Page 17 of False Assumptions

“Hey.” He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. She kept her eyes focused on her hands. “Layla, look at me.” When she finally did as he asked, he went on, keeping his voice low. “I’m sorry. I’ve never thought about it that way. I promise not to call you that again, okay?”

She waved a hand, dismissing his apology. “Yeah. It’s fine. You probably think I’m overreacting.”

“No, I—“

“Look,” she interrupted. “Evan. You seem like maybe you’re not such a douche after all. Maybe you are a nice guy. And I’m sorry for being such a bitch to you before, but you have to understand something. I’ve always been the ‘exotic’ girl.” She made air quotes with her fingers. “In the school plays growing up, I got all the parts for non-white people. It didn’t matter if they were supposed to be Mexican or Native or even black. I got them all.” She let out a bitter, dry laugh. “Which is funny, if you think about it, because I’m more white than Native, but whatever. Which also means that the kids on the reservation where I spent summers with my grandmother didn’t accept me either. I wasn’t enough like them. And since my mom’s half Japanese, that just adds to the strange mix here. And guys like you—guys that look like you that are used to girls falling all over themselves for your attention? Those guys only wanted to be with me to try something exotic, something different. I’ve spent my life as this weird, fetishized challenge. So, yeah. Exotic isn’t a compliment. Not to me, anyway.”

Evan sat back, running a hand over his mouth, not sure what to say. At first, when she’d said that maybe—seriously, maybe?—he wasn’t a douche, he’d gotten kind of pissed. But she’d apologized for being a bitch to him, which he appreciated. And the rest? Fuck. No wonder she’d been suspicious of him from the start. She didn’t want to be another conquest, and for good reason. But he was also surprised at how much she’d shared about herself.

“I’m sorry, Layla. I didn’t realize all of that.”

She nodded, not looking up.

His curiosity getting the better of him, he had to ask. “Did that really happen?”

“Did what really happen?” She gave him a quick glance, but kept her focus on her hands in her lap.

“Did someone try to get in your pants just to say he’d been with someone …” he trailed off, looking for a word other than exotic and finally settled on, “different?”

She mumbled something.

“Sorry. I couldn’t hear you.”

Lifting her face, she met his eyes, her face stoic. “He didn’t try. He succeeded. He made me believe he liked me, but he didn’t care about me at all. I was just a space on the sexual Bingo game he was playing with his friends.”

“Oh my God.” His horror came out in his voice. Yeah, he liked to have sex, and he didn’t have a problem with no-strings hookups, but that kind of callous disregard for people? That was revolting.

Layla let out a soft snort. “Not literally. I don’t think anyway. But it was clear … after, that he and his friends had some kind of thing going where they all needed to sleep with the greatest variety of girls possible.”

“That’s disgusting.”

She hummed in agreement, looking back down at her hands.

He let the silence stretch between them, not sure how to break it after that revelation. Pulling his phone back out, he texted Daniel Carter, his roommate. He’d need someone to go with him to get Layla’s car after he took her home once they were done here.

When he looked up, she was looking at him again. She took a deep breath and let it out. “So what made you take World Literature?”

He raised an eyebrow. Okay. Apparently they were going to just go on like that whole conversation hadn’t happened. “I’m an English major with a literature focus. What about you?”

“English major, creative writing track. But we have to take a certain number of literature credits. I’d kind of hoped to get some Native literature or Asian literature in the World Lit class. So far, I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

His other eyebrow joined the first. “Native literature? In a World Lit class? I get the Asian lit, but why would Native literature be in World Lit over American Lit?”

She shrugged. “I know, right? But you had to have taken American Lit. It’s all dead white guys. Since, as you now know, Natives are other,”—she gave him a pointed look—“I thought they might be included with the other exotics in World Lit.” Her mouth twisted when she saidexotic, her distaste obvious. “No such luck.”

“Who would you want them to include if we did Native lit?”

Her eyes met his with a flash of surprise at his interest. “Sherman Alexie, for one. He’s probably the most well known Native American writer. And he’s from around here.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard of him.”

An embarrassed smile crossed her face. “I have kind of a crush on him.”

His head jerked back in surprise. “You’ve met him?”

Her wide eyes met his. “No! Not that kind of a crush. Like an intellectual crush. You know, I want to have lunch with him sometime and ask him a million questions and see if he’ll read my poetry.”

“You write poetry?” She was just full of surprises today.

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