First off, I want to say thank you to all of you who have left me reviews, especially those who have left more than one (lauren-case, Gmac62, Itrasco, miluvrox, Somebody). When you write, it is really great to know if people are liking what they are reading.
Soundslike: your comments were so sweet :) and I love that you saw the same things for the PLLs as I did. As for Aria, I definitely agree she's the hardest to peg. I would have probably put her at a small northeastern liberal arts school, but I wanted to keep her around for the story :) And thanks for the recommendation. I will definitely check out The Little Prince. Oh, and don't worry. I'm no PSU fan either, but I was, however, born and bred in Big Ten country, and while I didn't pick any of them for college, I'd probably peg myself for a Michigan girl if I were to choose?
lauren-case: your feedback means so much. honestly, I probably wouldn't have decided to write this if it wasn't for your amazing story :) I'm honored you are reading mine
Second, thanks so much for being patient with the story. I promise things will start speeding up now. And this story will definitely last through the next few weeks til the new season starts in June, probably longer.
And last, if you didn't already, everyone should go tweet the wonderfully lovely Lindsey Shaw a Happy Birthday :) She turned 22 yesterday
Chapter Five
Later, as all the girls began filtering out of the locker room, saying their goodbyes, and going their separate ways, Emily lingered behind, seeing that Paige was still packing up her things into her duffel. They fell into step together as they left the locker room and wandered through the hallway to get outside. At first, neither said a word to one another, and Emily suddenly felt weird around her again.
The entire time Emily had been in the shower after practice and getting dressed, she had thought about what the coach had asked of them, realizing that she was basically insisting that they spend even more time than they already would be spending together. After she'd told them, Emily had walked back to the locker rooms together with Paige not saying a word. She had hoped that maybe they had made some progress that morning, talking a little bit. She had started to feel Paige open up a little, let her guard down, maybe start to see that Emily wasn't someone to be totally freaked out by. Except now, with how Paige was acting again, she wondered if the idea of spending so much time with her really did still bother Paige. Maybe Paige thought she could handle having to have her as a teammate, even as a roommate, but to spend all those extra hours one on one were just too much for her to deal with.
As they stepped into the sunlight outside, Emily finally turned to Paige nervously.
"Look, I know what Coach said, about swimming together and everything, but if you want we can just alternate when we use the pool. She won't have to know. "
Paige turned to her with a look of relief that made Emily's stomach sink, a look that told her she was right, that being around Emily was the last thing Paige wanted.
"Yeah, okay," Paige agreed nodding.
Emily simply nodded sadly in return.
"I gotta run and meet a friend," Paige blurted out.
"Okay," Emily replied, nodding
"See ya," Paige said as she quickly took off in another direction.
While inside, Emily felt herself wanting to simply go back to the dorm and curl up in bed again, she tried to keep her head up. She tried to tell herself it didn't matter what Paige thought of her, but for some reason, it did matter to her. She just wasn't sure why.
After Paige took off, Emily had hoped to talk to Mallorie, but she, along with the other girls, were long gone. She figured maybe she'd text her a little later and see if she wanted to catch up so Emily could hear about what happened with her other scholarship. She was at least glad that one of the girls on the team she'd have as a friend, even if she would have to accept that her roommate was only tolerating her.
She meandered back to Brumbaugh, a little bit thankful that she'd have some time alone to gather herself before heading to Hanna's to help her pick out an outfit for the first night of Sorority Rush.
Paige made her way across campus to the South Halls. It was quiet outside still with a few coeds buzzing around that morning. She felt bad darting away from the conversation with Emily, but she didn't know what else to do. She had caught the look on her face when Paige agreed to practice separately, and it killed her. Yet, Paige knew she had no choice. It was going to be hard enough living with Emily, getting to know her, being even that close to her. There was no way she could be around Emily all of the time when she already felt like she couldn't breathe.
Moments later, Paige knocked on Pru's door, once then twice, before the other girl finally yanked the door open. She was still dressed in her pajamas, a loose fitting tank top and small shorts. Her hair was a wild mess and she was still rubbing the sleep from her eyes.
"What time is it?" she asked groggily before turning back around to move back to her bed, barely looking at Paige who stepped inside and closed the door behind herself.
Paige shrugged. "I don't know. It's like 1030?" she offered nonchalantly.
"You do know that normal people are still sleeping at this time on a Saturday."
"Sorry. I just," Paige started, part of her wanting to tell Pru how she couldn't go back to her dorm room by herself with Emily, how she didn't know how to be around her while she was alone, but it didn't make any sense. It was one thing for Paige to have complained to Pru about Emily being that way, and a whole other thing to act like she was paranoid about it. "I just burned like 1000 calories at practice," she told her instead, "and I'm starving." Paige figured it was mostly true.
Pru frowned playfully. "Does the dining hall deliver?"
"Just go get ready," Paige told her, pushing her friend towards the door before plopping down on Pru's bed. "I'll wait here."
Pru slipped back into the dorm room fifteen minutes later wearing a towel around her body, her long black hair a mess around her shoulders. As she rummaged through the closet for clothes, Paige was still laid out on her bed, examining Pru's wall that was slowly being covered with magazine spreads of her favorite designers' latest fashions.
It was nothing new to Paige. Pru's walls back at home had been nearly covered, floor to ceiling, with one space reserved just for pinups of things she had drawn. Pru had been dying to go to fashion design school, but the economy slump had hit her family hard and even with both her parents now working, it was still out of the question. So instead, Pru had settled on getting a business degree now, hoping one day she'd at least be able to use the skills when she was finally able to get her fashion career started.
Paige's eyes scanned the room over to the opposite wall which was completely bare, the bed covered with a plain, simple grey duvet.
"Where's your roommate?" Paige called out to Pru who was on the other side of the closet dressing. She peaked her head out, a towel covering her head. She was now wearing jeans and just her bra on top. While Paige had realized more and more than she was starting to feel awkward around some girls at school, while changing for swim practice or showering after gym class, she and Pru had known each other since they were kids, so it never seemed to be an issue.
Pru rolled her eyes as she glanced at her roommate's space. "Probably studying at the library."
"What? We haven't even started yet," Paige replied incredulously.
"Just look at all those textbooks," Pru responded, motioning to a large stack of heavy books piles on the desk opposite of Paige. "I don't even know what half those classes are."
Paige rolled herself up from the bed and crossed over to the desk. She glanced at a few of the titles. Quantum Mechanics. Physical Chemistry. Biomathematics. Paige cringed before looking back to Pru who emerged finally.
Paige smirk in amusement. "So, on that match form, for 'Heroes,' I'm guessing you put 'Alexander McQueen' and she put 'Alexander Fleming,' and they just figured that was close enough," she told her.
"She put who?" Pru asked with a confused frown.
Paige laughed. "Forget it."
"Well, she's some smarty pants," Pru continued, casually flipping open one of the textbook covers. "One that actually studies. Apparently, she doesn't just show up and get As like somebody else I know," she added, eyeing Paige with a teasing smile.
Paige blushed lightly. "Are you ready yet? I'm dying here."
"All right. All right. Just let me put some makeup on," Pru insisted, reaching for a cosmetic bag and disappearing out the door again for the bathroom.
Paige shook her head and lay back down on Pru's bed, knowing it was still going to be a while before she'd get to eat.
Across campus, Emily was similarly sprawled out across Hanna's bed in a dorm room that looked nearly identical to her own, except instead of swimming posters across the wall, it was plastered with magazine images of male models and actors, most of them without their shirts on. She had one of Hanna's fashion magazines opened up as she thumbed through it, nearly immune to the chaos surrounding her.
Near the closets, Hanna and Lenny, a slightly shorter, strawberry-blonde version of Hanna, sifted through their clothing, exchanging items, trying on dresses, comparing shoes, digging through jewelry boxes.
"What do you think?" Hanna asked, turning to Emily with three different dresses in hand.
Emily smiled sympathetically. "They all look great on you, Hanna."
"I know they all look great. Which one looks the greatest?" Hanna insisted, taking one and holding it up to her body and posing in front of one of their wall mirrors.
Emily shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe the black one?"
"Do you think it's still too summer for black though?" Hanna asked, turning from Emily to Lenny and back again.
"I always love black," Lenny remarked with a cursory turn back to her closet, her locks spinning as she moved.
"Then maybe the red?" Emily suggested again. She felt like she was offering little in the way of help, but the reprieve from her dorm room was comforting. Anything to help take her mind off of what was going on with Paige was nice, yet even still, her mind kept flitting to her over and over, and she couldn't figure out why she was so hung up on her.
Hanna grabbed another dress from the closet, this one brown, and showed it to Lenny.
"Lenny, you should try this one on," Hanna told her, holding up another of her dresses.
Lenny stepped back to examine it. "You think so? I never thought I looked good in chocolate."
Hanna shook her head. "This is more of an espresso. It'll look great on you."
Lenny took the dress from Hanna's hands and began examining herself in the mirror with it pressed against herself. Emily watched the exchange, laughing to herself that it could be this complicated or this important.
Hanna turned back to Emily just as she was looking back to her magazine.
"You should totally come with us tonight, Em. Even if you're not rushing. You can always just say you changed your mind," she added nonchalantly.
Lenny turned around with a look of shock. "You're not rushing?" she asked incredulously. Emily almost laughed at her disbelief.
Hanna shook her head and rolled her eyes playfully. "Emily thinks it's all about meeting boys."
Lenny nodded. "Ah, I get it. You're one of those lucky girls who already has a guy."
Emily fidgeted uncomfortably as Hanna turned to her expectantly. After everything that happened already, she found herself hesitating.
When Emily didn't respond right away, Hanna lifted a brow wondering if Emily wanted her to answer for her before Emily finally began to stutter out her words.
"Oh. No," she said awkwardly, turning Lenny's attention back to her. "I… I have… a, uh… a girlfriend… actually."
"Aw, she didn't want to come over too?" Lenny replied without even skipping a beat as she turned and held up another dress to her body for the girls to judge. "I need all the opinions I can get."
"She's in California," Emily replied, feeling more at ease seeing Lenny's nonchalance with the information. "She goes to UC Santa Cruz."
Lenny spun back around, dresses still in hand. "God, I'm so jealous."
Emily smiled, but at the same time, the whole thing made her a little sad. This was what she had been hoping for all along with her own roommate. "Yeah, she loves it so far."
"Who wouldn't?" Lenny replied dramatically. "The sun and the beach. Why didn't I go to California? Oh yeah—," she continued, turning to Hanna where they nodded together, and in unison, both agreed.
"In state tuition," they said, before laughing together.
When Paige and Pru had arrived at Paige's room, Paige was relieved to find that Emily wasn't there. She had wanted to get changed out of her sweats before she started to look like a slum around campus, but she felt weird now after Emily had darted to the bathroom to change that morning. Especially since Pru would be with her, she had felt like some terribly awkward moment would have happened if she had needed to get ready while they both were there.
So she was happy to find the place quiet when they arrived. Paige dressed quickly into a pair of jeans and top, fixed her hair, and put on a light coat of makeup as Pru moved around the room.
"So where is your roommate? Driven her out of the manor yet?" Pru teased as Paige emerged in her street clothes.
Paige knew Pru was only joking, but it made Paige uncomfortable. Pru had no idea what really happened, had know idea that Emily had overheard their conversation, had no clue that the problem here wasn't really just about Emily, but about herself.
Paige shrugged, trying to look casually. "No, I don't know where she is."
"This her?" Pru asked curiously, reaching for the photograph of Emily and Maya from Emily's desk.
"Hm?" Paige asked, looking up briefly to see what Pru was referring to. "Oh. Yeah."
Pru lifted the photo closer to examine the two girls' faces. "Which one is she?"
"The one on the left," Paige replied automatically. She realized how quickly she said it, realized that she knew exactly which one Emily was because over the last day, she had looked at the photo countless times.
"This her girlfriend?" Pru asked with a smirk.
Paige wasn't sure how to interpret it so she simply shrugged as she turned away and slipped her cosmetic bag into a draw before pulling on a pair of sandals.
"Geez," Pru continued. "From what you told me, I was expecting some disgusting monster that you were afraid was going to pounce on you," Pru said with a laugh.
Paige looked up, frowning. "What are you getting at?" Paige replied defensively.
Pru rolled her eyes. "She's kind of gorgeous, Paige."
Paige felt a fuzziness wash over her at the word. "Oh," she replied softly, while inside she kept repeating the word, gorgeous... Pru was right about it though. Paige just hadn't admitted it to herself yet. But since Pru was pointing it out though, maybe that's all it was. Maybe it was normal to think that of another girl. Maybe she was having an entire panic over nothing. Thinking that of Emily, it didn't have to mean anything, right?
Pru laughed at Paige's unresponsiveness. "What? You failed to notice?"
"I don't notice girls," Paige insisted, rolling her eyes. On the inside though, she felt nauseous, like she was going to trip up on her words, like she was going to say too much, like she might accidentally admit that, of course, she noticed Emily was gorgeous, the very moment she met her.
"You do have eyes though. Don't tell me you don't ever scope out the competition. Compare yourself?" Pru inquired, teasing her friend casually, even though to Paige, this entire conversation felt anything but casual.
"I guess," Paige replied calmly.
Pru turned and set the frame back down on the corner of Emily's desk.
"If I were you, I'd be glad she was into girls," Pru told her, "because if she wasn't, and she were my roommate, no guys would be looking at me. I'd be single the whole year."
Paige smirked. "You might still be single the whole year, Pru," she teased.
"Please. Jacob was totally flirting with me last night!"
Paige frowned. "You came all this way to date someone from Dublin?" she asked disapprovingly.
A devious smile crossed Pru's face. "I don't care where he's from as long as his destination is my bed."
Paige laughed. "Slut," she joshed playfully.
"Proud of it," Pru replied with a smile, flicking a strand of hair over her shoulder. "By the way, I noticed Collin totally checking you out last night," she added surreptitiously.
"Collin?" Paige wondered.
"The blonde guy. Swimmer too. Gorgeous blue eyes."
"Oh. Yeah. Him," Paige replied nonchalantly. She did remember Collin. They had talked for a few minutes and realized quickly they were both from the Columbus area. In fact, Paige was pretty sure their fathers ran in the same circles, a fact that seemed to thrill him and disappoint her. The last thing she needed was more of her father's world infiltrating her life. Honestly, she didn't know what she needed, but she was pretty sure it wasn't Collin Jerrett. But she couldn't say that to Pru.
"I'm calling it now. You two are going to be an item before the year's over."
"If I make it that far," Paige muttered under her breath.
"Look on the bright side. Her girlfriend is way hotter than you, Paige," Pru taunted, "so I don't think she's going to be taking a step down."
"Shut up. She is not!" Paige insisted, feeling her cheeks turning red. She reached for a pillow from her bed and launched it across the room at Pru. Pru ducked out of the way and flashed Paige a gleaming wise ass grin.
"So you do have eyes," Pru teased. "Just checking."
Paige just shook her head, feeling grateful that somehow Pru hadn't noticed what Paige had just revealed, that the person she had been comparing herself to this entire time wasn't Emily, but Emily's girlfriend. She hated what that truth could mean. She swallowed hard and forced another smile at Pru, trying her best not to think about it.
After a couple of hours of trying on countless outfits, Hanna and Lenny had finally decided on dresses, shoes, and accessories for the first night of rush. Emily took the chance to gather her bag and let Hanna know that she had to get going. While she'd been flipping through the magazine and helping them contemplate the 400 possible outfit combinations, she had texted Mallorie and made plans to meet her for dinner.
As she was heading out the door, Hanna followed her a few steps into the hallway.
"Are you okay?" she asked Emily, stopping her before she could leave.
Emily forced a smile, thinking she had done a better job of concealing what she had been feeling the last couple of days. "Yeah. Why?"
"Before," Hanna started, frowning. "I didn't mean to put you on the spot. I just thought you were cool coming out to people here."
"I am," Emily insisted. "It's no big deal."
"Cause you just seemed…" Hanna started, then hesitated, and Emily started to wonder what the hell was going on and why Hanna was acting so strangely.
"I seemed what?" Emily demanded anxiously.
Hanna finally blurted out her words. "Does this have anything to do with your roommate?"
Emily's brows furrowed. How could Hanna know what Paige had said about her? Hanna wasn't even there. "What?"
"Spencer said—," Hanna started, and immediately, Emily felt defensive. She loved Spencer, but sometimes, she put herself in places that weren't her business.
"Spencer doesn't know what she's talking about," Emily insisted, her voice thick with annoyance as she moved to leave.
Hanna reached out and grabbed her arm, stopping her. "Emily," she said sympathetically.
Emily shook her head. It was bad enough that all this stuff was happening with Paige. The last thing she wanted was to talk about it.
"Look. Whatever happened, I can handle it, okay?" she assured Hanna before turning and leaving before her face revealed that she very obviously wasn't handling it, at least not on the inside.
By the time Emily made it back to her dorm room, the conversation had thoroughly gotten to her. Something was obviously said that alarmed Spencer enough to tell Hanna, and while it upset her to know this, it couldn't have been worse than what Emily had overheard Paige say. What she hated was that her friends now knew that something was wrong when she had been trying to work it out on her own. Feeling exposed, she could sense tears welling up in her again and desperately tried to push them away.
As she approached her dorm door a few minutes later, she heard chattering inside and could tell Paige must have been there. She took a deep breath to compose herself before pushing the door open. Inside, Paige was seated on the edge of her desk while another girl moved around the room as they chatted. They both looked up as they heard the door.
"Hey," Emily said softly as she stepped inside.
"Emily, this is my friend Pru," Paige replied, pointing casually to the other girl.
Emily recognized her as the girl Paige had been complaining to at the mixer. She fidgeted in place uncomfortably, knowing that this girl was in on everything Paige had said. She wondered if Paige had told her that she had heard them. It would be the only thing that could make it worse.
Emily nodded and forced a small smile. "It's nice to meet you."
As Emily moved past her desk, she noticed her frame had been moved, the one with the photo of her and Maya. She touched it, moving it back again into its proper place. When she looked up, Paige was looking at her, like she'd been caught, like they both knew that something had been said about Emily when she wasn't there, and neither of them could deny it, even if both of them wanted to.
Emily felt sick to her stomach and looked away.
"Um, you know what. We were actually just going," Paige muttered awkwardly.
Emily looked up and saw Paige getting up from the bed and tugging at Pru's arm.
"What?" Pru asked in confusion.
"I need a soda," Paige insisted, refusing to meet Emily's eyes again.
Pru shrugged her shoulders and followed her. She turned back to Emily before they reached the door and shouted, "Bye!"
"Bye," Emily whispered.
As she sat down with Mallorie at Findlay later that night, it was like they hadn't missed a beat since they had met in February at a recruitment visit. She and Emily had texted a few times back and forth afterwards and talked of rooming together that fall, but the year had gotten crazy for both of them, and eventually Mallorie had let her know that she had decided on another school. Emily had been disappointed to hear, but she had hoped they would have kept in touch a little or maybe seen each other at some of the Big Ten meets.
Mallorie had a spunky personality, with a mouth that ran a mile a minute. It ended up being a huge surprise running in to her that morning and learning that she had, in fact, still ended up at Penn State. As they sat around a table eating pasta in the dining hall, Mallorie went on and on about what had happened to bring her to PSU. She explained how the other school's basketball program had been sanctioned for monetary gifts to players, and the punishment was a loss of scholarship money that trickled all the way to the swim team. She had gotten in touch with Penn State in April when she heard and luckily, they were able to work out a position on the team for her.
Emily didn't say much during dinner, simply caught Mallorie up on the past few months, but Emily welcomed the reprieve and just let herself take in Mallorie's manic chatter with a smile.
Later that night, they hung out at Mallorie's dorm listening to music before heading down to a party being thrown by an upperclassman at a nearby house. After a couple of drinks, Emily felt all the anxiety inside her start to melt away, and she was relieved to be finally meeting a few people, laughing, and having a good time.
Emily woke the next morning to the sunlight glaring through her dorm room window. She cursed softly for not having remembered to close the blinds before she went to bed, and as she stood to cross to the window, she noticed that Paige's bed was not only empty but still made from the day before.
Emily had gotten home late and passed out quickly just after 1am and figured that Paige would be in a little later. Knowing she hadn't come home was strange, and she didn't know whether to feel relieved or disappointed that Paige had chosen not to sleep there. In the midst of her thoughts, she realized that they didn't even have each others' phone numbers. She thought that maybe she should mention it to her when they saw each other, just for emergency's sake.
As the morning wore on, Paige was decidedly absent, and Emily used the time to sleep in longer. When she finally pulled herself out of bed just before noon, she showered and dressed, before taking a walk down to purchase her mound of textbooks from the bookstore and wander through campus, getting her bearings. She ended up finding a quiet place on a bench where she curled up with a book she picked up along with her textbooks and read in the afternoon sunshine. The day passed quickly as Emily felt the nervous jitters start building in her about finally starting class the next day.
That night, after the sun had made its descent over the horizon, she finally got a chance to really talk to Maya, and for a while, it seemed like things were a little closer to normal. Emily decided not to tell her about what happened with Paige, and instead just let her know that, while things were civil, it seemed they were by no means going to be best friends. Maya didn't seem to think it was a big deal, but then again, her own roommate was an old friend from growing up that Maya described as being like a sister.
As for Maya, it seemed to Emily that everything was running smoothly. She had already made a wealth of new friends and couldn't stop talking about how much she loved Santa Cruz. On the other hand, Emily told her about practice and how the coach was thinking of giving her a relay spot, but besides swimming, Emily realized she had little else to tell Maya.
Emily loved hearing Maya's voice again, but it was no replacement for being able to curl up together like they used to on Sunday afternoons, exchanging chaste kisses, enjoying each other's warmth, and giggling at stupid things on television. It felt weird that they didn't seem to have nearly as much to say to each other as they used to back when they saw each other all the time.
Emily had always pictured something totally different for them once they left for school. She figured they'd be gabbing a mile a minute about all the new people they were meeting and things they were doing, but their conversation kept falling flat, kept dissolving to silence, until finally, Maya let her know she still needed to restring her guitar and pick up some sheet music for class the next day and they said their goodbyes.
Paige wandered back in to the dorm late Sunday night, exhausted. The night before, she had gone to a huge party with Pru and ended up crashing on Pru's floor to the dismay of Pru's roommate. When she awoke in the morning, it was still early, and Paige knew prying Pru from bed was a futile effort. She ended up going back down to the Natatorium to take a few laps and clear her head. She tried to stay clear of Emily so that she could at least try to formulate a reasonable game plan.
As her body had cut through the water, she'd decided the best course of action was to steer clear of Emily as much as possible, keep note of her schedule of classes, study at the library. It seemed like the only appropriate way to keep whatever was happening inside of her at bay. She would simply keep her distance.
That night, pushing open the door to their room, Paige could hear Emily on the phone. They waved an awkward hello as Emily finished up her conversation. By the sound of the sweetness in Emily's voice as she said goodbye, Paige could tell she must have been talking to her girlfriend, and it made Paige undeniably uncomfortable.
When Emily got off the phone, she signaled to Paige that she was going to the bathroom, and Paige took the opportunity to put on her pajamas and get in bed. It wasn't that late, a bit after 10, but the blaring 5am alarm clock was going to come soon.
As she lay there, facing the wall, her mind was racing.
Here she was, finally here, starting everything she had worked her whole life for.
She decided she was going to tackle this year like she did everything else: hard work, will power, sacrifice. Somehow, she hoped that the same methodology would work on her emotions.
A few moments later, she listened as Emily returned to the room, clicked off the lamp, and crawled into bed. Paige took a deep breath and forced her eyes shut.
She could do this, Paige told herself as she drifted off to sleep. She could do this.