falling

part 3: exams

I wake up to his soft snoring but both arms wrapped around me. I figured there's no way to really get out of it without waking him up. I resolve to falling back asleep but I can't help but look at his sleeping face. I brush a couple curls from his eyes and he stirs some. I freeze until I know he's not waking up. I move my arm back down to rest on his chest by my head. I look over at the clock and it's still only 4:30 am. We've, or at least just me for sure, been only asleep for about two hours. I feel our breaths synch and slowly fade back into sleep.

"WAKE UP, YOU TWO!" A very loud, disruptive voice startled me awake. I squint and see Tara. "We have an exam in an hour." She says.

I look at James and he yawns. I press myself up and move off of him. He sits up on his elbows and his bedhead makes me laugh a bit. "Nice hair." I mumble.

He looks up then remembers he can't see it like that and tries to play it off. "Thanks."

We both pack up our stuff and leave. Tara practically shoves me into our room. I start looking for an outfit and go towards our  shower that we share with the room next door. Tara is still standing arms crossed, turning and following me everywhere around the room. I'm still too tired to notice until I get out of the shower and she's tapping her foot while sitting on her bed. I walk back in our room with a towel around me and on my head when I finally see her like that. I walk around the room grabbing different things.

"Do you need something?" I say with a mouth full of toothpaste then continue brushing.

"You. And James."

"Are you mad? Because there's nothing going on." I say from inside the bathroom.

"No." She pauses. I walk out of the bathroom fully dressed and shaking the towel on my head to dry my short dirty blonde hair. "Is there something -"

"I already said no." I said while looking for my keys and emptying my bag of all my study stuff, books and notes and wrappers of the junk food I eat last night. She was pouting with arms still crossed and foot tapping. "Can we go now and hopefully grab coffee before we go to class?" I say, hand already on the door and ready to go with or without her.

"I just can't believe you didn't tell me about you two." She said not moving.

"There isn't anything going on!" I say and walk over to her to pull her up and out the door. "Coffee and I are in a long relationship though and you're keeping me from it."

"Honey, you can tell me. I don't care if there is. I just need all the juicy deets." She finally makes it through the door.

"The coffee cart by class is better." I say as she tries to get in line.

"Come on, there has to be something."

"No, there's not. We've slept together like that before. We stayed up late cramming." I should feel more awkward talking to her about this but like I said last night, she was over James about 12 guys ago.

"First off, there's no way a guy that hugs you like that while sleeping and squeezed harder to protect you when woken up is platonic. Secondly, you both are going to pass this class whether you pass the exam or not and studied or not. Two large lattes with cinnamon." She orders for the both of us the drink she likes but I don't care.

"Extra shot in one of them." She hardly needs more caffeine but I do. "You're reading into this." I lie knowing that there was some mixed signals last night.

"I'm never wrong about these things." She flips her perfect brown hair. She finally dyed it back to her natural color after killing it nonstop for the past year. Every other month, a new color. The pink was still in my hair from when she convinced me. I admired her courage and bluntness but wished she'd find another target for her dissection at the moment instead of me.

"You're mostly wrong about these things. Look at your dating history." I chuckled. "Ty, Brandon, Brennan, Ty again, Kip who was a tool from the beginning, Lucas who was the only really good one, Steven."

"Okay, I get it. Not all of them were bad and I was right about them in at some point in the relationship."

"Here you go." The barista says and hands us our drinks with a smile.

"Oh my god, did you see that?" Tara says as we walk into the building our class is in. "Check your cup."

"He is paid to be nice." I say but check anyway to appease her. Nothing.

"Mine is written in cursive." She gasps as we sit down in class.

"So is mine, drama queen." I roll my eyes and James gives me a look which I return a it's-not-worth-it slash it's-tara-being-tara kinda look.

He smiles and says, "Hi, Tara."

"Hello again." She brushes him off still looking at her cup for a hidden message. "He drew a face!"

She holds the cup to me. "Congrats." I give her a thumbs up.

"What happened to Drew?" James asks.

"Who?" Tara replies.

"Drew"

"Who?"

"Dr- ah I get it." He finally gets it.

"Welcome to your last day of class. I hope you are prepared. This exam isn't easy." The professor walks in and gives the test to a few students in the front to pass back.

"Isn't that what they always say?" I whisper and my two friends silently laugh.