Lab Partner

Chapter Seven

I woke up to the smell of coffee and realized that it was the start of a new day.  Last night went pretty well, other than the ending credits that happened with Nichole.  I wasn't going to dwell on it though.  I opened my eyes slowly and saw Jake through my blurry eyes that were still trying to focus with the light coming through the window.

"Morning..." I warmly smiled to him.

"I brought you warm coffee, the kind that you like." I looked back at him and saw that he was on the couch with his laptop on.

I arose from the bed and grabbed the coffee, mmm, vanilla, "So what are you doing there?"  I curiously sat beside him and looked over the laptop screen.  His Facebook was open and he was obviously chatting with someone, but I couldn't make out the name.

"You have a Facebook?"  I asked him. "I rarely get on mine, but wow, we could've been Facebook official" I air quoted and he gave a chuckle.

"Actually no, I was just reconnecting with an old friend while trying to do my statistics homework." I wonder who that old friend could be.

"Yup that tends to happen with Facebook" I took another sip from the vanilla coffee, "so who's your old friend?"  I made sure not to make my questioning too obvious, but with the whole Nichole thing, she's crept her way into my head.

"His name is Ashton" he finally logged out of his Facebook, "he used to be my childhood friend and he's been wanting to visit me." Phew!  Well, at least it was a guy.

"Oh, so why doesn't he come?" I started getting up so I can change already so I can meet up with Cindy later on.

"I don't know, we kind of have a rough patch, I really don't want to talk to him, but he is one of my oldest best friends." He replied.

I grabbed my clothes and headed to the restroom to go brush my teeth and get ready.  I decided that I wasn't going to mention the whole Nichole thing until I spoke with Cindy and see what she thought about it.  Plus, when was I going to mention to Jake and realize if he was rich or not?

I mean, how can he be?  I never really noticed if he was or wasn't.  Plus does it matter?  I really did love him for the way he is, but what if he truly is supposed to be married with Nichole?  Jake told me that his mother was a single mother; maybe I should get to know him better.  I finally got out of the restroom and met up with Jake who was already dressed himself.

"Hey I was thinking maybe we could grab lunch together after I meet up with Cindy?" I asked him with concern.

"That sounds wonderful babe" he responded, "I'm just going to meet up with a few guys and I'll go ahead and meet you at Burger Paradise around 1:30, sound good?" I looked up at him and started checking him out... man I really was lucky, let's hope everything that I’ve been hearing is wrong.

"Yup that's good", I kissed him goodbye and headed out the door.  I wasn't sure if he could tell that I wasn't being myself.  Almost going all the way yesterday was supposed to bring us closer, I couldn't help but feel even further away from him right now.  What am I doing?  I knew nothing about him and he didn't know anything about me.  It's time that we changed that.

I used the university shuttle bus and headed to Cindy's dorm so I can talk to her, I already warned her I was going to come uninvited, but I never received a text back.  It didn't even take me more than ten minutes when I arrived at her dorm.  Man, I really should start taking these shuttle buses; it made the walking so much easier.

I knocked on her door before I actually opened it, I didn't want to intrude if she was doing something. "Cindy are you there? It's me Ariel." I kept on knocking even harder.  I probably sounded desperate.