It was ten minutes in and Peridot had already seen through her.

Somehow, this little nerd who had probably never had a meaningful conversation in her LIFE had peeled away her first line of defense like it was nothing but gauze. Feeling naked before her would be one thing, but Lapis didn't just feel naked. She felt UGLY.

Lapis had many skills, but altruism was not one of them. She had many people fooled – it kept them from asking questions – but all it took was one suspicious dweeb to shatter her entire façade. It couldn't be that Peridot was good at reading people. It had to be how wary she was. Not that Lapis considered wariness of other people an unfounded thing. Especially not of people like herself.

She felt like she was being crushed from all directions. She had to do something before Peridot picked up on her distress. Lapis was a perfectionist in terms of how she came across to others. Peridot, it seemed, was a perfectionist in everything but. For the time being, Lapis envied her. With her disguise breaking around her, there was only one thing left in her control. Something for her to grab onto before the storm washed her away. It was an anchor in more ways than one.

"Sorry… I need a minute."

She got up and made for the bathroom.

Sometimes it was dysmorphia. Sometimes it was punitive. This time it was all stress.

She'd need two minutes if she was good. If things didn't get out of hand. Two minutes to wrap her fingers in tissue in case her teeth came down hard. Two minutes for something burningly shameful – she didn't need to go all the way this time – and the next ten minutes for the blessed release that only came from what she was about to do. The time after that was something she couldn't afford to think about.

She would ignore the wretched girl in the mirrors until the final necessary step, and even that she would make as short as possible. If anyone came in, she'd pretend she was fixing her hair.

She rounded the corner and reached for the door.

"Hey, Lapis!"

Fuck. Spotted.

"Amethyst. Hi."

"Aren't you supposed to be in class right now?"

"Something came up."

"You mean your big daaaaate with that little dweeb over there?"

"You can call it that."

"Hah! I knew it!" Amethyst whooped. "Why HER of all people? You can do way better than that! I've SEEN you do better!"

"What?"
"Oh come on, EVERYONE saw you and Jasper the other week! The whole rugby team's been DYING over it ever since! Ol' Patch is just about ready to KILL you."

Right. That night.

"Who's 'everyone?'"

"Everyone who matters! And boy, there wasn't a girl on that floor who wouldn't have killed to be in YOUR shoes!"

"Including you," Lapis said, trying to sound bemused but actually sounding more dispirited. She wished with all the desperation in the world that Amethyst would leave.

"You bet your TITS on that! Even STRAIGHT girls want a piece of Jasper!"

Several had had it too, minus their sobriety.

"You really were all over her…" Amethyst went on. "She never just LETS people touch her, you know. You gotta tell me your secret sometime, okay?"

Lapis paused. The secret was too much alcohol on the part of both parties. But yet, she felt a twisted relief to think that Jasper might have something to regret about that night, too.

"You at LEAST gotta tell me how she was…" Amethyst goaded. "Must have been pretty fucking awesome, right?"

Lapis fiddled with her sleeve.

"Sure."

"That's IT? You know that half the CAMPUS wants to sleep with her, right?"

"I know."

Her memory of that night was incomplete at best, but there had definitely been no sleeping involved.

She remembered leaning in and whispering what could only have been a proposition, and there they were in Jasper's room, hardly any lead-up, Jasper's hand reaching down her skirt, Jasper's tongue in her mouth, Jasper's bare thighs sporting razor lines all along the inside.

She'd had mixed feelings about the strap-on. It reminded her of a few too many things. But she was drunk and thought, maybe, this time, she was enjoying it.

"Laz? You okay?"

"Um, yeah. I just remembered a paper I have to do."

"Well, then, don't be too long with your little dork over there! At least she'll understand getting blown off for a paper!" Amethyst snickered and pushed open the door. "The team's gonna flip their shit when they hear you passed up Jasper for THAT one!"

This was it. She couldn't follow Amethyst into the bathroom.

She tried to gather her breath as the door swung shut. It didn't work.

Maybe, if things had started VERY differently, she and Jasper would have found some decent common ground. But the night had not gone that way, it ended with her being violently sick in Jasper's arms, her walking home alone in the rain, stumbling enough times that she had to sit on the wet sidewalk until she could see clearly.

She dug her nails into her palm and sighed.

That was the last time she would combine alcohol with her meds. The pounding headache the next day, Jasper's very pointed, "You should go." No more of that kind of self-medication.

But there would be other distractions. There was one right now at the table by the window, fidgeting idly with her napkin, waiting for her to return.