#MeantToBe Read online

  The fight with Ethan wasn’t helping.

  I didn’t know what was going on with him, but I wished he would just stop and go back to the way he was. Because at this rate, I wasn’t going to be able to pass my calculus class if I couldn’t focus on the class in the first place.

  And I hated that Ethan was doing that to me.

  Five

  Brooklyn’s boyfriend was obviously a real jerk.

  I couldn’t believe he’d actually just left her there in the middle of the night. I kinda wished I’d taken my car to tutoring so I could’ve offered her a ride straight home, but I almost always took the bus to and from the tutoring center. It was just too much of a hassle to find a parking spot if I left the parking deck near my dorm. So I tried not to use my car unless it was to go into town or go home and visit one of my parents.

  Brooklyn’s boyfriend reminded me of those guys back in high school. The jocks who got the girl and had a nice car and didn’t pay for it. The kind of guys who thought they were better than you, but really, they just happened to come from money.

  I wasn’t really like that.

  My parents were blue collar all the way, and I’d had to work for what I’d needed since day one.

  I thought some more about Brooklyn on my way home, even if I should’ve already been working on that paper. Writing down notes or something, but I couldn’t help it.

  I guess I thought she was different.

  What did that even mean?

  Maybe that I expected her to be with someone who treated her better? Someone who wasn’t a jerk.

  Sure, she struggled with math to the point of violent erasing, but she seemed like a really smart and nice girl otherwise.

  But maybe that’s how it was. A lot of the time, the nice girls ended up with the alpha jerks.

  What was that saying? Nice guys finished last.

  Maybe that was my problem. I was too nice.

  But I would rather be too nice than a total jerk.

  Brooklyn and her boyfriend also seemed like that stereotypical on-again, off-again couple, just from the five minutes I heard them argue. The kind that broke up one minute but got back together the next.

  I knew because my parents had been one of those couples. Except the last time, they’d been off for good. I’d actually been kind of relieved when they’d told us they’d decided to separate.

  If there was one thing I wouldn’t do, it was the on-again, off-again thing. What was the point of being with someone if you were gonna be miserable half the time? If they were gonna make you miserable?

  My mom and dad always expected each other to change, tried to make each other change, in fact, and it never worked.

  I wasn’t sure I believed someone could change. Not that much, anyway. So that was why I didn’t get why Brooklyn would be with a guy like that. He’d probably always been some version of that same guy from tonight.

  The bus came to a slow halt at the front of my dorm. I got off, and Brooklyn wasn’t far behind me.

  I paused to offer to walk her to her dorm. It was the right thing to do considering how dark and desolate it was out there. Plus her dorm building was still another block in the opposite direction.

  But before I could say anything, she walked off without so much as a glance my way.

  Only a nearby street light illuminated her long hair.

  Six

  My roommate Shelley looked up from her desk when I walked into our dorm. “I thought you were hanging out with Ethan’s tonight?”

  “No,” I said with a sigh, setting my stuff down next to my desk. I took off my jacket and hung it on my chair.

  “Another fight?” she asked. She sat at her desk, no longer typing.

  “You got a paper due?” I asked, not wanting to answer her question just yet.

  She gave me a tight-lipped smile. “Yep. Psychology.”

  I sighed. “Oh yeah, I have one due on Friday too. I should probably work on it.” I got out my laptop from my bag and sat down at my own desk.

  “Did you have dinner already?” Shelley asked.

  I turn around to face her. Her black framed glasses had slid down her nose again, but she didn’t bother pushing them back up. “Not yet. You?”

  “Nope. Let’s work for a bit and then we can walk to the dining hall,” she replied.

  “Sounds great,” I said, facing my laptop again. “I’m starving.”

  About thirty minutes later, I’d worked out the first paragraph. The sound of Shelley closing her laptop reminded me that I was hungry and so I did the same.

  We put on our jackets and headed to the dining hall.

  I didn’t mind the long walk. In fact, I loved it. During the day, I loved staring at the old buildings on campus. The grass hardly visible through a thick layer of fall leaves. The reds, oranges, and browns on the gray tree branches made my day.

  It was too dark to see them now that it almost midnight.

  Shelley’s voice interrupted the silence. “So…it sounds like you and Ethan have been on the rocks lately. What’s that about?”

  I couldn’t dodge her questions forever. I didn’t normally like to talk about personal stuff, but Shelly wasn’t just anyone. She was my roommate, and we’d gotten pretty close since the beginning of the school year.

  I shrugged, focusing my attention on my feet. “I don’t know. I know he must seem like a jerk to everyone, but I swear he wasn’t always that way. He actually used to be really sweet.”

  Those memories of our first few months together resurfaced, and my chest gave a squeeze.

  I’d been a sophomore. He had been a senior. I thought he was so cute, something about his smile.

  I couldn’t remember the last time he’d smiled like that, his entire set of pearly whites on display.

  “But why is he acting like that, then?” Shelley asked, bringing me back to reality.

  We entered the dining hall, and I stayed silent.

  Because of the time, the cafeteria was mostly empty and pretty quiet except for the occasional clatter of silverware and trays in the back. Most people had to be in their dorms, but we had a bad habit of eating dinner way too late and pulling all-nighters.

  Shelley went on. “I don’t know, girl. My gut says you need to walk away sooner rather than later.”

  I exhaled. “I can’t just give up on us like that, though.” We grabbed a tray each. “It would kill me. It would be like throwing away almost three years of my life. How can you just do that?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, following me toward the pizza. “But I do know it’s gonna be a lot more than three years the longer you stay, though.”

  I had no response to that.

  The next time I heard from Ethan, he didn’t mention our argument the other night. He just texted me, asking if I wanted to come over.

  I replied yes a few minutes later then stared at the ceiling above my bed.

  It was Saturday, which meant it was game day on campus.

  Football wasn’t really our thing, so we usually ate out and then hung out at his house, maybe went to a movie.

  I climbed down from my bed, and my gaze landed on the books stacked on my desk. I had a huge load of homework and studying to do.

  My stomach sank at the thought of putting it off today, but I told myself there was always tomorrow. If I was with Ethan, I couldn’t really study. Unlike me, he wasn’t in school, so he didn’t really get the amount of studying I had to do to keep up with my classes. He thought college was just like high school but with more parties and no parents.

  He’d graduated from high school not long after we’d started going out and gone to work with his dad. He owned a firm that sold a lot of the town’s real estate. So that was why he had a nice car.

  Ethan helped his dad run the family business. His older brother, Mark, did too, but apparently Mark went to some fancy business school and therefore had a much cushier position.

  My phone dinged again, and it was Ethan letting me know he was only a
few minutes away. He lived about twenty minutes from campus. I changed quickly and pulled a brush through my hair, not wanting to keep him waiting.

  A short while later, his car pulled up in front of my building, and I walked outside.

  “Hey,” I said, getting my seatbelt on and not really meeting his eyes.

  “Hey, babe,” he said, hardly looking up from his phone.

  I wondered if he might apologize, but clearly, that wouldn’t be the case. Instead, he gave me a quick peck on the cheek, and we got going.

  Not wanting to ruin my entire Saturday over it, I inhaled deep and blew my breath out quietly. But if I was being honest, it still kind of bothered me.

  I stared out the window at the trees flashing by while he talked.

  “You’re kinda quiet today,” Ethan said after laughing by himself about something.

  I shrugged. “Tired, I guess.”

  You’re in a good mood today, I wanted to say. But I didn’t because I knew it would start another fight.

  He didn’t say anything else after that. But I did notice that we were not headed to his place.

  Just when I was about to ask him where we were going, Ethan pulled into my favorite place to eat.

  He turned and smiled. “I got your favorite to go. Thought we could stay in tonight. I’ll be right back,” he said, getting out of the car.

  I couldn’t help but smile. He knew the chicken Alfredo here was my favorite.

  This was the Ethan I knew. The kind of guy to do thoughtful things like this without even asking.

  Not the guy from last night. Not the guy from the last few months. This had to his way of making it up to me.

  But even so, it felt like lately all we did was fight. Fight and make up, fight and make up.

  Ethan came back a few minutes later, a couple of bags in his hand. He handed them to me while we headed home.

  “This smells so good,” I said, the hot food keeping my legs warm. I glanced at him as he drove, realizing it would terrible of me to still be mad at him after his kind gesture. “So are we eating this back at your place?”

  But we still weren’t headed back to his place.

  He kept his eyes on the road. “Yeah, I thought we could get a movie or something. I just have to pass by my parents’ place real quick. I need to do something for my dad. It won’t take long. Don’t worry,” he said with a quick smile.

  I smiled back. “Okay.”

  We arrived at his parents’ house. They had a really nice house. Two stories. Landscaping and decorating that cost as much as my tuition. Not like my house.

  My mom lived about twenty minutes from there myself. In a different part of town.

  I still remembered, when we’d first met and started going out. I had been really intimidated the first time he’d brought me to his house, but I was kind of used to it now.

  Meanwhile, in all the time we’d gone out, I’d rarely taken him back to my house just because it wasn’t much compared to this. He’d told me in the beginning that he didn’t mind what kind of neighborhood I lived in, but it’d always bothered me a little, knowing that we came from really different backgrounds. Ever since graduation, he didn’t live with his parents anymore because he’d gotten his own apartment, but even his place was really nice.

  Now that I lived on campus, I didn’t go home much either. My mom worked a lot and hardly spent time at home. We usually just talked on the phone a couple times a week.

  Ethan turned off the car. “Do you want to wait here or come in with me? It won’t take long,” he said.

  It was a hot day, and I didn’t want to sit in a hot car too. “I’ll come with you. I need to stretch my legs anyway.” I put the bag of food in the back seat, and we got out and walked into his house.

  His mom greeted us right away. She was the kind of person that was polite and well-mannered but didn’t really show much affection.

  We stood in the foyer. “Where’s dad? He said he wanted to see me for a bit?” he asked.

  Mrs. Roberts’ hair was wound tight in a high sort of glossy bun. “I think he’s in his study.”

  Ethan turned back to me. “I’ll be back in a sec.” He walked off in the direction of the study, and I took a seat quietly on the sofa of the living room. Or the family room, rather.

  Mrs. Roberts made small talk with me, asking about school and my mom. She was nice enough, but she’d always been a little bit too formal for my taste.

  And I couldn’t help but get the feeling that she thought I wasn’t quite good enough for her son.

  Finally, Ethan and his dad walked back into the family room. Ethan carried a thick folder with several documents in his hands. Mr. Roberts wore a business suit even though it was Saturday. Instead of addressing us, they continued discussing something, and from the sound of it, things were getting heated.

  His dad stopped a few feet away. “Make sure you get those documents back to me as well as the monthly reports by Tuesday. You know, your brother Mark always turns in his paperwork on time. Something you really need to learn how to do, Ethan. This is the third time this quarter you’re late.”

  I cringed a bit for Ethan. His dad was always saying stuff like that. Backhanded comments about how his brother Mark was better than him. He never talked about it, but I knew it bothered him a lot.

  Ethan nodded without another word and looked at me. I tried but failed to give him a smile. He clenched his teeth and glanced down. Knowing it was probably time for us to go, I stood up. I took his hand, and we headed towards the front door. We said our goodbyes and left.

  On our way back to his place, I couldn’t help but stare at Ethan a little. His entire demeanor had changed. His face was tense. He was no longer the friendly guy he’d been just a few minutes ago when he’d picked me up from school.

  I couldn’t help but feel a little bit sorry for him. I would hate to have parents like that. One that put way too much pressure on him and another that acted more like the Queen of England than his own mother.

  Scratch that. The Queen of England was awesome.

  I put my hand on his forearm as we drove back to his apartment, but no matter what I did, he hardly spoke. We ate dinner and watched a movie in silence.

  Seven

  I struggled to keep my eyes open in class, much less take notes.

  It had been eleven o’clock before I’d made it to my dorm last night.

  After a quick shower, I’d stayed up until two in the morning finishing assignments and trying to study before I finally fell asleep at my desk.

  My neck still hurt, and I hadn’t gotten much rest anyway.

  This was my second class of the day, and I still couldn’t get myself to fully wake up.

  Sara had kept nudging me awake in history. I almost hadn’t shown up, but attendance counted as part of our final grade in that class. Once I’d gotten her to promise me a copy of her notes, though, I hadn’t even bothered to keep my eyes open in there. But I didn’t know anybody in this class, which meant I’d be out of luck when it came time to study for next week’s exam.

  Plus I had another online quiz due for this class tonight, and tutoring again. I didn’t know how much more of this I could take. It was only Wednesday, but I was on the verge of crashing. Truth be told, not much of the semester had been easy.

  I knew it would be hard going to class full-time and tutoring twenty-plus hours a week, but what was really difficult was getting more than five hours of sleep a night. Not to mention checking in on my parents on the weekend, mostly Mom.

  I’d spent the entire weekend with her and hadn’t gotten much schoolwork done. Now I was paying for it. So no going home again next weekend.

  Mom would be fine. I could call her. She’d already started hinting at dinner plans for us this Saturday, but I’d have to break it to her. I pushed the guilt at the thought of that back and rubbed my eyes again one more time.

  Somehow, I managed to get half a page of sloppy notes before the end of class, but I could barely read
any of it. On the way to lunch, I crumbled it up and threw it away before I sat down to eat.

  It was just me today. Sara was going to have lunch with Brian downtown, and other than my roommate, I didn’t really hang out with anyone else. No time.

  I had one more class left today, and then I needed to get to the tutoring center.

  Maybe I could head home early today, if not too many people showed up. Yeah, I could go home and study for a bit and maybe get into bed at a decent hour.

  At my last class of the day, the TA handed back last week’s quiz.

  My jaw dropped when I saw the giant D on mine.

  How was this even possible?

  I thought I did okay on this quiz. I start reading through my answers, double-checking against the book but realizing I should have studied more than the night before.

  This really sucked. I wasn’t one to fail quizzes, but this class was my hardest, and I didn’t have time to go to the study sessions the TA held every week.

  After class, I went straight to the tutoring center to get a head start on my assignments and studying for the night.

  I greeted Heather from across the room and found an empty table in the far back corner of the room. Without putting on my tutoring badge, I set my own books down on the table.

  I cracked open my books and got to work, but it wasn’t long before I could hardly turn a page without yawning and wishing I was in my dorm taking a nap instead.

  With a glance around the room, I decided it was time for desperate measures. I hated the taste of coffee, but I hated being unable to focus and study more. I got up and found the break room.

  Once I found the biggest coffee mug I could find in the cabinet, I filled it to the top, adding cream and sugar. I took several sips on the way back to my table, feeling better even if I knew I was in for a long night.

  A couple of hours later, I wasn’t just awake. I was a well-oiled machine of efficiency, and I’d gotten a ton of stuff done.