Choose Me: a novella Read Online Free

class. 
    “Her name was Ellie, she was the smartest girl in our class,” he’d said as he adjusted his camera on its tripod. “The rest of us always wondered how she seemed to understand all of those equ ations and symbols when it all looked like Greek to us.”
    Then Jessica had wanted to tell him what her mother usually said—that little black girls always had to work twice as hard as the rest of the world, if only to prove to them that they were equal. Ellie’s mother had probably said the very same words to her, pro bably even warned her that everyone—from the other students to the teachers to the principal—was waiting for her to stumble so they could throw salt in her wounds and confirm their own misgivings about her achievements.  But she hadn’t said anything; she’d just smiled at him and lay back on his bed, waiting for him to take the picture of her that he’d said he wanted. And when she didn’t comment, he’d gone on to say that eventually that Ellie had gone on to Harvard while the rest of his classmates had settled for Temple or Villanova or Community College.
    “Last I heard, she was going to law school,” he said as he peered through the viewer. Then he dropped the subject of Ellie—whom Jessica suspected he’d had a crush on—and began snapping pictures of Jessica, until she started to undress and lured him into bed with her.
     
    “Who’s this Yank you’ve got your panties in a twist over?” Gillian asked her one morning over breakfast. They were sitting at the small Formica card table that functioned as their kitchen table, both of them wrapped in thick robes and flannel pajamas. Though the radiators were on full blast, the kitchen was chilly. Gillian had even turned on the oven just to generate a bit of heat.
    Jessica smiled hazily. She’d spent the previous night with Chris at his place, letting him take pictures of her for his portfolio. He told her she was his muse, an idea that appealed to her. No one had ever found her inspiring before. And when he’d said it, her skin went prickly and a thousand tiny lights blinked on inside her.
    “His name is Chris,” she said. “I met him at the Honey Pot.”
    “Figures you’d come all the way here to meet another Amer ican. I was so sure you were keen on Andrew.”
    Andrew was one of their study partners from their Birth of the Novel seminar. Like Gillian, he was from Aberdeen. Jessica didn’t find Andrew half as attractive as he seemed to find himself. He was always blathering on about his own positive qualities and who was interested in him and who was not. And though Gillian was convinced that Andrew had a thing for Jessica, Jessica thought it more likely that he was only interested in her because she hadn’t shown any real interest in him. He flirted shamelessly with her, especially since he’d seen Chris kiss her that day in the café. He habitually treated the girls who asked him out or who slept with him badly, giving them the cold shoulder when they next met or pretending not to know them. And while he was attractive in a ginger-haired freckled face sort of way, the limitlessness of his ego turned Jessica off. She couldn’t picture him as relationship material, and he wasn’t the sort of person she’d ever change her life for.
    “Andrew is a good study partner,” Jessica replied with a smile, “but he’s definitely not date material.”
    Gillian accepted this with a slow nod. It was too early for her to challenge Jessica much. Gillian usually slept in on Saturdays until noon so Jessica was surprised that she was actually awake when she came home.
    “It’s odd is all, I figured American blokes were too scared to date…well, you know what I mean—someone one wasn’t exactly the same as them.”
    “And what about Scottish men? I haven’t seen very many dating girls like me.”
    “It's not the same,” Gillian retorted. “We’re not altogether ra cists like most Yanks.”
    “What a load of bollocks!”