo.”

Funny! He thinks I’m funny. I
am
funny. I giggle a little bit.

He continues, “You’re pretty brave to come to Professor Newbury’s class high.”

My smile freezes. It takes me a good five seconds to track down what he’s said. “High? Me? No.
No
. I’m not…”

“Hey, it’s fine.” His voice is so nice. He’s genuinely trying to make me feel comfortable. “It’s college.”

“Yes,” I agree. “Yes, it is. Wait. I’m not high.”

“Okay,” he says gently. Great. Now he thinks I’m mentally handicapped instead.

Professor Newbury’s voice cuts into the babble of students playing with each other’s tongues. “Wrap it up, everyone, and we’ll discuss our results.”

Adrian the Green-Eyed Greek begins gathering our supplies.

Suddenly, I’m struck with the memory of what Marie told me. Faced with Dreamboat, it doesn’t seem like such a bad plan after all. In fact, I could put it into action right now.

“Wait,” I tell him sexily, stealing the food coloring. I squeeze some onto a Q-tip, take his hand, and write my number on tanned boy skin in blue AmeriColor.

I hear him chuckle and utter a soft, “Damn.”

That’s right, boy. Damn is the appropriate impressed response to a girl who can write legible numbers with a food-colored Q-tip, possibly the worst writing tool in the world.

And now that I’m leaned in close to him, it seems a shame to pull away. His mouth is right there. It’s like a gravitational pull. I lose all sense of myself. Our eyes are locked together and it’s as if we’re exchanging a promise.

“It wouldn’t be a real experiment if I didn’t taste something,” I whisper.

I kiss him.

It’s not a hallucination. I’m actually doing this. His lips are warm and cinnamony and perfect, and the feel of them sets off several volcanic eruptions in my abdomen. Evacuate the civilians. Beware of falling ash…

“Ms. Reynolds!” someone barks. “Please save it for after class!”

Yes, I would love to keep doing this after class, thank you…

“
Ms. Reynolds!”

I break away, slowly realizing what I’ve done. Adrian is staring at me, is expression unreadable. My eyes drop, to the arm where I just wrote my number. There’s a little scar just above his wrist. A V-shaped scar. Where have I seen that before—

It hits me.

“No,” I moan, as all the blood empties from my face and pools at the bottom of my feet. “You…walked in…Friday night?”

“I walked in. Friday night,” he confirms, not unkindly.

But I don’t give a flying fudge about his tone, because I myself am flying through the door, whizzing past my turtle-headed professor and leaving behind half-truths about sickness and the nurse’s office in my wake.

The final judge of the Annual Idiot Contest holds up a perfect ten, and the crowd goes wild. I can almost see Marie in the audience, face-palming.

I’d like to thank the Academy.

~3~

“You…gave…me…
what
?”

“Xanax,” says Marie, her guilty expression perfectly mirroring my mom’s dog’s when we catch him crapping in the kitchen. “I’m so sorry, Cleo. I was in a rush…”

I will not murder my roommate! I will not murder my roommate, however much she deserves it.

“I’m sorry! I’m taking you out for tacos, aren’t I?” she says, glancing at my face again. At least once person on the sidewalk has crossed to the other side of the street at the sight of my face. Marie, though, is holding up well. “How many did you even take?”

“Two,” I grouse.

She winces.

“On my way to lunch I stopped Clarissa Williams just to start an argument about taxes, based on a comment she made in econ class. Our
freshman year
. She had no idea what was going on.” I sigh and rub my forehead. I am in desperate need of another long night with Mr. Flix. “And that’s nothing compared to what I did in Psych lab. I wrote my number on a guy’s hand. In food coloring. And then made out with him in front of everyone.”

“Was he cute?” Marie asks.

“That’s missing the point by about eight hundred miles.
Food coloring
, Marie. And I remember him being cute, but I also remember being asked what time it was by a giant owl, so he probably has three heads and is covered in barnacles.”

I elect to keep the little fact that he was the one who walked in on me on Friday to myself. Sharing is caring, but there’s only so much more embarrassment I can stand.

“There was a basketball home game today—they had someone wear an Ollie the Owl suit to try and get people to go to the game. You know, our school mascot?” Marie is smirking now. I resist the temptation to kick her into the street. “Besides, barnacles could be hot, if you’re into the pirate theme. Has he called you yet?”

I push my phone deeper into my pocket. I have definitely not checked my phone fourteen times in the past hour. Not me. “No. Considering my mental state at the time, I probably wrote down Netflix’s customer service hotline instead.”

“Considering your mental state at the time, I’d be amazed if you could remember that,” she muses.

Only fools doubt my commitment to Netflix.

We reach Loco Tacos, complete with a roof that looks like a sombrero and a front door decorated with red-and-green Christmas lights, just as a phone buzzes. I go for mine at the same time Marie does, but it’s hers.

She answers. “Hey…oh…no, damn, I totally forgot…yeah, I’m on my way! Sorry!”

Which are never words you want to hear from someone about to treat you to tacos.

She hangs up and turns full-blown puppy eyes on me. “I’m gonna have to bail, Cleo. Totally forgot I have a meeting for my Austen Seminar group project tonight. I’d skip it, but it’s the first time our schedules have aligned all semester, and the proposal is due—”

I wave off her paltry excuses. “Don’t worry about. I’ll just go cry in bed and finish season four of Parks and Rec.”

“No, you will not,” she says firmly, shoving a fistful of cash at me. “I really do feel bad about the Xanax. And you’re still stuffed up—you need something spicy to clear your sinuses. Buy yourself some tacos. On me.”

“Solo Loco Tacos. An interesting proposition.” Although after my horrible day, the idea of sitting along and stuffing myself with beef and cheese sounds perfect. “I accept. The cash, as well as your apology.”

She kisses my cheek, standing on tiptoe to do it. “And when you get back, you can work on finishing that scene.”

I almost huff at her, but before I can, she’s halfway across the street. Smart girl. I turn and go through the door.

“Just me and my shame,” I tell the boy in a beaded sombrero who asks how many people will be joining me. He seats me by the window, where I have a perfect view of the inglorious main street of Westby, Massachusetts—its only claim to fame the delectable foreign cuisine and, I guess, Statham.

I’m far from the typical Statham student, who is Jewish, rich, a little neurotic but still willing to party. Though I
am
willing to party on occasion, I’m definitely not rich. Or Jewish. The jury’s still out on neurotic.

While I’m waiting for my triple order of heaven, a.k.a beef and cheese tacos with a margarita to wash it down, I slide out my phone. No calls from Dreamboat, although it’s very possible that he could be sweet-talking a Netflix service representative at this very moment. I do, however, have a new email.

And that email contains some very bad news.

Dear Ms. Reynolds,

I hope you enjoyed a refreshing summer break. We are emailing concerning the Cosmann Grant, of which you have been a previous recipient. Unfortunately, budget cuts to the school this year have required that we reevaluate our financial aid distributions to some of our students. We thought it best to notify you that the Cosmann Grant has been removed from your aid package for the upcoming spring semester, as part of certain unavoidable changes to our budget. We hope you are not inconvenienced.

Sincerely,

Eleanor Golding

The Office of Student Financial Aid

Well, fuck me with a hot buttered scone.

The Cosmann Grant covered a huge chunk of my tuition. Without that, I
really
need my portion of Marie’s advance…or I won’t be able to come back to Statham next semester.

I stare at the random Spanish phrases etched into the wooden table. How could they do this to me? My GPA hasn’t dropped at all. But—no. I know exactly why they did this. They’re cutting the aid of seniors, knowing we’ll do whatever it takes to cough up that extra couple thousand because it’s too late in the game for us to transfer.

Goddamn rich academic asshole bureaucrats…

I sniff, wishing I could blame it on my cold and not the moisture in my eyes. I can handle any stress but the money kind. I reach into my bag, but I’m out of tissues. My fingers close around a crumpled piece of paper. Marie’s stupid submission to the Sex King.

I bring it to my face, intending to tell it exactly what I think of it by dousing it with snot, but my stupid eyes betray me and I read it instead.

Dear High and Dry,

It sounds like you need a serious wake-up call. Possibly, get one of your friends to slap you in the face. So you dated some loser for three years and now you’re free? Don’t talk about this like it’s some difficult thing for you—when you’re forty and miserably married to some other loser, these will be the days that you look back on when you please yourself at night (because your husband definitely won’t). Take advantage of this, full throttle. My advice? Fuck the nearest thing with legs. You need a good time.

Email me with any follow-up questions:
[email protected]

Best of luck.

Fury surges up and makes itself a comfy home in my stomach.

What an arrogant, idiotic, self-assured piece of—

Because I need to take my annoyance out on someone, and possibly because my margarita is already half gone, I decide to let him have it. I use my kiddie hotmail account, the one with ‘Princess Ariel’ as the username in case he decides to track me down.

Dear Sex King, if that is your real name,

First of all, you should know that I’m not even the one who submitted that letter to your stupid column. My friend did it on my behalf, because she’s an idiot. She is a minor league idiot compared to you, though. ‘Fuck the nearest thing with legs?’ The nearest thing to me with legs happens to be a statue of Pancho Villa, so yeah, I’ll get right on that. Also, I do not EVER plan to be ‘miserably married’, at forty or otherwise. Now excuse me while I go scrub off the residue of your arrogance with industrial-strength soap.

Sincerely,

Screw You

I hit send. A little harsh, maybe, and not my greatest work, but I’m steaming.

When my tacos arrive, I tear into them like I’m on a time limit. Which I am. I have to get home tonight and hammer out that sex scene, inspired or not. Or I won’t be getting my degree come fall.

The Sex King must have been sitting at his computer, because not less than five minutes later, my phone lights up with an email notification.

Dear Screw You,

I’d be happy to. Just give me a time and place.

My fingers flex. This guy is probably not half as attractive as he thinks he is. Mommy issues, most likely. I type out a quick response—
The time is never, the place is nowhere
—and turn back to my neglected tacos.