Lie Until You Laugh

27- Shirtless Boyfriends

Gianna is given a warning after what happens at the food court. She’s given her second warning actually, which means that if she gets in trouble one more time, she’ll be expelled for the rest of the summer. That all happened almost a week ago since today is Saturday, and I haven’t spoken to her or any of her minions since then but Penn told me what her sentence was. I didn’t go to the bonfire last night because I decided to go to dinner with Penn instead and then he took me to a movie afterwards, which was nice. It’s nice to spend time with him just us two without having to worry about the drama that’s stirring around on campus.

Anyway, today I’m spending even more time with Penn because Mason and Brian are spending the weekend at Brian’s house with his parents and Stella is hanging out with Drew. Last night, Penn told me that I could just come to his dorm after I woke up, because I sleep so much later than he does. Before I leave my room to go to his (instructors have rooms to their selves, so I don’t have to worry about a roommate or anything) I text him and tell him that I’m on my way.

I look in the mirror that Stella has up on the back of our door and run my fingers over the scar that’s on my forehead. I’ve decided that Gianna had a ring on or something when she punched me, which is why I needed stitches, but it doesn’t look too nasty anymore because the stitches fell out last night while I was sleeping. My lip was swollen for a few days but that’s gone now too, so really the only evidence of the fight is the scar on my forehead, so I can live with that. I know that people think that I lost the fight, but I really don’t care. I mean, maybe I did but that’s just because I didn’t want to fight. If I wanted to fight, I could have broken her into bits and I know that. Even though she can throw a hard punch, I can still take her in a fight if I really wanted to.

I grab my dorm key from the dresser and hurry out of the room with my phone in my pocket. I’m wearing a simple outfit- just a pair of jean shorts and a gray shirt that reads ‘dance’ on it three times. It’s an outfit that I’d brought from home, but the black flip flops that I’m wearing, I bought those here in Oxnard. My hair is in a messy braid down my back, so I think that I look presentable. Especially because I even put on mascara and eyeliner this morning. Maybe it’s the fact that I have a boyfriend and I feel like I should put makeup on when I see him. I mean, I know that Penn won’t be like ‘ew, your face is naked’ but it just feels like something I should do, I guess.

After a week of having a boyfriend, I think I’m getting less clueless as to how to be a girlfriend. I don’t know certain things though, like how long we should wait to do more than just making out or when it’s okay to tell him more about me without worrying that he’ll run away. Maybe I’ll Google that stuff later. However, I do know things like how to kiss him (it’s surprisingly easier than I thought it would be, I’m realizing) and that it’s okay to think that he’s attractive and to say that out loud. After what I said in the nurse’s office, Penn wouldn’t stop teasing me about that, so I’ve gotten used to the embarrassing confession type things, I think.

When I get to the dorm building where the interns and other workers stay, I go in and notice that it looks identical to the student dorm building and I realize that’s probably because it is a student dorm building during the school year because the actual dance instructors don’t actually stay on campus during the school year so they obviously don’t need dorms and because there’s not as many students in the summer, they just use one of the empty buildings to house the workers. The reception desk in this building is empty though, probably because they don’t need somebody to babysit them. Penn gave me his room number last night because I didn’t know it so I wrote it down on my hand because I’d forget it if I didn’t. I’ve never been to his room before, but I go up to the fourth floor, because the three digit room number starts with a four and then I follow the room number signs to 403, which is the number that’s written on my hand.