Chapter 6

My best friend Tyler was a weirdo sometimes. Sure, I loved the guy but he was weird.

Like for instance, I didn't know if it was a fear, or a general distaste for alarm clocks, but for the life of me, the guy couldn't have an alarm clock waking him up.

Before, his sister would wake him up every morning before going to school. When she left for college, his father did it.

And now in college, I would wake him up, or Vanessa would.

Tyler Grayson was a very high maintenance dependant little boy.

When we'd first started sharing a room I had pointed out that he could never live alone if he always needed someone to wake him up. He had explained to me that he could do it on his own but he needed to set the alarm clock like two hours before he actually needed to get up because he didn't have the will to get out of bed on his own. He thought that the best way to actually wake up was to let nature do its thing and to wake up when your body wanted it to.

So when the alarm on my phone woke me that morning, I threw one of my pillows in Tyler's face and said, "Wake up, bitch."

"Not right away, my dearest step father," Tyler grumbled. That was a talent. He managed to be a sassy motherfucker half awake.

Before I had to get out of bed and shake him awake, Vanessa walked into our room.

"Oh hey wow, look who's in his bed," she said and threw herself beside Tyler on his bed.

"Ha, ha, very funny, sarcasm. Just brilliant, really. Why are you even here? I told you yesterday that I would be there to wake Sleeping Beauty up," I told her, sitting up and rubbing the sleep off my eyes.

"Ah, but see, you said you would be there the other night and you weren't and Tyler got late to class, so clearly we can't trust you," she told me, stroking her boyfriend's hair.

"This is ridiculous," I groaned and let myself fall back on my pillow before hiding my head under my covers.

"Oh hey Nik, you're here," Tyler said, his voice still groggy from sleep. Motherfucker...

I pulled the covers off my face and sighed loudly. "Yes, I am here. I got here last night when you were there. I was still there when you both texted on our group in the middle of the night. I was there when you woke me up later to ask me to check your pulse and tell you if you were having a heart attack or not," I ranted.

"Heart attacks for young athletic people are getting more and more common you know."

"ARE YOU ON GODDAMN STEROIDS TYLER GRAYSON!?"

Tyler made some kind of whimpering sound and hid his face under Van's hair. "Jeez, no need to yell." Wuss.

"ARE YOU ON STEREOIDS?" I repeated.

"Noooooo," he drawled.

"Then you are not having a heart attack. Your heart is fine." Goddamn hypochondriac. I should really finish med school to be Tyler Grayson's personal doctor and just follow him around telling him, no Sir, you are not dying.

"I'll bet you'll feel like an idiot after I die and they find some kind of heart defect."

"OH MY GOD!"I threw my hands up, "I brought you to the hospital two months ago for a whole check-up. You're in perfect health."

Tyler snorted, being a sassy little bitch. "That's what people who are about to die think."

I got out of bed and threw sweatpants and a t-shirt on. "I am not dealing with your nonsense in the morning when I haven't had my coffee yet."

I walked out of our room and then I just froze.

I'm an idiot.

I walked right back into the room and sure enough, Tyler and Vanessa where making out on his bed and Van already had her shirt off. "That was just so you two could make out?"

"It's like you just met us," Vanessa answered.

"I hate both of you," I exhaled and stormed out.

Idiots. The three of us. Just big dumb idiots.

I checked my phone and it was like six thirty, so I still had a lot of time to kill before I needed to get to class.

I made my way to the dinning hall on the first floor of our dorm, grab cheap coffee that tasted more like dirty dish water than anything else and a bagel and went to pout alone at a table.

"That's a great look you got going for yourself darling," a voice said behind me.

I turned around and smiled at Chloe. "Morning to you too, Dimples." She chuckled at the nickname. It amused her because her dimples weren't on her cheeks, they were right above her butt cheeks.

"Did Tyler kick you out of your room?" she asked while she sat in front of me with her tray of food.

"Yeah he did, and I didn't even realize he was doing it."

"That boy has magical powers. You think he's out of it, but he's like two steps ahead of you," she pointed out and pushed her plastic box of cut up fruits towards me.

I chuckled and grabbed a grape. "Totally."

"So, how are things going?" she asked me before scooping up some of her scrambled eggs.

I shrugged. "Oh you know, same old, same old."

She smirked. "Bad decisions and cigarettes?"

I shook my head and chuckled again. "Aren't those two, kind of the same though?"

She leaned forward and patted my cheek. "I'm so proud that you're admitting it on your own."

I snorted at that. "I'm still a work in progress."

I liked Chloe, but if anyone had explained to me my relationship with her two years ago I would have laughed hysterically. Or maybe hid in a corner.

Here was the thing, the first time I had sex was a one night stand. I wasn't exactly proud of it, but there it was. I had never had any kind of relationship with girls before. I had never had a girlfriend. I barely ever talked with girls, unless it was to do a project at school and even then, I'd say the bare minimum. When my father died though, I went a little crazy. I went out to a bar, and god knows how I did it, but I managed to convince a girl to take me back to her place and I had sex with her. It wasn't extraordinary. It wasn't a magical experience. It had been nice, but I had been drunk and clueless. Jesus, I had never even kissed a girl before, so going from never kissing anyone and then having sex suddenly was kind of crazy.

Anyway, I had sex with the girl and it wasn't a complete disaster. But we both knew what that night had been, so the next morning I left after an awkward one-night-stand-morning-conversation. I didn't see the girl after that, but I kept thinking about every little detail I had done wrong, every little thing I had said wrong. Everything that I shouldn't have been remembering but that my mind just wanted me to ruminate.

The best way I thought I could move on from the cringe worthy memories was to sleep with a stranger again. I thought that doing it again would make me stop focusing on the one other time where I had done things wrong.

And from there it just sort of became a vicious circle of needing to sleep with someone else to forget about the time before. And then it just became a habit, the way to stop thinking for a while. I didn't think that at any point having sex for me was really for the joy of the act itself. Having sex felt nice, but it never was truly about feeling nice.

Wow, I really was quite a mess.

Anyway, some of my sex partners were better than others. Chloe was one of the best in my pool of sexual partners. She had been supposed to be just another one night stand, but we'd really hit it off the night before, and the next morning she had given me a nice little speech about how there were no need to just be awkward and that since we got along we could just keep on getting along and eat breakfast because let's face it, we were hung-over and starving.

We had spent the entire day together, just chatting and getting to know each other. We kept in touch afterwards. Out of all my contacts on my phone, she was the only one I could text for a booty call. And I had. A few times.

I wouldn't see myself dating her though. She was nice and I liked her, but I preferred to just be friends who had sex sometimes.

Truth was, I didn't think I was in a place were it would be good for anyone to actually date me. I wouldn't wish it on anyone. I could admit it myself that I wasn't exactly in the best place mentally.

I was, well, quite a mess.

Anyway, Chloe was my booty call.

That was kind of pathetic and a little sad to think about.

We kept chatting while we ate, catching up. I hadn't seen her in the past two weeks. She was busy with school and I was busy sticking it in girls I didn't care about.

After I was done I went back to my room, grabbed my stuff and took a shower. It was probably the first time when I wouldn't be the dirty walking version of bad decisions for class.

I grab another coffee, a decent one this time, at one of the stand on the campus, and got in class in time. I was actually early enough to pick an empty table in the middle of the class. By the time the class started two girls were sitting beside me and trying to get me to give them my notes from the last time I had taken the class. I was trying to convince them that the reason I had flunked the class was because I had definitely not taken notes.

Today though when class started I listened to Professor Connor and actually took notes. Waking up more than five minutes before class was a great way to actually be awake during class apparently.

At one point though, Professor Connor mentioned this lovely fact, "Let me remind you that you have a final project that will count for thirty percent of your notes to do in teams of two or three. I'll give you guys ten minute at the end of the class to pair up and start talking about what you want to do your projects on," and I painfully remembered one of the reasons why I hated this class. The subject was nice, the teacher was excellent but team project... uuuuuugh.

Giving teamwork in college or in school in general was such an evil thing to do. There was always someone who worked more than the other and it was always a pain to organise what time to meet and when to do the work. Also finding people to actually work with was painful.

When the class was over, people started to pair up, chatting amongst themselves.

I started to slowly pack my stuff. I didn't know why but my eyes wandered to where the Scared-Mouse sat. No one was even looking her way. She was sitting there with her big eyes darting around and I just knew what she was thinking. "No one is going to work with me, no one is going to ask, I don't know who to ask, what am I going to do?" I just knew because that was what I used to think all the time.

I remembered feeling scared and alone and out of place.

I remembered being that scared kid, the sixteen year old nerd that everybody was out to get. I remembered that every one of them would have gladly used my virgin blood to use as a sacrifice to call upon demonic creatures.

"Do you want to be in our team?" the girl that had been sitting beside me asked.

"No thanks," I answered, not even looking her way and got up, backpack resting against my back.

The poor girl got up but stopped dead in her track when I stood in front of her. "Hey, would you want to be in team with me? I might not look like it, but I'm not a shitty person, I won't make you do all the work on your own," I told her. I probably shouldn't have said shitty. I should probably try to censure myself a little bit more. There was a time were holy crumpets was like the epitome of swearing for me.

"You don't have to," she answered softly. Her voice was low but I could see some kind of fire burning behind her eyes, the kind of determination that would have made someone say I'm not a charity case, don't take pity on me.

If I was honest though, I wasn't really trying to help here, I was trying to help sixteen years old, alone me. I wasn't taking pity on her, I was feeling sorry for myself. "I know."

"Alright, but you better not be lying about that whole not letting me do all the work thing," she said, and there it was at the corner of her mouth, the very beginning of a smile. It wasn't a smile per say, but it was just as good as one.

"Cross my heart and hope to die," I answered, smiling at her.