As Lita washed her hands, she saw a thin figure walk up to the bathroom mirror. She didn't know the girl, but, glancing at her out of the corner of her eye, Lita recognized her as a sorority girl dating Lance, a fellow basketball player.
For most of her time at Crown, Lita's group of friends had either been restricted to the Sig-Mu guys and Mina and Serena or basketball players. At Crown, teammates were usually all housed in the same section of a dorm, so Lita had bonded with the girls on her team for the past year and a half. Their alarms went off together, they all practiced together, they played together—it made sense. Some of the men's basketball team also lived on their floor; Lita half-wondered if this was the university's misguided attempt at matchmaking.
The brunette assumed that, by the amount of primping the girl beside her was doing, she had slept over the night before.
"Morning," Lita said in her usual friendly tone, even though it was 11:30 am.
The other girl nodded and returned to her makeup. Lita continued rinsing her own rough hands as the girl applied mascara. She was very pretty, of course (Lance was point guard after all) and had delicate features, like a china doll's, with glossy blonde curls and pouting pink lips.
By the time she had left, Lita's hands were practically pruney. She dried them and for a moment, looked at herself in the mirror. She had never thought of herself as beautiful—certainly nowhere near the girls in Mina's sorority or the ones who dated athletes. She was too tall for most guys (not petite like Molly); her hair was always in a frizzy brown ponytail (not smooth and shining like Molly's); and her body, though very much in shape, was too curvy (not slim like Molly's). She normally wore athletic wear because it was just easier that way. She wasn't even sure she owned a dress, and didn't know the first thing about all the powder and goop that girl had been pasting onto her face.
Not that it mattered, really; Lita had never been shallow.
Yet something clenched in her chest as she realized it probably did matter to Nevan.
"And one and two and three and four and one and..."
"Uh, Jed, what are you doing?" asked Zane as he leaned against the doorway. Jed's laptop sat open on his desk, and if Zane's eyes weren't deceiving him, an aerobics routine featuring Jillian Michaels was playing on the screen. Even better, Jed was mirroring Jillian Michaels' squats and kicks as she barked out about the "buns of steel" he would soon own.
"And one!"-punch-"Two!"-squat-"Three!"-bunny hop-"Four!"-...pose?
With a mischievous cackle, Zane began to record Jed's rhythmic gymnastics with his phone.
"Come on, you can do it! You go, girl!" encouraged Jillian Michaels.
"You go, Glen Coco!" encouraged Zane.
Without breaking his concentration, Jed flipped Zane off. With a final jump-kick, he paused the video.
His frat brother's grin was unshakeable.
Jed attempted to explain. "It's Mina's video. She said it would be the fastest way for me to get in shape."
"And of course the most masculine way."
"Delete it."
"No way!"
"Delete it."
"Oh come on, I want to show it to your pretty history class girl," Zane said with a mocking smile.
"You do and I'll show your hot chem girl that comic book collection of yours."
"Her name is Amy, and she might actually be impressed by that."
Jed looked surprised that his friend had managed to find a girl as nerdy as him. "Really?"
"No." Zane looked mournful. "But speaking of Amy, you'll never guess where I saw her today."
"Let me think, let me think." Jed squeezed his eyes shut as if in deep thought. "Um...porno shoot!"
"JED!"
"What? You said I'd never guess, so I went for the unexpected," Jed said, unfazed. "Though you know, the premise of a hot chem girl and her TA might not be a bad idea for a porn..."
"Will you—"
"Is she a good actor?" Jed went on as if deaf to Zane's blustering. "Not that it matters, I don't think acting skills are really part of a porn star's repertoi-"
"SHUT UP!"
Zane kicked at his so-called friend. Jed nimbly hopped out of the way and onto his bed. "Not that I'll find it as interesting as the porno shoot, but where did you see her?"
Zane paused, foot still in mid-air. "She's in my writing seminar."
"Oh?"
"Yeah. And actually," Zane smiled to himself, "she's the one who had my glasses, apparently."
"Really? She steal them? Are you crushing on a klepto now, Zane?"
Zane tried to kick Jed once again. "She did not STEAL them, they fell into her bag."
As he blocked the kick with a textbook that looked suspiciously like one of Zane's ("Damnit Jed!"), the other blonde nodded sagely. "Yeah I had an aunt who was a klepto. I think that was her story, too."
"I can't talk to you right now."
"Aw no, tell me, tell me. Was she wearing the glasses, 'cause that'd go with the whole hot chem girl slash librarian thing—"
"No she was not WEARING them, what the hell?"
"Man, you do not know how to make a good porno."
"I swear Jed, you say 'porno' one more time and this aerobics video goes viral." Zane held up his phone threateningly. "And those rumors about me being gay (which I bet YOU started) are swinging right over to you."
"But Zane, Daniel told Carly told Michaela told Serena that you think I'm cute. Don't you, Zane, don't you?" wailed Jed as he leaped from the bed and flung himself onto the other blonde.
His advances were not graciously received. "Geroff me, you twat!"
At that moment, Zane saw, with the eye that wasn't currently covered by Jed's body, that Nevan had just entered the room...
"Jed you better fricking well get off me!"
...and that Nevan was closely followed by a brunette with wide brown eyes, which widened more when she saw the position the two blondes were in.
Jed and Zane jumped away from each other, as far as they could get, like dogs who'd just been sprayed by a hose.
"Uh, this isn't what it looks like!"
"We were just rehearsing a play!"
"But nothing happened!"
"We swear!"
"Zane just can't keep his hands off me!"
"Traitor!"
Nevan introduced his idiot friends to Molly, much as it pained him to acknowledge them at the moment. While Molly giggled behind her hand, Nevan opened up his arms and hands in the universal "what the hell?" shrug. Really? They had to embarrass him the second he walked in the door?
"So Molly, are you Nevan's...cousin?" asked Zane.
Molly looked confused. "She's in Serena's sorority, Zane," snarled Nevan.
"We're um, kind of...you know," said Molly shyly.
"Oh. Right." Zane thought of how Lita must be feeling right now. He badly felt like clocking Nevan with a shoe.
"Cool," contributed Jed. He subtly closed his laptop before anyone could see the frozen image of Jillian Michaels and co. working their glutes.
"Okay, we'll see you weirdo's later," said Nevan, feeling the awkwardness the situation, which he frankly couldn't explain away. He fidgeted with the iPhone in his hand as he and Molly walked out the door.
It was much easier to not worry about Nevan, Lita decided, when she had a friend to distract her.
Okay, so she didn't actually know Raye well, but she was funny and nice to be around. She and Amy lived in the same dorm complex as Lita, and Lita had thought to drop by to see if the roommates wanted to grab a bite with her. Cooking class had been wonderful, but it had also made Lita pretty hungry. The class had only baked small pastries, which the professor promptly "put away" (to be put away, Lita suspected, in her personal pantry).
"Come in!" called Raye, after Lita knocked on the door of room 103.
Lita entered to find herself facing Raye's ass. The other girl was turned away from the door, bent at the waist, and legs spread out into a deep V position Lita was certain defied human physiology. The dark-haired girl had her hands clasped around her ankles and head planted on the floor.
Serena had once mentioned to Lita that although she and all her friends got hit on at some point whenever they went out to a party or club, Raye usually had more conquests (not that she would call them that) than all the girls in the room put together.
Taking in Raye's flexibility and tight Spandex shorts, Lita little doubted the truth of that statement.
"Er, Raye?"
Raye unhinged her joints like a mechanical toy and popped up. "Hey Lita. What's up?"
Lita looked understandably confused. Raye explained with one word: "Dandayamana."
Silence. "Say what?"
"It's a position."
"In...the Kama Sutra?" Lita suggested.
"Yoga."
"Aah, gotcha. Is that what you do to relax?"
Raye nodded. "I meditate, too." She arched her back into a stretch. "It's too bad Amy's such a stickler for fire code, or I could really delve into my meditations."
Lita decided against asking exactly which aspects of the fire code Raye needed to break to achieve inner peace. "Ah. I just wanted to see if you and Amy wanted to grab some lunch? My cooking class really worked up an appetite."
"Yeah, sure. Oh, there's this organic vegan restaurant off campus called Soy and Things that we could try?"
"Oh...uh, sure—" Lita stammered, though normally she wouldn't touch vegan products with a ten-foot-pole.
Raye allowed herself a smile. "I'm just kidding. Screw vegetables—let's get a burger."
As Amy would be in class all day, it was just the two of them. They took Raye's sleek red car to Jimmy's diner.
Raye apologized for the fact that all the radio presets were either classical music or documentary programs.
"That's what happens when you tell your nerdy roommate she can have her way with the radio."
Once at Jimmy's, the girls grabbed their food and naturally fell into conversation. They talked music, sports, a shared love of cupcakes, their mutual annoyance with the cheerleading squad's ever-shrinking outfits, and then another source of annoyance: Crown's frat boys.
"The ever-diplomatic Amy's pointed out that I know some decent guys who are in frats. But God, when they're in their group they're just—"
"Sexist idiots," finished Lita. Remembering that Nevan was being an idiot all on his own, she amended: "Though some of them can easily be jerks alone, too."
Instead of replying, Raye gave Lita a thoughtful, measuring look with those dark indigo eyes. The other girl shifted uncomfortably in her seat. She felt like that stare could read her.
If Raye had been Serena or Mina, she would have pounced and brought up Nevan and how Lita couldn't hate frats that much if she was so googly-eyed in love with a classic frat boy.
But Raye was Raye and she simply stayed quiet for a moment. "You know, I bought into it my freshman year."
"What?"
"The Greek thing."
"What do you mean?"
Raye rolled her drink straw between her fingers. "I rushed Beta Chi, actually."
"No way." Lita blinked at the idea of Raye singing sorority anthems and coordinating lipstick colors with other girls'.
Raye nodded. "It can suck you in. You feel like you belong in a way, you know. Sororities aren't as bad as frats, but...it wasn't for me. Serena was made for it, though."
Lita agreed. She hadn't known Serena as long as Raye, of course, but she knew what she meant. She nibbled on a fry contemplatively, then said: "Do you think that...frat guys just assume they should be dating sorority girls?"
"I've never seen a frat guy really 'date' anyone, unless date means sleep with them."
Lita detected some venom there.
The other continued: "But I see what you're saying. It's probably easier for them to get with sorority girls. But it's not like they're all in a bubble that can't communicate with the outside world.
"I went to high school with Darien and Serena. They were crazy about each other long before they ended up in the Greek world. Gaga, even; it was kind of disgusting." Lita laughed, well able to imagine the couple mooning over each other while Raye rolled her eyes in the background. Raye continued: "Being Greek hasn't changed that at all, though. It's...well it's not like that's their only identity," she admitted, almost to herself.
She looked up at Lita and paused. She surprised her by saying: "Lita, if he doesn't look at you in that way just because you don't have random Greek letters stitched to your sweater, he really is an idiot. But I think...I think the sorority girl is the distraction. Not the other way around."
In spite of herself, Lita inhaled. "How did you...?"
Raye sat back in her chair. She looked a bit smug. "Just think of the wonders I could do if I had my fire."
Nevan looked down at his cell phone. Molly, whom he had met for lunch leaned over to see what had got his attention. "What's up?"
"Huh, uh, nothing."
Lita must be busy. She had that cooking class after all and then botany in the afternoon. That was why she hadn't responded to his texts. Not that it mattered, she had her own life and he was busy trying to get with Molly so...so, it didn't matter.
"Nevan?"
Molly looked over at him with those wide brown eyes. He put his phone away decisively. Nevan inched closer to the girl, wearing a smile that could weaken the knees. "Want to work on some more physics later?" He waggled his eyebrows and she laughed.
"I think I've figured the problems out," she said in her New Yorker accent.
"Aw."
"But just in case, we could always review it one more time tonight?"
"Better safe than sorry."
Zane sat down to review biochemistry for the following day. The experiment was pretty straightforward since it was their first, but he didn't want to risk making himself into any more of a fool than he had on Monday. Especially in front of a certain someone...
"Whatcha doin'?" asked a voice right by his ear.
"Ah!" The lab manual fluttered up and back onto his desk.
"Jeez, nervous much?" said Jed as he took a seat on the corner of Zane's bed. He deposited a Subway sandwich onto Zane's desk unceremoniously before starting on his own. "No mustard, extra Pepper Jack."
Zane swerved around, simultaneously touched and irritated. "Thanks. Not to sound ungrateful, but don't you have class?"
"Technically, yes."
Zane was about to begin his usual lecture on the obvious detriment to one's grades when one did not attend class, but Jed stopped him with a wave. "I know, I know, but you don't even do anything on the first day, and I'm still shopping for classes."
"The point of shopping for classes, Jed, is that you go check out the class-"
"New sufrar pwease," Jed said in the middle of a large bite of his sandwich. "So what's the story on this chem girl? You gonna ask her out?"
Zane shrugged, suddenly a little shy. "Maybe." He fiddled with his pen and looked down at his manual. "She's interesting, definitely. She has this focused, mathematical mind, Jed. But she also has a poetic side and a love for art, or at least good literature. She's incredibly smart and awfully sweet and pretty and I dunno...I just feel nice when I'm around her."
"You know for a nerd you have a curiously high libido..."
"I don't mean sexually, Jed. God, is that all you think about?"
Jed looked at him with wide eyes, over the footlong sandwich. "Well...yeah."
Zane rolled his eyes. "Seriously, though, I don't think I've ever met anyone quite like Amy. "
Jed studied his friend's classic profile for a minute. Zane had been tumbling into love since they'd met freshman year. Back then, Zane was constantly full of energy and ideas, but also had a thing for pretty girls. The first semester it had been a perky redhead in his Shakespeare class. Zane had even gone so far as to write her a sonnet, which he'd been on the verge of spouting outside her dorm window. He'd arrived at the building, though, only to find that the redhead was more interested in getting it on with a lacrosse team player in the middle of a clump of bushes than hearing Zane's sonnets. At least he never actually got to start the poem, Jed thought gratefully, too preoccupied was Zane with the lacrosse net flailing around and somehow being used in the bush operation... He had tried to go out for sports after that, and twisted his ankle two minutes into a pickup game with Jed. So that was the end of that.
The second time, Zane had met a quieter, but certainly not a bubblegum-sweet girl at a rush party. She wore scads of eyeliner and insisted her name was Darcy even though her friends kept calling her Anne. Zane got her number, though, and called her, tried to date her, and said he found her "fascinating."
"It's not a fucking behavioral experiment, Zane," Jed had put in. Darcy/Anne stopped seeing Zane after a few weeks, informing him she needed someone who understood her dark side better. Considering he was upbeat, constantly smiling, and blonde, Zane abandoned the idea of winning Darcy-Anne back.
The last girl had been Imani. He met her during their summer studying abroad in Europe. Tall, luscious and cocksure, she flirted outright with Zane at the Irish pub their study abroad group had decided to check out. She smiled over at him with ruby lipstick on her mouth and enough shining brown skin revealed to make any man pay attention. She had been unlike any girl Zane had known.
She was razor-sharp, too, quoting Nietzsche in the back of the pub as he tried to catch his breath, and clean the red from his mouth. He found himself in her bed the same night.
It was something he'd promised himself he'd never do. But he had, and a few weeks into the tumultuous relationship, Zane truly thought himself in love.
Imani was more tender than she appeared. She broke up with him gently in the fall, saying she needed time away from anything resembling commitment. It had taken Zane more time and more booze to get over her than any of the others.
That was Zane. Wearing his heart stitched to all his fucking sleeves, getting hurt, and bouncing right back.
Trying not to be too blunt, Jed pointed out: "Zane, you just met this Amy girl."
"I know, it seems crazy. But...I like her," Zane admitted to himself.
"Zane, you liked Imani, too, and that wasn't the best decision—"
"Okay, so I was impulsive. That's just how I am, Jed. And did it ever occur to you that it might actually be for real this time? A broken clock's right twice a day, y'know."
"Hey that's good, you should write that one down."
"It's a cliché you numbskull."
Jed decided to drop his counseling for now. Maybe Ken could try his hand at it. "Come on, all this talk's got me curious. Show me chem girl."
"Amy. And I don't have a picture."
"On Facebook, stupid."
"I'm not going to Facebook stalk her just so you can rate her hotness..."
"What? When have I ever done that?"
Zane began to tick off on his fingers, "With Mina, with Cassie, with Maria, with Deirdre, with the entire cheerleading team, with Janet..."
"Okay okay, I mean with a girl you've liked?"
"With Imani, with Alex, with Claudia..."
"Okay, okay, I promise I won't this time!"
Zane looked suspicious. "Not even in your head?"
"Not even in my head."
"Fine." Zane logged into his Facebook. He searched Amy Anderson, and got a hit. "I think you can only see her profile pic, but this is her. The girl with the shorter hair."
"Yeah, I know."
"How?" asked Zane suspiciously.
"'Cause the girl standing next to her is my history class girl."