A Fall from grace

A week later and things certainly did get worse. After getting his phone fixed, Mark tried calling Tiffany multiple times for her to never get back to him. He would have tried to do it in person but there was never a chance to get her alone, she always had someone with her, blocking any chance of him being able to explain himself further.

Word did eventually get out and suddenly everyone was staring at him for the wrong reasons. Tiffany’s friends including Ali and Miranda were now giving him the cold shoulder.

God he needed someone else dramatic to happen on campus. Just something to take away the attention from him. He didn’t really know how it was affecting Winter as she too seemed more keen on avoiding Mark for the meantime, in order to protect her own social status that had taken a giant hit.

He worried for how Miranda would see this, concerned she’d used this against Winter to have her kicked out of the hall.

To add to his woes, Mark was relocated within East Hall. He couldn’t even get his old dorm room back which was a massive shame, he now had arguably the worst room of the entire hall.

**** to share it with a new freshman named Dale. There was just something about him that was odd, he seemed to pick up the nickname of ‘Dirty Dale’, and the dirty was referring to his appearance. He didn’t smell great and he always looked like he had never washed his clothes.

The guy was in his own little world, a technical expert that came off as a socially awkward geek. He barely spoke to Mark, instead always glued to his multiple laptops and phones, headphones in every night.

Mark thought back to the day after his break up with Tiffany, to the moment he was unpacking. A certain unwelcome visitor appeared at his new dorm room doorway, ready to rub salt in the wounds.

It was his original dorm mate, Matt. He was laughing, standing at the doorway, almost hysterically doing it in front of him.

“What do you want?” Mark said bluntly, not amused with his laughter.

“Oh man, this is just too good. Oh how the mediocre have fallen...” he said, leaning against the frame of the doorway.

Mark just ignored him and continued unpacking his stuff. It was bad enough as it was, the last thing he wanted was this asshole to sit back and enjoy his pain.

“What’s the deal with cheating dude? Made Cas cheat on me, now you cheat on Tiffany. I can’t wait for the time that someone ch-” Matt was cut off by Mark slamming the door shut on him.

He felt a sudden rage inside of himself. Grabbing one of his textbooks, Mark threw it hard against the wall. It was loud enough for Dale to take his attention away from his laptop screen for just a moment.

“Sorry. That was uncalled for,” he said softly before Dale returned to his screen.

It wasn’t until the following weekend that Mark had a chance to speak with any of Tiffany’s friends. On Saturday Night, there was a massive college party happening. It was in honour of ex-student and recent graduate, Tayla, who had just got a job as a teacher on this very campus.

She in fact was probably the only female student to ever be more popular than Tiffany. So to celebrate her achievement, campus threw a party just for her, one that she couldn’t even really attend for long due to how much current work she had to prepare.

At the party, Mark found a chance to speak to Ali while she was filling up a red cup at a beer keg.

“Ali,” he said as he came up from behind her. She looked stunning as usual, tonight in a tight black dress, her new blonde hair straightened behind her. Seeing him, she turned back around, almost ready to get out of there but he wasn’t going to let that happen that easy.

“Wait, wait, wait!” he told her. “Please don’t go Ali, just give me one minute.”

“Make it quick,” Ali said, not wanting to do anything to hurt Tiffany.

“I just wanted to check on Tiff, is she okay? Would she at least just speak to me? I’m worried about her Ali,” he asked.

Ali’s lips bent, she felt a bit of sympathy for him even though he was that far in the wrong, it wasn’t funny. “She’s okay, I can tell you that,” she said, “I don’t know what the hell you were thinking. You’re lucky she’s like the nicest person ever, Miranda tried to get her to boot Winter from our Hall completely and there’s plenty of other girls that have told her to do the same to you.”

Mark just felt terrible hearing all of that, just made it worse that Tiffany was so freaking perfect, still being the honourable grown-up that wouldn’t let her relationships affect her decisions as RA.

“Fuck... It really was just a terrible decision I made, I feel horrible. I just wish there was a way I could change things and get everything back to normal,” he told her.

“There’s nothing you can do Mark, I’m sorry. Like I don’t know how else to say this but there’s going to be a massive push from a lot of the other girls to try and get her to get with someone else tonight. I still care for you so I’m just trying to look out for both of you,” Ali told him.

Mark didn’t know what else to say, hearing that just pissed him off. It shouldn’t with everything he had just done but that’s how he was feeling.

“Look, I’ve gotta go and I know I can’t really speak to you right now but over time, I’m sure we can all get over it and you and Tiff can just be friends. Anyways, try enjoy your night,” she said before leaving in a hurry.

The last three words is what he needed to focus on right now or he was going to lose his mind in overwhelming guilt.