by Taylor Bell
“Are you listening to yourself? You’re protecting these rando girls above the dignity of yourself and Kelly?”
“Yes, Jonah, I am. Think about the lengths Kelly already went to. She was in rehab for six months, and she doesn’t even do drugs. If I go in there now and freak out and scream at Colette, what good will that do? Kelly’s commitment to all of them will be wasted.”
Jonah just sat there in silence, looking at the road ahead.
“I get it.”
“You do?”
“Yeah. I get it.”
Jonah zoomed back out onto the highway.
“You have your reasons and I support you,” he continued. “But please tell me you are at least working on a plan to privately yet savagely destroy her.”
“I might be,” I confessed.
“I can help you come up with something good.”
“I know you can.”
“You have to let her know that you know. That needs to happen stat.”
“Really? Why?”
“Because for maximum effect, you need Colette to be squirming every time she’s around you, constantly wondering if you’re about to blow up her whole spot.”
“I like the sound of that. But how do I do that, you know?”
“Just tell her how you got home and finally got to catch up with Kelly. If you say it like you mean it, she’ll get it right away. Colette’s not a fucking dummy.”
“True. But she kind of is. She’s like smart-stupid.”
“Very, very true.”
“I’m just trying to focus on the positive parts of my life. You, Jack, my grades, and my magnificent breasts.”
There was no one I’d rather have been with at that moment than Jonah. The rest of the drive we geeked out and listened to the soundtrack of Wicked. We sang/screamed our faces off. It was the release I needed after the vacation I’d had (if you can even call it that).
I never, in a million years, would’ve expected to be thrilled to get back to my dorm room. It was empty and boring and peacefully devoid of anything that made me think of the mess that was my life. I plopped onto the bed and let out a huge scream into my pillow, which was only semi-relieving.
I couldn’t stop wondering when I’d see Colette next and how it would go down. I remembered her saying that she was going away on vacation over break, but I didn’t know if she was coming back to school early for Snow Bash or not. Until my phone blew up with a group-text string that clued me in:
Meg 3:17PM How the fuck is everyone’s break? I’m bored.
Stephanie 3:18PM Same. I’m over being on break. All I’ve been doing is eating mini muffins
Olivia 3:18PM It’s so true.
Olivia 3:19PM A few nights ago she ate like 40 mini muffins and then cried
Meg 3:19PM LOL
Stephanie 3:20PM OLIVIA WTF
Leyla 3:21PM
Meg 3:24PM So who’s on campus early? I’m getting in tonight for Snow Bash. What are people wearing?
Taylor 3:25PM I’m here now! Let’s hang
Stephanie 3:25PM We’re here
Meg 3:25PM Cute!
Leyla 3:25PM Me too!!!
Meg 3:26PM Oh, cool.
Taylor 3:28PM I think I’m wearing this navy halter dress I keep forgetting to wear to date nights
Stephanie 3:28PM I ate 20 mini muffins at the absolute maximum. And they’re tiny
Stephanie 3:28PM And I was wasted
Stephanie 3:29PM And my ex from high school was there and he’s dating a Victoria’s Secret model I’m not even fucking kidding
Meg 3:30PM Okay Steph whatever honestly no one cares
Meg 3:30PM How many muffins you ate
Meg 3:30PM No offense
Stephanie 3:31PM Oh, none taken
Olivia 3:31PM Fuck. I was going to wear a navy halter too :/
Taylor 3:32PM Oh I don’t mind if we both have the same color dress
Jane 3:32PM Oh snap!!! TWO NAVY DRESSES?!
Meg 3:33PM omg Jane lolz you’re hilarious
Stephanie 3:35PM We should pre-game at our place. Si?
Olivia 3:35PM Don’t be a bitch, Jane. I hate matchy girls with a passion. PS who are you?
Jane 3:36PM Oh get off me, Olivia.
Meg 3:36PM Well that sounded a little bit shaaaadddyyyyy
Jane 3:36PM Me?
Olivia 3:36PM Me?
Jane 3:37PM I’m gonna wear a navy blue halter dress
Meg 3:37PM HAHA
Taylor 3:37PM lol
Meg 3:38PM Colette? Hello?
Meg 3:38PM Has anyone spoken to Colette?
Meg 3:38PM or Kenadie for that matter
Stephanie 3:40PM Nope
Meg 3:40PM Colette, are you there? How long are you in Mexico for?
Jane 3:41PM She doesn’t text me.
Leyla 3:41PM Me neither.
Leyla 3:41PM I love when we do these group texts though:)
Olivia 3:42PM I talked to her last night. She’s still in Mexico. I think she’s in Tulum with her cousins for another like week
Meg 3:42PM Oh ok cool.
Olivia 3:43PM Yeah. She told me she did molly on new years and Lorde performed on the beach
Kenadie 3:43PM OMG fun!!!!!!!!
Meg 3:44PM Oh, hi Kenadie
Olivia 3:44PM Hey Ken
Stephanie 3:44PM Kenadie wtf hiiiiii. Are you here?
Kenadie 3:45PM Yep I’m here let’s drink
Stephanie 3:45PM Funnnnn
Taylor 3:45PM PS Kelly says hi and that she misses you guys
Meg 3:46PM OMG hi Kelly!! love love! Tell her we miss her
Leyla 3:46PM Who’s Kelly?
Kenadie 3:46PM What’s up Kelly. Hi y’all! Let’s hang out and get drunk
Olivia 3:46PM You just said that
Meg 3:47PM True
Jane 3:47PM lol
Kenadie 3:50PM lol y’all. I’m so happy to be back
Meg 3:50PM SAME
Meg 3:53PM KK let’s talk soon and plan tomorrow night. Taylor call me
Taylor 3:53PM Will do
I put my phone down and looked at myself in the mirror, finding a tense and wired-looking version of myself staring back. I needed to clear my head and disconnect from the world for a minute. I put my phone into airplane mode and got dressed for a run. It was freezing outside, but I didn’t care. I knew there was no other way to get out of my head.
When I got back to my room and switched my phone back on to check my messages, I had a voice mail from my parents checking to see that Jonah and I got back to campus all right, and I’d missed this text from Jack:
Jack 5:01PM U back?
I wrote back right away.
Taylor 5:01PM Yup:) when do you get back again?
Jack 5:01PM Getting in at 830. Went to a hockey game with my dad. Dinner later?
Taylor 5:02PM Dinner sounds perfect. Drive safe. Text when you get here
Jack 5:03PM
I’d promised Meg I’d stop by the BZ house to say hi, so I headed there before dinner. I was glad Colette wasn’t back in town. I needed more time to figure out exactly how I was going to handle that whole fucked-up sitch.
“I’m running late for my dinner with Jack,” I lied to Meg, who was sitting on her bed checking Facebook on her iPhone.
“Oooohhhh. Sounds steamy. I wasn’t aware you had moved into the Dicks Before Chicks phase of your romance,” Meg replied, not even looking up from her feed.
“It’s not even like that.”
“No, no. I get it. This happens to us all. You’re here for five minutes and you gotta rush out to go see a guy about getting fucked. It’s all good, babe. I’m not mad, I’m just real.”
“But I’ll see you tomorrow to pre-game for the Snow Bash?” I asked.
“It’s honestly fine, Tay. I was just giving you a hard time. I have to go in a minute anyway. Jenna brought back some amazing grape-flavored cocaine and I told her I’d sample some with her before we went to the gym.”
“How fun!” I said sarcastically.
<
br /> It was great to see Meg, but it was also a bit weird to be in the house and to have this secret hanging over me. The whole thing made me feel like I’d done something wrong, which was ridiculous considering I was the last to know.
On the walk over to the Omega Sig house, I contemplated whether or not to tell Jack. Something was telling me to keep my mouth shut for now. Did it even make sense to involve him at this point? When I arrived at his house, I stood in front for a minute, trying to find some clarity. As I was about to ring the doorbell, someone behind me whistled.
“Hey, good-lookin’, can I help you with something?”
I spun around and saw Jack was already sitting in front of the house in his parked car with the window rolled down. He must have seen me standing there that whole time.
“Holy shit, I’m glad it’s you.”
“Sorry, Tay. Didn’t mean to frighten you.”
“What are you doing here all alone in the dark?” I asked as I approached his window.
“I was just about to ask what you were doing standing alone in front of the door, in the dark.”
“Good point.”
“I got back pretty quickly, unpacked my stuff, and I knew you were coming over soon, so I just came out here to wait for you.”
“That was really sweet and semi-creepy of you.”
“Also, they’re having a porn-a-thon right now on the projector in the living room, so I figured I’d spare you the epic triple-penetration scene that is currently being enjoyed.”
“See, maybe you don’t know me as well you thought, because I fucking LOVE triple-pen scenes.”
“Oh, well then. I am so very sorry to have deprived you. I didn’t realize you were such a fan of the adult cinema. By all means, let’s go in and see if we can’t catch the last couple of moments. Which, by the way, are spectacular in this particular vignette. Some of Tasha Reign’s finest work.”
“Huge fan of Tasha’s.”
“She’s an artist.”
This was the weirdest and sexiest flirting of my life.
“I couldn’t agree more with you, Jack. I really couldn’t.” I leaned into his car window and kissed him.
We made out for a minute, then Jack suggested that we pick up dinner, go back to my dorm, and watch a movie. It was pretty clear that we wouldn’t be doing too much eating or watching.
The sex that Jack and I’d had up until now had been great, but after coming back from break it was like we’d graduated to a new level of closeness. There was something new about the way he looked at me and touched me. I could tell that he’d really missed me. Jack was in control of everything. As I laid on my bed, he undressed me so expertly and smoothly that I had a hard time not giggling. I wanted Jack to fuck me so badly. He had a tendency to make me wait for it, which was what I loved most about him. Just as I was about to force him to go inside me he looked deep into my eyes and said:
“I want you on top tonight.”
I’d never been on top with Jack, or anyone for that matter.
“Okay.”
“I’ll do all the work. Just relax,” he said.
As I climbed on top and he went inside me, I knew I was going to love this. It felt amazing, like nothing I’d ever experienced. The pressure between our bodies was so intense. I couldn’t feel where my body ended and his began. Jack continued to control the motion, but I realized I could control how much I was bearing down on top of him. Within a minute I was already feeling like I could orgasm.
“I feel like I’m gonna come,” I blurted out.
“You should then.”
I ended up having three orgasms in the span of about twenty minutes. It was incredible and it felt like we were both in shock afterward. I fell asleep, nestled into Jack’s shoulder, and I stayed there until the morning.
“Greasy diner breakfast?” Jack asked, one eye open.
“You read my mind.”
“Great. I need coffee. Badly.”
“I have an extra toothbrush for you.”
“Are you saying I have morning breath?”
“Haha, very funny. I just don’t trust a man who doesn’t value oral hygiene.”
“I respect that and I will honor that by accepting your kind dental gift. I shall treasure it always.”
“Such chivalry!” I kissed him hard on his perfectly stubbled cheek and he hopped out of bed.
As we went about our morning, brushing our teeth together, getting dressed together, and driving to breakfast, the fact that I hadn’t told him a thing about Colette and Kelly was weighing on me. I just kept building it up in my head. How could I be dishonest with someone whom I was expecting to be honest with me? Was I being dishonest by not telling him?
At some point during breakfast, I must have unknowingly started staring at my egg-white omelet.
“Are you okay?” he asked. “You just checked out or something.”
That was it. I needed to tell him everything. I wanted him to know what I’d been through. I had to break the seal. But as I looked up, something caught my eye by the front counter.
Holy fucking shit.
It was Colette.
She walked into the diner with this football player named Josh something, whom she fucked from time to time. She looked flawless. My blood started to boil.
“Oh, look who’s here,” I said to Jack in the calmest tone I could muster.
She spotted us and came right up to the table.
“Nothing like some diner grease and shitty coffee to wash down last night’s coital juices.”
I’d forgotten how condescending Colette’s tone was. Being this close to her literally made me want to throw coffee in her face and stab her with my butter knife.
“Hey, Colette. How are you?” Jack said.
“I’m good. Came back early for the Snow Bash, as I assume you did as well?”
“Yeah, we did.” I smiled. “How was Mexico?”
“Hot. How was your break, Taylor?”
This was it. This was my moment. I thought about what Jonah had said about owing it to Kelly and all of my BZ sisters to stand up to Colette. I wanted her to know that I knew everything that had gone down. But I had to proceed with caution; Colette was a crafty bitch and a formidable opponent. I took one long breath, and looked deep into her brown eyes.
“It was really nice, Colette. Finally got a chance to catch up with Kelly. She’s been . . . away, as you know.”
“Right,” Colette replied smugly. “How was her . . . internship?”
“Great! Although she’s not nearly as tan as I thought she’d be after all those months in Africa. Anyways, we had soooooo much to talk about—you know, about Beta Zeta and all.”
Colette looked into my eyes and, for a split second, I saw her perfectly composed facade crack. Just as quickly, her face resumed its mask of calm condescension as she turned to go. “See you tonight, I guess?”
“Great.”
She knew that I knew. As she walked away I sat happily in that booth, convinced that I had played it perfectly. I decided not to tell anyone else, including Jack, about my beef with Colette. Getting back at her would be a long and slow process. Colette had already proved herself to be a masterful manipulator. Kelly is no joke and Colette had managed to take her down. I’d have to be calculated and calm about it.
“Hey, Colette,” I called out to her, “sorry about your mom’s dog.”
“It’s fine. Thanks.” She sat in a booth on the other side of the diner.
It’s on.
18.
THE BZ GIRL
Weeks passed without incident between me and Colette. I could tell that she was keeping an eye on me just as much as I was keeping an eye on her—in chapter meetings, in hospital gala committee meetings, at parties. Neither of us said a word about it. It was business as usual on the exterior. Between studying, the chapter stuff, and Jack, exacting revenge on Colette fell lower and lower on my priority list. To be honest, I barely had enough time to blow-dry my hair on most days.
>
I kept my life pretty much dramaless until one Sunday night about a month or so into the spring semester. It started as a pretty average night. I was in the library robotically rifling through index cards, testing myself on some IDs for a quiz I had the next day. On one side of each card was the name of a feminist visual artist from 1960 to 1970, and on the other were three of her most famous works and a blurb about her contribution to the time period. This was kind of exactly what I liked about school, the routine and the repetition. I was always good at memorizing things.
Completely in the zone, I spat out the IDs more like a computer than a human. Bridget Riley, flip card, Crest 1964, Disturbance 1964, Cataract 1967, geometry suggests movement of color, inspired by hallucinogenic experimentation with Aldous Huxley, next card.
Ping, ping. My phone buzzed next to my stack of books, causing the whole table to vibrate. The girl across from me, who had been coughing and blowing her nose into the same dirty tissue for the last hour, lifted her head from her laptop and scowled.
“Sorry,” I mouthed before reading the text.
Meg 10:44PM House meeting in 15 minutes. Basically if you’re not here by 11 then we’re locking the door and you can never come back. So don’t be late. Not kidding :)
Random house meetings like this were super rare. I threw my bag over my shoulder and got out of that library as quickly and quietly as I could. I knew I’d have to speed-walk to make it across campus in time.
I glanced at my phone as I ran up the faded brick steps to the BZ house.
10:58 PM.
The door was unlocked. I went directly to the Great Room, where meetings were normally held, which was empty besides Jane, who was also looking for everyone.
“Oh,” she said, pointing to a note on the mantel. “It says to go to the basement.”
I didn’t say anything, just followed her downstairs. I’d only been down to the basement once before, to grab some cups for a brunch meeting we had. I found myself peering into every open door, wondering where the bathroom was that my sister and Colette had used as storage for their stash.
Now my entire pledge class was standing around talking. People didn’t really seem that apprehensive. Jane and I found open seats in the circle of chairs. Everything these girls did was in a circle.
“This is so annoying. I was showering,” Jane said, pissed.