by Ney, Sara
He turns.
Looks down at me, at my finger, still poised on the tan skin of his arm.
One of his bushy brows rises in question.
“Hi.”
Hi? Is that the best I can do? I’m here to charm the pants off the guy and drag him over to my group of friends.
No, not friends.
Not now, probably not ever—not after tonight.
It’s not too late to leave, Georgia.
“Hi,” he says back.
This already is going horribly—I can’t even engage the poor guy in conversation, briefly wondering what he and the blonde girl were cackling about earlier.
“So, I’m new here and was wondering—”
“Where is here?”
He has an accent I cannot identify, or maybe it’s the crowded house and the music blaring in the background causing me to strain at the sound of his voice.
“Here. This is my first semester here. At this school.”
“Ah. Welcome then.”
His eyes are green—the muddled green you would find in a vintage oil painting—and up close, the gash in his lip has obviously caused it to be swollen. The bruise on his cheek—the entire left side of his face—is about four different colors. Purple, black, yellow, and brown.
Not cute.
Perfect!
“So, I’m new here and was wondering if you’d like to show me around.”
Those green eyes blink. “Now? It’s dark outside.”
Yeah, he definitely has an accent.
Shit, is he…British?
He can’t be.
What would a guy from the UK be doing in Midwestern America?
“No—later. Like as a date maybe?”
“A date?” He glances around. “You’re asking me on a date?”
I nod, affirmative. “Yes.”
“Are you barmy? Is this a jest?”
“First of all, I have no idea what barmy means. But no, this isn’t a jest.”
He sounds fancy—not at all like the Eliza Doolittle cockney British. More like “tea with the queen” British.
“Barmy means…” He searches for the word. “Crazy.”
“Are you calling me crazy?” I blurt out, hating the fact that I’m asking when he clearly wasn’t telling me I’m nuts, he was asking. Big difference.
“You asked me on a date, so you must be.”
Aww, the poor guy! No wonder he called me barmy; he must be wondering why I would randomly walk up to him and ask him on a date when we hadn’t exchanged more than two sentences and the lamest salutation I could think of.
Hi.
Ugh!
“I did ask you on a date.” I hesitate. Can hardly believe I’m standing here doing this. “So what’s your answer?”
“Where are your mates? They must be here somewhere.”
My mates? “You mean my friends?”
“Yeah.” He’s staring at me as if I’m the odd one.
“Um.” I crane my head and look through the crowd. “They’re by the back wall.”
“Lead the way.” He gestures with his free hand—the other one is holding a beer—for me to push my way through the crowd toward my teammates.
Lead the way? That’s a weird way to put it, a strange thing to say, and why did he ask where my friends are? What kind of guy asks that when you ask him on a date?
“Are you going to follow me?” I ask, clarifying.
“The entire way.” His eyes shift toward the back of the room, and I do an internal happy dance.
This was way too easy!
Phew!
I barely had to spend any time groveling or begging!
Granted, I’m cute—I know this. I’m not a brat about it by any means, but even so, I assumed it would take more sweet-talking to get this strapping brute of a guy to agree to my nonsense.
It’s as if he could see straight through me.
Although, he didn’t actually agree…
Did he?
Did he say yes?
Shit, I don’t remember.
Maybe he changed the subject too soon? I’m racking my brain during the short walk to Ronnie and the girls, and they all seem to be uncomfortably looking everywhere but at me.
The wall, the floor.
Tamlin has her back to me, facing the staircase, glancing this way and that. And is Clarissa sneaking off? It looks like she’s crouching, but I can’t be sure…
“Hallo, Ronnie.” The guy’s voice is deep. “Do you think I’m daft?”
“Ash, I am so, so sorry. We, um. We…”
Ash? Is that his name?
I begin wringing my hands—suddenly none of this is going well, and I work overtime to click together pieces of a puzzle that I’m clearly missing.
This guy knows my teammates and they all seem horrified I’ve dragged him over here.
But isn’t that the point?
Wasn’t I supposed to?
“You think we don’t know all about your little hazing pranks?” The guy—Ash they’ve been calling him—crosses his arms, muscles bulking up without even needing to be flexed.
His right bicep is covered with tattoos.
“That’s not…we’re here to party! Wooo,” one of the girls whoops. “We just want to have a good time like everyone else!” She has to practically shout from the back of the group; it’s that loud in here and getting louder.
“You’re going to need an umbrella, ladies, because your bullshite is pissing it down.”
Um.
Okay.
Crap, how do I…
…fix this?
I feel responsible, as if this were all my doing. I’m the one who approached him, I’m the one who asked if he wanted to go out with me, and if he knew about the prank then he knows I asked him on a date because he’s not cute.
Where is that hole I want to crawl into?
“Ash, don’t be mad—we’re so sorry, she’s new. She didn’t know.”
“You think I’m ugly, eh?” His question is directed at me, and for a few seconds, I waffle trying to reply.
Stutter as if I’m just learning how to speak.
“N-no! No! I…I was in a rush and w-wanted to get it done and there you were and you…no. No, I don’t, I…we…”
I sound like I’m pandering. So foolish.
So immature.
It does nothing to smooth his ruffled feathers.
He is steaming mad, glaring down at me. “You don’t come into my house and make me look like a cockwomble under my own roof.”
Cockwomble?
He’s so utterly British-sounding—I want to hear him talk more.
“Is this your roof?” I turn my head. “Y’all live here? It’s a mess.”
Why are boys such slobs?
Everyone’s eyes bug out of their skulls at my audacious inquiry.
“Oh my god, Georgia, you can’t just ask someone if they live here.” Ronnie swats at me, sounding thirty shades of embarrassed, her cheeks blazing red. “No, he doesn’t live here. He’s being rhetorical.” Her gaze finds his again. “We’re sorry, Ash. We’ll leave. We’re going.” Her hand grabs me by the wrist. “Come on, Georgie.”
I’m pulled out of the house, down the steps to the lawn, where we congregate on the sidewalk.
“What is going on?” I blurt out. “I did exactly what you wanted me to do—why are y’all acting so mad?”
“Because, Georgia! Do you know who that is? Do you have any idea?” It sounds like she’s accusing me of something.
My eyes roll. “Obviously not.”
“That’s Ashley. Dryden. Jones.”
I’m silent after her stilted pronouncement.
“Am I supposed to know who that is?” Then, “Wait…is his last name hyphenated?”
“Yes it’s hyphenated,” she hisses. “He’s British, for god’s sake. That’s what they do when they’re rich.”
“Okay but…why are you mad at me?” She looks madder than a fox in a henhouse, which is only
making me more and more confused. “You told me to go inside and find a guy who’s…who is…” I can’t even say the word ugly.
“Ugly.”
“I know what we told you, but you weren’t supposed to choose him!” She’s hissing again, getting worked up into a snit.
“Ronnie, I don’t know who any of those people are.” I’m using my most placating voice. “How on earth was I supposed to know to not choose him—you didn’t give me pictures to look at of any guys who were off limits.”
I haven’t started my classes yet! I wouldn’t know Ashley Dryden-Jones from a hole in the chemistry classroom wall.
“This isn’t an episode of The Bachelor, Georgia—you don’t get a wall of photographs to study! Ugh!” She throws her arms up and stalks off in the opposite direction from whence we came, her gaggle of followers doing what they do—following her. “This is a nightmare!”
That seems a tad dramatic, but this whole evening has been. And for the record, it was a dumb idea anyway—these are practically grown women. They should know a prank like this was eventually going to backfire.
The good news is, I don’t know that guy inside and will probably never see him again. I may lie in bed tonight hating myself for putting him in that awful position, but at least I won’t have to look him in the eye while I do it.
Ugh, he looked shocked and hurt, kind of.
I trail along behind my teammates, bringing up the rear with my incessant questions.
“Can someone please explain why this is a big deal?”
“Ash is like, blue-blooded or something.”
I’m not sure I’m understanding her. They’re all really overreacting to this. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“We’re never going to be invited back into that house after tonight, no thanks to you!” Tamlin sputters, high heels clicking furiously on the pavement. She trips on a crack and stumbles. “One time, a few years back, the baseball house kicked a girl out for jockblocking, and she was never allowed back inside.”
That sounds extreme.
“Never?”
“Well…maybe not never, but they did ban her for like, a few weeks.”
“For cockblocking.”
“That’s what we said, isn’t it?”
No, they said jockblocking, which I guess must be a made-up word to describe someone who’s preventing you from having sex. Jockblock must be the term they use on Jock Row, egomaniacs that they’re turning out to be.
I don’t like these girls at all. Not a single one of them—they’re acting like mean sorority girls, not Division 1 athletes with a code of conduct and a There is no I in team attitude to uphold.
They’re nothing like the young women on the team where I spent three and a half of the best years of my life, and it makes me homesick being here tonight, standing in the shadows of the trees lining the street.
Listening to them ridicule me.
Without another word, I turn and head the opposite direction, striding on the long legs that brought me here.
Two
Ashley
That pretty girl thinks I’m a munter.
Ugly.
I lie in bed after leaving the party the moment the group of girls walked out the door of the rugby house, barely remembering to grab my jacket from the kitchen before ducking out.
I had to drive home—my place is on the outskirts of campus, not on it—and I might be in great shape, but I have zero desire to hoof it through the dark streets in the middle of the night.
Folding my arms behind my head, I stare up at the ceiling, head resting on a white pillowcase embroidered with my initials.
A D J
Ashley Arthur Calum Dryden-Jones.
The fifth.
Thank bloody god Mum left my middle names off the pillow; that’s some posh bullshite for a student at uni in America, but they’re the only things I had when I moved, and there seemed no sense in replacing perfectly good linens.
The furniture came with the house, and I could bring nothing but a few suitcases when I enrolled in school here, moving clear across the globe in an attempt to seek some semblance of normalcy.
Some semblance of normalcy.
Ha.
I chuckle to myself knowing the guys on my team would ride my arse for sounding like a massive wanker. None of them seem to have any grace when it comes to grammar, all sounding like goddamn simpletons most of the time.
The only indication they’ve any intelligence at all is the fact that they were accepted by and enrolled at this university to begin with.
“You think I’m ugly, eh?” I quietly repeat the words I said to the girl to myself in the dark, remembering the look on her face and the stutter in her voice.
She’s not from here, either. Some weird accent inflected her tone the same way I know it inflicts mine, hers sweet though. Except I have no way of identifying it.
I haven’t lived in the States long enough.
But she said y’all, and I think that’s a Southern thing. Then again, I could be wrong.
Brunette hair, blue eyes.
Taller than most girls, I’d sized her up before she asked me on that damn date, calculated her to be about one hundred seventy centimeters.
Not sure what that is in American. I’m shite at conversions.
And her voice…
Airy and sweet.
It doesn’t fucking matter, Jones—she thinks you’re ugly.
She was asking me out on a lark, some stupid track ritual they’ve become famous for in our circle. See, that’s the thing about athletes—we all hang out together. Eat in the same cafeteria on campus, work out in the same gym facility, use the same trainers.
Have the same friends.
Therefore it stands to reason I’d have heard about the hazing some of those blithers go through; rugby is just as bad, only I’m not a big enough cockup to participate.
Even the extreme frisbee team hazes their members, and they’re not considered an actual sport. Those idiots make each other drink beer from the frisbee, and did you know you can fit three beers on one before it spills over?
The women’s track team? They haze their freshman members by having them find the ugliest guy they can—usually at a party—and ask him on a date.
They never actually go on the date, but any unsuspecting arsehole who believes their invitation is a flipping moron who deserves to be embarrassed.
Bloody imbeciles, the entire lot of them.
That girl—whoever she is—can kiss my giant British arse. And the look on her face says she probably would have; she seemed that humiliated.
I was the one who was supposed to be humiliated, but guess what? It doesn’t work that way, sweetheart.
You have to wake up pretty goddamn early to toss one over on Ashley Jones.
Still.
It’s her wide-eyed expression I see when I close my eyes. Toss and turn throughout the night, grateful I never have to see that pretty, perfect face again.
* * *
Tuesday
I lift the water bottle to my lips and chug, hungry as a mother as I forgot breakfast—usually I toss a bar or two in my bag, but this morning I ran out the door too quick.
My stomach growls as I shift in my seat.
I barely fit in the thing. It’s made for people like…everyone else.
Normal-sized humans.
Someone grunts as they bump into me in an attempt to head down the aisle I’m blocking.
Not intentionally, that’s just how things work when you’re a hundred and eighty-seven centimeters.
Legs. Everywhere.
“Oh.”
At the sound of the gasp, I glance up.
It’s the girl from Friday night.
Georgia.
She’s startled to see me, stopping in her tracks, my knees pressed against the seat in front of me, blocking her passage and preventing her from getting down the row of seats.
We’re in a lecture hall for this class, much li
ke an auditorium. About twenty rows look down at a miniature stage where the professor stands holding a laser pointer in one hand, her glasses in another.
She’s wiping her eyes and looks tired. Must not have gotten to bed early for the first day of the term.
Semester they call it here.
I keep forgetting.
“Are you lost?” I ask her, slightly annoyed that she’s still standing above me, staring like a deer caught in headlights.
“Um, no? This is Business Communication, isn’t it?”
Yeah, but it’s a 400-level class. “This is a class for upperclassmen, not freshmen.” I can’t keep the sarcasm out of my voice and wonder what the hell my problem is. “You need an academic advisor or another professor to sign off before you can register for it.”
I was in a perfectly jovial mood five seconds ago before she rammed her knees into my legs.
“I am an upperclassman.”
“Then why were they giving you shite Friday night?” Don’t they normally just haze underclassmen?
“Because I’m new. I…just transferred here. This is my first semester here, but I’m a senior.”
That makes no sense.
“That’s weird. Is that normal?” I’ll never figure out the wonky shite they do here in the States.
Never.
“Not really, no.” She shifts on her heels, books clutched in her arms. “Only a lunatic would transfer their senior year, but I had no choice.”
It’s on the tip of my tongue to say ‘We all have a choice,’ but I bite it back.
“Listen, uh—Ash. I just want to apologize for Friday night. I…it wasn’t at all what you thought. I didn’t walk up to you because…because…”
She can’t say it, and I don’t blame her.
Ugly is an ugly word.
“It’s fine.” It’s not fine, but I let her off the hook, wanting her to walk away. “You don’t have to stand here chatting me up.”
“Oh. Right. Um…okay, sorry.” She glances over her shoulder. “I’ll just go sit, um. Somewhere else.”
“Brilliant. You do that.”
She looks me over for a few extra seconds before shuffling away, weaving down the row and plopping down five seats away just as the professor at the front of the room introduces herself—and her teaching assistant, Kelly—and fires up the screen hanging on the wall like a giant billboard.
