Darryl couldn’t believe this was happening. Not now. Not during final exams. He pleaded with Wendy. “I could spend my time doing anything, but instead I’ve spent it with you. Don’t you understand?”
Wendy burst into tears again. Darryl had no answer. Why was this girl doing this to him? Didn’t he just tell her how important she was? Yet here she was, cradling herself like he had punched her in the gut.
“Look, I…” He just couldn’t find the words to say, and he was sure anything he tried to say right now wouldn’t be the right ones. He tried to touch her shoulder, but she pulled away. “I need to study.” He turned and left the room. He couldn’t decide if he was storming out or fleeing, but either way, he had to go.
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Wendy felt more than saw Darryl leave. Her tears continued to escape, but she was holding the rest of the heartache in. If she squeezed herself hard enough she might be able to hold it together till she got back to her dorm room. She waited long enough that hopefully he was gone before she scrambled to exit. That’s when she ran full force into Judy.
“What the hell happened to you?” Judy asked.
“Darryl said he wasted his time being with me. He told me he could have been doing anything else, but instead he had spent it with me.” That was it. The hurt gushed out all over the place, and no amount of squeezing was going to get it back under control. She ran for her room, hoping she wouldn’t run into anyone else.
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Judy watched Wendy go, wondering why Darryl could say such a thing. She decided to give that boy a piece of her mind. It took her a bit, but she found in him the basement quiet area studying physics. The putz looked like all he cared about were those damn equations. She walked up to him from slightly behind. He had his hand on the left-hand side of the book, using his finger to hold his place. Judy grabbed the other side and slammed it shut on the stupid kid’s hand.
“Ow! What the hell!” screamed Darryl. “Bitch!”
Judy leaned in close. She wanted to get in this asshole’s face. “How dare you say Wendy’s not important.”
Darryl flew out of his chair wagging his hand. “What the? I didn’t say that!”
“Liar!”
“What the hell do you know?”
A voice from outside the room filled the small basement space. “Keep your voices down!”
“Sorry, Henry,” Darryl said. In a much softer voice he continued, “Like I said, how the hell do you know?”
Judy took her voice down a couple of notches as well. “She told me.”
“She, but, I, I didn’t say that. I told her I thought she was important enough to spend all my time with.”
Now it was Judy’s turn to be caught off guard. “What?”
“I told her she was so important to me that I spent all my time with her. I could have done all these other things, but I just wanted to spend time with her.”
“Did you say it exactly that way?” Judy started to have a queasy feeling in her stomach.
“Well, not exactly,” Darryl said. Then a horrified look came over his face. “Fuck!” He ran out of the room.
“I said keep it quiet in there!” A mountain of a man waddled into the room. “What is wrong with you people? This is a quiet zone!”
Judy shrugged. “I guess it was just a whole bunch of miscommunication.”
“Me yelling wasn’t enough communication?”
“You’re the only one making with the loud right now,” Judy said. She sat down and cracked the physics book. Henry must have gotten the hint since he left. There could be worse things than what she was reading, but then she thought of the mess that had just occurred. She then looked back at the page of equations she had flipped to. “Okay, maybe not.”
Judy closed the book and left the whole mess behind.
Image: upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/be/Physics_Book.jpg
Never Short On Words 