Dirty: The Complete Series (Secret Baby Romance Love Story) (72 page)

Chapter
Nine

  
After
I had managed to get home with Ashley—splitting a Lyft ride with her for about
fifteen dollars each—I got my makeup off, took my hair out of the intricate style
I’d managed to braid and twist it into before Ty had arrived, and crawled into
bed. I hadn’t even bothered with washing my face more thoroughly, or brushing
my teeth, or any of my usual rituals.

  
I
was too upset from the double-whammy of seeing Dillon and watching some drunk
girl who apparently knew Ty grind all over him. I’d told myself that I would
somehow make sense of the whole situation in the morning, after a reasonable
few hours of sleep.

  
When
I woke up late in the morning I felt like I had a hangover. At first it
confused me—I hadn’t even had that much to drink the night before, and I hadn’t
been up later than I generally was during the week, studying. I’d had plenty of
water. But my head throbbed and my eyes felt dry and scratchy, and I was exhausted.
My teeth felt as though they’d been coated in fur, my feet ached, and my lower
back might—according to the stabbing pain that rose up every time I moved—as
well have been stabbed the night before.

  
First things first,
I thought as I forced myself to climb out of the bed. I would take a long, hot
shower and get truly clean, and I would drink some more water, and brush my
teeth, and see how that made me feel. When I stepped out of my side of the dorm
room, armed with my shower caddy, robe, and towel, I listened to hear if Ashley
was awake yet; there were no signs of life coming from her end of the room, so
I figured I was safe from any uncomfortable questions for at least a little
while.

  
I
went into the shower room and turned the water on as hot as I could stand,
holding my hand under the flow until it came up to temperature. I stripped out
of the clothes I had been too exhausted the night before to take off, and got
into the shower cubicle, pulling the curtain shut behind me. I stood under the
water for what felt like maybe an hour even before I started to scrub myself
from head to toe. I shampooed my hair twice and then covered every inch of it
with a deep conditioning mask. I bundled it up into a shower cap to keep it
from rinsing off while I applied my favorite scrub on my skin, starting at my
neck and working my way downward bit by bit until every part of my body
tingled. I rinsed off the exfoliating scrub and then slathered a moisturizing
shower cream all over to follow it. I didn’t have to shave; I’d shaved the
night before, while I was getting ready for the party.

  
I
sat down on the shower bench that Ashley and I had split the cost on and let
the water flow over my body while I gave the conditioner ample time to work on
my hair, and I thought about Ty. He was such a good guy—wasn’t he? He was at
least a hundred times better than Dillon had been.

  
But
my mind kept flashing back to the sight of the drunk girl from the club
plastering herself all over Ty, saying something about “their” song, grinding
against him. It had seemed an awful lot like Ty knew the woman pretty well;
certainly she seemed to know him. It was the cap to a night that had gotten
incredibly horrible only an hour or two before when Dillon had appeared at the
party out of the blue. It had made me feel like I was just as inferior to Ty as
Dillon had thought I was to him. It had made me feel insignificant.

  
I
rinsed my hair out and got out of the shower, stopping long enough to brush my
teeth and smear a purifying mask on my face while I shivered in my robe before
walking back into my bedroom in the dorm. I threw myself onto my bed, staring
up at my ceiling and thinking about how things had managed to go so completely
and totally pear-shaped the night before. Should I have just insisted that Ty
and I go back to campus? It wouldn’t have been all that fair to Ashley, who was
still having a good time when we’d left the party. But it hadn’t really been
fair to me that the club we’d ended up going to had a girl who thought she had
the right to grope my boyfriend.

  
My
phone chirped and I managed to turn over enough to grab my purse and take it
out. The screen flashed the time and then a notification: I had a message from
Ty. Part of my brain told me not to take it; I needed time to figure out how I
felt about what had happened, and what I wanted from the situation. But another
part of my mind insisted that I owed him the benefit of the doubt. I should see
what he had to say. I took a quick breath and unlocked my phone.

  
I
opened the message app.
Hey babe! I’m
sorry last night ended so badly. Feel up to doing brunch? I want to make it up
to you.
I caught my bottom lip between my teeth and worried it for a moment
while I thought. It was almost eleven; I could get dressed, put on a little
makeup, and do something with my hair in twenty minutes. But did I want to see
him?

  
Of
course I did. Who was I trying to fool? I texted back.
Give me fifteen-twenty minutes, babe?
An instant later he sent back
an emoji with a kissing face and then a quick “Sure thing!” and I got to work.

  
I
pulled on a bra and panty set, wriggled into a pair of jeans and a
 
t-shirt, and unwrapped my hair from the
towel. A quick blast of the hair dryer and a little creative brushing and my
hair looked as if I had spent an hour styling it. I put on a little bit of
mascara, some highlighter on my cheeks and eyelids, and some lip color, and I
was done.
   
By the time I heard the soft
knock at my door, I was stepping into a pair of ballet flats. I grabbed my
purse and made sure that I had everything I needed: keys, ID card, wallet, and
phone.

  
Ty
looked just as hot as he always did, effortlessly handsome in a pair of fitted
jeans and a sweater. I pulled a cardigan on over my shirt and let the room door
close behind me. “I know last night kind of ended up sucking,” Ty said,
reaching for my hand as we started down the hallway.

  
“That’s
kind of an understatement,” I said, looking up at his face through my
eyelashes.

  
“I
know,” Ty said, smiling wryly. “But at least it started out okay, right?” I
pressed my lips together, shaking my head slightly and trying to suppress a
smile.

  
“Yeah,
right up until my ex-boyfriend showed up and ruined everything it was pretty
great,” I admitted. If Dillon hadn’t shown up, we wouldn’t have ended up going
to the club. If we hadn’t gone to the club, I wouldn’t have had to see the
stupid drunk girl rubbing herself all over Ty.

  
“I
want to make it up to you as best as I can,” Ty told me.

  
“We’ll
see how this goes,” I said, smiling in spite of myself. We went downstairs and
walked out to his car, and I noticed as we got in that Ty looked like he’d
probably had a shower too. I wondered what had happened with the girl who’d
been grinding on him—had he just shoved her away? He couldn’t have reacted all
that quickly. Ashley and I had made our way out of the club in a matter of
minutes, but we had had to wait about ten minutes longer for our ride to get
there. If he had extricated himself from the girl quickly, he could have caught
us—and yet he hadn’t.

  
Questions
bubbled and simmered in my brain as Ty drove us off campus and toward a diner
we both liked: Green Street Eats was only about ten minutes away from the dorms
and had one of the best—and cheapest—brunch menus in town. It was a little
early, which meant that we were able to find a parking spot, and the tables
weren’t jam-packed when we got there. I wanted to know who the hell the girl
had been, what she had meant to Ty, why she had thought it was okay to grope
and grind on him like that. I wanted to know why Ty hadn’t just pushed her off
of him and walked away, why he hadn’t come after Ashley and me to keep us from
getting home on our own. I wanted to know how to feel about everything that had
happened the night before.

  
I
ordered my favorite: the chocolate breakfast bread pudding with eggs and bacon
on the side, and a big coffee with toffee syrup. Ty ordered an omelet, and we
settled into our seats at one of the booths, looking across the table at each
other. “Who was that girl from last night?” I licked my lips, feeling the
stinging tingle starting in my eyes. Ty shrugged.

  
“She’s
an ex-girlfriend, that’s all,” Ty told me. “She got sloppy drunk last night and
when she saw me she thought it would be a good idea to throw herself at me.”
There was some kind of edge in his voice—something I couldn’t quite read. Ty
shrugged again. “By the time I got rid of her, you and Ash were long gone.”

  
“We
grabbed a Lyft,” I told him. I took a quick, deep breath, waiting to see if Ty
would explain anything more about the girl who had assaulted him on the dance
floor. He didn’t. “It was actually kind of fun—the guy had free candy in the
back seat of his car, and a cat hanging out in the front seat that we could
pet.”

  
“So
hey—it looks like the very end of your night wasn’t terrible, at least,” Ty
said weakly. “You look amazing this morning, by the way. A thousand times
better than me.” I rolled my eyes.

  
“Right,
sure,” I said, feeling my cheeks warm up. “You somehow always manage to look
hot, even if you’re hung over or whatever. This is just the result of a long
shower and some quick preparation.”

  
“Whatever
it is, you look great,” Ty told me. I tried to push my thoughts and worries
about his ex-girlfriend out of my mind, especially when our food started to
arrive, but I couldn’t quite shake the feeling that there was a lot more that I
wanted to know, and that Ty should have volunteered more information about the
woman since it was obvious I was upset. The girl who’d plastered herself onto
my boyfriend seemed like something more complicated than just some ex-girlfriend.
I didn’t bring it up again, but I was worried.

Chapter
Ten

  
I
had expected Nicole to grill me a lot harder about the run-in with Kelsey the
night before; I had expected her to ask me for more details about the
relationship with my ex, and why it had ended, and why Kelsey might think it
would be a good idea to come onto me in the middle of a club while I was on a
date. Instead, she had simply accepted my explanation that Kelsey was an ex—I
was in the clear.

  
I
ate my brunch as hungrily as ever, and we talked about other things. I wanted
more than anything to invite Nicole to come back to my dorm with me and spend
the rest of the day making love and lounging around; but I had to meet with a
group from one of my classes to get started on a final project for the course.

  
“Are
you doing anything tonight? Maybe after I meet with this group I can put
something together to make up for last night’s debacle,” I suggested to Nicole,
as we were both finishing up our meals.

  
“I
think I’m probably just going to study, maybe try and get ahead on some of my
classwork,” Nicole told me, shrugging slightly. We were getting close to
finals, and I knew that Nicole was stressed about her classes, even with the
small victories she’d been having in recent weeks.

  
“Well,
if you want to study together, we can do that,” I suggested.

  
“I’ll
stay in touch, keep you updated,” Nicole told me. I leaned across the table and
kissed her lightly on the lips.

  
“If
nothing else, you can come to me for a quick twenty-minute study break,” I
suggested, grinning at her as I sat back down. The check came and I grabbed it
before Nicole could get a chance to; I put my debit card down and the waitress
took it to process.

  
I
had been dreading the conversation with Nicole ever since I’d gone to bed the
night before; finding that it had gone so much better than I expected made the
rest of the day open up before me like the sun coming out from behind the
clouds on an overcast day. I had seriously underestimated the woman I was
coming to feel more and more strongly about; I should get her flowers the first
chance I got.

  
The
waitress brought the receipt and I gave her a decent tip, and then Nicole and I
left the diner, hand in hand once more. She was more quiet than usual, but I
thought that considering she was probably a little vaguely hung over, and that
she probably had plenty to think about and process with the appearance of her
own ex-boyfriend, it was only natural for her to be a little quieter than
usual. We drove back to the dorms together, talking a little bit more about our
plans for the weekend, and I tried to think of ways that I could spend a little
bit more time with Nicole. I would have to really dive into studying for the
CPA exam starting at the beginning of the spring semester—so I should do as
much as I could with the girl I loved while I had the chance.

  
“Let’s
make plans to grab dinner tonight,” I told Nicole as I walked her to the
entrance of her dorm.

  
“I
think I might just grab something from the dining hall; or maybe if one of the
girls needs me to do her hair, I’ll get her to buy me dinner in exchange,”
Nicole said, smiling.

  
“Well
if you do go down to the dining hall, shoot me a text, okay? I want to spend as
much time as possible with you before finals get here.”

  
“Okay,”
Nicole said. I kissed her on the lips and hugged her tight, and then I left her
at the entrance to her dorm. I had maybe fifteen minutes to get my things
together and meet up with my group at the library; one of the other kids in my
class had reserved a private study room for us to work in, and I didn’t want to
hold anyone up.

  
Alex
had had better luck the night before than I had, to judge by the necktie
hanging on his doorknob when I went into the dorm room. I heard muffled sounds
of music playing, confirming my belief that Alex had found someone to hook up
with, if nothing else.

  
Good for him!
I unlocked my bedroom door
and started getting together the stuff I would need for the project: my
textbook, my laptop, a notebook, some pens, and a few other things. I thought
again how lucky I was that Nicole had just accepted that Kelsey was my ex, and
hadn’t probed for more details.
She’s way
too good for you, dude. You are out of your league with a girl like her—you’d
better appreciate the hell out of her or you’re going to lose her.
I made a
mental note to look into getting her flowers and chocolates—maybe some coffee
from Starbucks to help her get through her study session. I was more than willing
to give Nicole all the affection she could stand.

  
I
hurried down to the ground floor of the building and then made my way across
campus to the library, buzzing with the success of my first attempt to make
things right between Nicole and me. I was maybe three minutes early for the
group meeting, and I looked around the library while I waited; a few people
were using the computers to access different database articles for free, a few
others were searching the stacks for a particular book, but on a weekend the
library was almost totally deserted.

  
A
little closer to finals week, it would be packed at all hours of the day and
night, and there were already sign-up sheets up on the walls at the entrance
for people who wanted “late night study” passes, which would give them access
to the library until three in the morning, long after the staff had gone for
the night.

  
I
put my name down and one by one, the other three members of my group showed up.
Kim, Jamie, and Manu were people I’d worked with before in other classes; when
the group project had come up in Advanced Financial Concepts, I’d grabbed them
as my partners as quickly as I could—I didn’t want to be stuck with a group
that would just argue about the assignment half the time and spend the other half
of the time doing the wrong shit, leaving me to put something together out of
nothing at the last minute.

  
“Manu,
you got the study room, right? Let’s go ahead and check in.”

  
We
settled into the little office that Manu had reserved, and started to look over
the assignment sheet, taking a minute to remind ourselves of the instructions.

  
“Okay,
so the way I see it,” Kim said, once we all had taken our time to get clear,
“there are four basic parts to this, which is good—four parts, for teammates.
So who wants to do which part?”

  
We
started talking over the different sections of the project—which of us was
better suited to which part, which of us had the most time to devote to the
more labor-intensive parts, and how we were going to bring it all together at
the end into the finished project.

  
My
phone buzzed in my pocket and I ignored it for a moment, focusing on the
project. If it was Nicole, I was sure she’d understand; if it was anyone else,
I didn’t really need to respond right away. Whoever didn’t know I was in a
meeting with a group from class would just have to deal with whatever they
wanted from me for a while longer.

  
As
we wrapped up the first phase of planning the project, my phone buzzed two more
times in my pocket and I started to feel a little concerned. Kim called a break
and she and Jamie went outside to smoke a cigarette while Manu started looking
through the textbook for his portion of the project work.

  
I
took my phone out of my pocket and unlocked my screen. I had been expecting a
text from Nicole, or maybe Alex, on the outside maybe my parents. Instead I saw
that Kelsey had texted me three times. I took a quick, deep breath, already
dreading whatever it was she had to say to me after the debacle of the night
before. I opened the messages and started to read.

  
Thank you so, so much for making sure I got
home safe last night, Ty!
That much at least was normal and was actually
almost a little nice to get from her.
I
was a little surprised you didn’t want to come up after we connected at Ibiza—but
if you want to take things slow, that’s fine with me.
I rolled my eyes,
shaking my head at Kelsey’s assumption.

  
She
actually thought that me taking her to her apartment was some kind of sign that
I wanted to get back together with her; either she was still drunk from the
night before or she was delusional.
Shoot
me a text when you want to meet up! Maybe we could get dinner tonight?

  
I
stared at my phone for a long moment, trying to wrap my head around the fact
that my ex-girlfriend really, truly thought that she and I were going to be
getting back together based solely on me making sure she got home from the club
okay when she was disgustingly drunk.

  
I
shook my head and put my phone back in my pocket; I wasn’t ready to deal with
her yet. I wasn’t ready for all of the grief that would come from explaining to
her yet again that we were not going to get back together, that it was over and
was going to continue to be over for the rest of our lives.

  
I
made a mental note that I should probably tackle that particular task before I
saw Nicole again, so that I could get the messages off of my phone. It wasn’t
that I didn’t think Nicole trusted me, but after seeing Kelsey plaster herself
on me the night before, I didn’t think Nicole would be all that charitable
about an ex-girlfriend who was convinced we were getting back together.

  
I
also didn’t think that she was going to take kindly to the idea of me driving
Kelsey home, even if it was just in the interests of making sure that she
didn’t drive her car into a canal or get picked up by some dude interested in
raping a drunk girl. I didn’t want to have anything to do with Kelsey anymore,
but I couldn’t bring myself to let her put herself in danger right in front of
me.

  
I
felt a little guilty, knowing I hadn’t been completely straightforward or
honest about Kelsey—I hadn’t admitted to driving her home. But I told myself
that Nicole had already accepted that Kelsey was just an ex, and making things
more complicated at this point was just stupid. I’d let sleeping dogs lie, and
I’d get on with my life and the semester.

  
I
would just have to find a way to get rid of Kelsey for good without her making
a big, enormous scene and involving all of our old mutual friends.
Good luck with that,
I told my
optimistic brain. Kim and Jamie came back in from outside and I pushed any
thoughts at all of my ex-girlfriend out of my brain to focus on our
end-of-semester project. Everything else in my life was going great—I shouldn’t
worry about my ex.