Hey guys, this is my first fic for Greek. And the first time I've written in a while, since my Bones muse has apparently died. Feedback is always good, so after you've read it, click the nice little blue button and let me know what you think!
Casey stood in the doorway of the ZBZ house, looking around carefully.
She had come back nearly a week before anyone else would return, desperate for some alone time to think things through. She had tried to think back in Chicago, but people she had gone to high school with kept calling her and inviting her to parties she didn't want to go to.
She took a few steps further into the entryway, closing the door softly behind her. Leaving her bags by the door, she began a slow walk of the house. She wandered through the living room and dining room before moving into the kitchen and back to the base of the staircase.
As she walked, she examined the precise placement of every item and knick-knack in the house, the perfect order of things. Things she loved, the great marble pillars and ornamentation, the plaques commemorating the great ZBZs before her.
At the base of the stairs, she took in the regality of the house, the plush luxury she had become so accustomed to. Turning to the mirror she had stared into the night she had been crowned Omega Chi sweetheart, she finally understood she had all of the regality and power she had coveted for a year and a half. And yet it wasn't enough. She wasn't happy.
She watched herself in the mirror, thinking over the events of the past semester. I finally have the ZBZ presidency… isn't that what I wanted? she wondered to herself.
Maybe I'm unhappy with how things worked out with Evan… she tried again, thinking of the disastrous end to their relationship. No, that's not really it. I'm surprisingly okay with that turn of events.
She thought over the past year and a half-- the time she spent working towards the ZBZ presidency, the time spent with her sisters, and her time with Evan. As if a light bulb had gone off in her head, she suddenly stumbled, grabbing the banister to steady herself against the conclusion she had come to.
I haven't been happy this whole time, she realized. I've been filling my life with things and goals I thought would make me happier, but I haven't been happy since my first year. Since Cappie.
Tearing her eyes away from the mirror, she moved to the living room and collapsed onto the sofa. All of this, she thought, the presidency, Evan, the competition with Frannie… I was just distracting myself from the truth. The truth I've destroyed in my attempt to find something better. But there is nothing better; nothing has made me happy since him.
Overcome by the discovery she had made about her own heart, she buried her face in her hands as hot tears began falling from her eyes.
No one could say Casey didn't have goals and dreams, but as she was quickly beginning to understand, achieving them was not enough to make her happy.
She could back to Evan and beg forgiveness, beg him to take her back. With him, she had security and the guarantee of a comfortable future. She would be able to do everything she dreamed of, but it would be a relationship of routine, boring love. She would be content and accomplished, but would she be happy?
Or there was Cappie. Cappie, who she knew would take her back in a heartbeat. Cappie, the only person who had truly made her happy. Who had really loved her, with pure, naïve, unconditional love. Whose heart she had broken not only once, when she had left him for Evan, but twice, when she had chosen to be lavaliered by Evan. Cappie, who was always unpredictable and different. Who never wanted her to be anything or anyone but who she was. Who supported her and accepted her decisions in whatever she did, including her decision to leave him. Cappie.
Jumping up from the couch, she almost fell in her haste to get up the stairs to her room. Reaching the room, she opened the closet, rummaging in the back corner for a box she knew she had left there. When her hand brushed against the paper edge of it, she reached a little bit deeper to grab it and pull it out.
Sitting cross-legged in the middle of her room, she looked at the outside of the blue photo box, studying the dusty fingerprints littered across the top edges from opening it frequently over the past semester. Carefully prying the top off the box, she set it aside, and looked into the box.
Lying on top was a framed picture of her and Cappie from the Vesuvius party their first year. They were sitting next to each other on the porch railing, staring into the others' eyes so intently they appeared to be oblivious to the noise and people surrounding them. The Kappa Tau who had taken the picture, she couldn't remember his name, had caught the pair blissfully unaware, content in their happiness to just be with the other.
Taking the bamboo frame from the box, she smiled down at the picture in her hands, remembering what had happened later that night when Cappie had walked her back to her dorm. That was the first time they had made love, and for as awkward and terrifying as it had been, she knew it could not have been any better. There was no one she would have rather lost her virginity to than the love of her life.
Setting the picture aside, she reached into the box, brushing aside folded notes on fading notebook paper, pictures of the two from a variety of events (each photo with a hole from the bulletin board they had been posted on in her room that year), and random little knick-knacks and things he had given her over their year together. Reached the bottom of the box, her fingers touched the soft velvet exterior of a jewelry box. Pulling it free from the depths of the box, she opened it slowly, the light from the setting sun reflecting off the small, silver locket.
Removing the locket from the box, she ran the chain through her fingers, wrapping them gently around the locket itself. Running her thumb over the smooth metal of the front, she turned it over to see the inscription on the back. Always in my heart, she read, touching the small C on the line below. Turning it back over in her hand, she slid her nail into the groove causing it to open. On the left was a picture of the pair just before Christmas, kissing in the snow outside the Kappa Tau house. On the right, a picture of the pair with Casey resting her head on Cappie's shoulder and his arm around her, both with their eyes shut peacefully. It had been taken at the park just days before her birthday, she suspected by the same Kappa Tau who had taken the one of them at the Vesuvius party. He was very talented, whoever he was.
Still looking at the pictures, she thought about her birthday in question, when Cappie had given her the locket. It had been the perfect day. She had woken up in his arms in the small dorm room, the early morning sunlight streaming through the window and onto his sleeping face. She had watched him sleeping serenely, a small smile playing on his lips. Finally she couldn't help but touch him, brushing a lock of his soft hair off his forehead. He had woken slowly, kissing her softly and sweetly, and pulling her closer as they burrowed back under the covers. When they finally emerged a couple of hours later, he had made omelets, feeding it to her in bed. After breakfast and a shower, they had climbed into his Jeep, heading off to her birthday surprise. He had driven them up to the lake about an hour from the campus, where a friend of his had a cabin he had borrowed for the weekend. They had gone swimming in the lake, taking turns jumping off the dock and trying to dunk the other. When they got hungry, Cappie had pulled out a picnic onto the dock, where they ate in the sunshine, enjoying the peacefulness of the quiet afternoon. Later, after he had given her the locket, they had made love, first on the dock, then over and over throughout the night in the cabin. The following two days had followed in a similar fashion before they had to return to school.
Choking back a sob, Casey remembered how she had coldly walked away from him a month later for his roommate who never did anything that romantic for her.
Why did I ever listen to Frannie? she wondered in dismay, Why?