9. Laura
9
LAURA
E ven though I made it a personal rule not to have too much caffeine later in the day, I sacrificed more time before rushing to organic chem to get an iced coffee. Standing in line, I rubbed my brow and sighed, wishing that I were sleeping better to not feel so tired now.
A headache brewed, and I scorned how stressed I was.
Ever since I started tutoring Jason, my life had been hell.
I was losing time—wasting it—tutoring him, and it was cutting into my studies. Then all the rumors he and his friends were spreading about me contributed to constant stress that bothered me when I decompressed to rest every night.
It wasn’t fair.
I tried my best to let it all go in one ear and out the other, but no one was that forgiving. Even a saint with the most supreme self-esteem and solid sense of self-worth would feel battered like this.
Behind me, Dennis, one of Jason’s frat brothers, talked about how slutty I looked.
I was right here.
He knew I could hear him.
Everyone else in line laughed along with him, and I zoned out with a weak wonder at how they couldn’t make up their minds.
Jason wanted to tease me for being a boring prude. Then in the next minute, he and his buddies would be trying to slut shame and call me a whore.
Which is it? I put out for everything that breathes and moves and has a dick? Or I have an icy vagina and can’t thaw enough to ever have sex at all?
To pass the time in line for my coffee, I reviewed my notes about the cancer drugs I’d been collecting research for. My dad would be furious if I submitted it for the symposium, but it didn’t hurt to daydream. To fantasize. Since I wouldn’t get far with imagining strangling Jason for trying to make me miserable with his bullying, I could entertain myself with the vision that I could one day be bold enough to stand up to my dad’s expectations and do as I wanted with my life.
After I got my coffee, I speed-walked toward the building where my organic chem lab was. I didn’t get far before my phone buzzed with an incoming call.
I checked the screen, scoffing at the sight of my sister’s name. What the hell could Mai want? And now? She seldom ever called me, too busy with her important life across the state at med school.
“Hello?” I’d never hear the end of it if I ignored her call on purpose, and she’d be liable to accuse me of that to my parents.
“Hi, Laura. I’d ask how it’s going, but I think I already know.”
I furrowed my brow, hating this headache. “What? I’m not following.” Was she calling to see how I was doing, yet not? I had no patience for riddles or any insincere interest in my life.
“I was chatting with Penelope, one of my mentees,” she said, “and she brought it to my attention that you were, um, caught pleasuring yourself in the locker room?”
I groaned, closing my eyes. No amount of caffeine would help with this headache now. I’d need a vat of it. Or a chance to run away. “No,” I drawled. “I was not.”
“Contrary to your claims,” she stated, “there are many posts that suggest otherwise. She showed me.”
“Yeah, because you can always believe everything that you read online.”
“It’s not true?”
‘No!” I almost crushed the plastic of my iced coffee cup as I walked and fisted my hand, gritting my teeth. I’d never been this frustrated in my life! “Some bullies are picking on me and spreading rumors.”
“Jeez, Laura. It’s not really a good look to cry victim.”
My mouth hung open. “I’m not!”
“Then what did you do to make some students pick on you like this?”
“Nothing. Dad asked me—no, ordered me—to tutor this jerk, and he’s making my life hell.”
“Can’t you have some compassion? Clearly, this student is going through a rough time. Just stop and think about how your reputation impacts mine.”
“Oh, God forbid someone spread a rumor that I’m a slut and it hurts you . Never mind how this makes me feel. Right?”
“All right. I see how this is. I’m not going to attempt a conversation when you’re just going to shout and be emotional. I don’t deserve that.”
“Why are you even calling?” I snapped.
“Because this doesn’t look good. For you. Me. The family. Poor Ethan. He must be so hurt by all this slander too.”
I laughed, just because I refused to cry. Fuck Ethan.
“You need to be careful. Ethan is the kind of man you could marry. A good, honest?—”
I hung up. She wasn’t calling to comfort me or offer me sympathy when I was targeted by bullies. And she was not going to make me feel sorry for Ethan.
Fuck him.
I shook my head, my mind made up.
His lack of support was worse than this stunt of Mai calling me. While I was supremely annoyed that these campus rumors were reaching her when she wasn’t here, he was a spineless idiot about this smear campaign that Jason wanted to put me through while I had to try to tutor him.
While Ethan was quick to whine to me about how cruel Jason was being toward him , just by association with me, he offered nothing else. Only complaints.
He admitted that he was too afraid to stand up for me against Jason or his frat buddies. He was too shy and nervous, not “a fan of confrontations” to tell Jason to leave me alone.
I was supposed to be Ethan's girlfriend.
Kristin was just a friend, and she was the only person who stood up for me. She replied to some of the nastier posts online, but when they turned the attacks onto her just for standing up for me, I told her not to bother. I didn’t want her to suffer.
At least she wanted to stand up for me.
She was a true friend. My only friend, it seemed.
Ethan had no backbone or willingness to give a shit, expecting me to tell Jason to knock it off. The fear of Jason turning his attention onto him was what kept Ethan quiet and scared.
And that, more than anything else, was the last straw. It was the final clue that I was way overdue to break up with him.
If I had to fake interest in a lackluster boyfriend, then it should at least be someone who’d care enough to defend me when I was slandered and teased mercilessly like this.
Tonight. After this class. I vowed to get it over with.
I texted him that I wanted to talk. I sent the message just before I got into my organic chem lab, glad that he quickly agreed to meet me at the outdoor seating area near the food court after his next class.
I wasn’t nervous after the lab was done. Walking back toward the center of the campus, I mentally rehearsed how I’d tell him that I wasn’t interested in being with him anymore. And that was what surprised me. I didn’t have to brainstorm for long. The words were already there in my head. It seemed like I’d been thinking of this for a while now, so it was almost like manifesting it and making it happen now.
“Hi, Laura,” he said, leaning in to kiss me.
He didn’t land on my lips, placing an awkward, too-wet kiss more on my cheek and the area under my nose.
For fuck’s sake. He wasn’t farsighted. He had twenty-twenty vision. It was this nervousness to show affection, or a lack of knowledge how to. Still after all this time we’d been dating, he was just so… bad at it.
I didn’t have much to compare him to. He was my first. But my God, even I could tell this was lousy.
As he stepped back, indicating for me to sit first at a bistro table, I nearly gagged at the onion on his breath.
Oh, nasty. It seemed like his kiss was stinky too.
“So.” I sat and waited for him to sit, too.
“So. What’s new?”
“What’s new is that I want to break up.”
He stared at me for a long moment as if he couldn’t understand. Then he laughed nervously. “Funny. That’s a good one.”
Please, just please don’t make this worse. “No. This isn’t a joke.” I tucked a long strand of my hair back behind my ear. “I’m serious, Ethan.”
“You want to break up with me?” he whispered as his eyes watered.
Aw, fuck. No. Don’t cry. I wasn’t one of those people who thought men couldn’t cry. I just dreaded his making this any more dramatic than it had to be. I preferred to keep it free of any drama at all, just like our whole relationship was. “Yes.” I nodded, too, in case he needed more proof of what I was saying.
“ You want to break up with me ?” While he wasn’t screeching, he almost sounded hysterical.
We were mostly private over here under the shade of a tree that was finally blooming and leafing out, but I hated the thought of anyone overhearing and watching. Witnesses weren’t welcome.
Dammit. I should’ve had him come over or gone to his house.
Privacy should’ve been a priority with how much attention I’d been getting lately.
A glance around us didn’t show anyone overtly interested, though. Students and faculty walked by like it was any other day.
Whereas Ethan acted like this was the worst day of his life, frowning and still too near tears and utter confusion.
“But why? We’re so good together.”
I winced, wishing again that my expression wasn’t so loud and uncensored.
“You don’t think we’re good together?” he accused. “How can you think that?”
“Because I’m not interested in you like that, Ethan. I’m not interested.”
“What?” he demanded. “That’s impossible. We are very compatible.”
“No. We’re not, not really.”
“I don’t understand. Why, Laura? Why? Because of all that slander and those rumors?”
That was part of it. I was disappointed that he wouldn’t stand up for me. But I had lost interest before that. If anything, in a perverse way, I had Jason and his teasing to thank for giving me the courage to dump Ethan once and for all.
“You owe me an explanation.”
I sighed. “I’m just not interested. You’re a great guy, and you’ll make someone really happy one day, but you don’t make me happy.”
“Is this about that one time that you didn’t come?” He furrowed his brow, losing the confusion and switching to anger.
I was so not taking crap about this from him. “That one time, Ethan? Really?”
He gaped at me as his face turned red. “What the hell? What— Are you trying to say I never made you come? This is about sex?”
I almost laughed as he lowered his voice when he said that word. “No. Yes. It’s just not working for me anymore, Ethan.” Honestly, it never had. I’d only given him a chance because I was interested in having a boyfriend and he was the guy my dad approved of and pushed at me.
“Don’t you dare try to say I never satisfied you.”
“You did. Or you tried.”
He gasped. “Laura, that’s a lie. I made you come.”
“Maybe?” I cringed. “But it’s not about that. I just don’t want?—”
“How can you do this to me! This is bullshit. I made you come a lot. One time, I didn’t wait for you, but that’s not my fault. It’s not my fault you can be so frigid sometimes.”
I pressed my lips together and inhaled through my nose. I was going out of my way to be gentle but firm. I wasn’t speaking meanly. “I’m not frigid.”
“Yeah, you are.” He nodded, latching on to this newfound claim he was sharing for the first time.
After all the bullying, slander, and cruel jokes varying between my being a prude or a slut, I was not in the mood for his criticism. “I’m not frigid when I use a toy,” I retorted quietly.
“You—” His eyes bugged out. “You use toys ?”
Oh, my God. This wasn’t going well at all. “That’s beside the point.”
“No, it’s not. If you’re playing and exploring by yourself, then no wonder you’re not… you’re not saving yourself for me. You were frigid for me.”
“Ethan, stop. I’m not trying to attack you or comment about your lack of skill?—”
“Lack of skill!”
I held my hand up. “Okay. That didn’t come out right. I mean?—”
“I am very skilled. I’m going to med school this fall, remember? And?—”
“Right.” I nodded. “All the more reason to end this now before you leave.”
“—and I am thoroughly skilled and knowledgeable about the female anatomy to please you… if you weren’t so frigid.”
I’d had enough. I was sick of being called a prude and/or a slut by everyone else. And I refused to be such a pushover as to let him call me frigid. “Ethan, you can take and retake human physiology as many times as you want and you will never understand where the clitoris is.”
He gasped again, rearing back with anger in his eyes.
“It’s over, Ethan.” The louder he got, the more nervous I became that someone would notice. Besides, the sooner I finished this, the quicker I could get home and study before having to see Jason for tutoring at the library again.
“You know what I think?” he asked hotly.
No. I don’t. I don’t care, either. I sighed, refusing to be mean. “What?”
“You’re just one of those selfish girls.”
I laughed, shaking my head.
“One of those teases who plays hard to get and?—”
I stood. “It’s over.”
He hurried after me, reaching for my hand. “No. Please!”
His begging would be worse than his crying. I shook my head.
“No, Ethan, I’m done.”
As I turned, determined not to be such a complacent idiot that I’d hear him out and give him a second chance when my heart wasn’t in it, I stopped short.
A few tables over was my worst nightmare.
Jason grinned at me, his forearms on the table as he videoed in my direction.
Dennis and Kevin laughed, seated at the table.
He’d recorded the whole conversation.
I swallowed hard and for the first time, I loathed the sting of tears threatening to fall as I fled the scene.