Page 22 of Always Yours

Tommy shrugs. “Nah, not really. I actually prefer being outside, working with my hands. Kinda only went to make my mom and dad happy, but that backfired big time.”

“In what way?” I ask.

Tommy chuckles. “In the way where I got paired up on my first day with the biggest stoner gamer there is this side of Colorado. I don’t think he ever went to class and as a result neither did I.”

I nod. “Yeah I remember that feeling of being away from home, no parents watching over you and no one caring whether you went to class or not. I nearly failed a couple of classes in my first year too.”

“You did?” Ellen asks, surprised.

I nod, smiling at her. “Yeah, although not for smoking weed or anything, although we did do a bit of that. It was more the pranks we used to play on the TA, all the hours spent planning that shit instead of studying or paying attention in class.”

Tommy grins now, elbows on the table as he leans forward. “Oh yeah, do tell?”

I shake my head, laughing a little. “Is this a good idea, given the company,” I ask, gesturing toward Lauren. “Young impressionable minds and all?”

Lauren scoffs as she flips me off and says, “Please, I’m a grown ass adult.”

Ellen bursts out laughing as she all but collapses against me. “Right,” she gets out between chuckles. “Which is why you’re pining over some guy you pretended to hate but actually are secretly in love with and now totally miss the shit out of?”

Lauren blushes and we all laugh as she grabs a slice of pizza and angrily begins to eat it.

“Alright, I’ll spill,” I say, in an attempt to make peace with her. “We did a lot of shit to torment the poor guy,” I start. “It was probably a bit harsh, but to be fair, he did make our lives a living hell a lot of the time. Running the class like he was on some mega power trip or whatever.”

“Wait, was Greg involved in all of this too?” Ellen asks, knowing exactly what my roommate is like.

I laugh. “God, of course, he was the ringleader of it all,” I say, knowing he hated our TA more than anyone. “Anyway, apart from the usual shit like barricading him in the restrooms or slipping laxatives into his coffee, the final straw came when we sort of stole his car.”

Tommy chuckles. “Sort of?”

I glance at him, an eyebrow cocked as I say, “Well, we moved it…without his knowledge.”

Tommy nods slowly as though he’s trying to put the pieces together. “Okay, elaborate,” he adds, moving his hand as though to hurry me up.

My grin widens. “He used to drive one of those tiny cars, some sort of Fiat or whatever, I don’t know,” I start. “All I know is that it was little and we’d been jokingly saying how it was so tiny we could practically lift it up. Then one day a bunch of us decided to see if we could move it.”

Tommy lets out a loud laugh. “What?”

“Yeah,” I say, nodding as I continue to explain. “We picked it up and actually moved it.”

“To where?” Ellen asks, her eyes wide.

I slip my arm around her shoulders as I grin at each of them. “Well, the first time…”

“The first?” Tommy asks, shocked.

My grin widens. “Yeah, the first time, we managed to wedge his car between two others,” I explain. “It was jammed in so tight, you could not open any of the doors and the only way he’d be able to get in was if one of the other cars drove away.”

“What happened?” Ellen asks, reaching for another slice of pizza.

“Well, we chose wisely,” I say. “Because we knew both those cars belonged to the members of the track team…who were at a meet and not due back for hours,” I continue, chuckling a little at the memory of our asshole TA desperately trying to work out how to get into his car, which was jammed between two SUVs, a wall at the back, preventing him from opening the trunk and just climbing through.

He hadn’t noticed us all laughing our asses off from the lab, two floors up, which was why we’d been able to get away with it.

“Pretty sure his car was stuck there until like midnight or something.”

Ellen swats at me, but she’s laughing as she says, “You guys are assholes.”

“Yeah,” I admit, shrugging.

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