When You're Ready Read Online Free PDF

wanted, you just haven’t wanted any of them back. This guy sounds different, though. I mean he came to your job—”
    “Like a stalker?” I chuckled.
    “Like you told him to. You should call him.”
    Tara had a point. Life was too short to always put things off, but could I risk getting involved with a man like Scout? I wasn’t sure.
    “Maybe I’ll call just to thank him for the tip,” I said. “I mean, it would be rude if I didn’t, right?”
    “Right,” Tara said, while we walked to her car. “It would be even ruder to pass up on a nice guy who made you smile as big as you’re smiling right now.”
    I caught a glimpse of myself in a store window and noticed my gigantic grin.  I wasn’t sure why I was so taken with Scout, but I knew I wanted to see him again. I made a mental note to call him—just to say thanks, for everything.

 
    4 Nola
     
    I sat in my media studies class listening to Professor St. James discuss the role of women in the music business. Normally, I would have been completely enthralled with her lecture, the way she championed feminism while railing against patriarchy and the objectification of women in popular culture almost made me want to switch my major from communications to women’s studies. But there was no money in being a militant feminist, unless you already had some. And while I loved reading about Gloria Steinem, Virginia Wolf, bell hooks, and Patricia Hill Collins, I couldn’t fathom being poor on purpose after having been broke for so long.
    As usual, I sat in the third row of the huge lecture hall and took notes, only this time I was barely paying attention. My pen seemed to have a mind of its own, doodling Scout’s name in the margin of my notebook surrounded by frilly flowers and, gasp , hearts like I was back in the fifth grade.
    I blacked out his name, covering the doodles with random zig-zags, trying to hide my relapse into schoolgirl-hood, but I just couldn’t stop myself. The battle went on for an entire hour—scribbling his name, then blacking it out—until soon the left side of my paper looked like it had been involved in a graffiti war.
    After class, I waited for Professor St. James to hand back our papers on cultural appropriation, but my mind kept returning to Scout. It had been days since he’d stopped by Pink Taco and I still hadn’t called him. I thought about it, constantly, even taking his crisp business card out and punching in the number, but chickening out before I could press send.
    Despite telling myself I’d call just to say thanks for the fat tip, I couldn’t go through with it. Scout made me feel things I was too scared to admit I felt—nervous, adventurous, aroused. Everything I’m sure my mother felt about my father, and you see how spectacularly awful that turned out. v
    I shuddered. That could never be me. Scratch that; it would never be me. I would never be as naïve, reckless, and absolutely dependent on a man like my mother, Sandy Jane.
    I tried to expel Scout from my mind because he obviously wasn’t thinking about me. He hadn’t been back to the restaurant since the night he stopped by, which pretty much confirmed he’d forgotten all about me and probably moved on to some anorexic bleached blonde with severe cheekbones. But still, I couldn’t keep my mind from drifting toward his devilishly handsome face, strong body, and I couldn’t even let myself imagine what was beneath his clothes.
    “Ms. Chambers,” Professor St. James almost sneered, thrusting the essay into my hand. She looked at me over the top of her glasses, her face crinkling like she smelled something foul. Strangely, it looked better than her normal expression, which always seemed to be a mixture of a grimace and a scowl.
    “What happened here?” she asked, accusingly. My heart sank at the less than positive response to the 15-page paper I’d worked on for three weeks. I needed to pass Professor St. James’ class with at least a B to keep my partial