Renaissance of The Dog Days

David Part II

"Dude, wait up!"

I had totally tuned him out. By the time his voice hit my ears, I was already up the steps and slid right into the elevator with her.

"Hey Josette," I said with a smile. My heart was pounding while sweat ran down my face. It was so hot in there. Blech.

She peaked at first, then fully turned to me and chuckled. "Wow. You look–"

"Like shit? Yeah I know."

"More like you've done a marathon, but that works too."

"Yeah." I laughed while running my fingers through my sweaty hair. I needed a shower bad.

There was a little awkward silence between us until we got off on the third floor together. She proceeded to head right to her dorm but stopped abruptly.

"Is there something wrong?" she asked in a skeptical tone.

"Uh, not really. I just wondered if we could talk? Maybe?"

I knew the moment my eyes awkwardly squinted, how cringe-worthy I was being. I swear some days I'm far more awkward than Jerry and he swore between us that he was the awkward one. To my surprise, Josette turned around and looked me square in the eyes. "I would except I've got class in like twenty minutes."

"So you're just dropping your clothes off and–"

"Yep." She nodded before letting out a deep sigh. She knew just as well as I did what was wrong and it wasn't about Jerry. It's exactly why we haven't spoken since Halloween night.

Right then, the air felt really dense. We both stood far apart, looking at each other. God, this was so awkward. It wouldn't have been this way if I hadn't been so fucking stupid.

I broke our icy silence by speaking up about what went down. "Listen, I'm really sorry for what happened the other night–"

"Hey, I totally get it," she calmly responded. "Shit happens where we say and do things we don't really mean."

"But I wasn't lying when I told you how I felt."

"And I appreciate that, David. I really do. It's just..." Josette paused for a second and turned away. Knowing what all happened, it wasn't too shocking how hard it was for her to talk about it. She then turned back and spoke in a firm yet broken voice. "You forced yourself to be someone you weren't. You made yourself feel the way I wanted, but we both knew you weren't there yet. So why did you do that? Why were you even–"

Josette shook her head and grumbled something under her breath. She faced me again with those cold, dead eyes and said, "You know what? Forget it. I've got shit to do today. I can't deal with this now."

"You wanna talk later?"

"Sure." She nodded before turning her back on me. "If we don't talk then, we always have the weekend."

"Alright." I agreed while she began to walk away.

"Goodbye David."

"Goodbye–"

In a blink of an eye, she was gone. I couldn't help but groan. Truthfully, I shouldn't be the one who is getting upset when I wrecked things but let's be honest: I've fucked up shit with her, Jerry, and myself. Though as terrible as I've felt, Jerry's feeling a thousand times worse and he shouldn't. It's not his fault he got attacked nor did he deserve it even after proving me right.

With nothing left to do, I retreated back to my room and took a nice, hot shower. It felt amazing. Maybe it was because I hadn't slept much or the fact that everything had become such a clusterfuck lately. I mean the first week was one thing where I was learning things but now there's no excuse. I was an idiot, simple as that.

When I finished up in the shower, I went into my dorm and saw my phone flashing.

Look at all these fucking notifications, I shook my head while scrolling through all the shit and people's posts. At first the videos I found were a bit sketchy, but the more I received, the more I began to figure out what was going on and where they were from.

I used my iPad to record some of these videos for future reference. Videos of Jerry being drunk as a skunk and girls trying to get up on him. The last one though hurt the most. He had gone on top of the table and announced in his words:

"David Soracho can suck my dick! He's a fucking loser..." with emphasis on the ooh sound. Yep, he ranted about how much of a loser I was. In the second part, he tore his shirt off and wildly cackled like The Joker. I would've thrown it back in his face until realizing he was just as broken as I was that same night. The weirdest part of all, I've actually seen this video from before which explains why people were whispering about me. Between that and the thing with Josette, I was relatively nothing in the eyes of these campus fuckers. I was still pissed about what happened, though I couldn't blame him. Unfortunately for us both, we can't take back what we said or how we handled our fight and that's something we'll have to live with.