…or, Firm Answers
“Sorry I’m late,” I said to Missy and Marlot, who’d already gotten their food by the time I reached the food court. “Class was late, and then I got held up a bit talking, uh, to a classmate.”
“Oh, what’s that?” Missy asked when I set the flowerpot down on the table.
“Argenti violets,” I said.
“Ooh, is somebody giving you flowers?” Marlot said. “Better watch your back, Missy. You’ve got competition.”
“They’re from my teacher,” I said.
“I don’t even think that’s legal,” Marlot said.
“She gave them to everybody,” I explained.
“Shameless hussy,” Marlot said.
“Would you like them?” I asked Missy. “I don’t know where I’d put them.”
“Oh, he’s re-gifting you,” Marlot said. “I wouldn’t stand for it. If I were you, I’d demand a dozen white roses, with all the thorns removed and replaced with smaller individual flowers.”
“Sure,” Missy said, taking the pot and pulling it closer to her tray.
“Cool,” I said. I set my bag down on the table. “I’m gonna go grab some food.”
I waited in line at the Burger President counter and got myself a bacon double cheeseburger and large fries.
“So, how was your morning?” I asked the girls when I returned.
“Meh,” Marlot said. “I am not at all impressed with my signs and warnings lab. Not at all. My elementalism lecture looks to be okay.”
“What’s wrong with the lab?” Missy asked.
“Okay, the way I figure it, there are two ways a teacher can approach the first day,” Marlot said. “One is to pass out the syllabus, go over some basics, and say ‘Have a nice day!’ a quarter of the way into the period. The other is to jump right in and start doing stuff. Our instructor? Kept us there for the whole hour but didn’t have anything prepared for us to do. It was just ‘Oh, just familiarize yourselves with the equipment.’ For fifty minutes.”
“That sounds really unprofessional,” Missy said.
“He was a last minute substitution,” Marlot said. “Apparently. So, I don’t really mind that he didn’t have anything prepared, but he could have either whipped together a demonstration or turned us loose. When some brassy dame with a classy walking stick suggested that thirty minutes was plenty of time to get to know a table and some brushes, he told us to study the syllabus. It was a single scribed page, and he’d already read the whole thing aloud.”
“Ouch,” I said.
“My afternoon should be better,” Marlot said. “It’s an imagecrafting lab.”
“Two labs in one day?” Missy asked.
“Wards and illusions,” Marlot said. “It’s not exactly heavy lifting.”
“So, how’s your day going?” Missy asked me.
“Good,” I said. “I had two classes, both with the same professor. This afternoon, I’m taking an etherscaping class and a lore lecture.”
“He takes his undeclared status very seriously,” Marlot said. “He would have taken information resources, but the honors section was all filled up.”
“What did you have in the morning?” Missy asked.
“A basic lab, and a field class,” I told her.
“I mean, what subject?”
“Um, herbalism.”
“Were there a lot of girls in them?” Missy asked.
“You know, the field herbalism class actually has a challenge rating,” I said. “We spent, oh, maybe half the class going over all the warnings before we headed into the woods.”
“Methinks the lady doth protest too much,” Marlot said.
“Oh, don’t start,” I said. “Seriously. Not today.”
“It’s okay, you can like girly things,” Missy said. “It’s kind of cute. Like your pretty hand axe.”
“My axe isn’t ‘pretty’,” I said. “It belonged to my dad’s family for centuries.”
“I thought you were elven on your mom’s side,” Missy said.
“I am. My dad’s fully human.”
“Oh,” Missy said. She blushed, a little. “I thought it was an elven axe, with the silver and the jewels and stuff.”
“Elves aren’t really big on axes,” I said.
“She thought it was elven because it’s so pretty,” Marlot noted helpfully.
“Can we not talk about my family’s ancestral weapon like it’s a fashion accessory?” I asked. “And Missy, I’m glad that you like my culture, or whatever, but really, I’m almost as much human as you are. Not everything about me has to come back to who my great-grandfather is.”
“Hey, Jamie, what kind of leaf is this?” Marlot asked, holding up a piece of her salad.
I gave her a withering look. She remained unwithered.
“It’s romaine lettuce,” I said.
“See?” she said. “He’s going to make a great herbalist. He has a positive gift.”
I sighed.
“I don’t necessarily want to be an herbalist,” I said. “I’m just taking the classes because it’s convenient.”
“What, you’re just going to let your talents go to waste?”
“How was your morning?” I asked Missy.
“Pretty much okay,” she said. “I got my W.P. class out of the way in the morning. You know I thought basic knife was going to be really easy, but it turns out there’s a whole bunch of stuff we have to go over before we’re even allowed to have our blades out.”
“Yeah?” I said. I smiled, a little cockily. “I took something a little more challenging. Mixed melee. I had to take it late tomorrow afternoon, because apparently they combined the beginner and advanced sections into a single class this year. I don’t know how that’s going to play out.”
“How about you?” Missy asked Marlot. “What’s your W.P. class?”
“Oh, I’m not taking one,” Marlot said.
“Really?” Missy said. “Because my adviser told me it’s best to get them out of the way first, so you know what you’re doing and so you don’t get stuck later.”
“I’m not taking one at all,” Marlot clarified. “I have an accommodation. As long as I can get enough support credits, I don’t need a W.P. class.”
“Is it because of your leg?” Missy asked.
“It’s because I’m a less-than-conscientious objector,” Marlot said. “That means I don’t want to fight, but I don’t mind using magic to mess with the other side.”
“You don’t have to get snippy,” Missy said.
“I’m not snippy,” Marlot said. “I just don’t think the whole world has to revolve around my leg. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go write up my notes from my signs lab before I forget everything I learned today.”
She got up and stalked away, practically stabbing the floor with her cane.
“You going to go after her?” Missy asked.
“She wants to be alone,” I said. “She’ll calm down in her own time. Trying to talk her through it only makes it worse.”
“What’s with her leg, seriously?”
“Born wrong,” I said. “That’s all. Her leg’s too short and her knee doesn’t work right. Don’t make a big deal out of it.”
“You asked her about it,” Missy said.
“I forgot,” I admitted. “I’m used to being alone with her, most of the time. She’s different about it, in front of other people.”
“Oh,” Missy said. “Can I ask you something else, then?”
“Sure.”
“Are you jerking me around?” she asked. I stared at her, not sure what she was asking or how to answer. “I’m sorry,” she said, holding up her hands. “I know we’re not actually ‘involved’, yet, but I think you’re cute and kind of smart, and I don’t want to spend a lot of time and energy on something if it’s doomed from the get-go.”
“What do you mean?” I said. “There’s nothing between me and Marlot, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“Yeah, I know,” Missy said. “But, Marlot said she thinks she’s seen you checking out guys.”
“She managed to notice that but somehow missed how often I check out girls?”
“So you do?” Missy said.
“Sometimes,” I said. “Why didn’t she say anything to me?”
“She said she thought for sure you’d say something, once you guys were here,” she said. “She doesn’t know I’m asking you about this. She just wanted to give me fair warning, I guess, that you might be one of those guys who comes out of the closet midway through the first semester.”
“I’m not one of those guys,” I said. “I know what I like, and what I like is, well, varied. But mostly girls.”
“You’ve never had a girlfriend.”
“I’ve never had a boyfriend, either,” I said. “I didn’t exactly do a lot of dating in high school.”
“What about outside high school?” she asked. “Your summers, with the elves?”
It suddenly occurred to me that maybe Marlot hadn’t been so much off target as beating around the bush with her half-joking questions about “elven anal princesses.”
“That’s different,” I said. “It’s a different culture, with different rules. But, no dating.”
“No dating, but sex,” she said. “You’ve had sex with guys and you know you like it. How do you know you like girls?”
“Do you want to know?” I asked.
She nodded.
“Because if I’m alone and touching myself inappropriately in my bedroom, odds are pretty good it’s a woman that isn’t involved,” I said. “I’ve been getting off on girls since before I discovered boys, or they discovered me. I had the motive, but not the opportunity. Girls weren’t flocking to me during the school year, the way boys were over break.”
“And you never told Marlot, because?”
“Because to her it would just be another cute, funny thing about me,” I said. “She doesn’t get what it’s like for a guy. If word had gotten out about how I spent my summer vacations, I would have been in fights every day, and I could have kissed whatever dreams I had of finding a prom date goodbye.”
“Must have been a small school,” Missy said. “Not that the queer kids didn’t get shit, but at the very least there would have been other guys you could have gone with, and girls who were into bi guys.”
“How about you?” I asked. “Are you one of those girls?”
“I told you I don’t mind if you like girly things,” she said.
She grinned, and I knew it was a joke, but it bothered me all the same.
“How is a man a girlier thing to like than an actual girl?” I asked.
“Sorry,” she said. “It’s just a lame joke.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “It just bugs me. The first time it happened, I didn’t even realize that what I was doing was the same thing that the guys back home were talking about when they started ripping on ‘fags’. I don’t like the idea that it makes me less of a man.”
“It doesn’t!” Missy said. “I mean, I know it doesn’t.” She grinned. “At the same time, I mean, it is kind of cute. The image. I hope that’s okay.”
“I suppose it beats the alternative,” I said.
“Are you sure that you like girls, though?” she asked. “Sexually?”
“I think I’m as sure as I can be, without actually trying,” I said.
“Do you want to find out?”
I snorted.
“Nice pick-up line,” I said. “But, seriously, I’m pretty sure.”
“I’m serious,” she said.
“What, now?” I asked.
“After classes,” she said, shrugging. “Tonight. Whenever.”
“You’re serious.”
“I like you,” she said. “Does it have to be a big thing? I don’t want to end up going with you and waiting until ‘the time is right’ or whatever and finding out the time’s never right because I’m not right.”
Missy was not a bad looking girl. She didn’t have my favorite type of body, physically, but considering that I hadn’t had any kind of sex in over a month, or ever with a girl, my body was responding very well to the idea.
From a shallow standpoint, she did have a rack, and great skin, and a nice smile. I wasn’t sure that noticing a girl’s smile was actually that shallow, though. Didn’t that say something about her personality? Personality-wise, she was definitely nice. A little sheltered in some ways, but not so much in others, it turned out.
She was definitely into me, too. It surprised me how much of a turn-on that was. It wasn’t like I would have jumped the first girl who looked at me. But, after having been the smart, cute, funny, and more than a little bit weird guy all through high school, being able to look across the table at a girl who was looking back at me and thinking oh yeah, I’d do him?
That was pretty hot. It was a real rush, so to speak. An ego stroke.
Not to put too fine a point on it, it made me hard as a rock.
“Okay,” I said, pulling my chair up a bit closer to the table and leaning forward. “Tonight? You can sleep over in my room.”
“Okay,” she said, shakily. For a moment, I thought she was going to call it off, but then she smiled. “Okay. Tonight.”
“Tonight,” I repeated.
No matter what happened in the afternoon, it would be an interesting first day of class, that was for sure.
