Dallas (Time for Tammy Book 1)

Chapter 12: Snubbed

For the first few weeks of my second semester, I didn't have any interaction with Dallas. Although Eckhart was small enough that you usually ran into people you didn't want to see, those who you actually wanted to encounter often remained elusive. Linda still had Heritage with him, but she said he avoided her completely.

"Why do you care?" Jane asked.

"I have to talk to him."

"Tammy, I think you've probably said enough at this point. There's really nothing left to be said."

"I need to tell him that I'm sorry for the tape."

Jane gestured to the phone on Linda's desk. My New Year's resolution was to be more assertive, so I dialed his number. Someone picked up, but as soon as I asked for Dallas, I heard a dial tone. "He hung up on me."

Jane nodded but she didn't say anything more.

The need to apologize to Dallas had plagued me all during Winter Break and I wasn't ready to give up so easily. I was going to have to orchestrate a run-in with him. I suspected Dallas purposely stopped walking on the path that went past our dorm room and was walking the long way to get to class. Since I had no idea what classes he was taking this semester, the only guaranteed time to see him was on his way to the gym for Volleyball, all the way across campus.

One day, after I worked up enough courage and planned out exactly what I was going to say—as in "I'm sorry"—I grabbed a book and sat on the picnic bench across from the gymnasium. I waited for him, my heart pounding. The weather was warm for January in Florida, and the afternoon sun warmed my back as I stared at the words in my book without reading them. Soon I sensed Dallas's familiar gait and I glanced up from my non-reading and watched him approach. When he caught sight of me, his face fell. I could feel myself blushing as I blinked back tears. He was wearing a gray T-shirt.

"Hi." I told him, completely forgetting what I had planned to say. All I could hear was his denial of the Blockhead convertible flip-off: I don't wear T-shirts.

"Hi..."

"Look, Dallas." The words came out in a rush. "I-know-you're-mad-at-me-and-I-just-wanted-to-say-that-I'm-sorry."

"I'm not mad at you, Tammy." His stride was bringing him right past the picnic table where I was standing. And then he kept walking. He wasn't even going to give me the courtesy of stopping and talking this out.

"Dallas..." But he was already past me and into the gym.

~*~

I had already decided before I returned for my second semester of freshmen year that I would allow myself a real college life, and declared to Jane and Lizzie that I would finally participate in the activity most of my peers at Eckhart and all around the country—or at least at the University of M—were doing: drinking and partying. I figured the night after the Volleyball Snub was as good a night as any to try my first on-campus drink. It also happened to be the night of yet another complex party: Beta Blackout.

Underage or not, we weren't technically allowed to have any alcohol in substance-free Gandhi, but a guy Jane knew from her Heritage class by the name of Caleb volunteered to be our supplier. We would pre-party in his room at Prasch before heading over to Beta. I decided to get dressed in the outfit I would have worn on my first date with Dallas had he not rejected me: a purple velvet dress with a white shrug to cover my arms and my push-up bra. Jane wore a slinky black dress with elbow-length gloves. Linda had decided not to join us while Lizzie, grasping her ever-present smokes, had donned a wrap-dress. As we walked into Prasch, one of Caleb's dormmates was coming out.

"Hey," he said, eyeing the three of us up and down. "You girls look like you just stepped off the Titanic."

"He's cute," Lizzie whispered to Jane and me as we continued down the hall.