Dating on the Dork Side -- SAMPLE

Part 8: iykwim

Author Note: Oops! I promised to come back on Friday to do a little explaining, but then I got a little busy over the weekend. As an apology, here's one more short scene from DATING ON THE DORK SIDE. Remember, it's available now on Amazon -- or put it on your holiday wish list!

P.S. Lysistrata is an ancient play by Aristophanes in which all the ladies try to change things by going on a sex strike. 

"We need to talk, but not here," Gavin said. He brushed past me on his way to the stairs. "Come on."

I followed him to the second floor hallway, until he disappeared into the boys' bathroom. I froze at the entrance.

He reappeared with an Out of Order sign in his hand and stuck it to the door. "Don't worry," he said. "It's all clear." The door swung shut behind him.

Did he expect me to go inside? Really? I waited a beat, then another. The door opened a crack. I didn't see Gavin, but I heard his voice.

"Come on, Camy. It's fine." A pause. "Trust me?"

I'm not sure what I expected, but the boys' bathroom was a lot like the girls'. We didn't have urinals, and our walls looked cleaner and less, er, sticky. But everything else about the place was so ... normal.

It was kind of disappointing.

"What do you think of the office?" Gavin asked. "We should really redecorate, but Jason wants stripes and Aiden has his heart set on floral."

Part of me wanted to laugh at the idea of Jason and Aiden going all death match over wallpaper. But the part of me that was way too nervous to make a sound won out.

"Note to self," Gavin said, "Redecorating jokes-- not so funny."

"It ... was funny," I managed.

"Thanks. My ego needed that." He grinned at me. Gavin unslung his backpack and pulled out a paperback book. I recognized the cover immediately. Two women in togas, a Greek temple behind them. Lysistrata. My throat got so tight I couldn't swallow.

"A lot of the guys are wondering why a bunch of girls in this school are suddenly interested in ancient Greece." He studied the book, then looked at me. "It wouldn't seem weird to see you reading a book like this," he said. "But Lexy had it in Goals Lab. Then Aiden heard Sophie asking for a copy of it in the library. Come on, Sophie? She's not exactly genius material if you know what I mean."

I had decided to keep my mouth shut. Okay, decided might not be true. It was more like I was stunned into silence. After all, this was Gavin. And he was talking to me. How long had I wished this would happen? Only, the words he was saying were all wrong.

"You do know that some people used to say the same thing about you?" I said. "Once upon a time there was this boy who couldn't pass a test. Do you even remember him?"

Gavin winced but it only took a second for him to recover.

"Here's the thing," he said. "None of the guys in school can get dates to homecoming."

"That's not what I hear," I said. "The chess club is very popular these days."

"Yeah, well, the football team isn't doing so great."

"On or off the field?" I asked. He cringed again.

Oh. My. God. What was I doing? At this point, Gavin probably wouldn't speak to me again for another three years, if ever. Still, I couldn't stop myself.

"Maybe if the football team would stop underestimating the girls in this school, they might do a little better. I mean, just because a girl can shake a pom-pom, that doesn't mean she can't do anything else. And just because someone doesn't have very much money, or is a little, uh--" I stopped to grope for the right word. It didn't come. "Anyway, that doesn't mean she can't be smart."

"Nobody's saying that," Gavin said.

"Yes they are. And they're saying a whole lot of other things too. Butterface? Sasquatch? Furnipple? Any of those sound familiar?" I was about to mention something about girls who dress like someone's little brother when I glanced down at my Yu-Gi-Oh shirt and scuffed up Chuck Taylors and changed my mind. It was just too humiliating.  

Author Note: Before I got all busy, I promised to tell you the rest of the story about how Charity Tahmaseb and I came to write this book. Let's see ... I told you how we met, how we started writing, about my son getting sick and Charity coming to my rescue. I told you how we wrote that other book, THE GEEK GIRL'S GUIDE TO CHEERLEADING, and how it was a pretty good book, but then one of us got sick and we quit writing for a while. I think I told you that Charity started writing again, and I did too, but we weren't writing together. 

Did I tell you that my brother died? I think I did but it's hard to remember because it's so hard to think about the thing that broke my heart into a million pieces. But if I told you about my brother then I'm sure I already told you that it was the saddest thing. And if I told you that then I had to tell you that Charity came to my rescue again. How she said, "Remember that book we tried to write before? What if we tried to publish it on our own? It'll be fun. We'll get a good designer to make a really cute cover for it and put it up for sale on Amazon." 

So, during all those months when I would have been moping about my brother, I got to work on getting Dork Side ready instead. And even better, while we were trying to figure out how to promote that book I ended up here on Wattpad, where I'm publishing another story, LESS THAN THREE. So while it's coming up on the anniversary of the saddest day ever, I have YOU GUYS to look forward to every day: reading, voting, commenting. Ahhhh.

They say that laughter is the best medicine, and that time heals a broken heart, but I think they might be wrong. I think it might be my friend Charity ... and publishing here at Wattpad.

Thank you all so much!