Dallas (Time for Tammy #1) (14 page)

“Have you thought anymore about asking Dallas out?” Linda asked as we moved forward in line.

I shrugged. “I don’t think I want to go there. I just wish he’d figure out that I’m a great girl and we’d make the cutest couple ever. I want
him
to ask
me
out. It’d be so much easier.”

Linda picked at a mosquito bite on her arm. “What do you see in him, anyway? You should hear some of the comments he makes in Heritage. They’re really out there. Like, to solve overpopulation we should just move everyone in central Africa to Siberia or have rich people adopt all the poor kids. He’s pretty clueless.”

“I think he’s funny.”

“I think you are too good for him,” Linda said with a defiant tone in her voice.

I turned toward her. “But if that’s true, then why doesn’t he like me?”

“I don’t think he likes anybody in that way.”

“I think he likes Jane.”

Linda obligingly turned a corner in the line and then turned back toward me. “Jane’d
never
go for him. I think she knows he’s a loser, but she puts up with him for your sake.”

I didn’t have anything to say to that. I knew Jane, unlike my twin sister, would never date anyone I had liked. Not that Jane harbored any feelings toward Dallas.

“You should just ask him out. It’s better to know now, before you get even more obsessed over him… if that’s even possible.”

It was hard to believe that Linda, with her twangy accent and Mickey Mouse T-shirt, was giving me dating advice. Dictating that I had to stop mooning over Dallas and just ask him out. What I should have told her, should have told all of my friends, was that not only was I scared to ask out yet another guy, but I was almost certain of Dallas’s rejection since he’d never given me the slightest hint he liked me back. But as Linda stated, perhaps it was time to do or die. I’d make a move, and if it didn’t work, well then I’d forget about him. No problem.

Yeah, right.

The day we got back from Thanksgiving Break, I called Dallas to come over. I was going to use the coupons I’d won at Delta Flashback as an excuse to ask him to go out with me. Lizzie even offered to let me borrow her car. I wanted to get the whole asking Dallas out part done with ASAP to stop my pounding heart. Jane offered to have Linda hang out in her room for the night, but I told them I’d rather have them stay.

Dallas actually showed up when he said he would for once. But he was in one of his goofy-story moods and started talking about jobs he had in high school.

“I worked at an ice cream palace in Illinois,” Lizzie said. She had entered the room mid-conversation.

“Ice cream?” Dallas repeated.

“Yep, and I’ll be working there for Winter Break. My cousin Cameron works there too.”

“In Illinois?” Dallas’s ears perked. “I’ll be visiting Ian over break. You’re going to hook me up with free food, right?”

“Sure, all the food you want,” Lizzie told him, as if she and Ian didn’t actually live in towns located five hours away from each other. “And ice cream, too.”

“Oooh, sweet, do you have Mackinaw Island Fudge?”

Lizzie nodded. Throughout this conversation, Jane’s eyebrows had been arching higher and higher until they were practically sitting on top of her scalp. She decided it was time to change the subject. “Speaking of food, Tammy, don’t you have coupons for free pizza?”

“Yeah,” I mumbled in reply as I could feel my face turning red. “They’re for a restaurant in downtown Tampa,” I continued, wanting to fill the silence as their faces all swiveled toward me; the girls’ were looking expectant while Dallas’s face held his regular blank expression. “I won them at Delta Flashback. Instead of the Grand Prize, which was a trip to the Bahamas.” Now I was just babbling. I took a deep breath. “Maybe-you’d-like-to-go-with-me-sometime-Dallas,” I said in a rush.

The time before his reply seemed to stretch forever until he said, “Maybe… although I'm not sure I’ll have time. You know, with Volleyball and stuff.”

There was another pause. Lizzie, Linda, and Jane’s faces seemed to fall simultaneously. Their outward expressions seemed to mimic what I was feeling inside: as if the upper part of my chest was collapsing into my stomach. “But Dallas,” Lizzie finally asked. “Don’t you want free pizza?”

“The free pizza is a guarantee,” he replied, which I took to mean that he’d come out with me.

Lizzie and Jane both sighed audibly. My lungs seemed to right themselves and I could breathe fully again.
But
what if he meant he wanted free pizza from Lizzie’s restaurant hook-up? What if he got confused with the question and reverted back to the previous conversation?

I’m not sure what happened in the five minutes after that until Dallas left our dorm. I think Linda was telling them about her job working in her dad’s store in Minnesota. Dallas claimed he had to go to Volleyball and said his good-byes. I mumbled back at him. As soon as the door shut behind him, I stated my fear to my friends.

“Tammy, he said it was a guarantee,” Lizzie replied.

“He said the free pizza was a guarantee. What if he meant when he visits Ian, and he wants Mackinaw Island fudge and pizza from your restaurant?”

Jane and Linda didn't reply, but Lizzie was nodding thoughtfully.

“We have to go over every pointless tidbit of that conversation to figure this out,” I told them.

“Tidbits of conversation are often pointless when Dallas is concerned,” Jane said with a sigh. “This could take forever.”

Indeed, we spent the next hour debating over the contents of that dialogue. The results were inconclusive.

“Call him now. I think he’s done with Volleyball,” Jane said as she picked up the phone and dialed Dallas’s number.

“No!” I yelled, lunging for the phone. Jane dropped it on the bed. It was ringing. “Shit!” I called out as someone answered. Finally I got a hold of it and pressed the END button. “Great, Jane. That was either Sonofabitch or
him
, and they’ll know it was me by the sound of my voice.”

“So call him now and ask him out. Tell him the phone hung up accidentally.”

“No.”

“Fine. Then stay up all night wondering if he really agreed to go out with you. But don’t bring it up again to me until you ask him out for real. Slowly, in plain English and enunciating every word so he doesn’t get confused again.”

“No.”

“Hey, I’ve got an idea,” Lizzie said as Jane and I stared heatedly at each other.

It was decided Lizzie and I would construct a double date, going out for pizza and then on to the free “semi-formal” on campus—nobody would have even had to pay a cent. She had this guy coming around, Jeff, who was drop-dead gorgeous, but also a dumb jerk—which often seems to be the case with drop-dead gorgeous guys. Incidentally, I hated Jeff, but it was agreed that since he had a four-seated car, he would be the ideal double on Dallas and my “date.” At any rate, Dallas and Jeff could talk about dumb stuff together.

This would be my second attempt at asking a guy out—the intermediate “free pizza as a guarantee” offer didn’t count, and, since the first time resulted in me being stood up, maybe that didn’t count either.

I waited until the next day to reinstate the offer to Dallas. I called during the late afternoon, before Volleyball. Jane was still taking a nap, but Linda was in the room. Dallas seemed game at first, especially when I played up the free pizza angle. I guess he thought it would be a group of us. “Are Linda and Jane going too?”

“No,” I said, playing with the quilt on Linda’s bed. “It’s just going to be Lizzie, her new guy Jeff, and you and me.” Linda looked up at me from her desk, eyebrows raised.

“Oh.” There was a long period of silence. I crumpled my face at my roommate, knowing what was coming.

“Well, I think I won’t be able to go. I have too much homework this weekend.”

Homework? Dallas? On a Friday night at the end of the semester?

“Okay I get it. Whatever, Dallas. Have a great Winter Break.” I hit then END button and threw the phone on the bed. Linda got up from her desk to put the phone back on the charger.

“Well, I guess that settles it,” I told her. “What could have been Tammy and Dallas is now over. He really doesn’t see me in
that
way.” I blinked back tears.

“Are you all right?” Linda asked, coming over to hug me.

I shook my head as the tears really started coming. “No.”

“Oh, Tammy.” She dropped her arms to pat my leg. “I've said it before and I’ll say it again. You’re too good for that stupid horse.”

“But why? Why, if he’s so immature and trivial, if he’s so skinny with such a long face, why wouldn’t
he
want
me?
And why did he tell me he had homework? Why didn’t he just say he was hanging out with the Brazilians or going to a Kennedy party?”

Linda sensed that nothing she could say would cheer me up. “I don’t know, Tammy. I really don’t.”

Chapter 11: The Tape

I
wish I could have blamed it on alcohol. Or drugs. But I was completely sober when I decided to give him the tape. At first it just started off as a way to relieve the pain I felt from Dallas’s rejection. I used Linda’s lecture recorder to make up songs about Dallas and his roommate, sung to Christmas song melodies. There was
Dallas, the Long-Faced Horse, Silent Night: Drunken Night,
and the classic,
Walking Around in Ian’s Underwear.

Somehow it made me feel slightly better to hear my tuneless voice making fun of the guys that broke my heart.

I played it for Jane and Linda one night shortly before finals.

Jane laughed most of the way through it. “Those are pretty good, Tammy.”

“Yeah,” Linda replied. “You should give it to Dallas.”

“No,” Jane said. “That’s too mean, even for Dallas. And Sonofabitch. Just keep it, and you can listen to it whenever you’re upset over the holidays.” Jane got up from my desk chair. “I better go, I have to meet a couple of people at the library for an hour or so tonight.”

As soon as she left, Linda said, “You are going to give it to him, right?”

I turned to look at my normally shy, quiet roommate.

“D’you think I should?”

She nodded emphatically. “Those jocks are such jerks. They think they can get away with hurting girls and no one ever pays attention. But now… now they’ll know. I’ll even deliver it for you.” She rummaged through her closet. “Here,” she said, handing me a roll of Christmas-themed wrapping paper.

I was sitting nervously outside having a cigarette with Lizzie when Linda returned from Ibsen. This time I smoked the whole thing, relishing the way the dirty nicotine filled my lungs and calmed my nerves.

“He thought it was a Christmas present,” Linda reported as she walked up the path to Alpha.

Lizzie glanced over at me. “Who thought what was a present?”

“Yeah, I want to know too,” called a new voice. Jane had appeared from behind the other side of Prasch. She must have finished up at the library.

I stubbed out my butt on the bottom of the picnic table. “Dallas. I gave him the tape.”

“You didn’t.” Jane said, already knowing the answer.

“I did. He deserved it. I’m tired of him yanking me around,” I stated without meeting anyone at the tables’ eyes.

“And?” Lizzie demanded.

“Dallas asked if it was from Jane and Tammy,” Linda replied.

Jane raised her eyebrows.

“I told him it was strictly from Tammy,” Linda continued and Jane nodded satisfactorily. “Ian was there too, for once, and Nester came across the hall as I was leaving.”

I pulled my legs into my chest, suddenly noticing how cold it was. After all, it
was
December, even if we were in Florida.

“So does it make you feel any better?” Lizzie asked.

I pictured Dallas opening the package and noting the tape without a label on it. Maybe he thought it was a recording from
The Little Mermaid
or Third Eye Blind’s new song. Then I pictured the shock on all three of my nemesis’s faces as they heard the first stanzas of Song #1:
God Rest Ye Merry Ibsen Boys:

God rest ye Merry Ibsen Boys,

Let nothing you dismay

Remember Dallas the moron

Was born upon this day

To flip us off in back campus when we were rollerblading,

Oh tidings of Block-headed boys, Block-headed boys

Oh tidings of Block-headed boys.

“No,” I replied.

“Well,” Jane said, getting up from the table. “I guess that’s that.”

I managed to get through my finals and finish up my first semester of college. There was a guy on my flight back to Michigan I recognized from Eckhart. The freckle-faced one that walked LaVerne back to the dorm the night we put the bike on the roof. After we landed and I was waiting for my bag, he came up to me.

“You’re Tammy, right? Dallas’s friend?”

“He’s not my friend,” I replied.
Not anymore.

“Yeah, no kidding. I heard that tape. What a weirdo,” he said, shaking his head as he walked away. I assumed he was talking about me and not Dallas. I’d forgotten what a small campus Eckhart was. I supposed my tape would be all the rage over AOL Instant Messenger this Christmas
.
And that begged the question: would I rather maintain my anonymity or become infamous?
Whatever
. I had a whole month to forget about it.

And then I saw Corrie and Kellen approaching.

“Tamara!” Kellen cried, wrapping his arms around me. “How are you?”

Corrie picked up my duffle bag instead of offering a hug. “Yeah, how’s Horseboy?”

I somehow was able to get through the week leading up to the holidays. It was too cold to roller-blade in Michigan in December, so I took up running. Well, more like jogging. Well, more like walking briskly at night, listening to the customary Nine Inch Nails. It helped get me out of the house when Kellen was over.