Chapter 4

I sat with Kendall in the remaining chemistry class sessions before the final exam, and we became more and more comfortable talking to each other. Since neither of us had a class later in the day, a few times we kept chatting in the lecture hall while everyone else filed out around us. Or if it was nice out, we'd stop at a bench just off the path on the way back towards her dorm and my frat.

I learned she liked living in Carrick but hoped to be in the Andy Holt apartments next year. She liked her roommate, Abby. She liked other dormitory neighbors, one of whom, Vivian, was a friend from high school.

She was less close with some dorm neighbors that were in sororities, who went to Greek activities that she couldn't be a part of. Remembering what she said about avoiding the frat houses, I didn't bother asking if she'd ever considered joining a sorority.

There were some sizable missing pieces in the puzzle I was putting together about her. The biggest seemed to be a lack of lasting friendships. Other than Vivian, the people she interacted with were almost exclusively from her current environment. Friendships begun in past classes dropped away after the class was over. Friends from before college were not friends with her now.

And there was an undercurrent of distrust of men in general, I assumed because so many times it was only her body they were after. But keeping her guard up against boys with bad intentions made her an often lonely girl.

The exception to the pattern was the guy she'd called a 'summer romance, ' who I'd learned lived in Atlanta. I could tell by how she blushed when talking about him that they had been lovers. But more than that, it was obvious that she trusted him.

He stood out as a relationship that didn't seem temporal, even though he was still in high school. She seemed to use the idea that he would eventually join her at UT as a reason to hold back from getting involved with other guys.

I didn't tell her about Gerri, and she didn't ask whether I had a girlfriend. I suspect that would be too intimate a question for her to ask without some encouragement, and for whatever selfish reason I didn't offer any.

A couple weeks before the final exam, Kendall and I were sitting in the empty lecture hall to avoid a light rain outside. When the conversation eventually wound down we remained seated in companionable silence. I'd enjoyed getting to know her, and wanted to keep her as a friend. And who knew what could happen in the future, during the minimum six more years of school ahead of us, if you counted medical school?

"What's your schedule look like next quarter?" I asked with feigned casualness.

"I've got Biology 280, Chemistry 275, and Western Civ 101."

I raised my eyebrows. "Western Civ ... isn't that the 'sociology for jocks' class?"

She nodded a bit sheepishly. "It's a distribution credit thing. It's in the social sciences college, and I have to have five more 'social' credits for my application to Neural Biology. That's the BA degree I'm after. I thought I'd take an easy 'A' for once."

"I've got 'Introduction to Architecture' next term for my social requirement."

She looked surprised. "What?" I asked.

"Oh it's nothing," she answered. "I guess I hadn't thought of you as the architecture type."

I laughed. "Type ... and what do you mean by 'type'?"

"I don't know. I guess ... I mean if you're smart enough to get into med school, why take that?"

"Same reason you're taking Western Civ. Are you thinking of being a history teacher?"

She snorted. "No."

"I'm not planning to be an architect, either. But it sounds interesting. It's more likely I'll see interesting buildings when I'm a doctor than seeing people with the plague that swept through Europe."

She chuckled. "Well let's hope not." She hesitated for a moment, as she bit her bottom lip. "Why don't you take Western Civ with me? Then we'll have all our classes together."

That gave me pause. It seemed uncharacteristic, given her caution with guys and the newness of our friendship. I thought I'd test that friendship a little.

"Are you sure you want to spend that much time together? I mean, what if I turn out to be a typical frat rat, and I'm just secretly lusting after your big boobs?"