Jake thinks she's doing a pretty good job settling in at college.
It's still her first semester, but in the last month or so, she's found her feet. She’s made friends, she gets invited to parties. She likes her classes well enough, even Intro to Bio, which she's only taking because she overslept the day registration opened and it was the only science credit left. Things are good. She even managed to get a roommate she doesn’t hate, which is more than most of her highschool friends can say.
Jake likes Sarah. She's a good roommate, and she's nice to her, and she does Jake's makeup sometimes and lets her borrow clothes. She's pretty and she always smells good and she never holds too much of a grudge when Jake is being a d-bag.
So Jake got lucky with her roommate, and she just tries to ignore and push down the butterflies in her stomach everytime Sarah's hand brushes against hers. It's nothing. Jake likes her roommate a lot, in a good platonic friend type of way. It's fine.
It’s fine.
She’s fighting to stay awake in her bio class, notebook open but still blank on her desk, when someone leans over from behind, blocking her peripheral.
“Hey, Jake,” David says, and she tries to hide the way it startles her awake, “got a question for you, guy to girl.
He’s smirking in that signature David way he always does, the smile that says I know I’m cool enough to never have to worry about being cool. Unfortunately Jake does think he’s cool, so she smiles, leaning to twist around in her seat to face him.
“Yeah?”
“Are you coming to the party tonight?”
Jake smirks back, tossing her hair over her shoulder. “There’s a party?”
“You know it. We’re throwing a rager for my birthday.” He says, grinning at her. “I hope you'll be there."
"You do?"
"Yeah. The only thing I want for my birthday is to dance with the prettiest girl in bio 101."
Jake laughs, fingers brushing his arm, trying to flirt back. David is funny, and cool, and she likes that he likes her. So she smiles and leans a little closer, purposefully getting a little too close, watching David's eyes to see how he responds. "I think I can make that happen."
David grins. "That's awesome. I'll see you tonight."
She's already settling back in place in her seat, patting herself on the back for a job well done, when David leans back over.
"Oh, and can you bring Sarah too?"
Jealousy lights like a flare in Jake's stomach, but she nods with a tight smile. She shouldn't be jealous. David likes her. She's not jealous when she sees him flirt with anyone else, which he does, a lot. It's probably just because Sarah is her friend, so it feels like more of a betrayal, even though she hasn't done anything.
Thinking about Sarah liking David makes her feel sick. She spends the rest of the class driving herself mad imagining David talking to Sarah at the party, laughing and flirting, and Sarah giggling back in that way she does when she's tipsy and happy that would make anyone fall in love with her.
"Do you have to do that right now?"
"The best time to get things done is right now."
"I'm trying to get ready," Sarah whines, watching Jake from across the room, makeup bag spilled out across her desk, "which you should also be doing, by the way. You take longer than anyone I've ever met."
"In a second," she says, her words muffled by the thumb tacks she's holding between her lips, "this is gonna take two minutes, max."
"So, more than a second?" Sarah laughs. “Why do you even have that? I mean, Jessica Simpson?”
"A real artist is always surrounding herself with inspiration. I eat, sleep, and breathe fashion."
Sarah holds her hands up with a laugh. "Okay, I get it. You really care about this stuff, huh?"
"Fashion is the number one most important thing in my life," she secures the final pin, gesturing to the poster, "and that's fashion at its finest."
Sarah looks skeptical, and even though Jake knows she's right, she really wants Sarah to believe it. Sarah's opinion is more important than anyone else's, and it's vital that she doesn't think Jake is a freak. She cares about Sarah. A lot.
More importantly than that, though, Sarah has lots of other friends, and she'd definitely tell them. Jake can't lose the reputation as a cool, hot, fun girl she's been working so hard to cultivate. She even wore a beret the other day, so she's hoping that's still fresh in people's minds.
Sarah furrows her eyebrows like she's thinking, then moves to grab something out of her closet. "You know, I actually have a shirt pretty similar to that one, if that's what you're into."
"I'm not into it," Jake says, defensive before she can even realize it, but Sarah doesn't mention it, just keeps looking, "but yeah, that's cool. That's awesome."
"Here, I've not worn it in forever, it's not really my style." She tosses it to Jake, settling back down at her desk seat to finish doing her makeup.
It's ugly as shit, Jake can tell just from holding it up.
"You can wear it, if you want." Sarah smiles, and Jake grins back at her, grabbing it off the hanger. "It never looked that good on me, anyway."
"I bet you looked hot in it," she mumbles, then laughs to try and disguise the way her face heats up at the thought. "Thanks, Sarah."
She just shrugs, and turns back to doing her makeup. "What are roommates for?"
Jake takes a deep breath, staring at the shirt in her hands, and wills herself not to overthink it as she pulls her shirt over her head, instinct screaming to look over at Sarah and see if she's watching. She chances a glance over to where she can see Sarah in the mirror, expertly applying her eyeliner; she's not looking, focused on her own task, and Jake isn't sure whether she's relieved or disappointed. She pulls the shirt on and watches herself in her shitty cracked mirror.
She fucking hates it. It's such an ugly shirt, all frills and tassels that make Jake look like a little girl playing dress up. Sarah was right though, it does kinda look like the one Jessica is wearing on the poster, except she looks fucking gorgeous in it, obviously. She's Jessica.
Jake's never seen Sarah wear it, but she bets it would probably look good on her too. Sarah is pretty enough to wear any ugly shirt and make it look good.
“Cute,” Jake says, because she doesn’t want to say I can’t possibly be seen out in public in this to Sarah.
Sarah twists in her seat to look at her, capping her eyeliner. “...Yeah, it looks nice on you.”
“Thanks.”
“Yeah,” Sarah mumbles, and Jake knows she looks ridiculous but she can’t take it off now. She can’t show weakness in front of Sarah.
“Yeah,” she smiles, shooting a thumbs up, feeling out of place.
Sarah smiles at her and she feels a little better, but then she rolls her eyes like she remembered she's supposed to be hurrying her. “Can you please just get ready? I don’t wanna be late. Not when David invited me specifically. Maybe he’ll take me for a ride on his motorcycle.”
Jake feels herself deflate a little, but tries to hide it, turning around to root in her dresser for a clean pair of jeans. “Uh— yeah. Maybe. Maybe he— maybe.”
There’s quiet in the room, the only sound the rustle of fabric as Jake searches through her clothes, and she feels like she’s holding her breath waiting for Sarah to say something, anything.
“Jake, do you like David?”
“No,” she says on instinct. It’s true, she thinks, at least mostly; she likes flirting with him, but she's not, like, interested in him.
Sarah sighs and Jake can tell she’s relieved. “Great. I think I’m gonna go for him. He’s really hot.”
“Oh.”
She wasn’t prepared for how utterly crushed she would feel at the idea of Sarah and David being together. It’s because she likes David more than she’s letting on, she tells herself, but she knows deep down that it isn’t true. She knows why, but all she can do is keep denying it over and over again until it goes away. Even to herself.
She smiles and hopes it seems real enough. “Yeah, that’s— that’s awesome.”
“Thanks,” Sarah nods, moving to grab her purse from where she’d left it on the ground by the door, “now can we please go?”
“Yeah,” she nods, shimmying into her jeans, and Sarah’s face falls as she grabs her makeup bag, “just give me like, two minutes.”
“Jake—”
“Two minutes!”
It only takes her forty five minutes to be ready and out the door, which Jake thinks is pretty good, but by the time they’re close enough to the frat house to hear the music, Sarah is practically vibrating.
It’s the biggest house on the block, and Jake spots it from all the way down the street. The music is blaring, and they’ve got some kind of light machine inside that’s lighting the place up like a disco ball.
“Not really subtle, right?”
Sarah shrugs. “I think it just shows that he’s wild and brave. He doesn’t care what anyone thinks.”
Jake scoffs. “Even the cops?”
“He’s just so… self assured.”
“Yeah, that’s one way to put it.”
There’s people on the front lawn, drinking and making a racket, and Jake tries to embrace the part of her that revels in the chaos, that likes the feeling of rebellion, and push down the anxiety that bubbles in her chest as they head through the open door.
“I need a drink,” she says to Sarah, leaning over close to be heard over the music, and she nods, weaving through the crowd towards what appears to be the kitchen.
Jake grabs a solo cup of beer that barely tastes of anything and passes it to Sarah, grabbing one for herself and downing as much of it as she can straight away, immediately refilling it.
“I don’t see David,” Sarah says, looking around.
Jake scans the room as much as she can, but there’s so many people that it’s basically a fruitless effort. It’s a little quieter in here than it is out the front of the house, so she can at least hear herself think, but she can see through the open door that there’s people talking in the backyard so heads out there to check it out.
It’s a little easier to breathe outside; less crowded, less loud, and the air isn’t as stale with the smell of people and booze. She still doesn’t see David, and she purposefully doesn’t notice the way her jaw unclenches in relief, even though she feels like she’s still on alert. Sarah looks vaguely disappointed but keeps drinking, eyes roaming, and Jake gives one last sweep to check before resolving to forget it and just enjoy her night.
She doesn’t see David, but she sees someone else.
Jake's never seen her before. She's dressed like a teenage boy, backpack slung over her shoulders, and she looks so aggressively out of place around all the frat boys and sorority girls that Jake finds herself staring a little more than is polite. She doesn't mean to. She keeps trying to stop, but every time she catches her in her peripheral, she can't help but watch her for a while. Eyes glued to her pathetic attempts at socializing with the frat crowd like she's watching an antelope get torn apart on Animal Planet.
It's fine until she notices. Locks eyes with Jake across the crowd, head tilted, eyes narrowed, and Jake isn't sure whether to feel threatened or not.
Eventually she makes her way over, throwing an arm around Sarah's shoulders, laughing a little too much a little too quickly.
"Hey, Sarah, who's this new bitch?"
Jake scoffs. "I mean, that's not cool, right?"
Sarah doesn't acknowledge Jake, just looks at the other girl, gesturing to Jake with one hand. "Amir, this is my roommate, Jake. Amir is in my English class."
"Which is a total dud, by the way. They don't even teach you how to speak English, they just tell you to read a book. Talk about false advertising."
Jake laughs, but Sarah shakes her head. "She's not joking."
"Oh." Jake mutters, and Sarah pats her on the shoulder before gesturing behind her.
"I actually have to go be somewhere else, but you guys have fun." She leans in close to whisper a 'sorry' into Jake's ear and then takes off into the writhing mass of people, leaving Jake alone. She takes a sip of her disgusting watery beer, and turns back to face Amir, who has moved even closer since Sarah left.
"So anyway, what's your deal?"
"What's my deal?" She asks, feeling immediately defensive.
Amir shrugs. "Yeah. Like coming to frat parties and looking good in jeans, is that, like, your thing?"
"My jeans?" She echos, because this is the weirdest conversation she's had since she got to college.
She nods, gesturing at her jeans like Jake might not know what she's referring to. "Yeah, they fit you insanely well, am I just supposed to not bring that up?"
"Uh, I don't know," she says, eyebrows furrowed, looking around for anyone to save her from this conversation, "yeah?"
"I'm not gonna apologize for being real, okay? I'll apologize for most things, but I'll never apologize for being real."
"Okay?" Jake says, but she really has no idea what's happening. "What are you talking about?"
"I'm just making small talk," she says, a little too casually, "I hear people love it."
"Love what?"
"Small talk. The smaller the better, and the wetter."
Jake just stares at her, eyes narrowed. Trying to figure her out. "I don't have a fucking clue what you're saying."
"What's your major, I said," she yells, and Jake can't take much more of this.
"No you didn't! You said the 'smaller the wetter', which doesn't even make sense."
"Will you just please tell me your major, okay? I really wanna know."
"You wanting to know so bad makes me not want to tell you, you get that, right?"
Amir makes a face like she's going to start crying, right here, in the middle of a party full of everybody who's anybody, and Jake can't handle making that kind of scene right now.
"Fashion," She answers with a deep breath, chugging the rest of her beer. She gestures at the cup to Amir and nods in the direction of the kitchen. "I'm gonna go get a refill."
"Cool." Amir says, and when Jake starts moving, she follows.
"Bye." Jake doesn't even turn around, just hopes that Amir will get the message and leave her alone. She doesn't.
She follows her all the way to the kitchen, and watches as she fills her solo cup with more terrible beer. "You know, I'm pretty into fashion too. I love... wearing clothes."
"Right." Jake says, looking her up and down. It's so obviously not true. She's wearing green and pink plaid bermuda shorts and a striped brown polo shirt. She's obviously a fucking nerd. The glasses and the short, spiky hair don't help, either. "Clearly you know a lot about fashion."
She's trying her best to be mean, but Amir's face just lights up like she's thrilled. "Thanks! I like your clothes as well. Especially your jeans."
"Stop talking about the jeans, man."
"I will nay. They are totally cool."
"Totally ace." She grins, because if this chick isn't going to leave her alone, she's going to at least have fun.
"Wha— yeah. Totally— totally that. Totally ace."
Jake laughs, and Amir laughs along like she doesn’t get that Jake is laughing at her, not with her.
Amir grabs a cup but doesn’t fill it with anything, and Jake tries to chug her beer again, even though she’s not very good at it and has to take a break in the middle. The whole time Amir just watches her, and it would kind of creep her out if she didn’t live for attention.
“Why are you staring at me, man?”
“What? I wasn’t,” she says immediately, without making any effort to look like she wasn’t, “what are you drinking?”
“Uh— a beer.”
“Cool, cool, me too.”
“No you’re not. You’re not drinking anything.”
“I don’t know if I'm gonna like it!”
“Relax, oh my god.” Jake take a sip to see if it’s gotten any better, but it’s still just as disgusting. “It’s pretty bad. Weak as shit.”
“Oh. Okay,” she says, nodding, “how about—”
Amir takes off her backpack and reaches inside, pulling out a bottle of vodka, and Jake immediately hisses at her.
"Hey, hey, put that thing away! Do you wanna have to share it out between all two billion people here?" Amir just shrugs, but does as Jake says and puts the bottle back in her backpack. "How did you even get that?"
"I know a guy," she says, and Jake can't hide how skeptical she is.
"You know a guy that'll sell you booze?"
"Yeah! All you need to do is show him your driving card, you know, the little thingy that they give you—"
"So you just use a fake ID."
"Well, no, I don't have my little driving card yet because when I tried to take the test the douchebag instructor got mad at me for totaling his car or whatever. I tried to tell the guy at the alcohol store but he said he would just sell it to me if I promised to go away."
Jake just stares at her, not sure which part of that to even start with. “That’s… really depressing.”
“If you think that’s depressing you should hear about my childhood. It was nay so good. Nay so good at all.”
“Yikes,” she mumbles, grabbing the bottle from Amir and pouring some into her empty cup, “you know, we don’t have to talk.”
Jake passes the bottle back to her and Amir pours some into her own cup in what is clearly a poor imitation of exactly what Jake did. She just rolls her eyes, and taps their cups together before throwing back the shot, cringing at the taste as it burns down her throat. She opens her eyes just in time watch Amir copy her, screwing up her whole face in a way that makes her glasses slide down her nose, and it makes her heart swoop in her chest. It’s quick enough that she can almost convince herself she imagined it. Almost.
“Jake!”
She hears her name being called from behind her and turns just in time to see David stumble in from outside, Sarah giggling and hanging onto his arm.
“Hi, David,” she says, trying to smile at him, but her eyes keep drifting to Sarah, watching her look up at David like he hung the stars, and she feels her blood boiling in her veins more than she’d ever admit, “what’s up, man?”
“You guys having a good time? It’s my birthday, you know.” He smirks, and Jake hates how chill he seems, grinning with one arm swung over Sarah's shoulders, and gestures towards the Birthday Boy sash slung around his torso. "That's why I got this lame-ass sash. My boys made me wear it."
Amir laughs like he’s said something really funny, and Jake tries not to roll her eyes. It's such an obvious grab for attention, and Jake knows because she pulled the same thing at her party a few months ago. It's tacky.
She smiles anyway, because David is a cool guy, and she wants him to think she's a cool guy. "Yeah, that's so funny. You're boys sound so fucking pimp."
"More like fucking blimp," Amir laughs loudly to no one in particular, doing a poor impression of blimp crashing noises like that's a joke that even makes sense.
David laughs like crazy.
"Woah! This guy!" He grins, obviously already drunk, and throws his arm around Amir's shoulders, "I fucking love this guy."
"Really?" Jake asks, and she doesn't mean to sound so skeptical so she punctuates it with a smile.
Amir is already laughing, leaning into it, and Jake feels a tiny pang of the same jealousy she felt earlier when she thought about Sarah and David being together.
Maybe she likes David more than she originally intended to. She keeps feeling jealous every time he talks to one of her friends like she's some possessive girlfriend. Weird. Not that Amir is her friend. She’s just a weird person Jake literally just met. There's literally no reason for her to feel weird about Amir talking to David.
She takes another drink and pushes down the part of her that thinks she knows why.
David doesn't notice, and Amir is still smiling next to him. "She's so funny, man. I can't with this guy."
Sarah leans over to tug on Jake’s sleeve, and gestures to a group of people behind them— Jake recognizes some of them vaguely as friends of Sarah’s from her classes, who she would usually be interested in trying to impress if she didn’t feel awful all of a sudden. “Jakeeeee,” she says, dragging her name out, “a few of us were gonna go hit some bars to keep the party going, you wanna come?”
Sarah leans into David more as she talks, gazing up at him, her eyes sparkling and Jake downs the rest of her beer to drown out her unhelpful internal monologue. She knows that look, she knows what it means, not that there’s even any mystery. Sarah told her she liked David. It hurt then too, and Jake knows she has no recourse to feel betrayed about it, even if she sort of does. It hurts even more now, here, seeing it right in front of her face. She wants to hit him, like she did to Pat Cassels at the start of the year, that asshole. But she knows she shouldn’t. She can’t justify it, even as the anger churns in her gut like fire and her flimsy plastic cup crinkles in her grasp. Everyone’s here, and everyone would see, and she didn’t spend so long cultivating her reputation to destroy it in one hit, even if she really wants to. She survived the Pat incident because he’s a loser and kind of an asshole, but people like David.
She laughs and hopes it doesn’t sound as forced as it feels. “I’m good, I think I’m just gonna head home, actually. That’s— that’s cool, though, for you guys. Have fun. Not too much fun though, alright?”
It sounds pathetic, even to her own ears, but luckily everyone else is drunk enough to laugh it off, and David mutters something into Sarah’s ear as they walk away, bushin her hair aside lean down close.
Jake smiles until they’ve gone, and then fully crushes her stupid solo cup and throws it at the ground as hard as she can. Fuck David, he deserves to pick up her garbage. She covers her face with her hands, and she knows she’s smudging her makeup but she doesn’t even care.
She doesn’t care that much. She still tries to avoid rubbing at her eyes. She doesn’t want everyone to see her like that.
“Woah,” Amir’s voice says from right next to her, closer than she was expecting, “that was—”
“Why are you still here?”
Amir just shrugs, smiling wide. “I could walk you home?”
“What?”
“Yeah, I figured since I’m going that way anyway, so…”
Jake scoffs. “You don’t even know where I live.”
“I do, I live there too, probably.”
“You live in the East building?”
Amir shrugs again, not even close to convincing. “Uh— yeah. Obviously. I totally live in— in that place you just said.”
if Jake had better survival instincts, she'd probably do something about some strange girl trying to follow her home from the party, but she's too tired and too pissed and too fucking drunk to care.
"Leave me alone," she's says, a halfhearted last ditch attempt to get rid of her, "you fucking weirdo."
“Cmon, Jake, we can hang out.”
“I don’t wanna hang out with you, man.”
“We’re already hanging out.”
“We are not,” Jake laughs, bitter, but Amir laughs with her anyway, “don’t you have friends you can go be with?”
“You’re my friend,” she says, and it’s so genuine that it catches Jake off guard, pulling at her heart in a way she didn’t expect. Pity, probably, she thinks, though the feeling stays, settled in her chest displacing some of the anger from before.
“You just met me,” Jake shakes her head, “you don’t even know me. I’m an asshole.”
“I don’t think you’re an asshole. I think you’re awesome.”
“Why?” Jake asks, because she has no idea how Amir can think she’s anything other than the worst after everything. “I’ve been a jerk to you all night.”
“I dunno. I could just tell the first time I saw you.”
She rolls her eyes. “Oh, so you like me because you think I'm hot? Yeah, thanks a lot.”
Amir shakes her head, eyebrows furrowed like it's so obvious to her. "You're the best person I've ever met."
Jake laughs. “How would you even know that?”
She shrugs, because this is all so easy to her in a way Jake can't understand. "I just know. I saw you smile and I heard you laugh and I could just tell."
Something burns in Jake's chest, a feeling she's not quite willing to acknowledge yet.
“I don’t want to let you down, man, but you’re way off.”
“Maybe,” she shrugs, but she’s smiling, and Jake lets herself smile back, even if it’s with an eye roll.
She starts the walk back to her dorm and tries not to think too much about anything.
She's fucking freezing. It's the wrong side of summer for her to be out at night wearing Sarah's ugly flouncy shirt, and she wraps her arms around herself in a pathetic effort to avoid openly shivering. Amir is still glued to her heels, no matter how fast she tries to outwalk her. She thanks her lucky stars that she drew the line at wearing any kind of heels; at least her feet are warm, her trusty slip on vans letting her cut across the grass of the quad, avoiding the long way around.
It’s a fairly short walk home, but the cold still bites at her, and she finds herself thinking through the cold and the dark that she’s happy to not be alone. Amir is chattering the whole way, either not noticing or not caring that Jake is too tired to respond, but it’s kind of nice to have something fill the silence.
They reach her dorm building both too slowly and way too fast. She still feels the chill, driving her forward to get into her warm blankets as soon as possible, but she actually finds herself wanting to slow down, wanting to stretch this last sliver of time with Amir out for as long as she can. She can’t admit it, or show it, but there’s something there, she thinks, even when Amir was pissing her off. She’s drawn to her in a way she can’t explain but feels.
Shit, she shouldn’t have had so much to drink. The booze has brought out her sentimental side or something.
She tries to shake it off as they come up on her building, but the feeling stays, sweltering in her chest. She turns back to Amir, opening her mouth but not sure what she’s going to say yet, but she beats her to it, shuffling her feet and looking awkward.
“So, uh, you want me to come keep you company, orrrr?”
“Why would I want that?” Jake shakes her head, even though tonight was kind of an emotional rollercoaster and she is dreading being alone with her own thoughts after everything.
“I dunno. I just figured maybe.”
“You figured wrong,” Jake says, but she leaves the door open after she walks through it, and just like she thought she would, Amir follows her in, “where do you even live?”
“I live off campus with my cousin Leron,” she says, scrambling to catch up with Jake, “he’s so awesome. It’s kind of a sweet setup. He lets me live there for free if I just, like, watch his kids sometimes.”
“That’s pretty chill,” Jake mumbles, “how old are his kids?”
“Oh, I don’t even know. Like, six maybe. Or eleven.”
“Six or eleven?”
“He has seven kids, Jake. I’m supposed to remember that?”
“So like, between six and eleven.”
“What? No, they’re the same age. Obviously.”
“What?” Jake laughs and Amir just shrugs. “That makes no fucking sense.”
“How so?” She asks, eyebrows furrowed, “all he had to do was choreograph it with the moms—”
“You’re insane. You’re a deeply weird person.”
“You called me a weirdo before.”
“Yeah, and I was right.”
“Harsh,” Amir gasps, hand over her heart, “after everything we’ve been through?”
Jake sighs, because unfortunately, loath as she is to acknowledge it, Amir’s whole deal is actually working on her.
"I guess you're a pretty endearing weirdo." Jake says, because she's just far enough past tipsy to justify admitting it.
“Wow. That's the nicest thing anyone's ever said to me.”
"Seriously?" Amir just nods, and Jake huffs a laugh. "That's pretty sad, buddy."
“Not sad. Cool, or fun, probably.”
“Whatever you say, man.”
They reach her door, decorated with a bunch of band stickers and a tiny whiteboard Sarah stole during a sorority party on their first week, and Jake faces her, feeling the words she’s about to say before she says them, cringing at herself. She knows she shouldn’t, stranger danger and all that, not to mention that she’ll never live it down with Sarah, but she feels it; the draw to keep her as close as possible, an instinct that Jake hates but has never been very good at denying, even when she knows it could cause her problems. Amir is a whirlwind, and Jake feels like she’s gone through every possible human emotion in the last few hours, and she’s just drunk enough to let herself feel all of it.
“Hey,” she says, quietly, and Amir looks eager already, “do you wanna crash here tonight?”
Amir nods so hard and so fast that her glasses almost fly off her face, and she has to scramble to try and catch them. It makes Jake smile, shaking her head, and she unlocked her dorm door, heading inside.
Amir follows her into her dorm room, and, against her better judgment, Jake lets her.