The Pretend Girlfriend

Chapter Eighteen~ Rick the Prick

If there was one thing Gwen thought she could count on to take her mind off Aiden, it was school. She arrived back at her apartment still hungry, but determined not to think about this whole predicament for now. Another slice of peanut butter toast would have gone a long way to solving her hunger problem at least, but just looking at the loaf of bread brought back that hot sensation of embarrassment from arriving at Starbucks with her last slice still in hand.

So, bowl of Cheerios clutched close, she went back to her room. She sat down at her desk with determination, determinedly opened her laptop, and forcefully double-clicked the Microsoft Word icon on her desktop screen.

All that determination drained from her as she stared at the blank white screen in front of her. The cursor blinked mockingly , daring her to even attempt to start typing. It was all well and good to decide to get to work, but when Gwen got down to it, like many people, she discovered that the desire to work and willpower to actually start were two different, possibly mutually exclusive, things.

She chewed on her bottom lip, her eyes glassing over as she poised her fingers over the keyboard, waiting for inspiration to strike. Her normal routine (aside from procrastination, of course) was to plot a paper out at least a week in advance. Following a plan worked out better than striking off into the ether without a map, she always found. And the paper was actually due in two days. Hard copy handed to the professor, electronic copy submitted to see if she'd bought the essay off the internet.

"Aha!" she said, thinking she'd found that elusive starting line. Her fingers started tapping away, confidently at first, but flagging like a sprinter running out of breath not long thereafter.

The cursor blinked at the end of the incomplete sentence. It read : "What's wrong, can't you write a simple essay without thinking about Aid" And that's where she stopped.

Leaning back in her chair, she sighed. It was rather ironic, she realized, this inability to write. The big reason (or the thing she told herself was the big reason, in any case) that she'd accepted Aiden's offer was that doing so would allow her to stay here at school so she could finish her degree.

And now there she sat, unable to concentrate on school from thinking about a guy who was about as open and readable as a book written in Swahili.

"Coffee. Coffee's the answer," she muttered, unable to bear the mocking she perceived in the cursor's unrelenting blinking.
So, getting up, she went for the kitchen. Coffee actually wasn't the best answer. She already felt that strange combination of alertness and exhaustion that came from being over-caffeinated on too little sleep. But at least it would keep her (shaky) hands busy for a few minutes while she prepared it. And it would give her a few more precious moments of procrastination!

That thought put a bit of a spring in her step. There was just something so satisfying in procrastinating, in giving yourself permission to put off a task until the last possible moment. Gwen started washing out the coffee pot, using far too much dish soap. The lavender scent of it filled the air.

She'd just finished drying it when someone knocked at the door. It had to be either Beatrice or Aiden, she knew . Though Beatrice should be on campus at this time, so that left Aiden. Hopefully he was here to explain that little freak-out at Starbucks. They knocked again.

"Coming!" Gwen said, annoyed.

She rubbed her hands against her pants, trying to get rid of the clamminess from sticking them in hot, soapy water. It would be just the thing for Aiden to notice about her. He already knew that she wore glasses sometimes, and that her parents called her Gwenny. No need to let him think she had granny hands.

A third round of knocking started just when she unlocked the door and pulled it open. Rather than Aiden or Beatrice , a man in a dark suit, his hair slicked back, stuck a microphone in her face. His spray tan made him look orange, and his fake smile almost blinded her with the radiance of his artificially whitened teeth. Behind him stood another man, a camera resting on his shoulder. A little red light blinked beneath the lens. That means it's recording, doesn't it? Gwen thought.