9. Laura and The Tutor
Dillon
Two days had passed since Rebecca's party and Dillon was still confused why Libra had left the party. He had tried to find her but had eventually been approached by her work colleague, from the café, who told him she had left. For the life of him he didn't understand why she felt the need to leave and if he was the cause of it, but he hadn't done anything wrong!
Austin and Keith's timing had been less than ideal when they had interrupted his conversation with Libra. She had just started to open up a little bit and they were actually getting along, which was a surprise to even him, and then she was just gone. Laying on his bed now he thought back to what they were talking about and recalled what she had said about her father. He had no idea that her father was dead and not just dead but murdered â and the killer had never been found. The pain was written all over her when she had said that, and Dillon had almost been short of breath in that moment.
He wished he could feel her pain, but he could only do it from a far, because in his eyes he wasn't any better than that guy who shot her father. Here he was sitting on a secret that could set her free from the traumatic experience that had happened to her â but he just couldn't bring himself to tell her. His parents would hate him forever and he would get pulled out of college that was just something he couldn't have.
"Dude come on, Austin is meeting us for breakfast before your Economy class." Todd yelled from outside his door. Dillon rolled his eyes and shook his head no even though Todd couldn't hear it.
"I can't I have an assignment to do before class, but you go ahead." Dillon finally yelled back.
Austin and Keith were great and so was Todd, but he just didn't want to sit through another painfully long conversation where they rated every hot girl in class. For the first time he had a front row seat to what he used to sound like and he had promised himself not to go backwards.
"Come on man, please, I have a tutoring class after this and I'm kind of nervous." Todd's voice got lower and then there was a soft knock on his door. Dillon knew that this early on in their friendship wasn't the time to start reneging on things.
"Fine I'll come. Just give me a minute and I'll meet you outside the door." Dillon heaved himself off the bed and headed for his dresser to throw on a t-shirt and jeans.
There hadn't been much breakfast involved since they had met at a diner not too far from school. Apparently, Austin had gone home lucky at Rebecca's party and wanted to spend the morning giving details about it. Dillon kept perusing the menu while trying to make eye contact with any waitress before his stomach begun playing for a live audience.
"What about you Dillon? I saw you making progress with that chick you were talking to at the party, what happened?" Austin said after finally finishing an agonizingly long story.
"I don't know what happened, I left with you guys and when I got back she was gone," he recanted reluctantly, "and for the record nothing was going on." He was getting tired of his new friends assuming so many things about him.
Did he really come off as such a player? He had only gotten here a couple of days ago and yet a gang of people had already assumed he was only here to collect girl's panties. The annoyance of this had begun growing inside of him and he knew that he would soon boil over.
If this was going to be a recurring theme with Austin and Todd, because if it was Dillon needed to reconsider his new friendships.
"As fun as this has been I need to head to the library," Todd said and got up from the booth and gathering his things, "I have a tutoring session that I wish I didn't have to go."
"Good riddance," Austin laughed as Todd hurried out of the diner, "I'll keep going with my story."
"I have to get to class early today and speak to Mrs. Johnson, but we'll catch up after class and you can finish up then." Dillon needed to get out of here before Austin's details forced up his coffee.
Upon leaving Economy class Dillon dreaded the unfinished conversation with Austin and prayed that he had already told his gossip story to someone else. Luckily for him he never got the chance to find out as Laura, a girl from his class that he had met at the party, approached him with quick steps. She was hot, that much he had to admit, and he knew he wasn't alone in thinking so. At the party she had been amongst the crowd and apparently spotted him and wanted to get to know him.
Had she had anything decent to say he would've probably stayed and chatted to her, but their conversation was boring, and he wanted to get back to Libra; and a conversation with much more depth. Laura had a nice hazelnut colored hair and a slim body, sadly for him she was lacking in the breast department but that was easily forgotten when you looked at her face. With her Megan Fox like features she could snag any guy on campus and yet she wanted to talk to him, the guy who hadn't shown any interest at all. Maybe girls weren't so different after all.
"Hey Dillon, wait up," Laura flashed him a winning smile as he turned around, "Great party this weekend, huh? My friend Brittany was thinking of asking your friend Austin to go see that new Marvel film, I thought we could tag along." She smiled again and tilted her head to the side, making the lines between innocent and filthy very blurry.
Nonchalantly he shrugged his shoulder like he was oblivious to what she was trying to do and just responded:
"Sounds cool, you guys take care of the details and tell me when to show up." Perhaps Laura could serve as an innocent enough distraction, and maybe then he wouldn't have to listen to another one of Austin's stories â he would be there himself to witness it all.
Just because he was trying to change didn't mean that he couldn't at least enjoy himself a little bit, and at the movies there was no room for conversation â which he had noted wasn't Laura's strongest quality. With a devious smile she edged closer to him and let her finger run over the arm of his t-shirt.
"Great, I'll tell Brittany you said yes. What are you doing right now, by the way? I was going to grab a coffee and go over some notes for the assignments â care to join me?" Her voice dropped lower, and he understood what she was implying.
It's only been but a week and she is already putting herself out there like that? He wanted to lecture her about what she was implying and give her the speech about rumors and gossip when it came to things like that, but he figured Laura was a big enough girl to know what she was getting herself into â just not with him.
"As nice as that sounds Iâ" Dillon got cut off by a vibration in his pocket and he pulled out his phone to see who was trying to reach him. Todd's name flashed across the screen and he opened the text message he had sent.
Guess who my new sexy teacher is?
And then a picture of Libra Jones landed in his inbox. Todd had taken a quick picture of Libra as she was staring into one of her books while holding a pen in her hand. A sharp pain etched itself in his stomach and he swallowed hard. He prayed silently that Todd hadn't said anything about him and that if he had, that Libra was smart enough to know it was bullshit. But let's face it, Libra didn't have the best opinion of him already and anything Todd would say would affect the opinion she already had â which was probably still shitty.
I asked her if we could continue at my place, she said yes. Hope you're not too mad about it ;)
Todd sent another text and by the time it had landed in their conversation Dillon was already walking away from Laura, waving to her from behind.
"Something came up and I have to run. Tell Brittany to text Austin the details about the movie." And then he ran.
He needed to get to the library before Todd had a chance to take her anywhere and he needed to warn Libra about Todd. Because something told him that Todd wasn't teasing him about Libra, but that he actually wanted to flirt with her â and that was out of the question.