Misunderstandings (Woodfalls Girls 2)

“Fair enough. I love you, Mom.”

“I love you too, sweetie. Be safe.”

“You too,” I said, ending the call. I felt guilty for lying about Justin, but that was a subject I didn’t have the time or patience to tackle right now.

By the time Justin arrived, I was lying on my bed trying to read. Unfortunately, the effects of talking to my mom tended to linger for a while, making it hard to concentrate.

“Look at you,” he commented. “I thought you’d be done with books for a while.”

“Not this kind of book,” I said, holding up the racy cover for him to see.

“Hey now. Maybe I need to borrow that.”

“I don’t know if it’s appropriate for your virgin eyes. It’s pretty steamy,” I teased.

“Well, bring it along anyway. There may be some stuff in there I can use.”

Justin hauled my bags into the hallway while I gave my room the once-over to make sure I had everything I needed. The building was eerily quiet as we made our way down to the first floor.

“Man, it’s like a ghost town here,” Justin commented, holding the entryway door open for me.

“Yeah. I think Melissa and I were the last to leave. It was like the school announced the building had the bubonic plague or something with the way everyone scattered after exams ended.”

“Is your mom still mad you decided not to come home?”

“No. I think she bought my excuse that I needed to be here.”

“You know, I would have helped buy your plane ticket so you could have gone home,” Justin said, stowing my suitcase in the back of the jeep.

“It wasn’t the money. Mom would have bought my ticket if I had asked. It’s just—when I made the decision to attend UW, I didn’t want to fly home for every break. I went last year, but you heard how much she and I aggravated each other. It’s better to save the six hundred dollars for a plane ticket and we can video chat on the phone instead. Besides, I kinda got the vibe after talking to her a little while ago that she’s thinking of flying to Arizona to see my aunt and uncle,” I said, fastening my seat belt. “It’ll be good for her if she does. I think a few weeks away from Woodfalls is just what she needs.” I smiled.

“She can’t be nearly as bad as you make her sound,” Justin chuckled as we headed out of the city.

“Well, her nicknames are: Creeper, Stalker, Enquirer, Lurker, Peeping Pam, and many more.”

“Peeping Pam? That one’s pretty funny,” he laughed.

“Yeah, that one is courtesy of Tressa.”

“Now that’s a girl I want to meet.”

“She’s one-of-a-kind, that’s for sure. So, how was your humanities exam?” I asked, changing the subject. Just the mention of Tressa made me feel terribly homesick. Facebook and texting didn’t suffice when it came to best friends.

“Like seagulls were pecking my eyeballs out.”

“That bad?”

“Mr. Rucker is such a windbag. We spent months taking notes on every dribble of crap that left his mouth since he warned us at the beginning of the term that notes were the key to success in his class. I spent hours with my study group going over all that crap, and would you believe only two questions out of fifty were in our notes? Two! Who does that?” Justin said, holding up two fingers in frustration.

“That sucks. Do you think you failed?”

“God, I hope not. If I have to take an extra semester of humanities, I’ll jump off a ferryboat and hope another one runs me over,” he said, shuddering at the thought. “What about you?”

“I think I did okay on all of mine. I might have screwed up some of the equations in statistics, but seriously, they were ridiculous. I’ll eat my entire textbook the day I actually use any of that kind of math,” I grumbled. “I plan on teaching third grade, for crap’s sake.”

“Well, at least they’re behind us now,” he said.

“Truth. Is Hollie excited about Christmas?” I asked, pulling the conversation away from school.