Title: Bruins and Rebels | Chapter Two | Cheerleaders and
Socialites
Author: Nate
Pairing: Paris/Jess, and some couplings with the ancillary characters introduced in later chapters.
Spoilers: The big one would be the Jess/Milo spin-off series, which takes the Jess character to Venice, CA with his father. Otherwise it's unlikely I'm spoiling any of the upcoming plots. The earth-shattering and horrible news from The Big One is included and a major factor in the story.
Rating: PG-13 so far (although there's some description of a sexual act, it's tame though.)
Disclaimer: Amy Sherman-Palladino, Hofflund-Pollone and Warner Bros. Television along with the newer companies involved with the spin-off own the Paris and Jess characters. Jeopardy! is from Merv Griffin, King World, and Sony Pictures Television, I'm just using the show for storytelling purposes.
Archiving: Usual suspects; FF.net and LWL. Make sure to ask if you want to archive it yourself.
Summary: Paris settles into life at UCLA and in the dorms, and meets her roommate for the first time. Both Paris and the roommate learn blind first impressions don't really last all that long.
Author's Notes: I'm surprised by the amount of positive feedback I got from the first chapter of this, thanks so much you all. And to answer a concern from a reviewer about the Paris/Rory latent lesbianism conversation they shared, I realize not every woman wants Angelina Jolie, but it was meant to be a joke between Paris and Rory, and not a reflection on the entire female sex. It's also an in-joke among my fic buddies, and the opportunity just presented itself to fit it in within the plot of this story. And Jayta, the reason I had Jamie be dumped by Paris like that is I don't really like the character and just want him to go away. I didn't want to write one line of dialogue for Jamie, but I had to give Paris some reason to leave him, thus his line.
If you're trying to picture Paris' roommate by the way, think of Mila Kunis from That 70's Show. She's Jackie in case you need some reference. I think she's kinda cute and very smart, so I decided that she'd be a perfect foil/college buddy for Paris.
Onto the second chapter then, keep reading and reviewing, 'cause it makes me feel all warm and fuzzy. Thanks to Ash and Chris for betaing for me once again, I don't know what I'd do without you crazy girls :).
"Look, like I said to that other annoying guy over at the First USA booth, I already have enough credit cards, thank you. I don't give a damn if it has the UCLA logo on it, your stupid Visa has an insane interest rate and a late fee that would be illegal in my home state! Not to mention your cards target low-income minorities who really need to be taught to save more than they should be racking up a bill in your irresponsible manner. Teach them all how to spend wisely and maybe I'll reconsider."
"But I'm offering you a free MBNA traveler's mug with the UCLA football schedule printed on the side just for signing up, what could you lose if you already have a sterling credit record ma'am?"
"I said already I don't want one. There's a handy thing called the web to find out when the Bruins next play the Ducks, and I can pick up a mug just like yours for $2 at 7-Eleven, and fill it to the brim for just 50¢! What part of no don't you understand?!"
"But it has the logo--"
"I don't really care if the card is made out of gold with a diamond-encrusted hologram, I don't want any card offered here on campus! Now kindly quit following me you lowly gnat or else I'll mace you and report you to the FTC for harassment!" Paris tore herself away from the perky woman offering her a college credit card, and groaned as another man, this time from CalFed tried to lure her into signing up for a frequent-flier's Mastercard. Thankfully she saw him before he could approach, and Paris used her evil stare on him, along with her most terse voice.
"I don't travel, I don't rent a car, and I'm not about to start buying my groceries on credit, so don't even utter a word about how convenient your card will make my life unless you're hungry for a knuckle sandwich." Don't these idiots realize I'm not about to drop this box of books just to get a card? Paris thought to herself as she tried her best to avoid the famous gaggle of credit card tables that seemed to permeate university quadrangles at the beginning of each school year. She knew from other students that the banks were downright predatory when it came to signing new customers, but not that horrible at trying to rope her into extra credit she didn't really need. It was not only annoying but unneeded, couldn't anyone have seen she was already well to do?
Finally past the circus atmosphere of the quad, Paris made her way to her new dorm, as she carried a small yet heavy box of textbooks she had picked up at the campus bookstore, along with the instructions and equipment to hook her PowerBook up to the school's WiFi network. Her feet ached in the open-toed sandals she wore to make the trip over after she parked her car in her building's parking lot, and she was thinking that she would definitely need the help of Dr. Scholl in order to stay on her toes at UCLA, so to speak. She was very thankful she had the foresight of ordering some of the heavier texts online and having them stored in LA before she left Hartford, and felt that the $65 shipping and handling charge she incurred was worth every penny.
She arrived back at her dorm at the Saxon Suites a few minutes later, after negotiating some hilly terrain and learning the hard way, that there was a reason Los Angeles was the city where a car was a requirement rather than an option.
"Room 343, 3-4-3, 343," she said to herself as she walked into the front foyer of the building, and made her way over to the bulletin board where she'd find out if she was going to have a roommate or get the dorm room all to herself. Finding the sheet on the board with room assignments, she scanned the paper up and down until 343 popped out at her. Discovering the listing, she read it aloud to herself.
"Ahh, here we are, 343, shared room. Paris E. Gellar, freshman, and Brianna M. Daugherty, freshman." She gasped at the name, and rolled her eyes. "Just great, I have myself a real winner in the brain department. I'll have to get used to her constant Bring it On DVD viewings and tripping over her pom-poms, Brianna is such a cheerleader's name." Thoughts in her mind that she'd need to make sure to talk to housing after she settled in about a roommate change, she shoved her way past the students walking and running their ways back and forth in the hallways and ended up at the elevator, digging her key ring out of her pocket and trying to be as prepared as she could for when she walked into her dormitory for the first time.
Meanwhile, another girl overloaded with baggage and duffel bags shoved her way through the wide entrance doorway, and struggled to keep her bags balanced as she made her way to the same bulletin board Paris had looked at moments before. The curly-tressed girl with black hair dropped all of her stuff on the ground, and scanned the assignment sheet for her room number.
"341, 342, 343...OK. I'm sharing a room with a Paris E. Gellar, hmm." She wrinkled her forehead and imagined what a Paris type girl would look like. Suffice that the image that came to her head was not positive. "Oh crap, I have a daddy's girl in my room. Guess this means she'll be making herself scarce because she's an average LA slut who loves the eye of the camera. And if she's in, I don't even want to imagine what whacked things she has planned like orgies and drinking parties." She curled some of her long jet-black hair around her index finger, and tried to figure out the best way to introduce herself. "Hey, I'm Bree, hope to see you around a few times--no, too vague. I'm Brianna, but you can call me Bree if you'd like--What am I doing, hitting on her?! Damn, this is going to be harder than I thought." She kept mumbling to herself about introductions to Paris as she took all of the bags she had back into her arms, and started for the four-floor climb up to her dorm room.
Paris made her way through the crowded fourth floor hallway, trying to avoid the pesky men and women who were soon to be gone for the Greek houses along Sunset and Wilshire, along with the RA whom she met a few hours before and tried to be 'a friend' to her. The only thing that meeting had done was convince Paris that there wasn't much needed aptitude or intelligence needed to become the RA of a residence hall floor.
"Hey Doug, catch!" Paris soon found herself in between two dimbulbs tossing a football back and forth between 318 and 319. "I'm open Ronnie, go deep!"
Paris was starting to seethe, and she wasn't going to get to her dorm with these two throwing the ball and blocking her path. She dropped the box of books on the ground, gave the box a hard shove on the carpeted floor to attempt to get the box past the two dorms. She then walked towards the two guys, and after Ronnie followed through on his throw, she lept up into the air and intercepted the ball.
"What the hell you?!" Doug screamed. "I was trying to catch that!!"
"Why don't you just catch my drift Mr. Quarterback; don't play ball when I'm around, I'm not happy when you do. Stay out of my way Doug, I'll make your life a living hell." She tossed the ball back to Doug, bent down and picked up her books, and continued on her merry way down the hall, leaving Ronnie stunned. Doug on the other hand decided to enjoy the quick show Paris was providing him by bending down to pick up the box.
"By the way you have a nice ass honeybunch!" Doug yelled towards Paris. She rolled her eyes, groaned, and quickly returned fire at her first sexually crude comment ever in college. "Horndog, get a life, or a blow-up doll!" Her voice reached Doug's ears, and he quickly backed off and continued with his across-the-hall classic with Ronnie.
The foot traffic started thinning out around Paris, and she was relieved to find that room 343 was an end room in the southeast part of the building, complete with close staircase access to the campus and her car nearby, making the moving in process more palatable.
Thankful that a bed was just a few feet away, she unlocked the door to the dorm, opened it up, and placed the box of books she had just hauled across campus onto the kitchen counter off to her right, which had an open kitchenette. The room was more like a studio apartment for two people rather than a dorm in the traditional sense. There were three areas of the main room, the kitchenette on Paris' right separated a little with a peninsula counter, then a large two bed sleeping area on the side farthest away from the door, and a small little corner for a 19" TV, with a built-in long desk for Paris and Brianna's computer equipment to the left. There was a cramped little bathroom around the corner from the kitchenette, it featured a shower/bathtub, toilet and sink, not much else.
The room was better than Paris expected. It was painted a sterile peach like all other dorm rooms, but it had character to it, Paris could think of a thousand ways to make the room homey. And she couldn't beat the view outside her window, with a beautiful panoramic view of the UCLA campus, and to her right facing the window, a small peek beyond a grove of palm trees and homes of the distant Santa Monica skyline. It's not the manor, but I can get used to this. It was already more than any Harvard dormitory could ever have, most of the rooms in Cambridge were limited to shared cramped corners where a floor common room was the main entertaining area, and a small computer lab had to be carved out of several rooms. A small amount of dorms even had shared bathrooms. Slowly, Paris was just now realizing how many shortcomings she'd have if she stayed in an Ivy League school.
She kicked her shoes off next to her bed, the farthest from the window, and collapsed onto the bare mattress, worn out altogether from what had ended up being a four day trip cross country. One of those freak August snowstorms in the high Rockies that occasionally close the mountain passes stranded Paris in Denver for two days, and by the time she got back on the roads and out of Colorado she had to sleep in a Las Vegas hotel her third night due to exhaustion from so much driving. She also cursed that she didn't bring along an extra change of clothes with her, so she ended up having to do her laundry in a St. George, Utah laundromat, wearing her robe as she washed all the clothes she brought with her on the drive west. No way was she about to comply with an average male's fantasy of walking into a coin laundry and finding a girl wearing nothing but a smile or at least a bra and panties throwing Snuggle sheets in the dryer.
Her mind wandered off into the first LA rush hour she had ever experienced. She was used to the hell of driving into Boston around the Big Dig quagmire, and traffic into downtown Hartford could sometimes test her patience, so she thought that was the worst traffic that could be thrown at her.
Dealing with the six lanes of backup on the Santa Monica between the 101 and the Harbor Freeways south of downtown LA though was enough to drive her to vehicular homicide.
One jackknifed semi in the eastbound lane should've been a non-factor to the westbound drivers, but an hour later, Paris was still honking her horn like a madwoman trying to get the traffic in her lane moving again. "What the hell, do you get horny at the sight of a car wreck like in the movie Crash, move it you peabrains!!" she screamed, as the soundproofing in her Jaguar was tested to its limits. Sick of waiting to get to her new home, she peeled across five lanes and exited at San Pedro, driving through downtown until she hit Wilshire and a direct route to the college. She finally arrived at UCLA around 2:30, a day and a half later than she planned.
Paris was tired and worn out, and even in her old grey Chilton gym shirt and jeans, and with no sheets or pillows at all on the bed, the first thing she needed was sleep, and lots of it. She was feeling so unmotivated from the summer, and didn't want to go down to the storage place just to pick up a blanket and pillows. And because the air conditioning for the room had to be set up by each individual pair of students in each dorm room, the cool blast of air she was expecting when she walked in never came because the temperature hadn't been set up. If she had a dorm alone she would've just taken off her clothes and lay there in the hot room, but figured that Brianna wouldn't be very pleased to be greeted by the sight of her roommate in her underwear.
She was about to settle herself in for a quick nap, when she heard some banging outside on the door.
"What the heck?" she said to herself, and wondering why she forgot to stop at her car to at least pick up her self-defense bat. Cautiously, she approached the door tentatively, and brought those tae kwon do lessons from the 8th grade to the front of her mind, just in case.
"Who's in front of my door?"
"Who are you and what are you doing in my room?" the voice on the other side asked.
"Your room? You must be mistaken, this is my room," Paris responded, incensed.
"Is your name Paris Gellar?"
Gee, I don't know, let me check my driver's license. "That's my name."
"Is it safe to come in?"
The girl behind the door was starting to irk her. "Yeah, I don't have anything unpacked yet."
"Well is there a guy in there with you doing lines?"
Paris' eyes just about popped out of their sockets. "WHAT??!! I don't do drugs, or have sex with any guy that walks by."
"But your name--"
That was it, Paris was at her wit's end. She threw the door open, and shocked Brianna by starting on a ramble. "Listen here missy, my name is not my fault, blame my mother on that one. I've only had one sexual experience in my lifetime, and the only drugs I've ever done are named NyQuil and Vivarin, and even then only during exam time, I also do Lactaid in case you're interested. I'm trying to get somewhere with my life, and if my suspicions are right, you're the Brianna listed next to me on the dorm assignment sheet."
"Why yes, I am--" she started talking meekly, but Paris interrupted her before she continued further.
"Thought so. Listen here cheer girl, if you expect me to be happy with your peppy lifestyle and to take listening to bad techno all day as you practice your annoying little routines as you spread eagles and pyramid or whatever you do, you're dead wrong. It's girls like you who drag the rest of the female sex down to a level equivalent to Burmese sweatshop workers, here most of us try to make sure guys are the weaker sex, but you girls with your Justin Timberlake, Barbie doll pom-pom loving overpowdered faces are trying to keep us down, it's no wonder we're not all wearing 17 layers of dresses and still going to finishing school thanks to women like you." She sneered the last words. "Slutty cheerleader."
Brianna couldn't believe that Paris was laying into her the moment she walked into the room. All she had wanted was help with her bags, but instead got a lecture on women's lib. She hesitated and calmed herself down before she said something she might regret. Walking into the room and laying her bags right next to the door, she walked the distance over to her bed, sitting across from Paris, and very unhappy with how the girl had introduced herself. Brianna's blue eyes stared into the blonde's deep browns, and she prepared to take away all of Paris' misconceptions with two simple sentences.
"I'm sorry, you're calling the runner-up in the 2000 Jeopardy! Teen Tournament a cheerleader? Interesting, seeing as I loathe any girl with a short skirt, tight breast-filling sweater and a peppy attitude that ever walked passed me." She took a look into the window, and then faced Paris once again. "I'm pleased you share my opinion of the cheerocracy Miss Gellar, and I'm flattered you think I'm pretty enough to pass for a cheerleader. However if I ever do inexplicably decide to join the Bruins squad, I give you power of attorney to assist in my suicide, seeing as I have lost my mind."
"Um, Jeopardy!?" Paris now had the problem of having lack of speech. "So you aren't a cheerleader?"
Brianna held out her hand. "Brianna Daugherty, valedictorian of the class of 2003, Antioch High in Antioch, California, near Oakland. And you would be?"
"Um, Paris Gellar, 3rd in my class of 2003, Chilton Academy of Hartford, Connecticut." She shook the girl's hand, and couldn't believe it. "You're kidding, valedictorian?"
Brianna smiled back proudly. "Sure was, out of a class of 610, I was the #1 student, with honors. I worked my butt off for twelve years to not only please my parents, but to chase a dream." She looked up at Paris apologetically. "I'm sorry, I thought you were a druggie heiress with loose morals, your name had me thinking of Paris Hilton and her sister Nikki."
"I'm honored," Paris responded, smiling back. "I was born just around the time the fair Miss Hilton and her twin sister were brought into the world, and my mother knew theirs. Sadly Mrs. Hilton suggested the advantages of naming a child after the French capital, thus I was saddled with the same name. They were my playmates for a couple years, but then the Hiltons moved their summer home away from the Connecticut side of Long Island Sound, thus they're just a blur in my life. But thank God because the way they party and that whole messy association with Lizzie Grubman keeps me far from even considering renewing our friendship."
"Any other famous people you know?"
"Not really, I keep to myself most of the time and have a small circle of friends. The closest one is Madeline Lynn up in Seattle, and my other two friends, Louise and Rory, are in Miami and New Haven, respectively. I also have a former crush down in North Carolina I haven't seen in a couple years, but I'm not into him anymore."
"I see," Brianna nodded her head and looked up at the ceiling. "My friends are spread out too. My best friend Lara is just starting Georgia Tech, Ellie is attending Kentucky and Kaitlin, the second in my class is at Harvard."
Paris sucked in a breath at the mention of her dream school. "Can you say Boston instead Brianna, I'm not a big fan of that school anymore." She frowned, and looked down at her bare feet.
Brianna quickly understood why Paris didn't want the H-word mentioned around her. "Oh God, I'm sorry Paris, I didn't know--"
"It's OK, that's one of the reasons I decided on UCLA, because it was as far away from Harvard as I can possibly get. I worked hard to get into that school for so long, and they turned me down..."
Brianna looked deep in thought as Paris described her rejection, trying to remember where she had seen the girl in front of her before. She's familiar to me, but I don't know from where or how, hmm." Finally, it dawned on her.
"Are you Paris as in 'I confessed I lost my virginity and announced my rejection on live TV during a speech looking like crap' Paris?"
Paris gulped rather audibly, and returned her gaze to the floor. "In the flesh, you were watching C-SPAN that night?" she mumbled.
"Well I was channel surfing and came upon some girl bitching about how Harvard had screwed her over and that she deserved to get into it because of all her hard work. Once you yelled 'I had sex, but I didn't get into Harvard,' my face was red and I was going 'that poor girl, I hope she'll live'. And then you were pointing to the other girl in the speech and talking about how she was getting in 'cause she hadn't gotten any yet, and she was just dragging you off stage in an attempt to save your dignity. I can't believe that you were that girl, holy crap!" She looked down at the girl across from her, hopeful she hadn't opened up old wounds. "Did I make you mad Paris, please say you're not ticked off."
Instead Paris looked up at Brianna once again, and smiled. "It's not my most shining moment in the sun, but looking back it was pretty funny. That was Rory who was my speech partner, she was my rock through that whole rejection thing. Lo and behold she did get accepted to Harvard, but she was just so pissed off at Harvard rejecting me that she wanted nothing to do with them at all. Her grandfather was pushing for her to go to Yale, so she decided to go there instead, and we had fun using her town's bonfire to burn anything Harvard we had in our possession. Funny thing was two years before she was my most loathed enemy, and now we've become fast friends. The whole school competition thing, you know?"
"Yeah, I know how that feels, me and Lara were kind of hateful back in ninth grade. She had just moved to Antioch from a small town in Stanislaus County, and I hated her the moment she stepped into my school because she was one of those innocent girls who got the good grades and the acclaim. I wanted to hate her because she wanted to get into Stanford as bad as I did."
"You wanted to get into the Harvard of the West?" Paris asked. "Your dream school, wasn't it Bree?"
Brianna frowned, really not wanting to get into the story of rejection, but doing so anyways for the sake of Paris. "Ever since second grade that was all I thought about doing, was getting into Stanford. I did the whole charity thing, ran Student Council and the multiple committees, did everything I could possibly do to fit as many community service hours into my life, I even had a pretty good volleyball career going 'till I pulled my hamstring in a JV game, so I quit that because sports was becoming such a burden. It didn't help that my parents wanted nothing but Stanford for me, they quashed down my at least looking at the University of San Francisco just in case I did get rejected. I got the rejection letter around mid-February, and didn't emerge from my room except for school for about two weeks after. I mean I had a guy at Stanford who knew me by name and saw my rejection letter, yet he didn't have the courage to break the news to me."
"I was devastated beyond words, and the worst was yet to come. Lara did get the invitation to Palo Alto, and here I was without even a safety college to depend on, and to make it worse, my mother decided to try to talk to the chancellor about getting me in. Of course that went rather disastrously, and I was put on the unofficial blacklist for schools in the Bay Area. My counselor rescued me from getting stuck in community college by sending in a last minute application to here, and my scholarship winnings from Jeopardy! made it easy for UCLA to accept me. They weren't really my last choice in any way, but it made me realize that I shouldn't work myself ragged just to get into a school like Stanford. I consider this year to be more of an academic vacation and a chance to recharge than my first year at a major university."
"Me too Bree, I mean I had applied to all the Ivy League schools, but inexplicably I decided that I needed a couple safety schools east of the Appalachians just in the rare case that all of them rejected me. So with all the others I sent in applications to here at UCLA and BYU. I didn't expect BYU to accept me because I did end up violating their strict moral code, and saying I did the deed on national TV kind of ruined my chances with them. But I didn't expect UCLA to be so accepting of me, and when everything came down, I was just in this big funk where I wanted things to change, and I didn't want to live up to my legacy of the Gellars stubbornly sticking to Harvard and the Ivy League anymore. It just happened to come along at the right time, and I just felt that if I moved to California, things will change for the better."
"So we could both say that this year is going to be more play than work?" Brianna asked Paris.
"Yeah, I could say that, but I'm not going to let my studies go, this is UCLA after all, not Michigan State."
"I hate party schools, they just focus on their stupid basketball teams and don't give a damn about their academics. UCLA has some good teams, but it still has a good academic tradition at least." Brianna sighed, as Paris looked on at her new roommate.
"You know," Paris said, trying to broach conversation. "I do remember watching you in the teen tournament finals that year Brianna, you were pretty good for someone like yourself, and I thought you were easily going to win the last round and take the car and the larger scholarship. I noticed in that last episode though, you were really distracted. Don't wonder why I can still remember this, but your mind was somewhere else. What happened to you that day?"
Brianna stood up off of her bare bed, and paced the room, trying to figure out a way to answer the question. Apparent to her was that she had so far won Paris' trust, and with Paris' embarrassing incident on national TV, she figured if she decided to tell the story of her Jeopardy! tournament, that they could relate to each other so much more. She made her way towards the kitchen area, and the petite woman boosted herself onto the peninsula counter. She stared at Paris with grave seriousness.
"Now Paris, if I tell you what happened, will you promise not to breathe a word to this story to anyone you meet? The only two people who know about this are my mother and father, and there's a reason for that."
"Ooh, sure Brianna, who am I even going to tell anyways? I don't know anyone at all here." Paris walked into the kitchenette and sat atop the dishwasher.
"Cross your heart?"
"Crossing it tightly," she said, a trusting tone to her voice. "Now tell me."
Brianna stared out towards the beds as she told the story of her very unique experience on one of America's most popular game shows. "Well the whole tournament thing had started out really well, I was photogenic and smart, exactly what the producers were looking for when I tried out in San Francisco. So they paid my way to Philadelphia, where the college and teen tourneys were held that year. My mom and dad were so proud of me, and I couldn't be happier to be representing lil' ol' Antioch on Jeopardy!. Anyways, the first two rounds went pretty well, I creamed all five contestants I took on, I figured it had to truly be such a weak pool of students. They were getting the gimme categories all wrong, and somehow they managed to screw up on the daily doubles, I mean one girl decided to risk it all on a question involving some obscure Polish philosopher. I didn't get a daily double at all, but somehow I managed to do pretty well in both games, first one I scored $12,500, and the second I made an amount plus a dollar bid, so I had $11,901. As for the semi-final, I was unstoppable, $14,563, I had this aura around that no one was going to get in my way and beat me."
"But that all changed when Leonard Sharpe came along."
Now Paris had known that Leonard was a third-podium player when he came into the 2000 tournament, and had barely eeked out second place scores in each round. The tournament system of winners first, high scores second seemed to be against him, but somehow his $17,000 second place total in his second game seemed to hold through the quarterfinals, so he got third podium once again in his semifinal, which was separate from Brianna's game. The other two contestant's quarterfinal and qualifying games were games they ended with under $10,000 though, proving that they really weren't the smartest. Leonard ended up taking his semifinal, and along with him, Brianna and the second place contestant from her game were set for the finals.
"Now I remember the scores from that game Brianna," Paris said as she tried mining her mind for the numbers. "You had the highest score of all nine episodes, so you got podium one, while Leonard got the second, and Sheynhar number three. But somehow, Leonard took it all with a $17,750 score, while Sheynhar got around $7,500. But you, who had the podium one advantage, had a lowly $4,000 score before Final Jeopardy!, which was so low you had to risk all $4,000 for the second place prize. I wondered whatever happened to you, and what led to such a bad final round."
"Guess," Brianna said with a raised eyebrow.
"You were nervous about the final game."
"No."
"Um, you accidently walked past Alex backstage in violation of game rules, and you threw the game because you might've accidentally seen the big card."
"Try again Paris."
Paris pondered her brain for more possibilities of Brianna's championship meltdown. "The buzz-in button was on the fritz?"
"Nope."
"You forgot to put in your contacts and couldn't see the board?"
"I have 20/20 vision."
"Johnny Gilbert mispronounced your name during introductions and it threw off your concentration?"
The girl laughed. "Now you're just getting desperate."
"The categories weren't your strong suit."
"I have an academic brain which can mix many facts, I have many interests."
"OK, one more guess. You were sick on the inside, but didn't show it on the outside."
"All of them were wrong Paris, I'm sorry." Brianna gave Paris a straight answer. "I met Leonard down at the pool in the hotel, not knowing he was in the game at all. He just had this suaveness about him, and he was pretty cute. We get to talking and find we share the same interests and love the same things, and he thought I was attractive. Well, one thing led to another, my hormones were going crazy along with his, and then he says to me 'Want to go up to my room?'" Brianna looked down at her hands and played with her Antioch class ring. "I said yes. I didn't usually date or go out with guys, so the attention he gave me was such a turn-on, he kept commenting about how he'd love to play with my hair, and kiss my plump lips, and that he got lost in my eyes, and how even though I don't have much meat on my bones, I was very curvaceous."
Paris tried to say something, but felt that silence would be best, lest her new roommate breakdown and take her to task for something she said. She just nodded and let Brianna continue. "Leonard was wonderful to me, and he just eased me into everything, sliding my shirt off with ease and starting to kiss down my neck. He made his way down my body as if I was porcelain, and before I knew it, my passionate side came out. I was tugging at his shirt, and winding my fingers through his hair, and fumbling at his belt as we got into...it. I remember everything like it was yesterday, from putting on the condom for him, his lips suckling my breasts, and then when he broke me. I mean God Paris, for my first time and losing my virginity, he was great. I just got so lost in Leonard, and we made love, I made love to him as if I was putting all the passion I put into getting into Stanford into just that one expression. And then the way he said my name, it gave me a shiver of arousal. I fell asleep in his arms, and wished I didn't have to leave his side, I wanted Leonard to be my boyfriend forever. But I knew that he'd be one of those guys you knew was going to be just a one-night stand, so I left his room the next morning telling him I'd never forget him, and I hope we'd meet again someday. He told me that he wished the same, and that he loved me."
"You know how much girls like us just want those three words said to us, so I told him that I loved him too. I was never going to tell anyone that I had lost my virginity to such a great guy, because it was just one of those things you want to treasure for yourself and not ever tell anyone about."
"I get to the auditorium a few hours later, and of course the contestants and Alex are separated until the actual start of the show, but we do get a sheet of what to expect to do for the championship, and the sheet also has the names of the competing players on it. I hadn't been paying attention to the other finals because I'm superstitious, so the two people I'd be taking on in the championship were probably not going to be known to me, except for Sheynhar, who I knew would get in with me because he was nipping on my heels and lost the semi by only $1,400. So I'm looking at it, not thinking much about it at all, when my eyes catch a name starting with L. It gets my attention, and suddenly I'm reading the name aloud to myself."
"It was your lay from the night before of course." Paris felt so much grief for the girl at that moment, and was hoping Brianna could finish the story without starting to shed tears.
"It's OK Paris, plain truth is honest. What I did after that was think that Leonard also did the same thing and tuned out my games, thus he didn't know me at all and we could just chalk it up to some hilarious coincidence that we slept together and competed the next day. But when I got out into the backstage area before they started taping, I found Leonard looking at me with this smug grin on his face. Not the grin of 'fancy seeing you here Bree,' but the Mr. Burns-type that was saying 'Excellent, she's thrown off and my plans are going to work perfectly'. It was so devastating to see that grin was not in appreciation to me, but the only thing he was using me for was to gain a competitive advantage. I tried approaching him to ask what his problem was, but a PA had taken a hold of my hand and took me away from him for makeup."
"Well why didn't you try to tell him what was up, that you didn't want to do the show because he had seduced you and thrown you off?" Paris crossed her arms around her chest as Brianna become distraught at finishing telling her about the tournament.
"Stubborn Irish pride Paris, us Daugherty's just try to suck it up and move on from there. I thought I could easily forget about it, that after the show I could confront him and see if there was an us to salvage. But as they made introductions, he nudges me on the shoulder and goes in this snotty tone 'I hope you had a ball last night, because today's your reality check Brianna'. And this time, when he said my name, he said it as if it was some acidic word that puts a curse on a witch or something. Well that did it, all that work to go so far on Jeopardy! shattered with his words, and as I walked onto the stage and took my podium, I didn't have the confidence I usually exuded. Right next to the guy who had just so shamelessly taken my innocence with him, I couldn't concentrate. I kept thinking of him that night and comparing him to how confident he was answering all those questions. I'd buzz in sometimes and forget the answers, and other times that little plunger on a wire felt like bread dough, and my hands slid all over the button. And when the show went to break, Leonard would look at me smugly and ask if I was sore from the ass-kicking he was giving me. I'd stare back at him and wonder why he didn't go for the obvious little sore spot he aggravated the night before in his bed."
"That smug little bastard!" Paris gritted her teeth at how much she had hated Leonard during the tournament. Her rage against a guy she had only seen on television was building even more, now that she knew the story of why one of the girls she was rooting for to win the car and the scholarship had ended up falling so fast on the stage in Philadelphia. "If I were you Brianna, I would've had that guy holding his groin by the second daily double, what he did was not only horrible, but so violating. I mean you put your trust in this boy, and what does he do, fuck you over like that!"
"Yeah, in more ways than one," Brianna said as she managed a crooked smile. "I would've pressed the issue after the show with the producers and asked that he be disqualified, but I didn't want to seem the cold-hearted bitch that turned such an intimate moment into something big, it took a lot for me to even walk onto that set and face national TV cameras in the first place. I decided to confront Leonard at the hotel once we got back, and we had it out so viciously that my mother had to come in and find out what was going on. I told Leonard to leave and never come back, and he just said 'Thanks for the memories' and left. It was then I finally told my mother what happened, and I fell into her arms, crying my eyes out. I had enough scholarship money from my time on the show, second prize was $25,000, and I didn't really need a car, so I just decided not to pursue action against Leonard and the producers for what happened. I went back to Antioch and didn't tell my friends why I was runner-up, because it was just something that I wanted to put behind me and just learn from as a mistake in life. Things just happen for a reason Paris, and maybe my sleeping with Leonard was something that I needed to learn a lesson from."
"God, I'm so sorry Brianna, you look like a girl any kind of man would kill to want," Paris said to her sincerely as she got off the dishwasher and walked towards the girl, who had tears trailing down her cheeks from telling her story. "Have you even had a boyfriend after Leonard?"
"No, and I have no need for one," she choked out between sobs. "I don't want my heart to break if they decide I'm not good enough for them, it's a pain this girl just cannot take."
"Listen to me Bree, if you mind my calling you by that." Brianna nodded to let Paris use a nickname with her. "Men sometimes don't have the best of intentions, and its clear Leonard was one of them. But if it wasn't for them, we wouldn't be where we are today."
Brianna rolled her eyes. "Paris, I need a pep talk, not a biology lesson."
Paris frowned at herself and how clinical, instead of soothing her words had been. "Heh, sorry, as you can tell, I'm not experienced with the whole 'there, there' reassurance. What I was trying to say is that you're basing your opinion on men on that of your experience, not on the entire sex altogether. Now I may not be your closest friend so far, but somehow I'm sensing that we have a lot in common. We both were rejected by the colleges we wanted to go to, and our first true loves were disasters that we never saw coming before it was too late. I dumped Jamie because he didn't appreciate me announcing I had sex with him on national television, and he didn't care that he wasn't mentioned by name. You know when he asked me out the first time, I wasn't smart enough to notice that he had just asked me to date him?"
"How can you not notice a guy asking you out?" Brianna asked, starting to calm down.
"When you're in zealous competition to cream someone at a debate and have said boy tuned out, that's how." She laughed and placed a hand on Brianna's shoulder. "Bree, I'm not the type of girl who just wants love to come to her in just the snap of a finger. I'd rather wait for the one to come to me, but even then I'm still realistic, a guy isn't getting into my pants unless he's damn near perfect, and he loves me for who I am. I'm just like you, and I can see that rather than being at each other's throats for a guy all the time, we're going to be good roommates, maybe even best friends. Also I can sense that we're both going to be running away screaming from the KCBS Speaker's Corner booths at the malls because we've had embarrassing moments with the airwaves before."
It didn't take long for Brianna's mood to brighten, as her face lit up and she laughed out loud. "P-p-paris, I guess this means where not gonna do a Jennicam-like thing and set up a webcam in the dorm, are we?"
"Over my dead fully-clothed body," Paris responded with snark.
"Good." Brianna climbed down from the peninsula counter, and walked towards Paris. "You know, I think I'm pleased I went with the whole dorm experience now instead of the sororities, I feel like we're going to get along just fine Paris."
"Thank goodness, I wouldn't have liked it if I had to duct tape a line across the room and keep a party girl or guitar guy separated from me. Now I think our only challenge so far is balancing out our individual decorating tastes and how much time we spend in the bathroom each morning. How much of a wardrobe do you have Bree?"
"Not that much, about 14 pairs of pants, 25 shirts, a few skirts and shirts, maybe 20 pairs of shoes and enough delicates. As for bathroom time, I think I'll need the most, about 20 minutes each morning. You don't really need that much makeup Par, I suspect you're spare when it comes to your makeup box. S'OK though, you're pretty without it."
"Aww Bree, you're making me blush," Paris said as she tried to hide her face from Brianna, since she was turning red. "My use of heavy makeup is limited to the few parties I go to. About the only thing I wear daily is a little mascara, lip gloss and just a little powder."
Brianna's smile became wider, and she pointed to Paris' nose. "Oh, and I love the nose ring, let me guess. April rebellion after you needed to do something to make an outrageous statement to your mom?"
"Do you have some kind of scary ESP connection to my brain?"
"Probably, I got my belly button pierced around the same time." Brianna lifted up her shirt a little to reveal the gold piercing jutting from her innie. "Only I did it on a dare from Lara, still my daddy wanted me to take it out. I just convinced him it was better than getting a tattoo or coloring my hair hot green, that changed his mind pretty fast."
"My mother lost four of her nine lives when I walked into the house with the diamond stud in my nose," Paris said to Brianna. "My father was different though. He just shrugged and said 'at least you didn't get a tattoo'. I was actually considering a little Eiffel Tower on my ankle, which would be covered up most of the time, but then I came to my senses when my friend Louise described her experience getting a tattoo of a ladybug on her back, she said that she would never do it again. The artist in her words was 'totally grody', and she said the needle hurt 25 times more than if she just received a simple piercing. So the nose won out, and I won't have to deal with telling my kids why Mommy's little nutty rebellion caused her to have an ugly looking A on her ankle."
"Well I could see someone in Connecticut saying that, but here in California it's a little different. Tattooing is treated more like an art than some underground industry, so there's been some great designs and respected artists, they can go out and be recognized for their work. All of my friends have small tattoos, but I have a fear of foreign objects like India ink in my system, so I haven't had the wherewithal to get one. I'm not going to get it now since my friends aren't here to offer me the support I'd need to get through the whole process, but maybe someday. Probably something as simple as your Eiffel Tower idea, like a clover for my heritage or a butterfly because they're my favorite insect."
Paris decided to reassure her new friend. "If you ever need someone to help you when you decide to go through with it, I'll come with Bree." She smiled and took her hand. "We're stuck with each other for the next year, so we might as well buddy up and learn to go with each other's whims. You're going to have to get used to my overeviewing a test until three in the morning the day before an exam, along with my tendencies to, um...well you already saw me turn a molehill into a mountain with the way I overreacted to you when you came into the room." She laughed nervously. "Sorry about that by the way."
"You're forgiven," Brianna said right back, smiling and getting up. "At least I know I'll have a reviewing partner then, I've been a night owl for a few years, and not even during exam time. TV gets boring after awhile, so it makes me want to occupy my mind with something."
"That's great." Paris surveyed the empty room before her, and Brianna did the same. Their gazes traveled right back towards them. "You know, this room is missing something, namely everything. We better start hauling all our things up here before the Greek pledges decide our cars are enticing targets for their getting-in pranks."
"Probably, I'm not sleeping on an empty bed, and I got an email account that needs checking. Oh, and I gotta catch the SoapNet rebroadcast of General Hospital, got some big plot developments coming down the pipeline."
"How can you watch that claptrap Bree, it's mindless eye candy," Paris exasperated, then rolled her eyes.
"Two words Paris; hot guys."
Paris mischievously grinned back at Brianna, it was time to turn the tables. "Now Days of Our Lives and The Young and the Restless, those are much better soaps, with actual plot."
Brianna looked at Paris as if she had just announced that Santa Claus wasn't real. "Oh please Par, NBC and CBS are horrid, ABC is where all the great plots are going on. One more word for NBC; Passions. Need I say more?"
"Uggghh, I can't believe I admitted to you I watched soap operas. That's about as big a secret as my daily ritual watching of The Simpsons."
Brianna smiled back at her. "I'll try to turn you onto the ABC soaps as we unpack, I can help you with your stuff." She opened up the room door wide and put a doorstop below to keep the door propped.
"Sure Bree, I'll be right down, just have to put my hair in a ponytail." Paris threaded her long tresses into her hand. "Oh, and it'll take more than daily GH viewings to lure me over to the dark side. Excuse me while I fantasize about Bo taking me on my bare mattress."
"Paris, you are one weird woman," Brianna said, smiling back at her new friend and shaking her head. "Just you wait Gellar, the GH bug will bite you one of these nights." She left the room and left Paris alone to put her ponytail in a Scrunci, as the blonde girl looked back on her first meeting with her roommate.
"I think I'm going to like that girl, she's gutsy, clever, and smart. You've just made yourself your first LA friend Paris, pat yourself on the back." She finished creating her ponytail, and walked out of the room to help Brianna move into their dorm. I'm gonna hook her on DOOL if it's the last thing I do though, she thought smugly.
To be continued...
Next chapter: Paris learns the UCLA ropes with Brianna at her side, and ventures out into LA on foot for the first time, trying out the local delicacies at her new friend's urging. As she leaves a restaurant, she bumps into a familiar face, and strikes up a conversation with someone she was looking at with lustful eyes before Jamie came along. Will sparks fly once again, or is it a slow burn that's going to take time?
Author: Nate
Pairing: Paris/Jess, and some couplings with the ancillary characters introduced in later chapters.
Spoilers: The big one would be the Jess/Milo spin-off series, which takes the Jess character to Venice, CA with his father. Otherwise it's unlikely I'm spoiling any of the upcoming plots. The earth-shattering and horrible news from The Big One is included and a major factor in the story.
Rating: PG-13 so far (although there's some description of a sexual act, it's tame though.)
Disclaimer: Amy Sherman-Palladino, Hofflund-Pollone and Warner Bros. Television along with the newer companies involved with the spin-off own the Paris and Jess characters. Jeopardy! is from Merv Griffin, King World, and Sony Pictures Television, I'm just using the show for storytelling purposes.
Archiving: Usual suspects; FF.net and LWL. Make sure to ask if you want to archive it yourself.
Summary: Paris settles into life at UCLA and in the dorms, and meets her roommate for the first time. Both Paris and the roommate learn blind first impressions don't really last all that long.
Author's Notes: I'm surprised by the amount of positive feedback I got from the first chapter of this, thanks so much you all. And to answer a concern from a reviewer about the Paris/Rory latent lesbianism conversation they shared, I realize not every woman wants Angelina Jolie, but it was meant to be a joke between Paris and Rory, and not a reflection on the entire female sex. It's also an in-joke among my fic buddies, and the opportunity just presented itself to fit it in within the plot of this story. And Jayta, the reason I had Jamie be dumped by Paris like that is I don't really like the character and just want him to go away. I didn't want to write one line of dialogue for Jamie, but I had to give Paris some reason to leave him, thus his line.
If you're trying to picture Paris' roommate by the way, think of Mila Kunis from That 70's Show. She's Jackie in case you need some reference. I think she's kinda cute and very smart, so I decided that she'd be a perfect foil/college buddy for Paris.
Onto the second chapter then, keep reading and reviewing, 'cause it makes me feel all warm and fuzzy. Thanks to Ash and Chris for betaing for me once again, I don't know what I'd do without you crazy girls :).
"Look, like I said to that other annoying guy over at the First USA booth, I already have enough credit cards, thank you. I don't give a damn if it has the UCLA logo on it, your stupid Visa has an insane interest rate and a late fee that would be illegal in my home state! Not to mention your cards target low-income minorities who really need to be taught to save more than they should be racking up a bill in your irresponsible manner. Teach them all how to spend wisely and maybe I'll reconsider."
"But I'm offering you a free MBNA traveler's mug with the UCLA football schedule printed on the side just for signing up, what could you lose if you already have a sterling credit record ma'am?"
"I said already I don't want one. There's a handy thing called the web to find out when the Bruins next play the Ducks, and I can pick up a mug just like yours for $2 at 7-Eleven, and fill it to the brim for just 50¢! What part of no don't you understand?!"
"But it has the logo--"
"I don't really care if the card is made out of gold with a diamond-encrusted hologram, I don't want any card offered here on campus! Now kindly quit following me you lowly gnat or else I'll mace you and report you to the FTC for harassment!" Paris tore herself away from the perky woman offering her a college credit card, and groaned as another man, this time from CalFed tried to lure her into signing up for a frequent-flier's Mastercard. Thankfully she saw him before he could approach, and Paris used her evil stare on him, along with her most terse voice.
"I don't travel, I don't rent a car, and I'm not about to start buying my groceries on credit, so don't even utter a word about how convenient your card will make my life unless you're hungry for a knuckle sandwich." Don't these idiots realize I'm not about to drop this box of books just to get a card? Paris thought to herself as she tried her best to avoid the famous gaggle of credit card tables that seemed to permeate university quadrangles at the beginning of each school year. She knew from other students that the banks were downright predatory when it came to signing new customers, but not that horrible at trying to rope her into extra credit she didn't really need. It was not only annoying but unneeded, couldn't anyone have seen she was already well to do?
Finally past the circus atmosphere of the quad, Paris made her way to her new dorm, as she carried a small yet heavy box of textbooks she had picked up at the campus bookstore, along with the instructions and equipment to hook her PowerBook up to the school's WiFi network. Her feet ached in the open-toed sandals she wore to make the trip over after she parked her car in her building's parking lot, and she was thinking that she would definitely need the help of Dr. Scholl in order to stay on her toes at UCLA, so to speak. She was very thankful she had the foresight of ordering some of the heavier texts online and having them stored in LA before she left Hartford, and felt that the $65 shipping and handling charge she incurred was worth every penny.
She arrived back at her dorm at the Saxon Suites a few minutes later, after negotiating some hilly terrain and learning the hard way, that there was a reason Los Angeles was the city where a car was a requirement rather than an option.
"Room 343, 3-4-3, 343," she said to herself as she walked into the front foyer of the building, and made her way over to the bulletin board where she'd find out if she was going to have a roommate or get the dorm room all to herself. Finding the sheet on the board with room assignments, she scanned the paper up and down until 343 popped out at her. Discovering the listing, she read it aloud to herself.
"Ahh, here we are, 343, shared room. Paris E. Gellar, freshman, and Brianna M. Daugherty, freshman." She gasped at the name, and rolled her eyes. "Just great, I have myself a real winner in the brain department. I'll have to get used to her constant Bring it On DVD viewings and tripping over her pom-poms, Brianna is such a cheerleader's name." Thoughts in her mind that she'd need to make sure to talk to housing after she settled in about a roommate change, she shoved her way past the students walking and running their ways back and forth in the hallways and ended up at the elevator, digging her key ring out of her pocket and trying to be as prepared as she could for when she walked into her dormitory for the first time.
Meanwhile, another girl overloaded with baggage and duffel bags shoved her way through the wide entrance doorway, and struggled to keep her bags balanced as she made her way to the same bulletin board Paris had looked at moments before. The curly-tressed girl with black hair dropped all of her stuff on the ground, and scanned the assignment sheet for her room number.
"341, 342, 343...OK. I'm sharing a room with a Paris E. Gellar, hmm." She wrinkled her forehead and imagined what a Paris type girl would look like. Suffice that the image that came to her head was not positive. "Oh crap, I have a daddy's girl in my room. Guess this means she'll be making herself scarce because she's an average LA slut who loves the eye of the camera. And if she's in, I don't even want to imagine what whacked things she has planned like orgies and drinking parties." She curled some of her long jet-black hair around her index finger, and tried to figure out the best way to introduce herself. "Hey, I'm Bree, hope to see you around a few times--no, too vague. I'm Brianna, but you can call me Bree if you'd like--What am I doing, hitting on her?! Damn, this is going to be harder than I thought." She kept mumbling to herself about introductions to Paris as she took all of the bags she had back into her arms, and started for the four-floor climb up to her dorm room.
Paris made her way through the crowded fourth floor hallway, trying to avoid the pesky men and women who were soon to be gone for the Greek houses along Sunset and Wilshire, along with the RA whom she met a few hours before and tried to be 'a friend' to her. The only thing that meeting had done was convince Paris that there wasn't much needed aptitude or intelligence needed to become the RA of a residence hall floor.
"Hey Doug, catch!" Paris soon found herself in between two dimbulbs tossing a football back and forth between 318 and 319. "I'm open Ronnie, go deep!"
Paris was starting to seethe, and she wasn't going to get to her dorm with these two throwing the ball and blocking her path. She dropped the box of books on the ground, gave the box a hard shove on the carpeted floor to attempt to get the box past the two dorms. She then walked towards the two guys, and after Ronnie followed through on his throw, she lept up into the air and intercepted the ball.
"What the hell you?!" Doug screamed. "I was trying to catch that!!"
"Why don't you just catch my drift Mr. Quarterback; don't play ball when I'm around, I'm not happy when you do. Stay out of my way Doug, I'll make your life a living hell." She tossed the ball back to Doug, bent down and picked up her books, and continued on her merry way down the hall, leaving Ronnie stunned. Doug on the other hand decided to enjoy the quick show Paris was providing him by bending down to pick up the box.
"By the way you have a nice ass honeybunch!" Doug yelled towards Paris. She rolled her eyes, groaned, and quickly returned fire at her first sexually crude comment ever in college. "Horndog, get a life, or a blow-up doll!" Her voice reached Doug's ears, and he quickly backed off and continued with his across-the-hall classic with Ronnie.
The foot traffic started thinning out around Paris, and she was relieved to find that room 343 was an end room in the southeast part of the building, complete with close staircase access to the campus and her car nearby, making the moving in process more palatable.
Thankful that a bed was just a few feet away, she unlocked the door to the dorm, opened it up, and placed the box of books she had just hauled across campus onto the kitchen counter off to her right, which had an open kitchenette. The room was more like a studio apartment for two people rather than a dorm in the traditional sense. There were three areas of the main room, the kitchenette on Paris' right separated a little with a peninsula counter, then a large two bed sleeping area on the side farthest away from the door, and a small little corner for a 19" TV, with a built-in long desk for Paris and Brianna's computer equipment to the left. There was a cramped little bathroom around the corner from the kitchenette, it featured a shower/bathtub, toilet and sink, not much else.
The room was better than Paris expected. It was painted a sterile peach like all other dorm rooms, but it had character to it, Paris could think of a thousand ways to make the room homey. And she couldn't beat the view outside her window, with a beautiful panoramic view of the UCLA campus, and to her right facing the window, a small peek beyond a grove of palm trees and homes of the distant Santa Monica skyline. It's not the manor, but I can get used to this. It was already more than any Harvard dormitory could ever have, most of the rooms in Cambridge were limited to shared cramped corners where a floor common room was the main entertaining area, and a small computer lab had to be carved out of several rooms. A small amount of dorms even had shared bathrooms. Slowly, Paris was just now realizing how many shortcomings she'd have if she stayed in an Ivy League school.
She kicked her shoes off next to her bed, the farthest from the window, and collapsed onto the bare mattress, worn out altogether from what had ended up being a four day trip cross country. One of those freak August snowstorms in the high Rockies that occasionally close the mountain passes stranded Paris in Denver for two days, and by the time she got back on the roads and out of Colorado she had to sleep in a Las Vegas hotel her third night due to exhaustion from so much driving. She also cursed that she didn't bring along an extra change of clothes with her, so she ended up having to do her laundry in a St. George, Utah laundromat, wearing her robe as she washed all the clothes she brought with her on the drive west. No way was she about to comply with an average male's fantasy of walking into a coin laundry and finding a girl wearing nothing but a smile or at least a bra and panties throwing Snuggle sheets in the dryer.
Her mind wandered off into the first LA rush hour she had ever experienced. She was used to the hell of driving into Boston around the Big Dig quagmire, and traffic into downtown Hartford could sometimes test her patience, so she thought that was the worst traffic that could be thrown at her.
Dealing with the six lanes of backup on the Santa Monica between the 101 and the Harbor Freeways south of downtown LA though was enough to drive her to vehicular homicide.
One jackknifed semi in the eastbound lane should've been a non-factor to the westbound drivers, but an hour later, Paris was still honking her horn like a madwoman trying to get the traffic in her lane moving again. "What the hell, do you get horny at the sight of a car wreck like in the movie Crash, move it you peabrains!!" she screamed, as the soundproofing in her Jaguar was tested to its limits. Sick of waiting to get to her new home, she peeled across five lanes and exited at San Pedro, driving through downtown until she hit Wilshire and a direct route to the college. She finally arrived at UCLA around 2:30, a day and a half later than she planned.
Paris was tired and worn out, and even in her old grey Chilton gym shirt and jeans, and with no sheets or pillows at all on the bed, the first thing she needed was sleep, and lots of it. She was feeling so unmotivated from the summer, and didn't want to go down to the storage place just to pick up a blanket and pillows. And because the air conditioning for the room had to be set up by each individual pair of students in each dorm room, the cool blast of air she was expecting when she walked in never came because the temperature hadn't been set up. If she had a dorm alone she would've just taken off her clothes and lay there in the hot room, but figured that Brianna wouldn't be very pleased to be greeted by the sight of her roommate in her underwear.
She was about to settle herself in for a quick nap, when she heard some banging outside on the door.
"What the heck?" she said to herself, and wondering why she forgot to stop at her car to at least pick up her self-defense bat. Cautiously, she approached the door tentatively, and brought those tae kwon do lessons from the 8th grade to the front of her mind, just in case.
"Who's in front of my door?"
"Who are you and what are you doing in my room?" the voice on the other side asked.
"Your room? You must be mistaken, this is my room," Paris responded, incensed.
"Is your name Paris Gellar?"
Gee, I don't know, let me check my driver's license. "That's my name."
"Is it safe to come in?"
The girl behind the door was starting to irk her. "Yeah, I don't have anything unpacked yet."
"Well is there a guy in there with you doing lines?"
Paris' eyes just about popped out of their sockets. "WHAT??!! I don't do drugs, or have sex with any guy that walks by."
"But your name--"
That was it, Paris was at her wit's end. She threw the door open, and shocked Brianna by starting on a ramble. "Listen here missy, my name is not my fault, blame my mother on that one. I've only had one sexual experience in my lifetime, and the only drugs I've ever done are named NyQuil and Vivarin, and even then only during exam time, I also do Lactaid in case you're interested. I'm trying to get somewhere with my life, and if my suspicions are right, you're the Brianna listed next to me on the dorm assignment sheet."
"Why yes, I am--" she started talking meekly, but Paris interrupted her before she continued further.
"Thought so. Listen here cheer girl, if you expect me to be happy with your peppy lifestyle and to take listening to bad techno all day as you practice your annoying little routines as you spread eagles and pyramid or whatever you do, you're dead wrong. It's girls like you who drag the rest of the female sex down to a level equivalent to Burmese sweatshop workers, here most of us try to make sure guys are the weaker sex, but you girls with your Justin Timberlake, Barbie doll pom-pom loving overpowdered faces are trying to keep us down, it's no wonder we're not all wearing 17 layers of dresses and still going to finishing school thanks to women like you." She sneered the last words. "Slutty cheerleader."
Brianna couldn't believe that Paris was laying into her the moment she walked into the room. All she had wanted was help with her bags, but instead got a lecture on women's lib. She hesitated and calmed herself down before she said something she might regret. Walking into the room and laying her bags right next to the door, she walked the distance over to her bed, sitting across from Paris, and very unhappy with how the girl had introduced herself. Brianna's blue eyes stared into the blonde's deep browns, and she prepared to take away all of Paris' misconceptions with two simple sentences.
"I'm sorry, you're calling the runner-up in the 2000 Jeopardy! Teen Tournament a cheerleader? Interesting, seeing as I loathe any girl with a short skirt, tight breast-filling sweater and a peppy attitude that ever walked passed me." She took a look into the window, and then faced Paris once again. "I'm pleased you share my opinion of the cheerocracy Miss Gellar, and I'm flattered you think I'm pretty enough to pass for a cheerleader. However if I ever do inexplicably decide to join the Bruins squad, I give you power of attorney to assist in my suicide, seeing as I have lost my mind."
"Um, Jeopardy!?" Paris now had the problem of having lack of speech. "So you aren't a cheerleader?"
Brianna held out her hand. "Brianna Daugherty, valedictorian of the class of 2003, Antioch High in Antioch, California, near Oakland. And you would be?"
"Um, Paris Gellar, 3rd in my class of 2003, Chilton Academy of Hartford, Connecticut." She shook the girl's hand, and couldn't believe it. "You're kidding, valedictorian?"
Brianna smiled back proudly. "Sure was, out of a class of 610, I was the #1 student, with honors. I worked my butt off for twelve years to not only please my parents, but to chase a dream." She looked up at Paris apologetically. "I'm sorry, I thought you were a druggie heiress with loose morals, your name had me thinking of Paris Hilton and her sister Nikki."
"I'm honored," Paris responded, smiling back. "I was born just around the time the fair Miss Hilton and her twin sister were brought into the world, and my mother knew theirs. Sadly Mrs. Hilton suggested the advantages of naming a child after the French capital, thus I was saddled with the same name. They were my playmates for a couple years, but then the Hiltons moved their summer home away from the Connecticut side of Long Island Sound, thus they're just a blur in my life. But thank God because the way they party and that whole messy association with Lizzie Grubman keeps me far from even considering renewing our friendship."
"Any other famous people you know?"
"Not really, I keep to myself most of the time and have a small circle of friends. The closest one is Madeline Lynn up in Seattle, and my other two friends, Louise and Rory, are in Miami and New Haven, respectively. I also have a former crush down in North Carolina I haven't seen in a couple years, but I'm not into him anymore."
"I see," Brianna nodded her head and looked up at the ceiling. "My friends are spread out too. My best friend Lara is just starting Georgia Tech, Ellie is attending Kentucky and Kaitlin, the second in my class is at Harvard."
Paris sucked in a breath at the mention of her dream school. "Can you say Boston instead Brianna, I'm not a big fan of that school anymore." She frowned, and looked down at her bare feet.
Brianna quickly understood why Paris didn't want the H-word mentioned around her. "Oh God, I'm sorry Paris, I didn't know--"
"It's OK, that's one of the reasons I decided on UCLA, because it was as far away from Harvard as I can possibly get. I worked hard to get into that school for so long, and they turned me down..."
Brianna looked deep in thought as Paris described her rejection, trying to remember where she had seen the girl in front of her before. She's familiar to me, but I don't know from where or how, hmm." Finally, it dawned on her.
"Are you Paris as in 'I confessed I lost my virginity and announced my rejection on live TV during a speech looking like crap' Paris?"
Paris gulped rather audibly, and returned her gaze to the floor. "In the flesh, you were watching C-SPAN that night?" she mumbled.
"Well I was channel surfing and came upon some girl bitching about how Harvard had screwed her over and that she deserved to get into it because of all her hard work. Once you yelled 'I had sex, but I didn't get into Harvard,' my face was red and I was going 'that poor girl, I hope she'll live'. And then you were pointing to the other girl in the speech and talking about how she was getting in 'cause she hadn't gotten any yet, and she was just dragging you off stage in an attempt to save your dignity. I can't believe that you were that girl, holy crap!" She looked down at the girl across from her, hopeful she hadn't opened up old wounds. "Did I make you mad Paris, please say you're not ticked off."
Instead Paris looked up at Brianna once again, and smiled. "It's not my most shining moment in the sun, but looking back it was pretty funny. That was Rory who was my speech partner, she was my rock through that whole rejection thing. Lo and behold she did get accepted to Harvard, but she was just so pissed off at Harvard rejecting me that she wanted nothing to do with them at all. Her grandfather was pushing for her to go to Yale, so she decided to go there instead, and we had fun using her town's bonfire to burn anything Harvard we had in our possession. Funny thing was two years before she was my most loathed enemy, and now we've become fast friends. The whole school competition thing, you know?"
"Yeah, I know how that feels, me and Lara were kind of hateful back in ninth grade. She had just moved to Antioch from a small town in Stanislaus County, and I hated her the moment she stepped into my school because she was one of those innocent girls who got the good grades and the acclaim. I wanted to hate her because she wanted to get into Stanford as bad as I did."
"You wanted to get into the Harvard of the West?" Paris asked. "Your dream school, wasn't it Bree?"
Brianna frowned, really not wanting to get into the story of rejection, but doing so anyways for the sake of Paris. "Ever since second grade that was all I thought about doing, was getting into Stanford. I did the whole charity thing, ran Student Council and the multiple committees, did everything I could possibly do to fit as many community service hours into my life, I even had a pretty good volleyball career going 'till I pulled my hamstring in a JV game, so I quit that because sports was becoming such a burden. It didn't help that my parents wanted nothing but Stanford for me, they quashed down my at least looking at the University of San Francisco just in case I did get rejected. I got the rejection letter around mid-February, and didn't emerge from my room except for school for about two weeks after. I mean I had a guy at Stanford who knew me by name and saw my rejection letter, yet he didn't have the courage to break the news to me."
"I was devastated beyond words, and the worst was yet to come. Lara did get the invitation to Palo Alto, and here I was without even a safety college to depend on, and to make it worse, my mother decided to try to talk to the chancellor about getting me in. Of course that went rather disastrously, and I was put on the unofficial blacklist for schools in the Bay Area. My counselor rescued me from getting stuck in community college by sending in a last minute application to here, and my scholarship winnings from Jeopardy! made it easy for UCLA to accept me. They weren't really my last choice in any way, but it made me realize that I shouldn't work myself ragged just to get into a school like Stanford. I consider this year to be more of an academic vacation and a chance to recharge than my first year at a major university."
"Me too Bree, I mean I had applied to all the Ivy League schools, but inexplicably I decided that I needed a couple safety schools east of the Appalachians just in the rare case that all of them rejected me. So with all the others I sent in applications to here at UCLA and BYU. I didn't expect BYU to accept me because I did end up violating their strict moral code, and saying I did the deed on national TV kind of ruined my chances with them. But I didn't expect UCLA to be so accepting of me, and when everything came down, I was just in this big funk where I wanted things to change, and I didn't want to live up to my legacy of the Gellars stubbornly sticking to Harvard and the Ivy League anymore. It just happened to come along at the right time, and I just felt that if I moved to California, things will change for the better."
"So we could both say that this year is going to be more play than work?" Brianna asked Paris.
"Yeah, I could say that, but I'm not going to let my studies go, this is UCLA after all, not Michigan State."
"I hate party schools, they just focus on their stupid basketball teams and don't give a damn about their academics. UCLA has some good teams, but it still has a good academic tradition at least." Brianna sighed, as Paris looked on at her new roommate.
"You know," Paris said, trying to broach conversation. "I do remember watching you in the teen tournament finals that year Brianna, you were pretty good for someone like yourself, and I thought you were easily going to win the last round and take the car and the larger scholarship. I noticed in that last episode though, you were really distracted. Don't wonder why I can still remember this, but your mind was somewhere else. What happened to you that day?"
Brianna stood up off of her bare bed, and paced the room, trying to figure out a way to answer the question. Apparent to her was that she had so far won Paris' trust, and with Paris' embarrassing incident on national TV, she figured if she decided to tell the story of her Jeopardy! tournament, that they could relate to each other so much more. She made her way towards the kitchen area, and the petite woman boosted herself onto the peninsula counter. She stared at Paris with grave seriousness.
"Now Paris, if I tell you what happened, will you promise not to breathe a word to this story to anyone you meet? The only two people who know about this are my mother and father, and there's a reason for that."
"Ooh, sure Brianna, who am I even going to tell anyways? I don't know anyone at all here." Paris walked into the kitchenette and sat atop the dishwasher.
"Cross your heart?"
"Crossing it tightly," she said, a trusting tone to her voice. "Now tell me."
Brianna stared out towards the beds as she told the story of her very unique experience on one of America's most popular game shows. "Well the whole tournament thing had started out really well, I was photogenic and smart, exactly what the producers were looking for when I tried out in San Francisco. So they paid my way to Philadelphia, where the college and teen tourneys were held that year. My mom and dad were so proud of me, and I couldn't be happier to be representing lil' ol' Antioch on Jeopardy!. Anyways, the first two rounds went pretty well, I creamed all five contestants I took on, I figured it had to truly be such a weak pool of students. They were getting the gimme categories all wrong, and somehow they managed to screw up on the daily doubles, I mean one girl decided to risk it all on a question involving some obscure Polish philosopher. I didn't get a daily double at all, but somehow I managed to do pretty well in both games, first one I scored $12,500, and the second I made an amount plus a dollar bid, so I had $11,901. As for the semi-final, I was unstoppable, $14,563, I had this aura around that no one was going to get in my way and beat me."
"But that all changed when Leonard Sharpe came along."
Now Paris had known that Leonard was a third-podium player when he came into the 2000 tournament, and had barely eeked out second place scores in each round. The tournament system of winners first, high scores second seemed to be against him, but somehow his $17,000 second place total in his second game seemed to hold through the quarterfinals, so he got third podium once again in his semifinal, which was separate from Brianna's game. The other two contestant's quarterfinal and qualifying games were games they ended with under $10,000 though, proving that they really weren't the smartest. Leonard ended up taking his semifinal, and along with him, Brianna and the second place contestant from her game were set for the finals.
"Now I remember the scores from that game Brianna," Paris said as she tried mining her mind for the numbers. "You had the highest score of all nine episodes, so you got podium one, while Leonard got the second, and Sheynhar number three. But somehow, Leonard took it all with a $17,750 score, while Sheynhar got around $7,500. But you, who had the podium one advantage, had a lowly $4,000 score before Final Jeopardy!, which was so low you had to risk all $4,000 for the second place prize. I wondered whatever happened to you, and what led to such a bad final round."
"Guess," Brianna said with a raised eyebrow.
"You were nervous about the final game."
"No."
"Um, you accidently walked past Alex backstage in violation of game rules, and you threw the game because you might've accidentally seen the big card."
"Try again Paris."
Paris pondered her brain for more possibilities of Brianna's championship meltdown. "The buzz-in button was on the fritz?"
"Nope."
"You forgot to put in your contacts and couldn't see the board?"
"I have 20/20 vision."
"Johnny Gilbert mispronounced your name during introductions and it threw off your concentration?"
The girl laughed. "Now you're just getting desperate."
"The categories weren't your strong suit."
"I have an academic brain which can mix many facts, I have many interests."
"OK, one more guess. You were sick on the inside, but didn't show it on the outside."
"All of them were wrong Paris, I'm sorry." Brianna gave Paris a straight answer. "I met Leonard down at the pool in the hotel, not knowing he was in the game at all. He just had this suaveness about him, and he was pretty cute. We get to talking and find we share the same interests and love the same things, and he thought I was attractive. Well, one thing led to another, my hormones were going crazy along with his, and then he says to me 'Want to go up to my room?'" Brianna looked down at her hands and played with her Antioch class ring. "I said yes. I didn't usually date or go out with guys, so the attention he gave me was such a turn-on, he kept commenting about how he'd love to play with my hair, and kiss my plump lips, and that he got lost in my eyes, and how even though I don't have much meat on my bones, I was very curvaceous."
Paris tried to say something, but felt that silence would be best, lest her new roommate breakdown and take her to task for something she said. She just nodded and let Brianna continue. "Leonard was wonderful to me, and he just eased me into everything, sliding my shirt off with ease and starting to kiss down my neck. He made his way down my body as if I was porcelain, and before I knew it, my passionate side came out. I was tugging at his shirt, and winding my fingers through his hair, and fumbling at his belt as we got into...it. I remember everything like it was yesterday, from putting on the condom for him, his lips suckling my breasts, and then when he broke me. I mean God Paris, for my first time and losing my virginity, he was great. I just got so lost in Leonard, and we made love, I made love to him as if I was putting all the passion I put into getting into Stanford into just that one expression. And then the way he said my name, it gave me a shiver of arousal. I fell asleep in his arms, and wished I didn't have to leave his side, I wanted Leonard to be my boyfriend forever. But I knew that he'd be one of those guys you knew was going to be just a one-night stand, so I left his room the next morning telling him I'd never forget him, and I hope we'd meet again someday. He told me that he wished the same, and that he loved me."
"You know how much girls like us just want those three words said to us, so I told him that I loved him too. I was never going to tell anyone that I had lost my virginity to such a great guy, because it was just one of those things you want to treasure for yourself and not ever tell anyone about."
"I get to the auditorium a few hours later, and of course the contestants and Alex are separated until the actual start of the show, but we do get a sheet of what to expect to do for the championship, and the sheet also has the names of the competing players on it. I hadn't been paying attention to the other finals because I'm superstitious, so the two people I'd be taking on in the championship were probably not going to be known to me, except for Sheynhar, who I knew would get in with me because he was nipping on my heels and lost the semi by only $1,400. So I'm looking at it, not thinking much about it at all, when my eyes catch a name starting with L. It gets my attention, and suddenly I'm reading the name aloud to myself."
"It was your lay from the night before of course." Paris felt so much grief for the girl at that moment, and was hoping Brianna could finish the story without starting to shed tears.
"It's OK Paris, plain truth is honest. What I did after that was think that Leonard also did the same thing and tuned out my games, thus he didn't know me at all and we could just chalk it up to some hilarious coincidence that we slept together and competed the next day. But when I got out into the backstage area before they started taping, I found Leonard looking at me with this smug grin on his face. Not the grin of 'fancy seeing you here Bree,' but the Mr. Burns-type that was saying 'Excellent, she's thrown off and my plans are going to work perfectly'. It was so devastating to see that grin was not in appreciation to me, but the only thing he was using me for was to gain a competitive advantage. I tried approaching him to ask what his problem was, but a PA had taken a hold of my hand and took me away from him for makeup."
"Well why didn't you try to tell him what was up, that you didn't want to do the show because he had seduced you and thrown you off?" Paris crossed her arms around her chest as Brianna become distraught at finishing telling her about the tournament.
"Stubborn Irish pride Paris, us Daugherty's just try to suck it up and move on from there. I thought I could easily forget about it, that after the show I could confront him and see if there was an us to salvage. But as they made introductions, he nudges me on the shoulder and goes in this snotty tone 'I hope you had a ball last night, because today's your reality check Brianna'. And this time, when he said my name, he said it as if it was some acidic word that puts a curse on a witch or something. Well that did it, all that work to go so far on Jeopardy! shattered with his words, and as I walked onto the stage and took my podium, I didn't have the confidence I usually exuded. Right next to the guy who had just so shamelessly taken my innocence with him, I couldn't concentrate. I kept thinking of him that night and comparing him to how confident he was answering all those questions. I'd buzz in sometimes and forget the answers, and other times that little plunger on a wire felt like bread dough, and my hands slid all over the button. And when the show went to break, Leonard would look at me smugly and ask if I was sore from the ass-kicking he was giving me. I'd stare back at him and wonder why he didn't go for the obvious little sore spot he aggravated the night before in his bed."
"That smug little bastard!" Paris gritted her teeth at how much she had hated Leonard during the tournament. Her rage against a guy she had only seen on television was building even more, now that she knew the story of why one of the girls she was rooting for to win the car and the scholarship had ended up falling so fast on the stage in Philadelphia. "If I were you Brianna, I would've had that guy holding his groin by the second daily double, what he did was not only horrible, but so violating. I mean you put your trust in this boy, and what does he do, fuck you over like that!"
"Yeah, in more ways than one," Brianna said as she managed a crooked smile. "I would've pressed the issue after the show with the producers and asked that he be disqualified, but I didn't want to seem the cold-hearted bitch that turned such an intimate moment into something big, it took a lot for me to even walk onto that set and face national TV cameras in the first place. I decided to confront Leonard at the hotel once we got back, and we had it out so viciously that my mother had to come in and find out what was going on. I told Leonard to leave and never come back, and he just said 'Thanks for the memories' and left. It was then I finally told my mother what happened, and I fell into her arms, crying my eyes out. I had enough scholarship money from my time on the show, second prize was $25,000, and I didn't really need a car, so I just decided not to pursue action against Leonard and the producers for what happened. I went back to Antioch and didn't tell my friends why I was runner-up, because it was just something that I wanted to put behind me and just learn from as a mistake in life. Things just happen for a reason Paris, and maybe my sleeping with Leonard was something that I needed to learn a lesson from."
"God, I'm so sorry Brianna, you look like a girl any kind of man would kill to want," Paris said to her sincerely as she got off the dishwasher and walked towards the girl, who had tears trailing down her cheeks from telling her story. "Have you even had a boyfriend after Leonard?"
"No, and I have no need for one," she choked out between sobs. "I don't want my heart to break if they decide I'm not good enough for them, it's a pain this girl just cannot take."
"Listen to me Bree, if you mind my calling you by that." Brianna nodded to let Paris use a nickname with her. "Men sometimes don't have the best of intentions, and its clear Leonard was one of them. But if it wasn't for them, we wouldn't be where we are today."
Brianna rolled her eyes. "Paris, I need a pep talk, not a biology lesson."
Paris frowned at herself and how clinical, instead of soothing her words had been. "Heh, sorry, as you can tell, I'm not experienced with the whole 'there, there' reassurance. What I was trying to say is that you're basing your opinion on men on that of your experience, not on the entire sex altogether. Now I may not be your closest friend so far, but somehow I'm sensing that we have a lot in common. We both were rejected by the colleges we wanted to go to, and our first true loves were disasters that we never saw coming before it was too late. I dumped Jamie because he didn't appreciate me announcing I had sex with him on national television, and he didn't care that he wasn't mentioned by name. You know when he asked me out the first time, I wasn't smart enough to notice that he had just asked me to date him?"
"How can you not notice a guy asking you out?" Brianna asked, starting to calm down.
"When you're in zealous competition to cream someone at a debate and have said boy tuned out, that's how." She laughed and placed a hand on Brianna's shoulder. "Bree, I'm not the type of girl who just wants love to come to her in just the snap of a finger. I'd rather wait for the one to come to me, but even then I'm still realistic, a guy isn't getting into my pants unless he's damn near perfect, and he loves me for who I am. I'm just like you, and I can see that rather than being at each other's throats for a guy all the time, we're going to be good roommates, maybe even best friends. Also I can sense that we're both going to be running away screaming from the KCBS Speaker's Corner booths at the malls because we've had embarrassing moments with the airwaves before."
It didn't take long for Brianna's mood to brighten, as her face lit up and she laughed out loud. "P-p-paris, I guess this means where not gonna do a Jennicam-like thing and set up a webcam in the dorm, are we?"
"Over my dead fully-clothed body," Paris responded with snark.
"Good." Brianna climbed down from the peninsula counter, and walked towards Paris. "You know, I think I'm pleased I went with the whole dorm experience now instead of the sororities, I feel like we're going to get along just fine Paris."
"Thank goodness, I wouldn't have liked it if I had to duct tape a line across the room and keep a party girl or guitar guy separated from me. Now I think our only challenge so far is balancing out our individual decorating tastes and how much time we spend in the bathroom each morning. How much of a wardrobe do you have Bree?"
"Not that much, about 14 pairs of pants, 25 shirts, a few skirts and shirts, maybe 20 pairs of shoes and enough delicates. As for bathroom time, I think I'll need the most, about 20 minutes each morning. You don't really need that much makeup Par, I suspect you're spare when it comes to your makeup box. S'OK though, you're pretty without it."
"Aww Bree, you're making me blush," Paris said as she tried to hide her face from Brianna, since she was turning red. "My use of heavy makeup is limited to the few parties I go to. About the only thing I wear daily is a little mascara, lip gloss and just a little powder."
Brianna's smile became wider, and she pointed to Paris' nose. "Oh, and I love the nose ring, let me guess. April rebellion after you needed to do something to make an outrageous statement to your mom?"
"Do you have some kind of scary ESP connection to my brain?"
"Probably, I got my belly button pierced around the same time." Brianna lifted up her shirt a little to reveal the gold piercing jutting from her innie. "Only I did it on a dare from Lara, still my daddy wanted me to take it out. I just convinced him it was better than getting a tattoo or coloring my hair hot green, that changed his mind pretty fast."
"My mother lost four of her nine lives when I walked into the house with the diamond stud in my nose," Paris said to Brianna. "My father was different though. He just shrugged and said 'at least you didn't get a tattoo'. I was actually considering a little Eiffel Tower on my ankle, which would be covered up most of the time, but then I came to my senses when my friend Louise described her experience getting a tattoo of a ladybug on her back, she said that she would never do it again. The artist in her words was 'totally grody', and she said the needle hurt 25 times more than if she just received a simple piercing. So the nose won out, and I won't have to deal with telling my kids why Mommy's little nutty rebellion caused her to have an ugly looking A on her ankle."
"Well I could see someone in Connecticut saying that, but here in California it's a little different. Tattooing is treated more like an art than some underground industry, so there's been some great designs and respected artists, they can go out and be recognized for their work. All of my friends have small tattoos, but I have a fear of foreign objects like India ink in my system, so I haven't had the wherewithal to get one. I'm not going to get it now since my friends aren't here to offer me the support I'd need to get through the whole process, but maybe someday. Probably something as simple as your Eiffel Tower idea, like a clover for my heritage or a butterfly because they're my favorite insect."
Paris decided to reassure her new friend. "If you ever need someone to help you when you decide to go through with it, I'll come with Bree." She smiled and took her hand. "We're stuck with each other for the next year, so we might as well buddy up and learn to go with each other's whims. You're going to have to get used to my overeviewing a test until three in the morning the day before an exam, along with my tendencies to, um...well you already saw me turn a molehill into a mountain with the way I overreacted to you when you came into the room." She laughed nervously. "Sorry about that by the way."
"You're forgiven," Brianna said right back, smiling and getting up. "At least I know I'll have a reviewing partner then, I've been a night owl for a few years, and not even during exam time. TV gets boring after awhile, so it makes me want to occupy my mind with something."
"That's great." Paris surveyed the empty room before her, and Brianna did the same. Their gazes traveled right back towards them. "You know, this room is missing something, namely everything. We better start hauling all our things up here before the Greek pledges decide our cars are enticing targets for their getting-in pranks."
"Probably, I'm not sleeping on an empty bed, and I got an email account that needs checking. Oh, and I gotta catch the SoapNet rebroadcast of General Hospital, got some big plot developments coming down the pipeline."
"How can you watch that claptrap Bree, it's mindless eye candy," Paris exasperated, then rolled her eyes.
"Two words Paris; hot guys."
Paris mischievously grinned back at Brianna, it was time to turn the tables. "Now Days of Our Lives and The Young and the Restless, those are much better soaps, with actual plot."
Brianna looked at Paris as if she had just announced that Santa Claus wasn't real. "Oh please Par, NBC and CBS are horrid, ABC is where all the great plots are going on. One more word for NBC; Passions. Need I say more?"
"Uggghh, I can't believe I admitted to you I watched soap operas. That's about as big a secret as my daily ritual watching of The Simpsons."
Brianna smiled back at her. "I'll try to turn you onto the ABC soaps as we unpack, I can help you with your stuff." She opened up the room door wide and put a doorstop below to keep the door propped.
"Sure Bree, I'll be right down, just have to put my hair in a ponytail." Paris threaded her long tresses into her hand. "Oh, and it'll take more than daily GH viewings to lure me over to the dark side. Excuse me while I fantasize about Bo taking me on my bare mattress."
"Paris, you are one weird woman," Brianna said, smiling back at her new friend and shaking her head. "Just you wait Gellar, the GH bug will bite you one of these nights." She left the room and left Paris alone to put her ponytail in a Scrunci, as the blonde girl looked back on her first meeting with her roommate.
"I think I'm going to like that girl, she's gutsy, clever, and smart. You've just made yourself your first LA friend Paris, pat yourself on the back." She finished creating her ponytail, and walked out of the room to help Brianna move into their dorm. I'm gonna hook her on DOOL if it's the last thing I do though, she thought smugly.
To be continued...
Next chapter: Paris learns the UCLA ropes with Brianna at her side, and ventures out into LA on foot for the first time, trying out the local delicacies at her new friend's urging. As she leaves a restaurant, she bumps into a familiar face, and strikes up a conversation with someone she was looking at with lustful eyes before Jamie came along. Will sparks fly once again, or is it a slow burn that's going to take time?