Girls on Campus

by Sandy Lowe

  “But nothing! You can’t throw away four years of hard work for someone you have nothing in common with!”

  Drew had flushed with delicious memories. “Not exactly nothing…”

  Pam flung up one palm. “Please! No details! I have a weak stomach.”

  “It wasn’t ugly, damn it! It wasn’t disgusting!”

  “I’m not the only one who’d see it that way!”

  “Well, fuck you!”

  “You’ll never come close!” Pam retorted, scooping up her French grammar, slamming the door…

  Tired of the long pause, the suspense, Zoe rapped a spoon against a coffee cup, snapping Drew back to reality. “So I’m guessing your roommate disapproves?”

  “In spades. It was horrible! Pam and I have lived together since freshman year, but she acted like I’d morphed into some kind of monster overnight.”

  “A helpful preview of what we’re up against if we decide to pursue this thing.”

  “Not if, Zoe—as! Please say ‘as’!”

  Compton’s shoulders relaxed at last and she allowed a grin to escape. “Okay, Drew. As we pursue this thing. What happened next?”

  “I took an algebra test, which I’m pretty sure I failed. Then I reported to the lab school, where various events reminded me exactly how much I like kids, how good I am at my job. Then when I was headed to meet you at the Student Union, I remembered what Pam said. And I knew she was right—no way could I afford to fall in love with a woman.”

  “But you have,” Zoe said triumphantly.

  Drew smiled back. “Strange, but true. Still, no one who knew that would waste time interviewing me for a preschool position.”

  “So you panicked?”

  “I panicked. I blew off my afternoon seminar and holed up in the dorm. Eating stale crackers, feeling like a rat in a trap. Crying immoderately—which didn’t go unnoticed. For a long, abysmal time, I couldn’t see a way forward.”

  “But now?”

  Drew had slapped her forehead theatrically. “In a moment of rare clarity, Zoe, it finally occurred to me that I’m smart. Really, really smart. I can find other work—meaningful work—a job where it doesn’t matter who I love. Because I already know I belong with you.”

  Compton stretched across the table to squeeze Drew’s hands. “But I think you should continue on the path you chose. Any preschool director would be thrilled to have you on staff—and a fool to let you go.”

  “That happens, though, Zoe. All the time. You know it.”

  “Well, in the inconceivable case that you were fired, I’d be able to support both of us. Before long, computers will be everywhere, essential to absolutely everything, and people like me will be making big bucks. Mark my words.”

  Drew shrank from the sudden vision of herself as a kept woman. “No go, Zoe. I’ll need employment of my own—to keep me out of trouble, if nothing else.”

  A silence fell between them, lengthening ominously, before Zoe made herself say, “I suppose there’s always the closet…”

  “I’d never ask you to live a lie—you’re not the type.”

  “And you are?”

  “I told you…I’ll look for a different job.”

  Zoe laughed—a deep, magnificent, captivating laugh. “I’d bet my slide rule you’re on track to graduate summa.”

  “So what?”

  “So I’d rather live in the closet than see you give up something you excel at, a profession you love.”

  “It would be worth it to be with you.”

  “Here’s an alternate scenario, Drew: we live the life we choose. We’re never dishonest about our relationship if asked. But we never volunteer private information.”

  “A sort of quasi closet?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Could you stand that?”

  “More easily than losing you.”

  Drew had picked up her hat, her gloves then, and stood. “Take me home, Compton.”

  In daylight, Zoe’s apartment was stark and bare. But the bedroom was orderly and those soft sheets were tucked tight around the mattress, almost military in their precision. “It would be a shame to mess with such perfection,” Drew teased.

  Compton had snagged one wrist, pulled her down. “We can always make it again.”

  “But that would mean we’d have to get up…”

  Some untracked number of hours sped by and darkness descended. Lounging on tangled linens in the moon’s soft glow, Zoe said quietly, “I think we just passed our first big test.”

  “What’s that?”

  “We proved we can push through fear, find solutions to the insanity outside ourselves.”

  “Big deal,” Drew had said dismissively. “I’m more interested in another kind of test.”

  “Such as?”

  “Whether we can set a record for the most orgasms in the shortest period of time.”

  “Challenge accepted,” Zoe said, bending to an enticing breast. “Better notify Guinness that Compton’s on the case.”

  They’d been partners ever since. It hadn’t always been easy—two such different personalities sharing that cramped little closet. Over the decades there were misunderstandings and arguments, hurt feelings and doubts. All trumped by trust and respect. By politics and passion. By overlapping values and beliefs. By parents’ illnesses, parents’ passings. By the doors each opened into worlds the other had only glimpsed. By a million midnight conversations and morning kisses and forty times their birthdays, anniversaries, Christmases, and new years. Until time wove them together into a serene, grateful, inseparable symbiosis. DrewandZoe. ZoeandDrew…

  A discreet knock on the restroom door brought Malachi out of her reverie. Tossing her paper towel, she returned to work, to the stacks and stacks of files on her desk, to the endless decisions that defined the executive role in a child care center. But in calm moments that morning, she thought again about her partner. Wished it were the weekend instead of another dreary Monday. Wished she were just coming back to consciousness in Zoe’s tender embrace. A thousand-thousand events would take place before Saturday rolled around again. But damn, the two of them were lucky! They’d run headlong at love when they were young and green and they’d never regretted it, never looked back.

  Let Me Help You Pack

  Rebekah Weatherspoon

  I’m in a huff when I walk back to my sorority house. The last day of class before vacation always has that weird rushed feeling, like even our professors can’t wait to get the heck out of here. I’m ready to go too, but not without an explanation from my sociology professor about the absurd grade he gave me on my midterm paper. I nailed the proposed question, my footnotes were in perfect order, and the document itself was 100 percent error free.

  I want to ask him why the low grade, since his notes to “expand” and “elaborate” make no sense to me, but he’s out the door before I can even get my things together and make it down the lecture hall stairs. I rush after him into the hallway, but Professor Lutz is long gone. I’ll find him when I get back for sure. Or maybe I’ll email him. Either way, I want answers. I need to know on what planet I deserved this grade.

  In the meantime, I have to pack. In less than two hours we’re leaving town, and I haven’t even checked to see if all of the clothes I want to bring on our trip are clean. I’m usually more organized than this, but last night after I finished studying for my Islamic history midterm, my girlfriend decided to show up in my room. Literally just showed up. She used to be undead, but now she’s just a mortal with powers posing as a college student so we can still be together. She goes to classes and everything just so her presence in my life makes sense to my sorority sisters, who have no idea who she really is.

  Alpha Beta Omega is really a nest, home to five immortal vampires that my sorority sisters and I feed, for the greater good. That’s our motto. My girlfriend used to be one of them, a vampire who fed on the girls under our room, but she sacrificed herself for me, only to be reborn somewhat mortal with a lot of the
vampire perks. Like the ability to vanish through walls. My roommate was crashing down the hall with a few of the other girls, so I had the room to myself. Yes, we screwed until the wee hours of the morning, which has a lot to do with how cranky and over-caffeinated I am right now, but I am not too keyed up or pissed off to know that this grade is bull crap. I almost run right into my roommate, Portia, as I storm back into the Alpha Beta Omega sorority house.

  “Bridgette’s upstairs,” she says over the noise. The TV is on and there’s music coming from the kitchen. All kinds of shouting. It’s always like this when we’re about to leave. “Came to say bye or something.”

  “Thanks!” That makes me feel a little better. I’d seen her four hours ago, but I want to see my girlfriend again. I pick my way around the luggage that’s already piled up near the door and around the stairs and make my way up to my room on the second floor and find her sitting on my bed playing with my tablet. My body instantly reacts to her as I close the door behind me, shutting out the noise. We’re blood bound to each other in a way now; we both serve the same vampire, and the feedings and the sex we share with Moreland only make us closer. It only makes me want her more.

  The weather’s still a little chilly, so she’s in jeans and a Maryland University sweatshirt—unlike last night, when she appeared in my room in much less. She’s never been a fan of clothes, not as a vampire and not now.

  She smiles at me, that pitying smile because she knows I’m upset. “What’s wrong?”

  “B-plus. Read that and tell me that’s not an A paper.” I still have the pages gripped in my hand, flat, though; I don’t want to crumple up my work or it won’t sit smoothly in my file cabinet. I shove it in her face.

  She laughs as she sets down my tablet. “No.”

  “What?” I wasn’t expecting that. I know I get worked up about my grades, but she usually indulges me because she knows how important it is that I get As across the board. “Why no?”

  “No, ’cause I’m not reading it.”

  “Why not?”

  “’Cause you know and I know a B-plus will not screw up your grade in this class. I mean, we can pull out your assignment spreadsheet.” Yes, I have one of those. “I’m pretty sure a B-plus on this and the next three papers will still only bump your average down to a ninety-eight. Still an A, baby.”

  “I just don’t get these notes, and he didn’t even stick around so I could ask him about it.”

  “Of course he didn’t. It’s Spring Break, baby! Come here.” She opens her arms for me. I’m still grumpy, but I set my paper on my desk and take a seat on her lap. In her human form, she’s small like me, barely five feet tall, but she still has her superhuman strength, so balancing my weight on her thighs is easy. She strokes my back and kisses my face. This doesn’t do anything to improve my mood. I’m cranky for a lot of reasons today.

  “You and I also know that the limo bus will be here in two hours to take you to the airport.”

  “I know. I don’t want to go.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  “You’re right. I do. But don’t want to go without you.” Things are tricky. The girls can’t know who Bridgette really is. They can’t know that she used to be their beloved Miyoko, affectionately known as Tokyo. She was amazing as an immortal. Fun, sexual, down to party twenty-four seven, and so, so loving. It has been a few months, and her girls have already been redistributed to other vampires in the house, but they still miss her and talk about her all the time.

  Hiding her true identity was her choice in the beginning. She died in such a brutal way and died for a girl who wasn’t even her bound feeder. Explaining the how of her reappearance would pose too many questions, and yes, there was the bit where I was afraid that the girls would blame me for taking away their vampire. The fact that she is both very alive and very well and that I am keeping her to myself in her new form will only make things worse. All of this is a complicated secret, but as time goes by we realize it really is for the best. We’ve both been through so much, and living as Bridgette—a name she’s also taken on for me—gives Tokyo a real fresh start. It gives the two of us a do-over.

  But that do-over comes with conditions, like if she wants to join Alpha Beta Omega and live in the house again full-time, she has to wait until the fall. That means she can’t come on vacation with us. Most of the girls in the house are sleeping with other girls in the house, so they don’t care about leaving friends and lovers behind for almost two weeks. Even though my roommate has a boyfriend, she sleeps with girls in the house all the time, so she’ll have a blast on vacation. I am the only member of ABO in a truly monogamous relationship, and I have to leave my girlfriend behind.

  She’ll pop up randomly in the middle of the night because, as we determined over Christmas break, we can only go forty-eight hours without our body parts connecting intimately. Ten days will be way too long, but she has to wait until the right moments so I can sneak away from the group.

  I lean into her. “I haven’t even packed yet, and I need to shower.”

  Her lips are so close to my mine, but she doesn’t kiss me. She talks close to my eyes. “I wanted to give you a proper good-bye. How can I help you get ready?”

  Goose bumps spring up and my voice squeaks a bit when I speak. “Convince Ginger to let you come.”

  “You know she won’t. Next year, I promise. Now let me help. What do you need?”

  I let out a deep breath, then I reach into my back pocket, pull out my phone, and bring up my list.

  Her laugh blows a wisp of air against my cheek. Everything about her still smells the same, sweet and citrus. “You made a packing list,” she says, shaking her head. “Of course you did.”

  “I just wanted to be prepared.”

  “Why don’t you get in the shower and I’ll get started on helping you pack. Okay?”

  “Okay,” I whine, but it takes me a few minutes to get up. She starts kissing me before I can. And I’m useless when she starts kissing me. Thoroughly trained and seasoned dominatrix with a hundred years’ sexual experience, fifty more as an undead, all boiled down into this reborn college student who made me hers. I’m lost with her tongue moving against mine, caught up in the way her hand is moving along my back and how her other hand is rubbing my thighs. I have to get in the shower.

  “I’ll be right back,” I say when I manage to pull away from her.

  It’s so hard, especially when she looks at me with those deep brown eyes, because no one’s ever looked at me like that. No one ever sees me the way she does. This is going to be a long ten days. I shake off the lust boiling inside me and climb off her lap. As soon as I step back into the hall I’m swarmed by the chaos. Music blasting from at least five different rooms, girls running up and down the hall searching for this, grabbing that, doing a little bit of pregaming, which to me seems pointless because who wants to be wasted on a plane.

  “Hey, Jill! You want a shot?” Skylar asks me as I pass her room. I have to pass. There’s a shower open and I snag it. When I hop back out Aleeka is waiting. I get out of her way, grab my toiletries out of my cubby, and carry them with me back down to the hall.

  I find Bridgette standing over my full suitcase. I blink twice, looking at my things all neatly folded, then up to her face. Then a little lower. She’s taken off her sweatshirt and all she’s wearing underneath is a thin white shirt that is most definitely see-through. She’s not wearing a bra. The fabric molds to her heavy breasts, and the tips of her light brown nipples poke at the shirt, inviting me to come investigate them a little further, but I can’t get over what’s happening with my suitcase.

  I walk closer, water still dripping down my legs, and look at her handiwork. “You packed for me?”

  “Yeah. Still got the super speed and that photographic memory. Plus I’ve been on this trip like sixteen times. I covered your list and some extras. Twelve perfect outfits including shoes and evening wear for your trip to St. Maarten.” She taps her temple. “I know what all your clot
hes look like and I remember seeing your bikinis in the back of your closet. They were in—”

  “In the Target bag. Right.” I shouldn’t be shocked. She is magic, and packing isn’t exactly a superhuman skill, but… “I was only gone like ten minutes max. Whatever. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome. Here, give me that.” She plucks my toothbrush and my toothpaste out of my hand and drops them into a plastic baggie. “Where do you want this?” she asks. This is another reason I love her. She’s not very organized. She doesn’t have to be with her memory, but she knows how anal and organized I am. No way I would just throw that stuff on top of my neatly folded clothes.

  “Side pocket.”

  She shoves it into place and slides that pouch closed. Then she holds out her hand for me. “And that’s not all.” I clasp my finger with hers and follow her over to my desk. She’s pulled my video library up on my tablet.

  I lean back a little as her arms come around my waist.

  “Downloaded three movies for you, plenty to get you through the flight since I know you can’t sleep on planes. Those should finish loading in a second. That way you can watch them even if the Wi-Fi isn’t working. And I downloaded four books for you to read, for pleasure.”

  I opened my book app and there they were; four titles from two of my favorite horror authors that I have been dying to read.

  “I almost deleted your textbooks off that thing ’cause I don’t think studying and sunbathing mix, but you know.”

  I glared at her over my shoulder. “I would have kill—”

  “You would have killed me. I know. Just promise me you won’t study the whole time.”

  I pull her closer, wrapping my arms around hers, pressing my butt into her crotch. “I won’t study at all if you come.”

  “Nice try. Do you need anything else?”

  “No, I don’t think so. I just need to get dressed.”

  “True, but I bought you some time.” She’s right. Even if I dress slowly and take a while to dry my hair, thanks to her we have an hour to kill. I turn around, and right away I see the impression my wet hair has made on the situation.