Page 3 of Dirty Padraig: Dirty Dusters

I glance around the cream-colored administration office with its array of lopsided notices all blue-tacked to the badly finger-marked wall surface. I’m sitting on a chair, waiting for an amended class schedule to be printed off.

There’s a group of us taking additional lessons so we can graduate quicker. My da wants me to step up and do my Duster duty, and I can’t be doing that while I’m lazing around a fancy pants college, according to him, so I’ve been given no choice but to enroll.

It smells of lavender in here. The secretary, who’s as wide as she is tall, obviously has a thing for purple as she’s wearing it head to toe. She smiles at me from behind her desk and waits for me to approach.

“Thank you, Miss Houser. Efficient as always.” I shoot her my winning smile. The one that typically gets me away with everything and also gets me anything I want, especially when it comes to the female of the species. Despite being middle-aged, she blushes like a schoolgirl in response.

Works every time.

Shoving the piece of paper into the back pocket of my jeans, I turn to leave, colliding with a girl as I do.

My eyes trail over her tall, slim shape, dressed in blue jean shorts and a white tank top, and finished off with a beat-up pair of high tops.

She’s the most beautiful thing I have ever fucking seen.

“Sorry, darlin’.” I step back with my hands raised before shooting her the same winning smile. For the first time, it doesn’t garner a reaction. She doesn’t even make eye contact. She mouths a silent apology, then walks straight past.

Indifference is not a reaction I’m used to getting from the opposite sex, and they don’t typically keep on walking when I pay them any attention, either.

I shrug and start to walk away.

“I’m here for my new class schedule, Miss Houser.”

I stop in my tracks when I hear her speak. She’s not from around here. She has a west coast accent.

It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever fucking heard.

“Here you are, Jaine.”

I turn to look at her, grinning as I watch her try to balance her backpack on one knee while pushing her glasses further up her nose at the same time. She’s trying to file away the same piece of paper I’ve just been given.

My smile widens when I realize we’ll be in the same classes.

My eyes drift over her tanned skin and the golden hair tied in a messy bun on top of her head.

It’s then, I know.

That my future wife is called Jaine.

* * *

“I didn’t knowyou were into the librarian look, Paddy.”

Fletch smirks as he elbows me in the ribs when he catches me staring across the auditorium at Jaine. I’ve seen her a few times around campus now, and I still don’t think she knows I exist.

The opposite of me, she seems to be the quiet sort. She keeps to herself and gets on with her studies, only ever conversing with the two girls she hangs around with unless someone asks her a direct question.

“Me neither, Fletch.” I grin as I reply to my friend, my eyes remaining fixed on Jaine the entire time.

Professor Young enters the room, dragging his feet. You can tell he’s the type that signed up for lecturing because he thought it would be an easy life with its countless holidays and its well-behaved almost-adult students. That is until he was handed the endless list he needed to checkmark every day and for the rest of his teaching career. Before he realized that how well we perform reflects personally on him.

Given that most of his class comprises reluctant students with zero interest in the subject matter at hand and who are only in attendance at the insistence of their wealthy parents, he now realizes he has his work cut out for him.

At the realization that he may well have bitten off more than he can chew and going by his rosacea-covered cheeks and a nose that would give Rudolph a run for his money, he’s clearly started drowning his sorrows in drink.

I turn my attention back to Jaine as soon as the lecture begins, a smile crossing my face as her little red-haired friend notices my overt attention, whispers in her ear, elbows her in the ribs, and nods in my direction.

Jaine shakes her head at her friend.

---