Dallas (Time for Tammy Book 1)

Chapter 10: The Free Pizza is a Guarantee

For about a month after the complex party—and after he started Club Volleyball—I didn't see much of Dallas. I didn't hear from him either, until he called our room to ask how to spell the word "redundant." After I spelled it for him, I managed to work up the nerve to ask him if he wanted to come over and watch some John Cusack movies that weekend.

"Oh, are you guys having a movie marathon?" The term 'you guys,' hung in the air like a lead fishing weight.

"Yep. Me and Linda and Lizzie and maybe Jane," I said, emphasizing the latter name a little more than necessary.

"Probably. Although I'm not sure what I'm doing this weekend."

I ended up waiting up for him at the picnic tables alone, Sonofabitch-style, long after my friends had gone to bed. I was convinced that as long as he continued hanging out with my friends and me, he'd catch on to how fabulous I was and fall madly in love with me. I thought all I had to do was play the game exactly right, and then just wait until he realized how much he liked me. Me, not Jane. Or Linda. Or Lizzie.

But it wasn't working. I was miserable, thinking about him all the time, wondering why he didn't realize how perfect we would be as a couple. It was time to get over him. For good.

"I'm over him," I told Linda and Jane as I scrubbed off my red toenail polish the next day.

I could feel Jane gesturing something over my head. "Heard that one before," she said.

I was examining the length of my toe hair when the phone rang. I looked over at Linda and then down at my toes again.

"Aren't you going to get that?" Jane asked.

"We'll let the machine get it," Linda said, crossing her arms.

I nodded. The answering machine clicked on and Dallas's voice filled the room. "I've got hooters in my room now, guys! Hooters!"

The three of us looked at each other. "Oh yeah, apparently he got a stuffed owl," Linda said. "He was talking about it in Heritage the other day."

"Does anybody want go over to Ibsen and see it?" I asked.

"No," Jane and my roommate replied simultaneously.

I grabbed my razor and headed to the bathroom.

"Listen, Tammy," Jane said when I returned. "We've been talking..." Jane glanced over at Linda. "And we've agreed that you need to either get over Dallas for real, or just Sroot the Free and ask him out. It's time to take a shit or get off the toilet. You're driving the rest of us crazy. Lizzie too."

Linda nodded vigorously.

"How am I supposed to actually ask him out? The only modes of transportation between the two of us are rollerblades and a bike with half-deflated tires."

"Well, I wouldn't e-mail him," Linda said unhelpfully.

~*~

I decided not to go home for Thanksgiving. We only got a few days off, and I'd much rather hang with my roommate than my sister and Kellen. Linda's parents stayed in Minnesota, but her brother offered to have a small meal in his apartment in Orlando. He also was getting us free tickets the day after to go to the theme parks.

I harbored a secret hope that Linda's brother Donny would be handsome and we'd fall in love that weekend, but Donny was a male version of Linda, down to the coke bottle glasses and Goofy T-shirt. I also quickly discovered Linda's Fargoaccent became much more pronounced around fellow Minnesotans.

The meal itself was uneventful. Donny had picked up a rotisserie chicken from the local grocery store and we had canned green beans and watched It's a Wonderful Life when dinner was over. The next morning the three of us got up early to head to Epcot.