Getting to Third Date (3 page)

I almost didn't even mind that Tyler had the hots for her. I'd gotten used to being second-string in high school, and once again college wasn't much different. Besides, who can compete with a girl from Italy with excellent taste in fashion and room decor? It was a no-brainer that she'd take Human Sexuality just for the easy A.

 

I wonder how many other people in the class were relieved to hear, the very first class, that it wasn't our shallowness that made it difficult to return the affections of someone deserving. It was just basic chemistry. Our bodies made the decision from a few short sniffs and a little visual selectivity.

For example, my obsession with Tyler's eyes. Not to mention the way he smelled like peppermint and leather. And Richie's bizarre thing for my ear. How do I know that? Because he told me. He even wrote an ode to my ear for a dramatic performance once. He gave me a private showing and I applauded, even though it creeped me out a little.

I mean, my ear? Why not my smile? Or my eyes? Heck, even my legs, which are a trigger for male fantasies, according to my professor. But I guess we're just slaves to our own chemistry.

There was a ray of hope on the attraction front, though. Professor Golding says it eases up as we get older. Probably because we start losing our sense of smell. And our eyesight becomes fuzzier. But I'm only eighteen, and I'm not anxious to get old before I've been young. So I guess I'm just going to have to put up with the vagaries of pheromones. And the fact that my pheromones enjoy leading me into unrequited like with guys whose pheromones don't reciprocate.

Tragedy in the making, I say. But my body chemistry obviously didn't consult my wishes. If it had, I'd have gone out with David in high school. Or, at the very least, Tyler would have noticed me in the boy meets girl way during the past few weeks.

I tried not to let it get to me, although I had added to the end of my last essay, on the subject of human hormones, the rather impulsive and off-topic sentence:
I wish I controlled my body chemistry rather than it controlling me.

Professor Golding had written a note alongside my lament:
Ah! But the uncertainty is what makes it all exciting!

She could afford to say that—she was already at the stage where her sense of smell and her eyesight were going.

Mine, however, were still pretty sharp. And Tyler was a cutie, even though I was trying not to look at him. There was no discussion of Mother Hubbard at all from him, which threw me for a second. But then I noticed how he kept glancing at the empty seat next to me. Duh. He wasn't being his usual overcautious self. He had something other than the paper on his mind this morning.

“Where's Sophia?” His question reminded me that sometimes a sexy roommate can come in handy (not usually, but sometimes). At the same time I had to fight the red tide of jealousy. Damned pheremones.

Sometimes I wish I wasn't so good at guessing what people will say—at least the things I wish they wouldn't say. Not that Tyler isn't nonchalant enough to fool anyone sitting nearby.

 

So I tell him only half the truth. “She wasn't feeling well, so I promised to take great notes and fill her in when I get back to the room.” No need for him to know that the cause of Sophia's “illness” is six feet, six inches tall and a huge fan of some sports tournament at the bar. Sophia hadn't said good-bye to him until four in the morning—and I had cause to know since I was propped up on the lumpy, spine killer couch in the commons area of our dormitory until she gave me the all clear.

Okay, so there's one more adjustment I had to make to college life versus high school life. Sharing a room. I'm not an only child, but my little brother and I always had our own rooms. Sharing with someone who is yin to my yang is way weird.

Not that Tyler would get it—he's dying to yin her yang. Guys.

Golding walked into class with a massive pair of lips resting on her shoulders. At least, I assumed it was Golding, since the body beneath the lips was the same curvy yet conservatively clad figure that had somehow made the guys drool all semester.

She liked to shock us, always laughing when she got the silent hush at the sheer daring of her latest stunt. Then she'd smile a big Cheshire Cat grin and say, “It comes with the material. Can you believe they pay me to teach you guys about sex and love?”

But giant plastic lips in place of a head was a bit much. In my opinion. Tyler seemed to think it was cool, the way he was smiling. I suppose any diversion is a good diversion when you need one.

Some of the other kids clapped. Not too surprising when you think about it—a class of hundreds is bound to have a small percentage of people who like their humor on the cute but cheesy side.

Golding's hottie grad student assistant helped her get the lips off of her head and onto the little lecture desk at the front of the classroom. Her hair was a little mussed, but not much—she patted it absently as she faced the class, and adjusted her glasses as she peered up at the faces in the crowded lecture hall.

That was something I really did like about Professor Golding—she came by her sex appeal naturally. She wore minimal makeup and her clothes were the right size, not too tight. She had a killer sense of humor and such complete comfort in her own skin that there wasn't any way not to love her—even when she had a pair of giant lips on her head.

Even when she was outrageous. “Raise your hand if you think you're a good kisser.”

Lots of people raised their hands—Tyler's may even have been the first one up, he responded so quickly. Maybe he thought she'd ask him to come up and demonstrate. Hey, if my hope dies hard, I can imagine that holds true for other people, even guys like Tyler.

“No wonder no one takes your advice,” Tyler whispered when I didn't raise my hand.

“This is a bogus question.” I crossed my arms to avoid the temptation to raise my hand. I noticed a few hands that hadn't been up raise waveringly—no one really likes to be in the minority. Including me.

But I wasn't going to give Golding's lame question any validity.

I'd forgotten that Tyler could lose his sense of humor and revert back to serious in about a tenth of a second. “I am a good kisser. Are you implying I'm not?”

As if I'd know. Maybe once or twice (an hour) I've thought about it. Tyler has great lips, full and curved and quirked just like I like them.

Of course, I'd fall on the sharpest pencil I could find before I'd admit that to him. So I just said, “Everybody thinks they're a great kisser—it's the other person they think doesn't know jack.”

He grinned, sense of humor resurfacing, as if he thought I'd agreed with him. But no, he'd heard me. “Go ahead and keep telling yourself that.”

Golding's lecture was pretty much what I'd expected (after all, I had read the chapter she'd assigned us to read—maybe I do like being in the minority, after all). A quick historical overview, some of the more weirdo views that cultures hold on kissing, how kissing can go horribly wrong, etc.

To Tyler's (and probably others') disappointment, there was no practicing. Even Professor Golding restricted herself to kissing the obscenely huge lips only five times, and she didn't French-kiss even once, although several people anonymously—and loudly—called out for it.

We had pretty much exhausted the topic, except for jokes, a good ten minutes before class was finished. I was hoping for an early exit, but unfortunately, one of the adoring throng had a question unrelated to the topic of kissing—but very related to me and my life.

“Do you think Mother Hubbard has gone senile and should retire?”

Professor Golding doesn't usually get mad about anything. So I was shocked to see her actually turn red and shake her finger at us—the collective us, since she didn't have a clue who was Mother Hubbard either. Thank goodness, as it turns out.

Because, while I was anonymous, Tyler wasn't. And she turned her eyes to the editor of the paper. “Did you ask Dr. Laura to write the Mother Hubbard column this year, Tyler?”

“Ooooooooh.” The class knew that was a burn of the highest magnitude. Professor Golding hated Dr. Laura, the iconic and intolerant talk radio host.

Even though most of us didn't listen to her radio program, we know a lot about her attitudes: adoption over abortion, single parents don't date until children leave home, wives coddle their poor “less capable” husbands to keep their marriages happy, and—worst of all to Professor Golding, who had three children and a full-time job—mothers stay home with their children, no excuses, no escape.

Tyler, the freak, preened under her glare. “Her fee was too high, so I had to settle for a freshman who wanted to set her fellow students straight.”

Thanks, Tyler, tell everyone Mother Hubbard is a freshman. That quarters the possible candidates. Normally, I wouldn't care, but when people are burning your column in the streets, you start to realize you have to be a little bit careful. Or at least, you do if you're not Tyler, the normally-paranoid-turned-suddenly-clueless-by-the-spotlight editor.

That clue he'd inadvertently dropped obviously did not escape Professor Golding. “A freshman? Clearly, a very inexperienced freshman. Perhaps you would have been wiser to give the job to someone who had learned that no person—or relationship—is perfect.”

Tyler nodded, but I could feel the ego rising off him as he stood to address the crowd, not just Professor Golding. “Is there something wrong with not settling?”

I turned alternately hot and then cold. He was using my lines against me, when he hadn't believed a word I'd said. He had to be doing it to irritate Professor Golding. Or me. Or, more likely, both of us. Still, I admit I felt pleased that he'd remembered what I'd said well enough to quote me.

It was a toss-up which of us wanted him to sit down and shut up more. But since it was Professor Golding's class—and I was being discreet—she took the first shot. “I am the last person to suggest that anyone ‘settle,' as you say, Tyler. But I don't like how quickly Mother Hubbard advises someone to write off another human being.”

“Here's how it was explained to me,” Tyler said innocently, leaning forward earnestly for maximum effect. “Mother Hubbard thinks that you date a person once, and you are going to be almost certain whether they meet your standards or not. But, regardless, everybody deserves a second chance. After that—third dates only go to a chosen few.”

Professor Golding pushed her glasses farther up her nose—a signal to those of us who had been in her lectures that she was preparing to engage in verbal battle. But all she said, rather mildly, was, “That isn't an awful premise.”

I was warmed for a moment by Professor Golding's faint praise of my philosophy. Silly me. Because her voice had a little edge when she added, “However, Mother Hubbard appears to have set such high standards that only saints and robots could meet them on the first date.”

“Yeah,” one beefy football type called out. “My girlfriend dumped me because of a Mother Hubbard column. I didn't do nothin' to deserve it.”

Unfortunately for him, his pity party was cut short. He hadn't remembered that said girlfriend also took the class. She rose from a seat on the other side of the room and pointed at him. “Joe Jackmeyer, there's nothing wrong with Mother Hubbard saying that if you only came over for booty calls and never let anyone see us in public that I was wasting my time with you.”

The tough football guy fell apart, as if this was the first time he'd heard the accusation—untrue, since clearly he had read my column. “Baby. If you'd only talked to me about it…. I'll take you out in public.”

“You will?” She seemed skeptical, but I saw it—hope was rising faster than she could stop it. She wanted to believe him.

“Sure. I just didn't want to share you.” What a line.

Line or not, it worked. The girl would have flown over the turning heads if she could. “Okay.”

I didn't believe him. But the girlfriend who formerly had been only a booty call clearly did. I wondered what she'd be writing to Mother Hubbard in the future? I'd give the new “public” romance a good two weeks…if they were lucky.

“See?” Professor Golding obviously didn't see the same thing I did. She was practically beaming. “That's what's needed—a little more communication, a little more compassion, and a healthy dose of tolerance.”

The class echoed her last statement. We'd heard it many times during the semester. It was Professor Golding's battle cry, after all.

I wanted to do something really stupid—like argue with Professor Golding. She was actually the kind of professor who'd give you extra credit for arguing with her. But my defending Mother Hubbard, being a freshman, and sitting next to Tyler was just too many clues to drop when Mother Hubbard hatred was spreading across campus.

Besides, Professor Golding was not yet done. “Perhaps you should consider replacing your columnist, Tyler.”

“How's this…” Oh, God. I'd been so focused on the professor that I'd forgotten Tyler and his vow to come up with a solution to his editorial dilemma regarding the Mother Hubbard column. He had the gleam in his eye that meant he was getting an idea. This was a dangerous look. But I couldn't think of a way to shut him up, short of screaming “Fire!” And the dorm RA—our unofficial campus mommy, yet one more difference between college and home—had warned us more than once that ever since 9/11 the campus administrators had become very intolerant of false alarms.

“What?” Professor Golding stood with her hands on her hips, challenging him.

“Well.” He smiled that smile that had won him quite a bit of advertising for the paper. The one that had triggered my crush. The one I was rapidly coming to hate more than pop quizzes. “Why don't I ask Mother Hubbard to reconsider three of her own rejects for third date?”

Professor Golding pushed up her glasses. “You mean, give them each a chance for a third date before she makes up her mind?”

Tyler smiled more widely. “Exactly!”

Maybe, despite the fact that Sophia was clearly immune, Tyler's smile got to more people than silly little Katelyn, because Professor Golding did not smush him with a few well-placed verbs. Instead, she nodded. “I like it.”

I didn't. But that probably goes without saying.

Tyler bowed, as if he'd done the professor a courtly service. “Expect a report in next Thursday's issue on which guy Mother Hubbard's going to give another chance.” He grinned. “We'll save the recap for next week, to give her the weekend.”

“I'm impressed with your open mind, Tyler.” Professor Golding was practically beaming at him. Everyone else had a puzzled look, like they didn't quite know what to think—was Mother Hubbard now good, or was she bad?

I could have told them. Mother Hubbard was mightily pissed and ready to strangle the current editor of the
Campus Times
. Not that he knew it. Or would have cared even if he did.

When the class began to clap, after deciding Mother Hubbard was taking the right step in giving a guy another chance, and Tyler made another bow, it took all my will not to put my hand on his tight blue-jeaned butt and push.

It was there, in my face, as he stood happily lapping up the applause and praise. He hadn't even asked me if I'd do it. I was now stuck in a worse predicament than I had been in before. Tyler taking a tumble down the tiered seats seemed like the only way to fix the horrible mess he had just handed me.

“I'm glad to see you're going to try to gently guide Mother Hubbard to a more tolerant column, Tyler. Let's hope she learns quickly.”

I glanced at the worn jeans Tyler wore. His campus ID was hanging out, attached to the keys stuffed in his pocket, the little square photo smiling at me. One push. That's all it would take. Preferably a tumble all the way to the bottom where he could take out Professor Golding like a bowling ball takes out a lone tenpin.