A/N: If anyone knows what the hell is happening on Scandal other than with the Cyrus storyline or the Fitz being his normal horny teenager in a 50 something year old body self, please, please inform. So confused.
The four girls sat in the living room watching the fifth run around in her tight, sexy, elegant black dress. It was the type of dress that would make the women whose husbands would be flirting with her later want to say something about how cheap she was dressed, but would actually bite their tongues before it gave fruit to the insult since it was as classy as it was seductive. The TV was playing softly in the background, but they found their friend's frantic dash to be on time more entertaining at the moment.
She paused for a moment both hands out as if ready to grab for something the moment she caught sight of it, but the problem was, she didn't see it.
"You took your phone back upstairs with you," she heard one of her friends say. She turned around to see five sets of eyes on her, one of them belonging to the small furball who seemed like he was confused about what she was doing.
She took in her friends. They had that higher education bum vibe going on and, for a fleeting moment, she was jealous that she wouldn't be spending the night with them. They had decided not to party too hard this weekend since Halloween was next weekend and there was guaranteed to be a number of big parties.
"Thanks," she said giving them all a weird look since they were just staring at her, watching like she was the television set instead of the actual television set. She headed for the stairs.
"She looks really cute," Katherine said as she dropped some popcorn into her mouth.
"Yeah," Cai agreed. "She seems more excited about the date than usual. She must really like this Oedipus guy."
"Edison," Abby corrected as they all laughed. The first time Cai had ever heard Olivia speak of Edison was over a bad phone connection, and being that she was obsessed with Greek mythology, had immediately jumped to Oedipus. She had been corrected, but she hadn't put in much effort to make the correction whenever she spoke of him.
"How do I look?"she said coming back down the stairs.
She got a bunch of responses in exaggerated tones and fabricated accents that ranged from the 'If the Queen saw you, she would bow down to you' to 'like a younger version of that pretty lady who played Whitley's mom'. To which she couldn't help but to laugh at the encouraging if somewhat odd responses from her friends. They did make her feel better, which was another reason why she loved living with these girls and loved them even more.
"Just be back early," Abby reminded her. "We have to go to the park early tomorrow to get a good spot."
"Oh, I'm not going tomorrow, I've got a date," she said double checking the contents of her purse.
"Dang girl," Cai said. "You are killing them. Now I feel like a slacker."
"Who'd you have a date with?" Abby asked as she popped open a bag of chips.
"Jake," she said looking down and trying to sound nonchalant about it, but a smile slowly crept to her face.
She looked up through her eyelashes as the room was silent and saw that all of their mouths were open. She broke into an all out grin because she knew this would be their reaction. She was also kinda excited about seeing him again too.
"Hot back of the classroom guy Jake?" Katherine asked as she sat up in her seat.
She nodded.
"Good job," Rosalynn said with and impressed smile.
Katherine began a slow clap, "Bravo. I was beginning to think he was going to get away without anyone of us tagging him."
"Well consider him tagged and mounted," Abby said as she relaxed back into her chair, throwing a sly smile at her friend.
"You guys it's just a date," she told them. It was. She was still trying to figure this guy out. She didn't know if she wanted to yet tag and or mount him as her friends had suggested she do. Well she did, but that wasn't the focus of the date. She had unknowingly began an intricate dance with this man and she wanted to see how it was going to play out without throwing another variable into it, at least not yet.
"So what'd you find out about him?" Cai asked.
"Okay, I don't want to talk about him right now," she lied. She did but she had to be in an Edison head space tonight. She didn't want to find herself staring off into the distance and smiling goofily while thinking about Jake. Which she had found herself doing once and she hadn't even gone out on the first date with him. She figured it was just a part of that new fling butterflies thing that happened everytime you met someone new, so she expected it to end, but she would have fun with it while it lasted. "I'm going on a date with Edison, remember."
"Alright, alright. Where are you guys going?" Rosalynn asked.
"I don't know," she said as she anxiously held her clutch with both hands. "Edison's supposed to be coming by to pick me up, but..."
"Wait, he's coming here?" Abby asked, holding a chip up in the air.
"Yeah," she said.
"Well that's new," Katherine added. It was. Usually she just asked for a car to come and pick her up. Some of her dates had tried to come by and pick her up but she insisted that they just send a car. But she really liked Edison. He was nice, and seemed more realistically dateable than the others.
"He wanted to meet you guys," she smiled, thinking that her friends would be flattered that she talked about them enough that the man would actually want to meet them. But her smile faded when she saw the look of horror on their faces.
"He's going to be coming inside?" Rosalyn asked with a slight accent.
"Yeah," she confirmed, trying to figure out if she had made a mistake. Maybe her friends wouldn't be excited about meeting her date who could possibly be one of the best networking relationships they would have this early in their careers.
They all jumped up and started grabbing stuff. "We have to clean up," Katherine said voicing all of their thoughts. "I have to look presentable. Liv you can't just drop this on us like this."
She watched as he friends started to tidy the living room. It really wasn't that bad. She had seen it way worse. As a matter of fact, it would be way worse in a couple of weeks during the road to the end of semester tests. They were all pretty clean for the most part, but they were still students, so their apartment looked lived in, not messy and definitely never dirty, which was another reason that they were able to live in harmony.
"Guys grab everything," Rosalynn said as she grabbed one of her books and a bunch of the dog's toys to take upstairs. She just so happened to past by the dog who was perched on the arm of the arm chair looking at them all as if they were crazy. "Com'on Manny, get your shit together," she yelled at the dog, which was in itself comedic. All of them started laughing, but stopped abruptly when the doorbell rang.
Olivia rolled her eyes, "You guy's, it's fine. He's not like that." She then went to answer the door leaving her friends staring at the entrance to the foyer as if they were in a horror movie and they hadn't seen the antagonist in a while.
She opened the door and smiled at seeing him standing there, looking very handsome in his tuxedo.
"Wow," he said giving her a once over, before landing on her face. He studied her face for a moment before looking into her eyes. "You look beautiful."
"Thank you," she smiled again, feeling giddy. Edison showered her with attention and compliments, and she loved that. Especially after dating nothing but college guys for the last few years. And then the other more mature men she had been dating while in DC. They always seemed to be focused more on something else. Sure they complimented her and lavished her with gifts and attention, but she always felt like she, as a person, was more of a second thought, a bonus that came along with whatever their main priority was. But she didn't feel like that with him.
She heard someone behind her clear their throat and turned around to see the four girls standing there, seemingly having done the whole finger through hair comb and cheek smack in their haste attempt to not look like they had come home after class and slipped into a state of unapologetic uselessness.
"These are my friends," she said as she turned back to them. "The ones I told you about."
"Yes," Abby added. "The ones who will need jobs after they graduate."
Olivia turned back to her friends and smiled at the not so subtle hint.
"Hi, I'm Katherine," the woman said with a smile. "If you have a single well off friend you'd like to introduce me to, I can forgo the job."
The man laughed as he shook her hand and told her he'd see what he could do.
"I'm Abby," she said reaching to take his hand as well. "I actually do need the job."
Again he laughed. Olivia knew he didn't realize how serious her friends were.
"Rosalyn," the third woman said as she too shook his hand. "I'd take either offer."
Cai didn't even bother introducing herself as she shook his hand and went right to a question she seemed to have been itching to ask someone with some insider knowledge. "Is there a minimum idiot requirement for congress."
"Okay," Olivia said as she looped her arm around Edison and began leading them to the door. "I think its time we head out. I will see you guys when I get back."
"But...," Cai tried to interject.
"Bye Cai," Olivia said as she closed the door behind her.
She apologized to Edison on his way back to the car. He told her that there was no need to as she had described them perfectly, vocally opinionated and ambitious. She smiled and reminded him that she may also have used the word insane when she described them.
He opened the door to the town car and she slid in before he closed her door and went around to the other side. They spent the car ride with him filling her in on his recent trip back to Florida and her filling him in on school and other things that had occurred in her life while he was gone. She left out the part about her meeting a guy.
She was surprised when they pulled up to a very expensive restaurant. She had expected them to go to a banquet hall. She was even more surprised when she saw that they would be dining alone when the garcon led them to their table. It was a table for two in a more secluded part of the restaurant. There were other people in the area, the tables just weren't as plentiful or as close together and she guessed from the looks of it that people dining in this area paid more to do so.
"I thought we were going to a fundraiser," she told him as he pulled out her chair for her.
"I thought we might do a little something different this time," he told her as he went around to the other side to take his seat. "Something a little more intimate."
She looked into his eyes to see where he was going with this. She figured that Edison liked her a little more, or differently than her other political friends, but she didn't know to what extent.
"I hope you don't mind," he stated as he read the hesitation in her eyes.
She smiled at him, "No, not at all."
Their dinner was actually going well. There conversation had been flowing smoothly and surprisingly they had talked very little about politics. The food and service were both amazing and she was actually having a pretty good time just the two of them.
"You know I'm not leaving town until the day after tomorrow," he told her. Maybe we can get together tomorrow and do something. "There's this luncheon to raise money for Crosby's campaign."
He gave her a hopeful look, hoping that she was getting the message that he was trying to be more than just a networking source or a good time.
She looked at him and smiled before looking down at the floor. "I'm sorry, I can't." She told him. "I have a date."
"Oh," he said, obviously disappointed. He quickly tried to recover. "I take it I'll see you there then."
"Oh, no," she corrected him. "It's a guy in my class. We're probably just going to do some regular, non political stuff."
He smiled at her as she tried to make light of her date in order to try to soften the blow of rejection. "Yeah, non political stuff is always good. Everyone needs a break from the hustle and bustle every now and then."
She smiled and took another sip of her wine. Great, now she was thinking about her date with Jake the following day.
"Are you kidding me?" She asked rhetorically as she turned to sit facing him. "There is no way Andre the Giant was better than Brett Hart. No way."
"Uh, yes way," he said in a valley girl sort of way. They both smiled at their childish, though serious argument. "The guy is a fighter in and out of the ring. His body was literally trying to kill itself and he still came out and wrestled. Hart has never done anything like that."
"He's had stuff happen to him," she defended, half heartedly.
"Like what?" He quickly countered, "Did his curl fall after he sweat too much during one of his matches." He smiled as she was already in a fit of laughter before he could even finish the sentence.
They were sitting in the middle of the park, just talking. It was beautiful out, a little chilly but it was the end of October, but the crisp fall air just made you feel more alive as it drifted across their exposed skin. It was the perfect fall day. He had gone by the place her remembered walking them to that afternoon and they had gone to grab a late lunch. After that, they had gone by a musical art exhibit that was in town and had danced and did some karaoke and watched a few musicians and artists create and perform some pieces.
After they had gone to the park since neither of them wanted to end their date just yet. They had gotten some hot chocolate and found a bench with a good view of the fountain but not close enough that they were interrupted by the crowd that formed there. They actually had a little bit of privacy, save for the occasional jogger or other random person walking by. They had easily fallen into conversation that tangetially flowed from subject to subject. They were talking like they had known each other for years. They were bringing up things from me each other's past that they had shared earlier and connecting it to topics that popped up later. She was actually impressed by how good of a listener he was that he was actually able to do that.
"Alright," she said coming down from her laughter, "you are going to stop talking about one of my favorite wrestlers of all time."
"Don't blame me," he told her. "Those guys ruined wrestling for me."
"How did they ruin it for you?" She said, not believing him.
"They ushered in that whole pretty boy wrestling era," he explained. "And when you're an eleven year old boy and you ask your sister which one she wants to win and she answers back the sexy one, you kinda just turn the channel and never look back."
She laughed, "So you have a sister?"
"Had," corrected. "She passed away when I was fourteen."
"Oh, I'm sorry," she said regretting honing in on that point, but she was trying to figure out all she could about him. "Was she the oldest?"
"Yeah. By two years," he said as he looked ahead at the fountain, seemingly reminiscing. She studied him for a moment before doing the same.
"You have any siblings?" He asked after a while. He could feel the silence starting to get too thick. He didn't want to have all that time to think about his sister, not her death anyway.
"Nope, I'm the only one," she said as she turned back to him. She smiled when she saw how he was looking at her, as if studying her.
"Somehow I knew that," he said, and she laughed.
"You did not," she told him, and he nodded his head indicating he did. "How?"
"Because you have what my grandmother would call an air of self about you," he told her.
"What is that supposed to mean?" she said trying to sound slightly offended. She got what he was hinting at, and she couldn't deny it was partially true. It used to be more true before she was forced to share a dorm with two other girls.
"Nothing," he told her. "It's not as bad as it could be."
"Are you trying to say I'm self centered?" She asked him with a hint of playfulness in her voice.
"No, all I'm saying is," he paused trying to find the right words, "you seem to be very aware of what you want and what you need and you find a way to take it. The good thing is you don't try to screw everybody else over in the process. But you also won't let anyone screw you over either. You stand up for yourself...and others. I like it."
She smiled, and they joked around and flirted some more before they decided to get up and grab some dinner at The Noodle Factory. Neither of them were ready to end the date so they ended up meeting up with her friends at the park.
A/N: So this is all that I have written out so far. There is a chance that another funk will be coming on soon though and I will have to write my way out of it so hopefully I'll have more soon as well as more for my other two stories. Again Scandal...No clue.