Read Online Do-Overs by Christine Jarmola - Free Book Online Page A

I had built this up so in my imagination. There I was feeling as if my heart had been ripped out for a guy whose name I had just learned and I had never met in my current time sequence. My friends were giving me that look—some sympathy, but more confusion. I had said I’d seen him around campus a few times, yet I reacted as if he had just broken off our engagement. I was pathetic. I could see it in their eyes that they thought I was either a drama queen or some horribly psycho love junkie latching on to any guy who halfway paid me any attention. This conversation wasn’t going to happen.
    And suddenly it didn’t.
    “You look a little stressed tonight,” Rachel said after my fifteenth sigh while reading Jane Eyre . It was 11:30 again and I still had two chapters more to read and a paragraph for Old Testament to write.
    “I think we could all use a cookie dough break,” Olivia declared.
    Mr. Rochester had his secrets and so did I. Al Dansby went in the lost cause file and the topic was closed before it was ever opened.

 
     
     
     
     
     
    -14-
    Coffee, Tea, or... Never Mind?
     
    I left the room ahead of schedule for class that Monday morning. That was a rarity. It was a beautiful autumn day, not much wind. That also is a rarity in Oklahoma, not the beautiful day, but the absence of wind. I decided on the spur of the moment to make a quick trip through the student center for a cup of coffee. Not that I really liked coffee. I preferred Diet Dr. Pepper. But coffee looks sophisticated. At twenty I wanted to look adult. Mature.
    It was my lucky day. No line. Actually quite empty as it was early and most intelligent people were still asleep, either in their dorm rooms or in classes, but snoozing nonetheless.
    “I’d like a skinny cinnamon dolce latte,” I requested of the poor work-study employee stuck with the early morning shift. I really had no idea what that was, but it sounded urbane. He seemed less than impressed.
    “I’ll have the same,” came the most glorious, cultured, sexy voice from behind me.
    “Sure, Al,” the barrister replied, much more enthusiastic about his job than before. This gay thing was so unfair. I wanted a chance with the Al of my dreams, but no luck. In my mom’s day the dilemma was always all the good ones were taken. In my day they all are gay. How could I ever compete with that? I thought I was going to cry right then and there. I was so deep in thought that it took Al repeating good morning , I don’t know how many times before it sunk through into my gloom.
    “Are you okay?” he asked. Not in that obligatory way that people ask when they don’t really want a truthful answer and hope to not have to deal with an awkward situation. No, he asked as if he really cared. I must have looked like a mental case, tears starting in my eyes and my face getting all red and splotchy.
    Up close he was even more magnificent than my memories, my dreams, my fantasies had remembered. I had to get away, fast. Even if he wasn’t a possibility for me, I still couldn’t stand the idea of making a fool of myself in his. . . oh so green eyes that were looking into mine. Breathe. Yes, that was what I needed to do, breathe. I had to grab that eraser and get out of that God forsaken student center before I threw myself on him babbling platitudes of how if he just gave me a chance I could make him straight.
    I left the room ahead of schedule for class that Monday morning. That was a rarity. It was a beautiful autumn day, not much wind. Now that also is a rarity in Oklahoma. Yet, I wasn’t enjoying it. Should I have stayed in the student center? Should I have taken the chance to have a conversation with Al Dansby? No, no point in attempting a relationship that just couldn’t happen. No coffee for Lottie Lambert, and no Al Dansby either. Some things couldn’t change no matter how many special erasers I had nor how many times I did the moment over. Some days life just