Like I Love You

Chapter 1: Not Into Girls-3

Though Dana didn’t get Bethany’s number the first day of class, a tentative friendship began. The following week, Bethany gave Dana a wide smile when she walked in. “Hey, you. Comment allez-vous?”

Dana laughed. “What’s that mean?”

Bethany slid into the same seat as before, next to Dana’s. “It means, how are you?”

“Am I going to have to sign up for a French class if we’re going to become friends?” Dana countered.

“Only if you want to know what I’m saying,” Bethany said. “Don’t you know French is the language of love?”

Are you flirting with me? But Dana didn’t have the guts to ask that.

As the semester progressed, Dana found herself paired with Bethany whenever Mme Sarkozi assigned projects that required a partner. The first time it happened, it was purely by chance—the professor merely looked around the room and counted off the students by twos, starting with Dana closest to the door and Bethany sitting beside her. They simply had to push their desks together and compose a few questions from the reading to pose to the rest of the class.

The next time, though, Mme Sarkozi allowed them to choose their own partners, and Bethany turned to smile at Dana. “You and me?” she mouthed, eyebrows raised in question.

A thrill surged through Dana, who nodded a little too quickly. “Sure.”

This second project was a bit more intensive, requiring them to select two different books by French women writers that weren’t on the syllabus and present them to the class. Over the course of several weeks, they would have to meet up on their own time with their partners and review the books, then write a combined ten-page paper.

Half the students groaned at the extra work, but Dana looked forward to it. Hanging out with Bethany, even if it was just for schoolwork? Hell, yeah!

At the end of class, Dana lingered putting away her notebook instead of rushing to get to her job at the library. She didn’t care if she was late; she wanted Bethany’s number, but she didn’t know how to ask for it. The project gave her a perfect excuse, but would she come off sounding too eager? She didn’t know. Taking a deep breath, she screwed up her courage and turned to Bethany, only to find Bethany already looking her way.

“What’s your phone number?” Bethany asked, pen poised over the inside cover of the little blue book in which she took notes for class.

How did it come so easily to her? Dana wondered. “My…”

“Number,” Bethany said again. “I’ll call you tonight and we can figure out when to get together, maybe this weekend? If you’re not busy?”

“No, no,” Dana assured her, “I’m not. I work at the library until eleven, though.” Quickly she reeled off the four-digit phone extension to her dorm room.

Bethany scribbled it down, then reached over for Dana’s notebook and wrote her own number on the front cover. “I’m in Mendenhall. You?”

Mendenhall was one of the smaller, three-story dormitories in Rivers Edge, which housed a mix of freshmen and sophomores and was a short walk from Dana’s dorm. “Jameson, fourth floor,” she said. “I can reserve a study lounge at the library, if you want—”

“I have a single room,” Bethany told her. “Well, no, it’s a double, but my roommate dropped out or something, I don’t really know what happened, but they never moved anyone else in with me, so it’s basically a single. We can just go back to my place and no one will bother us, so no worries. I’ll swing by the library later and catch up with you there.”

A single room. No one will bother us, so no worries. Dana wondered if Bethany had deliberately tried to make it sound like an open invitation. The thought of being alone together behind closed doors thrilled Dana. But maybe she was reading things wrong. Was it always this tentative between women? Would they be able to open up more to each other when no one else was around?

Dana hoped so. God, she hoped so.