Page 16 of Choosing You

Luckily he starts fishing through his wallet and hands me the exact amount he owes me. “I’ll see you later, Jade.” He walks away.

“Is the place expensive?” I ask, standing in the hall still holding the money he gave me.

He’s in the doorway to the stairwell. “What?”

“That Thai restaurant you mentioned. Is it expensive?”

“I think it’s like 10 bucks a meal.”

“Okay. I can go. Does 7 work?”

He hesitates, like he’s trying to figure out what just happened. “Sure, 7 works. See ya then.”

I hope he doesn’t think I was asking him out. I’m just being social like Ryan told me to be. And Idoneed to eat dinner. Plus I’m starting to think Garret’s not that bad. In fact I might even say that I enjoyed his company in the brief time we spent together.

For the remainder of the afternoon, I put my clothes away and set out the few possessions I brought from home. Around 4, someone knocks on my door. It’s a guy in a maintenance uniform holding a mini refrigerator.

“Where do you want it?” he asks in a gruff tone.

I lead him to an open space along the wall near an outlet. Part of me is irritated that Garret took it upon himself to get me a fridge when I told him I didn’t need one, but it will be nice to have cold soda.

When the maintenance guy leaves, two girls walk through my still-open door.

“Hi. I’m Sierra and this is Ava. We saw your door open and thought we’d stop by. We live down the hall.”

“Hi. I’m Jade.”

They both look me up and down, then survey my sparsely decorated room.

“So where are you from?” Sierra asks. She’s tall and really tan with long blond hair, wearing a yellow sundress and strappy sandals.

“Iowa.”

I can tell by their expression they have no idea where that is. Why do people on the coasts never know what’s in the middle? Do they never look at a map?

“Is that near Colorado?” Ava asks. She’s a few inches shorter than Sierra with an even darker tan and shoulder length brown hair streaked with golden highlights. She’s very thin and the tight v-neck shirt she’s wearing shows off her very large, abnormally round breasts that have to be fake. There’s no way those are natural.

“Um, yeah, it’s close to Colorado,” I say, not in the mood to give either one of them a geography lesson.

“So I saw you with Garret earlier.” Sierra gives me a look like she thinks I’m trying to date the guy.

“Yeah, I met him when I was moving in.”

“I saw you leave with him.”

I don’t like what her tone is implying. “We just had lunch. That’s it.”

“You better watch out for that one. He’s a real heartbreaker.”

Ava and Sierra laugh, as if they share some inside joke about Garret.

“Okay, well, nice meeting you. I need to finish unpacking.” I pick up a t-shirt and start folding it, hoping they’ll leave.

“There’s a house party tonight a few blocks from here. You could come with us if you want.”

“I think I’m already going there with Garret.” I cringe as I say it. Now for sure they’ll think I’m trying to date him.

“Garret’s taking you?” Sierra glances at Ava. “I guess we’ll see you there then.”

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