Forcing Gravity

by Monica Alexander

  “Who’s Jase?” he asked, and it seemed I hadn’t pulled my phone away in time. I strategically hadn’t entered Jase’s last name into my phone for this exact reason.

  “Just a guy I met,” I said, smiling at the picture Jase had sent me of the Empire State Building. He’d taken it from the street, looking up at the assuming tower.

  “When did you meet a guy?” Ethan asked, and I looked up at him with raised eyebrows.

  “Despite what you think, Ethan, I do have a life outside of you, but if you must know, I met him at Garrett’s party.”

  Ethan rolled his eyes. “He’s not some douchebag actor, is he?”

  Ethan couldn’t stand some of the guys his brother associated with, and I had to agree with him. Some of them fit the stereotype I was so familiar with perfectly.

  “No,” I lied, turning to face Ethan so he couldn’t see my phone when I responded. “He goes to UCLA.”

  That could be true. Jase had mentioned that he’d always wanted to go to UCLA. It could happen.

  “Whatever,” Ethan muttered. “Just make sure he knows that I’ll kick his ass if he hurts you, okay?”

  “I’m typing that right now,” I said, making fake key strokes on my phone.

  “Laugh all you want,” he said, “but you’ll want me around if he tries anything shady. You have to watch out for guys from L.A.”

  “Guys like you?” I asked, amusedly raising my eyebrows.

  “Especially like me,” he said, as he moved over to one of the few remaining boxes that were piled up on my bed.

  “Oh Ethan,” I said, putting my arms around his waist from behind. “You’re one of the good ones.”

  He turned to face me and grinned. “Yeah, I’m really not.”

  Henley and her father made several more trips to the parking lot and back until all of her things were piled in the middle of our tiny room. Then her dad said something about having to make a few phone calls and told her he would be back at seven to take her to dinner. The whole time he was in our room, Ethan and I hovered on my side and didn’t say a word. We decided it was better to just remain quiet and pretend to be invisible.

  “Oh, my God!” Henley gasped when her father had left the room. She collapsed on her bed. “I am exhausted! Those boxes can just wait. We have more important things to discuss. Both of ya’ll sit down.”

  She was as commanding as her father, but at least she was sweet about it. Ethan and I shuffled over to my now empty bed and sat down facing her, waiting for our next instructions.

  “So here’s what ya’ll need to know about me,” she said, pulling her long, thick white blond hair up in a high ponytail. “I’m from Nashville, my mama died when I was a little girl, and my daddy raised me by himself. I don’t have any brothers or sisters, but I do have a cat named Rosco back home. I’m going to be a Tri Delt, since every woman in my family has been a Tri Delt. My major is Nutrition and Dietary Sciences, since I want to help people make health eating choices in life, and I love Kenny Chesney. Now you go.”

  Okay, so that last fact was sort of random. I looked at Ethan. I wasn’t sure who Henley wanted to go first, and if he wanted to volunteer, that was fine with me. He just shrugged, so I went ahead, feeling like if I didn’t Henley would force me to rush her sorority with her or go to a Kenny Chesney concert.

  “Um, well, I’m Logan, and I’m from Ft. Lauderdale. My dad also raised me, because my mother’s a freaking nut job, but she lives here in L.A. I surf as much as I can, my best friend is this guy here, and I have a sister, but she can be a brat, so I love her, but don’t always claim her. Oh, and I’m majoring in Sports Medicine at this point, but that could change.” I shrugged.

  And I think I might be dating Jason Brady, but I’m not sure, I said silently in my head, fighting the urge to squeal in delight at the thought of sharing that little tidbit.

  “And you dated, Garrett Lewis,” Henley chimed in, and Ethan started laughing. “What? It’s true. She dated him, and he broke her heart. It’s not very nice to laugh about a thing like that. I got my heart broken last year, and it was just awful.”

  Henley looked appropriately distraught and empathetic at the same time.

  Ethan stopped laughing and cleared his throat. “I’m her best friend, remember,” he said pointedly. “And Garrett Lewis is my brother. They didn’t date. You can’t believe everything you read.”

  “Your brother is Garrett Lewis?!” Henley exclaimed, and I realized that this girl would be the type to get star struck if she ever encountered any celebrities. I’d have to be careful about where I brought her – that is if we ended up being friends. The jury was still out on that one. She was sort of intense.

  “Yes, he is,” Ethan said, “and before you ask, no he’s not as amazing as everyone thinks he is. He used to give me wedgies and pick on me, and one time he pushed me out of a tree, and I broke my arm.”

  “Ethan!” I admonished, shaking my head and feeling the need to defend Garrett. I turned to Henley. “Garrett is a great guy. Don’t listen to Ethan. And no, we didn’t date, we’re just friends. And I was there when Ethan fell out of that tree, and he slipped. Garrett did not push him.”

  I stuck my tongue out at Ethan for good measure, and he just shook his head at me in amusement.

  “Oh,” Henley said, sounding disappointed. “That’s too bad that ya’ll didn’t date. He’s so hot.”

  “He’s not that hot,” Ethan muttered under his breath, so I shot him a dirty look.

  “He is hot,” I agreed, directing my response to just Henley, “but he’s just a friend.”

  “Could you introduce me? Oh, my God, you have a picture of him in here, and you’re on the red carpet!” She walked over to my desk and picked up a picture of Ethan, Garrett, their sister Kelly, and me. It was taken at the Earthbound premier. Henley turned to Ethan. “I can totally see the resemblance. Who’s that?”

  Her guard was up. I think she thought Kelly was Garrett’s girlfriend, and she was getting territorial.

  “My sister, Kelly,” Ethan explained. “She lives in San Francisco with her fiancé.”

  “Cute family,” she said, pacified that Garrett was in fact single and the girl in the picture wasn’t a threat. She moved on to my other pictures. “Where are the ones of your girlfriends?”

  She turned to look at me appraisingly.

  “I wasn’t really close with many girls back home,” I explained. “I mostly had guy friends.”

  That had been true my whole life. I got along with girls fine, but I just preferred hanging out with guys. I think it’s because I was raised by a guy, so I was taught about sports and other guy things. I could converse on most guy subjects easily, so I gravitated toward them more. I did have some female friends from my volleyball team, but we probably wouldn’t really keep in touch much beyond Facebook.

  “I have four best friends,” Henley explained, “but two went to Tennessee, one went to LSU and one went to Alabama. I’m the only one who left the south.” She smiled to herself. “One of them is going to be a Tri-Delt like me, one wants to be a Phi Mu, and the other two are rushing ADPi.

  “Jesus,” Ethan muttered under his breath, and I at least felt secure that he wouldn’t try to sleep with Henley.

  “What sorority are you rushing?” Henley asked me.

  Ethan couldn’t hold in his snort, so I elbowed him, but he was right. I couldn’t see myself as a sorority girl any more than he could.

  “Oh, I’m not rushing,” I said, trying to sound passive about it. I didn’t want to offend her, but in truth I found the whole institution to be a little archaic and cheesy.

  Henley tsked at me. “You don’t know what you’re missing. Sorority sisters are like friends for life.”

  “She has me,” Ethan said, smirking at me as he put his arm around my shoulders. “I’ll be her friend for life, and she won’t even have to pay me.”

  I shot him daggers with my eyes. Bringing up the fact that being in a sorority was essentially like buyin
g friends was not an opinion I wanted him to share, no matter how much I agreed with him. I was not in the mood to make an enemy with the girl sleeping across the room from me.

  “So you’re going to dinner with your dad tonight?” I asked Henley quickly, changing the subject before she realized Ethan had been insulting her.

  “Yes, I’m taking him out for a steak dinner,” she said proudly.

  “Okay, well, I guess I’ll see you later then. We have dinner plans with some friends of ours.”

  I saw Ethan glance at his watch. We had plans to meet up with Garrett for dinner since he’d gotten back from Vancouver that day, but Henley didn’t need to know that.

  “Sounds great,” she said cheerfully, before turning back to her boxes. “I’ll see you soon.”

  As soon as we were out of the dorm, Ethan turned to me. “You have a roommate.”

  “I sure do,” I said with fake cheer, wondering why I ever felt like communal living was a good idea.

  It would be one thing if I was rooming with Ethan or at least someone I knew, but having to spend nine months in such close quarters with a virtual stranger. Eeesh. I had a feeling I’d be crashing at Ethan’s a lot, even if I had to sleep on the couch.

  “I’ll bet my bed’s looking better all the time,” he said jokingly, but it was like he was reading my mind.

  -8-

  “Hey beautiful,” Jase said when he called me a week later.

  “Are you finally back in L.A.?” I asked, trying to hide the excitement in my voice, as I stretched out on my bed.

  Henley wasn’t home, so our room was exceptionally quiet. She was at some sorority something or other. She’d gotten into Tri Delt, just like she’d wanted, and there was some event for the new pledges that night.

  “I’m actually at the airport about to get on the plane, but I wanted to be sure we were still on for our date tomorrow night.”

  “Well, I did mark my calendar, but I’ll have you know I’ve had to fend off three other guys who wanted to go out with me.”

  “Really?” he asked, all seriousness in his voice, and I smiled.

  “No, you idiot,” I said, realizing the words sounded a little harsher than I’d intended. “I did get asked out by a guy in my biology class today, but that’s it.”

  “I told you that would happen,” he said. “What did you tell him?”

  “That I’m a lesbian and my girlfriend gets really jealous when guys talk to me.”

  Jase laughed. “What did he say?”

  “He asked if he could join us for a threesome.”

  Jase laughed even harder. “Please tell me you’re joking.”

  “I am,” I said, wishing I would have been that witty. I’d actually stumbled over my words as I told the guy I was kind of, sort of seeing someone, maybe, and he’d given me a funny look like he didn’t believe me. It was a little embarrassing. I was glad Jase didn’t probe for more details.

  “I’m just glad I got to you first,” he said instead.

  “Yes, be glad you got your name onto my dance card, or I just wouldn’t have any time for you,” I said in a fake southern accent that was surprisingly realistic after my week with Henley.

  He laughed again. I decided I loved his laugh.

  “Okay, so can I pick you up at your dorm?”

  “Sure,” I said, and gave him directions to my dorm. “We’re in room 408.”

  “Cool. Um, but are you able to maybe meet me downstairs? I’m not trying to be pretentious or anything, but I don’t really think it’s a very good idea for me to get out of my car on a college campus.”

  It hit me then just who I was going out with. For the past few weeks I’d grown used to thinking of him as just Jase, a really cute guy I’d met, but he was in fact a celebrity who the paparazzi followed around and who fans swarmed and who girls threw themselves at. How could I have forgotten that?

  “Oh, right. Yeah, sure. That’s fine,” I said, trying not to sound like he’d caught me off-guard. “What do you drive?”

  “A black Maserati,” he said, and I wanted to call my dad right away and tell him.

  He would kill to own a Maserati. His pride and joy was the red Corvette he’d bought a few years back that he only drove on special occasions and wiped down with a cloth diaper once a week.

  Instead I whistled. “Nice car, Brady.”

  Jase chuckled. “Yeah, well, I sort of bought it for myself as a birthday present last year.”

  My eyes went wide, and I was glad we weren’t face-to-face. It would have been embarrassing. That was one hell of a birthday present.

  “So, where are we going?” I asked, changing the subject. “I mean, what should I wear?”

  I was suddenly nervous about going out with him. What did you wear on a date with one of People Magazine’s ‘Sexiest Men Alive’? Okay, now that just sounded cheesy, but it was true. I had bought that magazine when it had come out, and he’d looked beyond hot in it. Hell, he was hot. Then I remembered the girls in his entourage that night at Katsuya and wondered if he expected me to dress like them. Thanks to my mom and a mission she’d sent her stylist on the week before, I was now the owner of five more designer dresses and five more coordinating pairs of heels that I would break my ankles in if I ever wore them and actually tried to walk.

  “Whatever you want. It doesn’t matter. I’m just excited that we finally get to go out.”

  That made me smile. He had this amazing way of putting me at ease. Maybe if I just thought of him as Jase, a really cute guy I met, I wouldn’t feel so intimidated about going out with him.

  “I’m excited too,” I said, and then I heard Henley’s key in the lock. “Oh, I actually need to go. I’m sorry.”

  As much as I didn’t want to hang up, I also didn’t want to be on the phone when she was in the room. I didn’t need her asking nine million questions about who I was talking to, which she surely would.

  “Okay, well, I’ll see you tomorrow. Text me when you’re going to bed? I’ll probably still be on my flight, but I’ll get your text when I land.”

  I smiled. He was so cute about wanting to say goodnight. “You got it. I’ll see you tomorrow. Have a safe flight.”

  “I’m just going to close my eyes and fall asleep thinking about the girl I have a date with tomorrow night,” he said, completely disarming me as he said goodbye and hung up the phone.

  “Hey Logan,” Henley said when she came in the room.

  I was suddenly busying myself with pulling out the reading I had to do for my English class while I fought to keep the blush off my cheeks. I had reading to do for several of my classes, and at that point, diving into schoolwork would be the only thing that would keep what Jase had just said out of my brain, because if I kept thinking about it, I wouldn’t get shit done that night.

  “How was your mixer?” I asked, looking over at Henley as she sat down on her bed and slid off her heels. Henley wore four inch heels everywhere. She was actually pretty short, so they gave off the illusion that she wasn’t such a shrimp – her words, not mine.

  “It was so fun,” she gushed. “The girls are all so nice. You totally should have rushed.”

  I stretched out my legs in front of me. “Not my thing, but I’m glad you’re liking it.”

  “I am,” she said. “I’m going to go out tonight with some of the girls. Do you want to come?”

  Henley was actually really sweet, if a little overbearing at times. She always made a point to invite me out with all the friends she’d already made at school. I’d gone out with her and some of her girlfriends on Saturday night to a fraternity party that was kind of fun. I’d met one guy who’d grown up surfing in San Diego, so we’d talked for a while.

  “Oh, no thanks. I actually have plans to meet Ethan to go surfing before class in the morning, so I want to get to bed early.”

  “Okay, suit yourself.” She smiled at me before turning to her closet to find the perfect outfit for that night.

  Maybe I’d have her help me
get dressed for my date with Jase.

  ***

  “I have a date tomorrow night, are you happy?”

  “Very happy,” Skylar said when I called her after Henley got in the shower. “It’s about time. Who’s the guy? Is it the one you were texting with last week at dinner?”

  I hesitated, suddenly not loving the idea of my gossipy little sister knowing I was going out with Jason Brady. She and her pre-teen friends would have a field day with that, and things were so new between Jase and me that I didn’t want to do anything to jeopardize our potential. I figured leaking our date to the media via my little sister probably wouldn’t win me any points, so I kept my mouth shut.

  “Yes, it’s the guy I was texting with.” At least that was true.

  “What’s his name?”

  “Jase.”

  “Jase what?”

  “I don’t know, Sky. Quit it with the twenty questions.”

  “Are you going to have sex with him if the date goes well?”

  My jaw dropped open. “Excuse me?!” I asked, completely taken aback.

  She sighed, and I pictured her rolling her eyes. “That’s what girls on TV do. They have sex with the guy if they have fun on their date.”

  “What kind of TV shows are you watching?” I asked, appalled at the serious lack of parental supervision she had.

  Shouldn’t she be watching Hannah Montana or some other equally annoying Disney show?

  “Sex and the City. I’ve been watching it on TBS. They cut out all the really dirty parts, but I’m not stupid. I know what’s going on.”

  “Jesus,” I hissed, not even sure what to do with that.

  “Sky, don’t you think you’re a little young for that show?” I finally said, once my brain cleared.

  “No.”

  It was my turn to sigh. I needed to have a serious talk with my mother. I wasn’t there to intervene, and I could only do so much to positively influence my sister. My mother had to be a parent for once in her life.