Chapter 1

Three chirps from my cell phone, just as I was setting foot in my dorm room for the first time in the new school year, announced the arrival of a text message. One that was much anticipated, I might add.

“Hey, man. Andrew Wilson.” His confident voice from across the room as I pulled the cell phone out of my pocket caused me to look up for a moment. “I took the bed by the wall, so you can have the other one.”

“Phil Johnson,” I said absentmindedly, looking back to my phone to read the text.

PIZZA AT 6?

I smiled when I saw it was from Shelly.

ROMS SEE YOU THERE, I hastily keyed, aware that she would know I meant Romano’s, where we had often gone for real food over the past two years. Still grinning, I looked up to see who had just introduced himself to me. I have to say I was pleased to see that he appeared to be an upper classman. Ben Cassel was the guy I dormed with through my freshman and sophomore years at Penn State’s main campus, but he was sharing an apartment with some other guys this year and I was hoping not to get paired up with a freshman.

“A friend?” Andrew asked nodding toward my phone.

“Michelle. Yeah, good friend.”

My smile widened as I said it. I was looking forward to spending time with the girl I’d grown very fond of during the past two years of school. Actually, she had been on my mind a lot recently as I prepared myself to return here.

I first met Michelle Dade, Shelly, during freshman orientation – the very first official class of my college career. I think when she noticed me glance at her a couple of times before class that day she totally got the wrong impression. I swear I was thinking I had seen her somewhere before. I sat down two seats away from her, wondering if I should ask. Then when two other girls asked her to let them sit at the end of the row, she was right next to me. The familiarity of her face bothered me, so I kept trying to check her out through the corners of my eyes. She seemed to get a little flustered the third time she caught me looking. That made my face feel hot, and I suppose, a little more red than my naturally ruddy coloring.

It was about fifteen minutes into the orientation lecture when the incessant pencil tapping on her notebook got to me. I was just going to politely ask her to stop, but froze when I saw she was staring at me like she was doing it just to get me to notice her.

She broke into a smile, her little mission seemingly accomplished. I quickly looked away. The tapping began again almost immediately, and I started thinking about grabbing her pencil and holding it until after class like my mom would have done when I was like six or something. Next thing I knew, I heard her gasp and felt something bounce off of my cheek and land in my lap.

“Sorry,” she urgently whispered, her face cringing in embarrassment. I picked the pencil out of my lap, fighting the urge to snap it in half and shove it into my shirt pocket. “I’m Michelle,” she cooed. I forced a scowl on my face to let her know I was not amused, but handed the pencil to her. She never skipped a beat. “Shelly,” she added. Turning my focus back to the prof speaking from the dais on stage did nothing to thwart her flirting, though. “I think red hair is so-o-o cute on a guy.” It must have been loud enough for the guy sitting in front of us to hear, because he shook his head a few times in disbelief. I imagine he rolled his eyes too.

I glanced in her direction again, a stern look still plastered across my brow.

“What’s your name,” she whispered more quietly, but with an impish grin.

“Phillip Johnson. Now will you stop bugging me?”

She didn’t say another word. Not for all of a minute and fifteen seconds that is. That’s when she learned toward my ear and whispered, “Okay.”

My concentration all but gone, I said a little too loudly, “Okay, what?”

That definitely got the attention of the guy in front of me, who turned around to shoot daggers at us with his stare this time, and that got the attention of the prof.

“Is there something happening back there I should be made aware of?” he calmly asked into the microphone, staring directly at us.

I continued to glare at Miss Congeniality out of the corners of my eyes as I turned toward the lecturer.

“Okay, I’ll stop bugging you,” she said like a ventriloquist, without moving her lips. That was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. Too funny. I just rolled my eyes and just shook my head from side to side.

“You look like a Phillip,” she announced, blocking my exit to the aisle after the class ended. “I like it.”

Hoping she take the hint, I rolled my eyes and let my breath out forcefully as I turned toward her. She was smiling impishly; the picture of innocence. How could I be mad? I mean class was over. …and she was just trying to be friendly.

“They’re showing a film at the student center tonight. I don’t really know anyone on campus, so if you wanted to ask me to go there with you, I’d probably say yes.”

“Are you for real?” I asked her. I know – lame, lame, lame – but it was all I could think to say. “I mean…” I cut my words off. What did I mean? Finally I remembered what seemed to have gotten me into this mess. “Did we meet before or something? …you kind of look familiar.”

It was like she didn’t even hear me. She just tweaked the tip of my nose softly and inquired: “So… Are you gonna ask?”

“Ask what?”

“Ask me to go to the Student Center with you tonight.”

 “Do I have a choice?” She let my words just hang there until I finally came up with the answer on my own. “What time does it start?”

I know I mustn’t sounded overly enthusiastic, but actually, that’s because even though I had been praying for the opportunity since my junior year of high school, I had never been on a date with a girl in my life. Let’s just say I was feeling a bit nervous.

“You  have a girlfriend?” Michelle asked that night looking at the plain silver band I wore on my left ring finger.

I was proud of why I wore the ring, but none-the-less I felt my face heating up.

“Oh that. I… well, no. We had this speaker at our church.” I paused, looking for a reaction to that word in her face.

“You go to church?”

I was subconsciously preparing myself for ridicule, so her enthusiastic reply to my weak “Yeah” kind of surprised me.

“Is that like a promise ring then? I’ve heard about churches that have this program with their youth group to get them to promise to wait ‘til marriage to have sex.”

I was beaming as I twisted the ring on my finger and shared my rather conservative Christian views on relationships with her.

“Oh my god,” she said in amazement. “I can’t believe that out of twenty-five thousand students, I sat beside you on the first day of classes. I’m waiting too.”

What was also amazing is how many times she apologized to me for the way she acted at the orientation class. She kept telling me she didn’t know why she acted the way she had, and hoped I didn’t think she was always like that.

That evening, we became friends. By the time a month had gone by, we were best friends. We also decided to concentrate on our studies rather than let ourselves get sucked into a romantic relationship.

“That was then,” as the saying goes, “…and this is now.” I was ready for some romancing, and I was more than hoping Shelly would feel the same way.

Andrew waited expectantly for me to elaborate on the subject of girlfriends but I change the subject.

“Good to be back for round three,” I told him, dropping my duffle bag on the bed. You a junior too?”

“Senior. What’s your major?”

“Geophysics”

“They put me with a brainiac?”

“Hardly,” I responded. “Just trying to study something I’m interested in.”

“You party?”

“Nah, not really. You?”

“My major,” he said, breaking into a wide grin. “It’s a field I’m interested in. …that, and female anatomy.”

Great, I thought. More sleepless nights in the student lounge. Only two more years to go – I can do this.

Surprisingly, seeing Shelly in the flesh as I walked into Romano’s, brought an unexpected wave of anxiety crashing over me. I had spent my summer dreaming of romance, but now that the object of my desire stood before me in the flesh, all that came to mind was “am I ready for the responsibility of a deeper relationship?”

Seems kind of ridiculous to think that way, but ever since I began going to church regularly, it had been drummed into me by the Youth Pastor that exclusively dating one person isn’t something you should do for entertainment. That’s why Shelly and I never referred to our dates as “dates.” Pastor Ben had told us we should find all the entertainment we desired in group settings – that exclusive relationships should wait until we were ready to get married. I think it was Colin Hart who asked him how we would know that. He responded that when the time came for each of us, we’d “just know.” How in the world is a guy supposed to “just know” something like that? I think that’s what was all of a sudden bothering me when I saw Shelly standing there.

Another thing on my mind is, and this is a little embarrassing to admit, but I had read a few of my mom’s romance novels over the summer. Okay, that’s not the problem in and of itself. The real problem is that reading them made me wonder if Shelly and I were doing something wrong because I’ve never really felt… I guess I should be proud of myself for being able to control those urges when I was with her. I sure hope the Proverb about pride coming before a fall doesn’t hold out in my case, because I certainly don’t want to mess up and jump into bed with someone before I’m married. It’s not that I never think about those things either. …it’s just that I never really seem to think about it when I’m with her the way they do in those stories.

“Phil, how was your summer?” Her voice brought my thoughts back to the present.

“Good,” I replied in typical male fashion, thinking I had answered her question sufficiently.

“That’s it? Just ‘good’?”

“It was alright. I stocked shelves at dad’s store for some cash. You do anything exciting?”

“Oh my gosh. As soon as I got home, my girlfriend was waiting for me to spend a week at the beach at her. She was so hot we barely left the hotel room. Then we were off with her parents to their cabin. It was such a cool place in the woods…” and on and on she went for the next five minutes. Girlfriend? Hot? Those words two words caused me to missed hearing at least half of what she said after that.

“So…” I interrupted her, “Hawaiian?” That was Shelly’s favorite pizza.

“Was that your stomach?” she asked when a loud grumble of protest at not being fed for over four hours made itself known above the din.

I could feel my face redden. “You hungry?”

“You buying?”

She grabbed my hand and kissed my cheek. My face suddenly felt like it was on fire. She had never done that before. I dismissed my wayward thoughts of Shelly having a girlfriend, and felt the corners of my mouth inch upward. Maybe she had the same thing in mind that I had.

“They showing anything over at the student center this week?”

“Friday. Some old rerun.”

“You want to go?”

“You asking me on a date?”

There it was, plain as day. She was ready for us to begin officially dating. I swallowed hard.

“You like me like that?”

Shelly looked at me with those big dark eyes of hers. “I thought about you a lot this summer, Carrot’s. Ann Jeanette told me I’d be an idiot if I let you get away.”

“Who’s Ann Jeanette?”

“My girlfriend”

Ever since she had mentioned the word girlfriend I had been thinking about Casey Alvarez. He was my boyfriend when I was in ninth grade.

 “You have a girlfriend?” I asked in astonishment.

Shelly looked at me like I had suddenly grown a third eye.

“Like du-uh. Don’t you have any boyfriends?”

“No,” I replied a bit too forcefully. I hadn’t even been a Christian when Casey and I were together. There was just no way I was going to tell her about him.

Shelly continued to look at me, like she was trying to figure out where in the world I was coming from. I, in the meantime finally figured out she meant girlfriend as in friend, and not girlfriend as in girl-friend.

At the same time my brain had figured out the meaning of Shelly’s words, hers had figured out the meaning of my reaction.

“Alex Harper,” I blurted out. He went to USC, though, so we don’t see each other too much.”

“Oh my god. You thought I…”

“Thought you what?”

“You thought we were girlfriends?”

“That’s what you said.”

“Oh my god. What would make you think that?”

“I don’t know. You just said she was your girlfriend. What was I supposed to think?”

“Well, we’re not those kind of girlfriends. Oh my god. You are so cute, Phillip Johnson. Oh my… Wait ‘til I tell Lisa. She’s my other girlfriend,” she said, and then she repeated “oh my god” in case I hadn’t heard her before.

“Isn’t that kind of like swearing or something? I mean, we shouldn’t be taking the Lord’s name in vain.”

“Oh my… I just can’t believe you would have thought that about me.” Then she put her arms around my neck and leaned against me as she chuckled. I wasn’t sure exactly what to do with my hands at the moment so I just kind of patted her on the back as she hugged me.

“You’re cute, Red.” Then she planted another kiss on my cheek.

“Numma sisteen” the tall thin guy behind the counter called out. I turned around, and noticed his gaze sweep downward and then back to look into my eyes. I quickly looked to Shelly when he wriggled his eyebrow at me.

“Maybe he’s looking for a boyfriend,” she said, nudging me slightly in his direction.

“What are you talking about, Shelly. I’m not like that,” I said rather brusquely.

“Like what?” she asked, a befuddled expression painted across her face. “You said you were buying the pizza.”

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Tuesday, September 2, 2008

Dear journal,

Thoughts about today: It feels good to be back at school – especially since Shelly seems to have missed me as much as I missed her this summer. I think I’ll get along okay with Andrew as long he doesn’t bring someone back for the night too often.

Honesty time: I felt like such an idiot when Shelly told me she had a girlfriend and I thought the wrong thing. Mom’s always talking about going out with her girlfriends. What was I thinking?

  What I learned: I think her telling me about her friend’s comment that she would be an idiot if she let me get away was her way of letting me know she wants us to get a little more serious. I can do this.

I’m not sure, but I kind of think she wanted me to kiss her goodnight.

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