"Oh my god really?" Samira asks shocked and I nod shamelessly. She pauses for a second and then tilts her head back, releasing a loud laugh. "I can't believe this! Latrell's gonna like hearing his boy is partnered up with you."
"Why is he even in this class? I thought he wasn't a freshman."
"Oh he's not. He's a junior like Trell." Samira sits back on her bed and closes her laptop that was on her lap from doing homework.
"Then why is he in there?" I scratch my head.
"Maybe he wanted to torment you," she jokes and I stick my tongue out at her.
"Ha ha very funny Samira," I say sarcastically.
"No, but for real, he probably had a mix up with his credits so they forced him to take it." She says after she stops laughing.
"Is he a nice guy?" I ask hopefully.
I don't want to spend a lot of the time this semester with someone who is rude and trouble because then my grade will suffer and I can't get anything below an A in all of my classes.
"Tre's pretty nice when you talk to him," she explains. "He's cool. Very chill, but he's also really smart. Like really really smart."
"He seems cocky." I blatantly state.
Samira nods in agreement. "He is very cocky, the girls love him. But he grows on you after a while." She smiles. "He's one of those people who no matter what, he would always help you out." She pauses for a second and then speaks again. "He has a good heart."
"He does?"
She nods. "He really does Eva. He may look tough and cocky, but there's a lot more to him than that. The more time you spend with him the more you realize that."
That makes me get lost in my thoughts. I always try to give people the benefit of the doubt, so maybe he won't be so bad after all?
"He didn't give me any way to contact him. He left before I could ask him."
Samira rifles through her bad and gets out her phone. "Here's his number." She give the digits to me and I make a reminder to myself to send him a text to get started on this project.
"So how was your classes?" I ask her and she goes on a rant about her 3D art professor who she already doesn't like. "She looks like one of them old ladies who would hit you with her broom if you stepped on her front yard and who would intentionally put prunes into a pie just so you can shit everywhere later." I laugh and cover my mouth in shock at her ridiculous description of the teacher and she keeps going with the ranting until she finally had enough of talking about the "old hag," her words not mine.
"I'm gonna go over to Trell's," she says as she puts her converse on. "You wanna come with?"
I shake my head. "No thanks, I'm gonna get a start on my homework.
"Don't study too hard now miss smarty pants," she teases and then walks out the door.
I chuckle and take my laptop out and go online to look at my syllabi to get a head start on my homework. If I get ahead now, then I won't be as stressed out later and can enjoy my college without freaking out about all of the assignments that are due. Better to do it now and get it over with than to do it later and not do as good as a job on it. At least, my classes right now do not have a lot of homework with them.
I spend the rest of the late afternoon reading the pages I had to read and I filled out one worksheet for my organic chemistry class. I'm almost done already and I still have the rest of the evening to do whatever I want to do. The last class I look at is Philosophy of Religion and we do not have any homework yet. The syllabus says it would be a good idea to get a head start on this semester long project, but nothing is required yet. I look down at my phone that's lying in my lap.
Should I message Tre?
What would I even say to him? That's if he even replies back to me, which I doubt he will.
Hello Tre. This is Evangeline, we're partners for the semester project in our philosophy of religion class. I was just wondering if you would want to meet sometime soon so we can figure out what we want to do for our project? Thanks.
I think that sounds pretty good and straightforward. And that only took me ten minutes to figure out. My finger hovers over the send button for a few seconds until I finally force myself to press the button and send the text to him. Oh gosh, what did I just do? I ask myself, but the deed's already been done. All I can do it wait for him to reply. I hope he does or I'm out of luck and stuck with a bad partner.
I do things to occupy myself and keep my nervous mind off of the text otherwise I'll be sitting there for the next few hours staring at my phone until it beeps, so I put a movie on read some of my bible. Samira comes and in and out of the room, one time with Latrell, and it made my heart stop seeing him because I was excepting Tre to be with him. I let out a quiet sigh of relief when it was only the two of them and nobody else was with them. I don't know how I would've reacted if Tre was with them and he didn't reply to my text yet.
My eyes start to droop as I lay my head on my pillow and wrap my fuzzy purple blanket around me. The Notebook is a soft noise in the background and my eyes are about to shut but a buzzing sound from my phone interrupts.
I look at the name and my heart stops.
Trevante
We can meet this Friday after 3
Wow, I didn't expect him to actually reply back to me. And thought he wouldn't be very nice since his friends made fun of me at the party on Friday night. I think about replying back but I don't wanna embarrass myself, so I just write down our meeting in my planner, read a couple bible verses, and call it a night.
*~*
As the school week goes by, I am starting to get the hang of this college life. I wake up early as always, go to all of my classes, and finish my homework before the day's done. It has been a big adjustment, but I think I am really starting to like being on my own. It is nice to not have mother and father breathing down my neck about everything I do. I call them two times a day, once in the morning, and once in the evening before I go to bed, and they always remind me to eat good, pray, and read my bible. I told them they didn't have to worry about that because I already do them. And of course, they asked about the boys that live in my dorm. The few that I have met seem really nice and the floor isn't as loud and rambunctious as I, and they, thought it would be. They were happy to hear that there have been no problems and I am getting ahead in my studies.
"We're happy that you've been behaving yourself Evangeline."
"Thank you, sir." I have been doing good with not getting distracted so far. It is easy for me not to when Samira is only in our room half of the time and I found a place in the library behind a bookshelf that is really quiet and a great place to study. Once I get finished with my homework, I pick out books to read and I will sit there for hours reading until the library closes. I like being able to be in my own little world of books and magic words.
"Today's Friday Bitch!" Samira chimes from her bed as I put my a white headband in my hair that I just curled.
"I love Fridays," I chuckle at her excitement and roll chapstick on my lips.
"You know what Fridays mean, right?" Samira asks. She leaves her bed unmade and opens her closet.
"What?"
"It's the weekend! And you know what happens on the weekends? Parties!" She squeals and I nod.
"Oh yeah, parties." I didn't like the last party we went to so I hope she doesn't try to drag me to another one this weekend.
"The more you go, the more fun they are." She starts to do her makeup in the mirror and I put my converse on.
"That logic seems a little off Sam. If I didn't like it the first time, why would I like it the second time if it's just the same thing as the first one?"
She stops mid swipe of mascara and looks back at me. "You actually called me Sam, Eva!"
I guess I did. "Yeah, I thought I would try it out." I still think Samira's name is really beautiful, but I know she likes to go by Sam, so that's what I'll call her.
She smiles. "I appreciate it. Although, for you, I don't care if you call me Samira. You and Trell are the only one's who can call me that. I don't even let my parents call me that."
"Well I feel special then," I chuckle and we share a laugh for a moment before we finish getting ready for class. As we walk out of the dorm and into the warm air, I get my phone out of my skirt pocket and it takes me a few minutes to figure out what to say, but I send a text to Tre.
Um, hey Tre, where would you like to meet at today?
Surprisingly he responds back right away.
We can meet in the library by the front desk
I type back slowly. Alright, see you then.
I put my phone back into my pocket when we get to our class and look at the clock.
7:51
Seven hours and 9 minutes until I have to meet Tre. I can feel my nerves already growing and know that I'm gonna spend the rest of the day thinking about this.
~*~
I was distracted in my all of my classes. I couldn't stop looking at the clock and thinking about how nervous I am too meet Tre. Why am I so nervous? I keep asking myself and I can't figure out why. We're just going to be working on our project for school. There shouldn't be anything to be nervous about. It's school work and nothing else. At least that what I keep telling myself. When the clock turned 2:45 I headed to the library. I didn't want to be late and I wanted to get there before he did. He showed up to our class late today so he'll probably be late here too.
I walk into the library and see the welcome desk in the middle of the large room. There's some couches and tables all around it so I go to one of the couches and sit down. There's still ten minutes before three so get out my planner and write down my schedule for the weekend. I'm gonna try to explore some of the city and I looked up some antique shops online that I would like to look at as well. Maybe I'll find something in there to send to my parents too.
"Evangeline."
I'm caught off guard by my thoughts being interrupted and quickly look up to see Tre standing right in front of me.
"Hi." My voice cracks and I internally grimace at the smirk that grows on his face. I try to redeem myself. "Um, I wasn't sure if I was in the right spot I not."
"There's only one front desk here Evangeline." I can hear the teasing in his tone and I wanna kick myself for how much I'm embarrassing myself. I can see him trying not to laugh and I feel like I want to cry. Great, I'm making a fool out of myself, yet again.
"Come on," Tre says. "Let's move over here." He starts to walk towards the back of the library and I follow him to some tables near the vending machines. We set our backpacks on the table and I try to control my shaking knees when I sit down. I can hear my mother already scolding me to stop shaking and sit up right.
"So what is this project we have to do?" Tre asks and I get out the assignment paper given to us the first day of class.
"Um, we have to think of a concept and research how it is viewed in both religion and philosophy," I start. "And then we must make an argument about whether or not we think what we find in our research is accurate in today's society. We have to write an essay and create a presentation about it."
"Damn Garrett really went all out for this project," Tre groans and rubs his hand on his head.
I don't know how to respond to that without looking embarrassing so I just get out my laptop and notebook from my book bag. It's quiet for a few moments as we both get our stuff out and I don't look at Tre once during this time. I know when I look at him, I'll want to keep staring and I don't need him to laugh at me more than he already did.
"So are you actually gonna talk to me during this project?" He asks and I take a breath to get myself together.
"Yes I will." My heart feels like it's going to beat out of my chest
"Well can we get started so I can get out of here? I have places to be later."
I nod, ignoring his rude tone, and he takes his jacket off, revealing his dark blue shirt underneath. My eyes go straight to his biceps that look very defined and I quickly look down at my notebook, not wanting to be caught staring.
"Do you know what topic you'd like to research?" I ask him quietly.
"I don't know. I'm not into all this philosophy and religious shit so I have no idea." His voice is the loudest one here and I'm sure the entire library can hear him.
I bite my lip and tap my pen against my notebook.
"Do you know?" He turns the question towards me.
"We could talk about creation or the universe or humanity." I list out. "Religion and philosophy both have standards and beliefs about how to live and be human in this world."
"Sure. Whatever will be the easiest to do." Tre crosses his arms and leans back in his chair.
I go search for some articles online while Tre sits there and is on his phone. Looks like I'm gonna be doing most of the work on this project. Although, I'm used to it at this point. In partner projects I always did all of the work since nobody else would. Everyone knew that if they didn't try, I would just do it anyways. Hey, I'm not going to fail because other people are lazy. I'd rather do all the work and get an A than to not do as much and fail.
A half hour passes and I have found a few articles that might be helpful.
"I'm bored," Tre says and gets up to leave. "Did you find anything?"
I nod. "Yeah I found a few articles that we could use."
"That's cool." He puts his jacket on and then grabs his backpack.
"I'm out. See you."
He leaves me at the table and I sigh. "Yeah see you." I quietly say after he left.
Well that didn't go how I thought it was going to go. First I make myself look stupid in front of him and teases me, and then he doesn't contribute at all. Sam was not right about him.
He's a complete jerk and I wish I was partners with someone else.