The Panty Raid by Pamela Morsi Read Free Book Online Page B

And until I do, it’s unfair for me to get involved with someone,” she said. “I don’t know yet if I’m willing to fall in love. I don’t know if I can let someone fall in love with me.”
    “Oh, sweetheart,” Hank said, “I think you’re too late.”

Chapter Six
    T he main living room of Baldridge Hall was off-limits to anyone who wasn’t tying bows, hanging lights or cutting the thousands of autumn-colored paper leaves that were the main staple of the theme’s decor. Hank, and the residents under his command, were approaching the festivities of the formal dance with all of the organization and dedication they had put into the panty raid. And Hank was pretty sure that had been exactly what the dean had wanted.
    Hank had tried to use everybody’s strengths and interests. The Ag and Forestry majors gathered a full half mile of wild grapevine from every fallow field and woods within miles around campus. Pre-Med, Botany and Biology cleaned it and twisted it into garlands that Math students strung up precisely two feet apart across the width of the room. Each yard had an eighteen-inch drop where a brightly colored leaf, sparkling with glitter, dangled down to create an atmosphere of intimacy. The guys studying Drama and Music were in charge of the bandstand, which had to have a raised dais, lights and a gossamer background of orange, brown, red and gold. The future engineers put together an amazing water feature that was expected to be the “wow factor” of the entire decor.
    The whole project as it progressed, was both eye- opening and surprisingly fulfilling. Chemistry majors discovered cooking and athletes had the opportunity to utilize the muscles they’d honed. The fellows in the College of Business were uniquely challenged on how to produce such a lovely occasion within the tiny budget that had been previously collected for pep rally snacks.
    Everyone seemed to be gaining from the opportunity. Especially Hank. Hank needed something to fill his hours since Dot had sent him on his way.
    He was being dumb, foolish, a knot-head, he told himself. Dot was just a girl—the university was full of girls. If she didn’t know what she wanted, if she wasn’t sure what her future should hold, then Hank should forget her, stop looking for her and move on. There were plenty of fish in the sea, and most of them wanted a bright young man to wed and have a home.
    That’s what he told himself, again and again. But that’s not what he’d felt. He had listened to her explanations, her motivations, and he tried to understand. He wasn’t sure he did. Wasn’t marriage and children a biological imperative for females? That’s what everyone thought. Wasn’t the woman uniquely made to fulfill domestic duties?
    His mother hadn’t reared him to believe such fallacies, and watching the men of Baldridge Hall step up to the plate so admirably to women’s work quashed any lingering doubts he had.
    So he knew that she was right, he supposed. But he still didn’t like it. He hadn’t been able to keep his eyes off her, even before they’d met. Now she was at the edge of every thought that went through his mind. She was the one with whom he wanted to share every dream that came into his head.
    But it wasn’t to be.
    Late at night in the darkness of his dorm room, he’d imagine that she’d have a sudden change of heart. That she’d come running to him, declaring that she didn’t want to live without him. Completely convinced that what she truly longed for was a little house with a white picket fence and a brood of rowdy children. But he couldn’t honestly say, even to himself, that he wanted her to give up her dreams. Her dreams were as much a part of what he loved about her as every other aspect of her person. He didn’t want some woman who just looked like her or talked like her. He wanted her—Dot Wilbur, chock-full of personal hopes and ideals and ambitions.
    Sometimes he told himself that in a few years, out working