Dallas (Time for Tammy #1) (19 page)

She shrugged. “I felt bad it happened while I was showering. I could have locked the room, but I didn’t want to bring the key with me to the bathroom.”

“Linda, I don’t deserve this. I’ve been such a shitty roommate.”

“You haven’t…”

“I have.” I cut her off. “I come in late at night drunk and loud, and I leave things messy. If I’d even been able to get a guy, I might have even pulled a LaVerne on you and brought him back.” I realized that as much as I had changed since coming to Eckhart, Linda had never bowed to peer pressure and remained as unapologetically cheerful and innocent as when I first met her. I couldn’t apologize aloud for the mean thoughts I had about her, but at least I could be sorry for my actions. “I don’t deserve you as a roommate.”

“That’s not true. You were a great roommate. When you weren’t obsessing over boys, that is. Which was pretty much always, so in retrospect…”

“Touché.”

“I’m kidding. But…” She fiddled with a paper on her desk.

“What’s up?”

“I know you probably want to room with Jane next year.”

“I—” I didn’t know what to say. The truth was Jane hated her current rooming situation and I once mentioned that she and I should be roommates in a non-substance free, co-ed dorm. Another reason to feel guilty.

“Don’t worry about it,” Linda continued. “I’m actually not coming back next year, anyway.”

“What do you mean?” The relief I felt from the roommate conundrum being solved quickly to turned to confusion.

Linda shrugged. “I came here for marine biology, and now that I’ve dropped it, I don’t really want to be at this school. I never really felt comfortable here.”

I sat back in my chair. “Trust me, I know what you mean.”

“So, now you’ll have him” she nodded toward my closet, “to remember me by.”

“I’m sorry Linda,” I repeated.
For so many things.
“Are you going to go to a University?”

“I’ll probably go to community college for a semester or so. That’s what I’m working on now, the transfer process.”

“Well, good luck. I’ll miss you next year,” I said sincerely.

“I’ll miss you too.”

“Let me know if you need any help,” I told her, not knowing what else to say.

She nodded and turned back toward her computer.

I glanced again at my new poster. Mark’s hair was a bit shorter, and you could see the scar from the car accident he had between the first and second
Star Wars
movies. He had his head slightly cocked, as if listening intently to whatever Yoda whispered in his ear. “A more mature Mark Hamill for a more mature Tammy T. Tymes,” I thought before I cracked open my textbook.

The Aftermath

T
hat night I tried one last time to apologize to Dallas. I felt I couldn’t move on with Morgan until Dallas had at last forgiven me. I walked over to Ibsen alone as Jane refused to accompany me. I half-expected Sonofabitch to be there as another trick from my guardian angel, but Dallas answered the door. His shoulders sagged when he saw it was me, but he invited me in anyway.

I was about to walk into their room when I saw it: that stupid crab. I don’t know why the sight of it disturbed me so much. I had half expected it to be under the bed, stuffing pulled out, or hanging from the ceiling, a stake through its little crab heart. At least put away somewhere, forgotten, out of sight. But there it sat in its customary spot on Sonofabitch’s stereo, as intact as the day I bought him, when I still had dreams of Dallas having one look at it, and then taking me into his arms with the thought that anyone who gives such a desirable present must be worth loving.

“This won’t take long,” I told him from the doorway. “I just wanted to say I’m truly sorry for the tape. And the phone calls.” Instead of looking into Dallas's eyes as I apologized, I stared at inanimate ole Sebastian. It might have been the last time anyone ever saw the thing. I wouldn’t have been surprised if the Horse took a baseball bat to it after I left that night. Maybe Sonofabitch gave it to one of the million “weird” girls that always chased him around. Or the two of them threw it into the creek running along the back of campus out near the gym. Sometimes I wonder if it’s still floating (literally) around somewhere. Maybe it’s halfway to China by now.

Dallas nodded after I finished apologizing. “It’s fine, Tammy, don’t worry about it.” That was it. No, “I’m sorry, too.” No, “I liked you well enough, but I liked your roommate more.” No, “I wish things would have been different,” and not even a “Do you want to watch
Revenge of the Nerds?”
this weekend. Just a nod and a brush-off. But it was good enough for me. I left Ibsen for the last time and went back to Gandhi to get drunk with Jane and Lizzie and dream of my first date with Morgan.

~*~

Acknowledgments

A special thanks to my critique partners: Ute Carbone, Theresa Munroe, and Karen Cino for their comments and suggestions.

Many thanks to Dave at thEditors.com: I hope you like Tammy more now than you did intitially!

And as always, thanks to my loving family, especially Tom for his love and support.

To My Readers…

If you enjoyed reading this short story, please take a moment to leave an honest review.

I’d also love to hear from you. Please e-mail me:
[email protected]

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Read on for an excerpt from the novel
Thrown for a Curve
, also by Kit Sergeant:

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Chapter 1

W
e should have known from the very beginning that our relationship had an expiration date. If my mother—the one who named me after a constellation—were here with us celebrating my college graduation, she probably would have told me to let the Universe decide our fate. But I thought I had it all worked out.

I was wrong.

“Sox or Cubs?” My father was eyeing Ryan warily as I returned to the table with some more pint glasses.

“Pardon, sir?” Ryan reached for my hand under the table.

“Well,” my father said slowly, “You’re from a northern suburb, so do they root for the Cubs or Sox up there?”

“Uh, I think Cubs, but I personally don’t like baseball … I do like football—the Bears,” he added quickly as my father’s wary expression became sour.

“Well, I guess no team is better than rooting for the Cubs,” Dad conceded out of the corner of his mouth.

“Let’s see about another pitcher,” Ryan called as he darted back to the bar. My best friend, Estelle, gave me one of her notorious
looks
; I just shrugged. Ryan wasn’t the first guy my father had tried to scare off, but he was the first boyfriend I deeply cared about. I figured it was only a matter of time before my father admitted to Ryan’s potential, baseball fan or not.

After he came back with another round, Ryan managed to get my father to talk about football—a notable achievement—and when my older brother Cameron arrived, they moved on to soccer. After a few more drinks, I could see that my father was finally starting to warm towards Ryan.

“Well, I guess he won your dad over. I always knew Ryan could charm anyone,” Estelle said as she led the way to the restroom a few minutes later.

“He is definitely charming,” I agreed as I maneuvered my way through the arteries of ripped leather barstools.

“Some might say, like Prince Charming?” Estelle threw me a curious glance over her shoulder, causing her to nearly collide with a drunken undergrad.

“Some definitely would.” I ducked under a bed sheet with the words “Congratulations Class of 2002,” handwritten in black permanent marker.

We arrived at the long line to the ladies bathroom.

“So does that mean there’s a Happily Ever After in the near future?”

I sighed. “I think so. But first we have to get through the long-distance thing.”

We shuffled forward obligingly as an older woman with giant hair-sprayed bangs squeezed past us on her way out of the bathroom.

“You know, Addy, I’ve known you, what, four years now?”

“And counting.”

“When I first met you, you were kind of a dork. All you did was hole up in our dorm room all night and study.”

“Whereas you would be out with a new guy every night.”

“But Ryan changed a lot of that,” she continued, ignoring my little dig, “and I think this is the first time I’ve seen you really, what’s the word? Cheery,” she spat out with a grimace. “And while it’s a little annoying to have you ridiculously happy, like your world is all pink and bubbly …” Estelle paused in mid-sentence, her lip curled with obvious distaste as she walked toward an open stall. Whether the distaste was for the lack of cleanliness of the bathroom at the Ritz or for my taking up residence in Barbie’s World, I’ll never know.

Venturing toward my own newly freed stall, I pondered her statement. Throughout most of college, I'd been hyperfocused on my career aspirations, and then the one person let in broke my heart. I had developed a slight inferiority complex after Jed broke up with me. But Ryan had helped to heal that. He always made me feel like it was okay to be myself, bookworm or not. He'd brought me coffee when I pulled all-nighters, held me through migraines, and when I had a touch of the flu, he made me soup and we watched
Gone with the Wind
. He was the person who knew me best in the world, and somehow I never scared him off.

“Anyway, I like Ryan and I hope you guys can make it work.” Estelle, in the grand tradition of girlie potty-breaks, finished her sentence as we both washed our hands. I had banned her from “toilet talk” long ago because I had nervous pee and couldn’t go in mid-conversation. “After all, if a guy is willing to buy you a Tiffany necklace for graduation, it might be worth letting him stick around for a while.”

“Yeah.” I fingered the teardrop pendant. “I kind of wish I wasn’t moving to Florida in a few weeks.”

“Are you crazy? You’ve been trying to get this internship for two years.”

“I know. But what does that mean for Ryan and me? He’ll be student teaching and living with his grandma to save money. I won’t see him until Christmas.”

She raised her eyebrows at me. “I think that’s a discussion you need to have with him.”

I nodded at her in the mirror. “I guess we’ve both been putting it off. Pretending like it’s not going to happen.”

“Well, as a marine biologist, you should know what the walrus said …”

I took the bait. “What?”

“The time has come to talk of many things.”

“Right.” I threw my paper towel in the garbage with a little more force than necessary.

“And as far as you and me go,” Estelle continued, opening up the bathroom door. “I will be in the City, but we can keep in touch. We can call each other—my new job’s giving me a cellphone. And e-mail every day—my new job’s giving me a computer. And I can come visit you …”

“Yeah, yeah, your new job’s giving you a car too.” Estelle got hooked up with a big pharmaceutical firm, or as my cousin Lizzie proclaimed, she sold her soul to the devil.

“And don’t forget our bet.” Estelle and I, after a late night of drinking, post Jed the Jerk for me and a bad date for her, made a pact to be maids-of-honor in each other’s weddings. And also the first one to get married wins a 12-pack of beer. Which was really a bet in my favor since Estelle’s men usually never made it to the fourth date. When I asked her once why four was the magic number, she pointed out that after three dates, she could sleep with the guy. “Addy, I don’t do one night stands,” she stated, as if this clarified everything.

“Yeah,” I replied as we made our way back to the table. “You better see if the Man can throw in for free beer.”

“In that case, maybe I’ll even buy you a 24-pack.”

The next morning found me packing up my dorm room to move back home for the summer. Actually, packing up my college career was more like it.
Each drawer I empty is one step closer to my new life
. I suddenly felt melancholy about the prospect of moving out of state and leaving everyone I loved. Estelle and I had been best friends and roommates for the past four years, and despite our promises to the contrary, our relationship was bound to change on a fundamental level—much like the relationship between Ryan and me. For the last few months, Ryan and I had seen each other every day, and now I was moving twelve hundred miles away. As much as I pretended to put on a brave face, I was secretly terrified.

I was about to do what any girl in my situation would do: put some tear-jerking love songs on my as-yet-not-packed stereo and cry my eyes out when the door to our dorm room was shoved open. A heavy-set man in a gray jumpsuit barged in carrying folded-up cardboard boxes. “You Estelle?” he demanded.

I let out an exaggerated sigh as I shook my head. By now I was used to strange men interrogating me on Estelle’s whereabouts. This one (his nametag said Gabe) walked past me and started unfolding boxes in the middle of the room. A couple more guys with similar physiques walked in as Gabe peered at a piece of crumpled paper and pointed at her side of the tiny dorm room. As they set about grunting and banging, I realized I’d forgotten that Estelle somehow convinced her new company to pay her moving costs. Considering we weren’t allowed to take any of the furniture—in fact, most of it was bolted in place—I would have thought the movers would have been more pleased than their expletives indicated. I looked down as Gabe threw a bunch of Estelle’s lacy thongs into a giant box.

So much for my cry-time
. I started to collect the stray pens and random highlighted and torn-out pieces of notebook paper strewn across my dorm-issued desk.

After a few minutes of rounding up paperclips, I glanced over at the movers, wishing my virtually unpaid internship included moving fees with my scholarship. Then again, Estelle’s starting salary was much higher than the typical college grad. Yet I was the one who was often glued to the desk I was now emptying, spending my senior year trying to memorize all twenty amino acids and the scientific classification of a sperm whale (
Physeter macrocephalus
)
while Estelle flittered her way through introductory psych classes and an entire semester on what happened during Gettysburg. She never seemed to study and spent a lot of her time distracting me and endeavoring to drag me away from my books.