Getting to Third Date (13 page)

I was so happy to be happy that I didn't even mind Professor Golding using Mother Hubbard's turnaround as a launch for class discussion.

“Did all of you read the Mother Hubbard column this morning?”

There was a pretty loud yes from the group, which surprised me. I knew the blog had been fairly busy, but I still didn't think, in raw numbers, that so many people were so interested in what Mother Hubbard was up to that they'd bother to read the column before 10 a.m. I guess the whole how-to-find-true-love question was something we were all interested in. We have to kiss a lot of frogs and all that, true. But kissing frogs, when you think about it, is no fun.

“It seems our Mother Hubbard has discovered that sometimes a third chance makes all the difference.”

Our
Mother Hubbard? When had I become
our
Mother Hubbard?

“And not only Mother Hubbard has benefited from giving someone a third date. I'm impressed at how many of you took advantage of my offer for extra credit. There were quite a few of you revisiting old flames last week.”

I was impressed too. Because her class was so big, she had a teacher's assistant and a classroom assistant. They each had a stack of papers six inches thick that they slapped down on a table for people to come up and retrieve in the Pick-up Sticks style of paper return—something a class this big can't avoid because a roll call return of papers would take an entire class period.

As everyone rushed down to sort through the stacks, I stayed in my seat. I couldn't help but wonder if the dating-supported businesses on and around campus had taken a big spike upward in profits, as I looked at everyone who'd written a paper (and there would still be a big stack left on the table, because the class was only about three-quarters full).

Professor Golding continued lecturing as soon as the first mad, noisy rush for papers had died down, not waiting for the people who couldn't find their papers right away to get back to their seats. “In fact, I'm so impressed that I want to take a moment to discuss what I've learned in reading your papers.”

I had not done the extra credit. I just wasn't willing to risk it. It was starting to become obvious that if I were revealed to be Mother Hubbard, my life—at least on this campus—would be over. Even after the revelation that Mother Hubbard had taken a more compassionate turn.

Now that I'd decided to give an actual mutually admiring guy a shot at being “the one,” I absolutely did not want to leave campus.

“The two most striking themes I'm discovering is that most of you are looking for ‘the one.' Defined, for most of you, as the person who gets you and still makes you feel good about yourself. So ‘getting to third date' may happen on the actual third date, the tenth, or for one of you, the first. You may be going through a lot of people looking for that ‘getting to third date' moment when you know you've found something real—but you do plan to stop once you find it.”

We laughed.

“The other thing I found is that everyone has, at one time or another, felt something for someone who didn't return the feeling. So you're not alone. In fact, one paper—whose writer got a well-deserved A, I might add—even went so far as to suggest that human beings pursue relationships with the same single-minded blindness to disaster that lemmings do.”

There were no laughs at that one. Lemmings have the reputation for swimming to their deaths. Who wanted to be a lemming? Besides, I think half of us didn't believe the unnamed writer (the half in relationships) and the other half didn't want to (the half not in relationships).

 

I was having fun with Stephen. He'd told me how much he enjoyed taking a break now and then from his robot-related life. We'd gone to a chick flick together, and we'd even Rollerbladed along the campus trails. Neither one of us was very good, which meant we had a lot of fun, and ended up with a few bruises and a nice precrash kiss, too.

On the fourth date I found out he was a good kisser, and I'm pretty sure he found out the same thing about me, because he no longer hesitated before kissing me, and his arm was always wrapped around my shoulder or my waist when we were out—or in, for that matter.

I especially liked being able to stop by after my last class and check on Stephen, who was almost always in the lab working on the robot. As usual, I let myself in through the big metal lab door and made my way around the parts and widgets that the robotics lab always had lying around on every flat surface.

I found him bent over Jezzy, as usual. I had just a moment to feel a little bit jealous before Stephen saw me. Then his face lit up and he pushed his glasses up and came to give me a hug. I held up the bag with his dinner—a sandwich I'd picked up in the student union—but he took the time for a long kiss before he noticed.

“Food. How did I ever survive without you?” He held up his hands apologetically. He was holding a screwdriver in one hand and a soldering iron in the other. I'd hung out with him long enough to know this was strange. He should have had solder instead of a screwdriver. Soldering irons are useless unless you have solder to go with them.

Then I noticed Sophia, crouching down behind the robot's back, frowning intently at the freakishly humanlike arm. She held the solder. Not long after our initial double date, Stephen and I had convinced her to join the robotics team since she was so into it.

Stephen turned to her. “Katelyn brought food.”

Uh-oh. “I didn't know anyone else would be here, so I only brought one sandwich and a bag of chips.”

“No problem, we'll share.” He put down his tools and snatched the bag from me. “Did you already eat?”

“I'm going to hit the dining hall later, but I knew better than to expect you to join me.”

“It's nice to have someone who gets me,” Stephen said as he popped open the bag of chips.

I knew just what he meant. “How's it going?”

He answered through a mouthful of chips. “Two steps backward and one step forward, I'm afraid.”

“No wonder you're hungry.”

He popped open the soda, and then stopped. He looked at the food he was stuffing in his face, surprised. “I guess so. I hadn't really thought about it.”

No surprise there. “When did you eat last?”

“This morning?” He wasn't even sure. I loved that about him. So serious about his work he forgot to eat.

Sophia stood up and stretched. Even in jeans and a ratty sweatshirt—her robot work clothes—she looked good. “Do you like ham and cheese?” Stephen asked her.

She nodded as she came over and snatched some chips from the bag. “My favorite.”

“I didn't realize you'd still be here. I thought you were going to check out that new club with Frodo or Fredo or whoever.”

“Frederick. No, I canceled.” She looked at Jezzy, who lay with the metal skeleton showing under a separation in the humanlike skin covering. “If we're going to have a shot at winning this competition, we have to pay attention to the details. And that takes time.”

“We're just trying to get this last application of falskin to ripple authentically over the forearm,” Stephen added. “The competition is over Thanksgiving break, you know.”

“I know,” I replied.

Stephen had dragged an old upholstered armchair that the grad students were getting rid of into the lab as a place for me to sit and keep him company while he worked. We scrunched into the chair together while he finished eating his half of the sandwich. And then they were back to work again.

I half wanted Thanksgiving break to get here soon, and half didn't want it to come at all. I wouldn't see Stephen for a week because I'd be at home and he'd be at the competition. But, on the bright side, the competition would be over, Jezzy would have her blue ribbons or gold stars…or not…and I wouldn't have to fight a robot hussy for boyfriend time anymore.

I hung out with them, watching as they fussed over the robot—which looked pretty good to me.

Maybe I wasn't cut out to be an engineer, because I really thought they'd put enough time in. But it was a mistake to say so, I guess.

“Looks great to me. But what do I know?”

“You're going to be a mechanical engineer. You know,” Sophia said.

“Right.” I wasn't going to broadcast that I wasn't as into my major as they were into theirs. Passion was a good thing, in a relationship and in a major. But maybe I just needed to give it some time. That's what my dad said, anyway.

“I'm going to hit the dining hall.” I stood up and walked over to look down at Jezzy's blank face. “Maybe I could come back after, and we could go check out that new comedy club the union is hosting tonight?”

Stephen and Sophia both looked at me with a blank look that was so much like Jezzy's, it gave me the creeps.

I sighed. “Never mind. I'll just join the Gossip Girls in the common room tonight.”

Stephen kissed me good-bye with a worried little smile. “You do get how important this is, don't you?”

“Of course I do.” I was trying, anyway. “Good luck.”

I confess, I heard a little voice asking me whether Tyler might want to hang out with me. I felt a little guilty. But only a little. It's not like my crush on Tyler had ended instantly because I'd decided to move on. No one who could crush on a guy for four years in high school is that fickle. It had just receded—the buzz factor when we were together was much lower. Almost the sound of a refrigerator from a room away.

But, because I was spending a lot of time with Stephen in his lab and Sophia was too, Tyler had been avoiding us. Our quick meetings to exchange the column were so quick I almost had to pick whether to say hi or bye because I didn't have time for both. Either way, he was out of the picture, and Stephen and I were in it—together. Better to keep it that way. So I hung out with the Gossip Girls and pretended I didn't mind that my boyfriend preferred a robot to me. It was only temporary, after all.

Everything was going great until Stephen and I had our first fight. I'd stopped counting dates; they had started to blur to the point where we were just a couple. The fight began as just a little thing. I thought. It started with my asking if he thought working with robots was the most important thing in the world. Yeah. Not a smart question.

All I really wanted to hear was that I was more important than robots. Just by a smidge, not by loads.

Yes, yes, I know. If I'd asked Mother Hubbard's advice, even the new compassionate Mother Hubbard would have been blunt: too much too soon. What can I say? I was a little greedy. I knew it. But I couldn't stop myself.

So we had a mega fight over something really stupid. Just like a thousand other couples. We all know the story. Some couples fight and stay together, and some fight and don't.

The problem was, since this was our first fight, I didn't know which we were going to be. I didn't even know which I wanted to be. I mean, how can anyone think robots are more important than girlfriends?

We'd gotten into the habit of eating dinner together every Friday night, Jezzy or not. In a different dining hall, just so we wouldn't attract a crowd that would distract us from each other. So when he canceled on dinner the first Friday after our fight, I didn't like it, but I wasn't going to drive myself crazy over it.

Okay. I did drive myself crazy over it. But in a controlled way. I complained to Sophia.

If I'd thought about it, I might have guessed she wouldn't be supportive. She'd been spending all her spare hours at the lab herself. “You know his robots are important to him.”

This was not what I wanted to hear. So I tried again. “You sound like you're defending him. Shouldn't a girlfriend be more important?”

She wasn't really in a sympathetic mood. “This is his career, his dream. Should a girlfriend want him to give up his dreams for her?”

“I get that he has dreams.” Well, I wanted to. But robots? Okay. If he had to dream about robots, I guess I could be cool with that. “I just want to be first.”

She hadn't been looking at me as we talked. But now she did. I was surprised at how passionate she was when she answered, “Then he is the wrong guy for you. His robots will always come first with him. What would Mother Hubbard say?”

I guess it took her being harsh for me to get it. “She'd say I was pushing, which is applying force in the wrong direction if I want to keep seeing him.”

She nodded. “Right, she'd use that physics stuff to explain the emotions. Good old Mother Hubbard. Who happens to be right.”

I sighed. “So the physics of attraction says I was being a bitch, then? And he should hate me and never talk to me again?”

“No.” My question seemed to soften her a little. “You were just letting jealousy make you unreasonable. We all do that sometimes.”

“So what should I do? He won't talk to me. Can you make him talk to me?” I'd never seen any guy ever refuse Sophia anything she asked for. Surely Stephen would agree to talk to me? Wouldn't he?

“I don't know….” She was reluctant, which I could understand. Getting in the middle of a boyfriend-girlfriend fight could be dangerous to your health and your sanity.

“Look. I promise I'm not doing the ‘poor me' thing. I just want to talk to him. We can work this out, or break up. Whichever.” Not that I really believed we would break up—I do know how to hang on to the last shreds of hope, after all. “I just don't want to do the wimpo route of never speaking to each other again and letting things fade away.”