In art history. We didn’t really hang out outside of class, but I wasn’t opposed to it.
“Anyway, how was your weekend?” she asked as she pulled out her notebook and three gel pens in pink, purple, and teal. She claimed writing in different colors helped organize her notes better. I thought it was just an excuse to use pretty colors. Tracy seemed to be fighting pretty girl stereotypes, which was fine by me, but she still drew hearts over her i’s. I found it charming. If your heart desires bright colors and bubble letters, then go for it, I say.
“My weekend was worse than yours,” I said morosely, struck again by the awful feeling of rejection I’d felt when I’d realized Kaleb was blocking my calls. He was such a … a … well, I couldn’t come up with a bad enough word for him, but it was bad.
“What happened?” Tracy asked, but right then the professor stepped up to the lectern. “Hold that thought. We’ll talk after.”
I slid down in my chair, got out a pencil, and wrote down the first few bullet points that appeared on the whiteboard. By the end of the class, my brain felt sluggish.
“So what happened this weekend?” she asked when the torture was over and we began shoving our notebooks into our bags.
“I got stood up by a date.”
“Ugh, that does suck. You win the worst weekend award.”
“But this morning I found this gift in my room…”
“Yeah?”
“It said it was from a secret admirer.”
“Aw, someone likes you.” She nudged my shoulder. “Go, you!”
“I guess? Kinda hard to believe.”
“No, it’s not. You’re adorable.”
“Shut up.”
She laughed a little. “Who do you think it is?”
“No idea.”
I stood, swinging my backpack onto my shoulder. Tracy followed me out of the room and into the hallway. “You must have some idea. It’s got to be someone you talk to, right?”
I shrugged helplessly. “I don’t have many friends either. I really don’t know.”
She tapped her lip with one finger. “Okay, here’s your homework assignment. Make a list of everyone you see on a regular basis. We’ll narrow it down to likely suspects.”
“We will, huh?”
She grinned. “Yep. I love a good mystery!”
Tracy walked away before I could argue. It was a decent idea, I guess, except I didn’t really know where to start. I hung out with my brother’s best friend, who saw me as a little brother, and my roommate had a girlfriend. There were a couple of guys in the dorm who said hi in passing. All in all, my social circle wasn’t that wide.
I started the walk back to the dorm. I had a list to make, apparently. I’d add a few of the guys from my dorm, the one or two classmates I’d worked with on projects — but not Kaleb. Ace was right; it made no sense for him to stand me up and then give me an anonymous gift, no matter how much I wished it.
Figuring this out wasn’t going to be easy. I just couldn’t imagine anyone who liked me enough to go to the trouble.
Ace
That evening I resisted the urge to check in with Benji and tried to forget what an idiot I’d been. Giving him a gift with a note like that? I didn’t do that kind of thing. Not even for girls. Not even for my most serious girlfriend, Sienna, who I’d dated a full semester before I realized we had nothing in common.
I didn’t have the best dating history, so that wasn’t saying much. After Sienna, I’d played the field. I hooked up at parties when the urge struck, but I rarely made the effort to go on dates. I had other priorities: my studies, my job, my frat responsibilities. It was just easier without giving another person the right to place demands on my time.
Jeremy jokingly called me a player, but that wasn’t it. I just hadn’t seen a future with anyone. How could I when I had barely believed in a future for myself? If it weren’t for Jeremy dragging me by the short-and-curlies, I wouldn’t have made it to college, much less the dean’s list and a leadership position in the frat. I owed him big time because, as a kid from the trailer park on the outskirts of town, I was destined for a dead-end, minimum-wage job. That was all I could see on the horizon without the talent to get an athletic scholarship.
At seventeen years old, Jeremy had single-handedly done the research to help