Try Delta
A few days later, the semester was in full swing. When I walked into the student union to get some lunch between classes, I was assaulted by the noise of all the clubs assembled to attempt to recruit new members. I had forgotten about Club Day, the day when everyone from the theatre nerds to the fraternities set up booths to promote themselves and harass every student who passed their way.
Club Day was my least favorite day of the semester.
I finally made it into the food court with only a few unwanted flyers in my hands, and I considered that a success. I quickly bought a burrito at Baja Fresh then glanced around to see if any of my friends were around. Zac, Molly, Peyton and Zac’s roommate Elijah were crowded around a small table and as I approached they all scooted in to make room for me. The spot they cleared was right next to Zac, and I was sure that was no coincidence.
“Oh good, you survived,” Zac said, scooting in to give me room.
“Yeah,” I replied. “It was a little iffy when I got to all the sororities, but I think I came out unscathed. Anybody need a Tri Delta flyer?”
“I’d like to try a delta,” Elijah remarked.
“Did someone switch your personality out with Taylor’s?” Peyton asked. “That’s disgusting.”
“I think I saw Bella talking to the Tri Delts,” Molly said. “You think she’s going to rush? I mean, don’t people usually do that freshmen year?”
“Who knows what Bella is going to do,” I replied, trying not to sound as disgusted by the discussion of
her as I felt.
Even though she still hadn’t really done anything wrong, I didn’t like her. She didn’t spend much time in the suite, and definitely didn’t acknowledge us outside of it. When she was there, she still tried way too hard to be friendly with us, especially if one of the guys was around. It didn’t surprise me at all that she was talking to Delta Delta Delta during Club Day. They were well known for being the sluttiest fraternity on campus; the nickname Tri Delta came with the joke that those girls would try anything once. Peyton would have called me a bad feminist for insulting our roommate like that if I’d said it out loud, but I could just tell Bella would be right at home in their slutty ranks.
“Enough about the Greeks,” I said. “Are we all still on for game night?”
It was Wednesday night, which was our traditional game night. It wasn’t an old tradition; we had just started it the previous fall when we all became friends. We had all been into all sorts of geeky games for a while and played them from time to time, but the tradition of getting together on Wednesday nights for a specifically chosen game was fairly new.
“First game night of the semester,” Zac said. “We better make it special.”
“So, Lord of the Rings Risk?” I asked.
He gave me one of those huge grins that made my insides turn to mush. “You read my mind, George.”
Trying not to blush as I turned back to the rest of the table, “That sound good to you guys? Our room, around seven, for Lord of the Rings Risk and Taco Bueno?”
“Actually,” Molly piped up, “I think I’m probably going to a tutoring session. I know it’s early in the semester, but this organic chem class is going to be a killer.”
“Paging Dr. Molly,” Zac chuckled. “Must be some class if you’re skipping our first game night for it. There’s gonna have to be a severe punishment for that.”
I nodded soberly. “We’ll have to take a vote on how to properly reprimand her for this offense.”
“Oh, come on!” Molly whined. “If I’m gonna get into med school–”
“You have to get good grades,” we all finished for her.
“Yes. I do.” She glared at us, then shoved one last big bite of nachos into her mouth. “And that’s why I have to run. I’ve got a lab all afternoon.”
Molly was gone before we could tease her any more about how much she studied. It wasn’t like the rest of us studied any less, but she was the only one with such huge goals. Once she was gone, the rest of us gradually finished our meals until only me and Zac remained at the table. I almost thought they had planned it that way, like the way they conveniently made space for me right next to Zac. Maybe I was being paranoid, though.
“Are you going to run off now too?” Zac asked.
“Nope,” I replied. “I don’t have class for two hours. I probably will go curl up somewhere and read, though.”
“Nerd,” Zac said.
“Geek,” I replied, poking Zac in the face with a french fry from his own plate. He snapped his head toward it and attempted to bite the fry, but I pulled it away before he could. “Don’t you have another class this afternoon too? Clinical psych?”
“Yeah, and can you believe we have a paper proposal due in there already? I need to stop by the library and print mine off before class, I guess.”
“You guess?” I asked. “And I’m betting you wrote it while trying to level up your paladin or whatever.”
“How did you know?” He asked, giving me a crooked grin.
“Because you always leave your homework until the last minute, and even when you don’t, it’s amazing any of your professors can make sense of it,” I replied.
Zac gasped in mock horror. “You just aren’t on my level of intelligence. My essays are fantastic.”
“They might be,” I replied. “It’s hard to tell when your spelling makes them look like English is your second language.”
“This is exactly why I keep you around,” he said. “You edit my essays for me and make sure my ego doesn’t get too big.”
“Glad to know I can be useful,” I replied, hoping the grin on my face looked sincere.
Zac grinned back, so I supposed it did. There were so many other ways I wanted to be useful to him, so many other reasons I wished he needed me. He made it pretty clear that he didn’t, though. As we finished our lunch, I tried to hide my stupid disappointment that once again, Zac had shown that I was nothing more than a friend to him.
“Are we playing as alliances?” Zac asked around a bite of burrito, his words barely intelligible.
“We are,” I replied. “Are we going to get guac all over the game board?”
“Possibly.” Zac grinned, just as a glob of guac did indeed fall out of his burrito and onto his shirt.
“Attractive,” I deadpanned, even though, as everyone but Zac knew, there was little Zac could do that I wouldn’t find attractive. It was pathetic, really.
While he shuffled off to the kitchen to find a napkin to clean up his mess, I slid into the floor in front of the coffee table that held the game board and began setting up all the pieces in their proper places. I was a little bit anal about having all the colors not just sorted together, but sorted by type, as well. Zac and I nearly always played as black and red, respectively, so I set up those two colors on my side of the board. Peyton and Elijah weren’t as anal as me, so I just passed them the yellow and green pieces to set up as they wanted.
“Are we ready now?” Zac asked, flopping down into the floor next to me. There was still a big green stain on his shirt and a dab of what looked like sour cream on the corner of his mouth.
“Almost,” I replied, reaching out to wipe the sour cream off with my finger.
It was an instinctive move, and I felt myself blushing after I did it. Not sure what else to do without making things even more awkward, I simply grinned sheepishly and wiped my finger off on his shirt.
“Oh, thanks,” Zac said. “That goes really well with the guac, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah, I think you’ll definitely start a new trend with that.” I giggled.
“Okay, if you two can stop flirting, how about we get this game under way? I’ve got a ring to destroy,” Elijah said, rattling the dice in his hand.
Flirting? Were Zac and I flirting? It didn’t feel like flirting, but it wasn’t like I had a lot of experience with that sort of thing. I had a grand total of one boyfriend in high school, and that had happened more out of convenience than anything else. I didn’t remember ever flirting with James; we were both part of the school literary magazine and at some point we just became more than friends. It never felt like what I had with Zac, though. Maybe I was flirting with Zac, but there was no way he was flirting back.
Was there?
As I waited for Elijah to take the first turn, I decided that he must have been teasing me. He wasn’t serious. I might have been flirting with Zac, but there was no way Zac was flirting back.
The game went on, and as it did, I stopped worrying about whether or not Zac and I were flirting. It seemed like the moments when I could just relax around him and act like things were perfectly normal and perfectly friendly were getting fewer and fewer. College was making it harder, I supposed. Being in closer proximity to each other than we had ever been before made it harder to hide how I felt. It hadn’t been nearly this bad in high school, not even when I first realized I was developing a crush on him. I hoped it would improve with time, but it only seemed to get worse. Nights like this, when I could relax, were the best.
The game went faster than regular Risk, so we made it through two rounds before it was even that late. By the time we started our third round, Zac was laying across my lap, a couch pillow the only thing between us and allowing me to keep from having a complete meltdown. We were just sorting out all the game pieces and cards when the door to the suite opened. I was hoping it would be Molly, but it wasn’t. It was Bella.
“Oh, hey,” Zac said, scrambling to crawl out of my lap.
“What’s all this?” Bella asked, waving her hand in the general direction of us and our game.
“Game night,” Zac replied. “Lord of the Rings Risk. Want to play? We could break the rules and let you be in our alliance.”
She glanced back and forth between Zac and I. We were still pretty close together, even if he wasn’t quite laying on me anymore. The way she glared made me nervous. I felt like I was being judged.
“Umm, no thanks,” she said. “Dragons and elves aren’t really my thing.”
“There aren’t any–” Zac began, but Bella had already walked away. “Dragons.”
“Denied,” Elijah remarked, chuckling.
Even Peyton laughed at that, and I couldn’t help laughing along as well. Was Elijah right? Had Bella just shot Zac down after shamelessly flirting with him nearly every time he came to our suite? I couldn’t tell when I was flirting, but Bella was a lot more obvious, and I had been convinced that she wanted Zac even more than he seemed to want her. What could have changed tonight to make her walk away so quickly and give us such an angry look?
“Hey,” Peyton said, shaking her hand in my face. “Middleearth to Georgina.”
“Huh?” I replied, then shook my head. I realized she was holding the dice out to me and I accepted them, going through the motions of taking my turn while my brain was still spinning.
Bella hadn’t been upset with Zac. She had been upset with both of us. The way she glared at us… could it have been because we were cuddled up like that when she walked in? Zac had moved quickly, almost like he felt guilty to let her see us like that. What was there to be guilty about? We weren’t doing anything, but I supposed to a girl who was potentially interested in him… it could look bad.
Was it possible that Bella thought I was actually competition? It was so absurd I almost laughed out loud. Even if it was possible that Zac wanted me, it was even less possible that he–or any other guy in the world–would choose dorky little me over someone like Bella.