Greek: Best Frenemies (12 page)

Rebecca Logan read Evan's brief response to her text message. She had asked if the contest was going forward with any dignity, and he replied, “Yes to contest, no to dignity.” With the fallout, he likely did not have time for a long conversation, and to be honest, she didn't want to have it with him. It wasn't about impartiality. The competition had gone from inane to crazy to scandalous, and she wasn't willing to make his life any more complicated than it already was. She liked trashing the Tri-Pis as much as anyone else, but this was overkill, and he'd probably heard enough of it. There was no need to torture him on this particular occasion. There would be plenty of other, more pleasurable occasions to do that.

She spent most of Friday at class or claiming she was at class. After she had selected a dress, Casey and Ashleigh seemed to lay off her for a moment, mostly thanks to the Tri-Pi scandal distracting them and most of the house, which was a blessing to Rebecca. There was no dignity in being followed around and constantly given advice she didn't need. As if she couldn't wow a crowd if she wanted to! Not that the Omega Chis, other than Evan, were worth wowing. It seemed to be the opinion on campus that they were misogynist bullies and no woman would sully her reputation by stepping in their house, or that was how the notoriously anti-Greek cashier at the campus market put it. There were also fresh rumors of a KT anti-sweetheart party, which she didn't doubt for a minute, as it was exactly something the KTs would do. They were itching to get back at the Omega Chis for betraying them last semester in any small way, and they did do one thing well.

But Rebecca didn't want to be some sort of social pariah. The one person she was willing to talk to was available, it turned out, once the Omega Chis were done yelling at each other. Calvin Owens met her in the student center, a place so anti-Greek that it was impossible they would be spotted.

Calvin got straight to the point. “This contest is crazy. I don't remember it being like this last year.”

“When sweet Casey was running like a saint against Frannie? Yeah, I can't imagine that was a hard choice.”

“It's the problems in the house, too. Well, mostly just Trip and Evan going at it—”

“Ew.”

“You know what I meant,” Calvin said. “And it'll all come down to the ceremony speeches, anyway.”

“I haven't even written mine. But I'm an excellent speaker.”

“Somehow, I'm not surprised.”

“The speech can't be vindictive and reveal everyone's inner secrets, can it?”

“No one would vote for you. But if that's what you want…I don't want to say go ahead, but since everyone already knows that Grant and I are gay, I think I'm in the clear.”

She narrowed her eyes. “You don't have any other secrets?”

“Not that I'm willing to admit to you right now, during this conversation,” he replied. “And if Evan has any that I don't know, I pretty much don't want to know them. But give me a heads-up, okay? Because it seems like you're considering it. Which you shouldn't, by the way.”

“Shouldn't what? Blow everyone off, yourself not included, out of frustration?” But she relented. “Casey has backed off,
and Ashleigh takes her cues from Casey. And they did take me dress shopping, even if it was horribly early in the morning, even for shopping. Not like they paid or anything.”

“But you don't like people buying you things.”

“They don't have to know that.”

“That's some twisted logic.”

“It's what I'm best at,” she admitted. “Look, just because I don't know what I'm going to say about the contest doesn't mean you have to look at me as if I'm a potential suicide bomber.”

“Ouch, dark.”

“I'm feeling dark. Even when it's kind of unfair to Casey, something you did not hear me say and will never, ever quote me on unless you want me spilling your secrets.”

“You don't know any.”

“So? I could make up some convincing ones you'll never live down. I think anyone would believe anything about Omega Chi guys right now as long as it's posted on Twitter and half the words are misspelled.”

“You should decide. Sometime before Saturday night, when you actually have to give the speech.”

“I picked out the dress. That's, like, half the work.”

“You don't have much faith in men, do you?”

“I've been hearing bad things about them in the papers. They're always a reliable source.”

“Hey, I thought you hated the papers.” He was referring to her father's scandal. “Sorry. You left yourself wide open for that.”

“I know. I know. I'm just really tired. Emotionally tired,” she said. “I'm sick of trying to decide whether I care or not.”

To which Calvin answered, “It sounds like you do care. Otherwise you wouldn't be fretting about it. When does Rebecca Logan fret?”

“Another thing I'm swearing you to secrecy about, by the way. Fretting. You never saw me do it, and I will testify to that in court.”

“You're imagining a lot of situations where I have to say things about you behind your back or at some kind of trial. Did you do something I don't know about?”

“Nothing that can be documented,” was her quick reply. He didn't need to know about her fat years. Nobody needed to know about those. And she was being hard on him. “Sorry. I'm not myself this week.”

“Hey, who is? Though actually, women vying for our attention and brothers yelling at each other in meetings is pretty much an average week for Omega Chi.”

“Male posturing in competition over females?
Never.
Next you're going to tell me Evan has a silver back.”

He raised his eyebrows. “You would know better than I would.”

“So the Tri-Pi story is true? Bickering and calling me a bitch?”

He raised his hand. “For the record, I, nor Evan nor Grant called you a bitch. It was…someone else whose name I will not disclose, and the article was good enough not to disclose. They just gave us numbers.” They were listed as
Omega #1
and
Omega #2.
“I was halfway into it and expecting to show up as Gay Omega #1.”

“Why? Why would Grant be number two? Because you came out first, or because you're number one? This is good material if I ever need to blackmail you, right? This is something
Grant would want to know, your opinion of who's number one in the gay wing of Omega.”

“Rebecca, I know you well enough that I can safely say that I will never intentionally get myself into a situation where you need to blackmail me.” He added, “That's a promise. Mostly to myself.”

 

Despite her confidence in front of Calvin, by the end of the day, Rebecca was no closer to a decision about what to say at the ceremony than she had been when she picked out her dress, the latter of which sort of guaranteed her attendance. Casey was expecting that much of her, and while Rebecca didn't feel particularly behooved to live up to Casey's expectations for her, changing them just to spite her didn't seem right for a change. Lots of people had advice for her on what to say and how to act, and she managed to avoid pretty much all of them by staying out of the house until people had absconded to various parties elsewhere or were asleep.

After sitting in front of her computer for half an hour, compulsively checking her email while her speech-writing file remained conspicuously blank, Rebecca groaned and abandoned her computer for the refrigerator. Thankfully, the kitchen was quiet, not filled with pledges waiting to wish her good luck or give her suggestions. It was also clean and well-stocked, because they finally had a hasher who was good at doing things other than making out with Ashleigh. On second thought, she didn't want to imagine Dale making out with Ashleigh even if it would never happen, so she put that thought out of her head as she poured herself orange juice, grabbed a bag of Cheesaritos and sat down at the center island. “Hey.”

“Hey.” Dale was used to being in the background, so he
wasn't expecting an acknowledgment all of the time. When she looked, he was poking a toothpick into the inside of a tray of brownies to see if they were done. And he was wearing an apron. Fisher, the previous hasher, never wore aprons, especially ones that said Cooking for Christ on them. “If you want brownies, they're going to be a few minutes.”

“Did you use Splenda or sugar?”

“Splenda.”

“Then maybe.” She was, like every sorority girl, obsessed with her figure and Dale knew that. “Chocolate does hide the chemical taste.”

“It hides a lot,” he said and put the brownies back in, unsatisfied with them. He was such a busy little worker, even if he wasn't particularly little. He just wasn't as tall as the guys she liked to date.

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Ask away.” He set the timer for the brownies.

“When you have no one to talk to—oh, forget it. You're going to say you always have Jesus to talk to.”

“I do. Though, sometimes the messages seem really mixed or difficult to understand. Everything becomes clear in time, though,” he said with his usual confidence.

“I don't have time. I have until Saturday night. And
don't
say there's always time for Jesus.”

“Jesus is my best friend, and best friends always have time for each other,” he said. “Otherwise they wouldn't be best friends.”

“Then I don't have a lot of best friends. And don't say I have a friend in Jesus. I have no time for a religious epiphany, and I don't think it's going to help me with the sweetheart competition anyway.”

The timer went off, and he pulled the brownies out, tested them again and set them aside to cool. “You're the one who keeps bringing up his name. And I'm sure Jesus is asked on a regular basis to help women win glorified beauty contests. And football games. And softball games. And pretty much every chess club tournament I went to in high school.”

“I would say it's more than a beauty contest, but it isn't.”

“I didn't say it wasn't also about inner beauty. I may think Evan is a tool, but the Omega Chis are obviously looking for someone who's kind and generous and more than a beer-ad woman, because women in beer ads don't send men cookie-grams. They stand next to beer and lure men to sin.”

“Dale, it's not hard to lure men to beer.”

“It is very tempting. They make it very tempting. But that doesn't seem like the contest you're in.”

“They want me to be a sweetheart. I'm not sweet.”

“Then be your true self, but everyone is capable of being sweet. The word has too many connotations for people to realize it.”

“If I don't win…” It wasn't about winning, it was about trying to win. Honestly, she could probably wow the guys with the dress and a great speech, but it was whether she wanted to or not that was the problem. “Everyone really wants me to put on this show and win. I have to succeed because…I'm not even sure anymore. Casey's obsessed with it. She's even treating me nicely and listening to what I have to say.”

Dale nodded sagely. He was weird that way. “That sounds like a true friend.”

“She's not, though.”

“She's doing it for her own selfish devices? I would find that hard to believe of the beautiful and sweet Casey Cartwright,”
he said, mooning a little over his crush of the past two years.

“No. I mean, she says she's doing it because it'll help me if I run for president and it'll help the house standing and she doesn't want to leave me with a crummy, fourth-place house when she leaves.

“Does she have another reason?”

She racked her brain. “I don't think so.”

“That sounds like she's doing everything for you.”

“I didn't ask for it.”

“It doesn't change the fact that she's doing it for you. Maybe she's not good at consulting you, but everyone has their flaws.”

“So what am I supposed to do?”

Dale poked at the brownies and started cutting them up. “What do you want to do?”

“I don't
know.
That's why I'm
asking.
”

“You want my opinion of what's the right thing to do, or what you should do?”

“Either, really. I'll take either at this point.”

He nodded. “Good, because they're the same. Casey is your friend, whether you want her to be or not, and if you really didn't want her to be, you wouldn't be here trying to figure out what to do. So you should be a friend to her. Wait, I've got something for this.” He put his mittens aside and went to his laptop, typing for a few moments. “Got it. ‘Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.'
John 15:13. And I used to be so good at these quotes when I couldn't just look them up. I think the internet is actually hurting my memory.”

“I'm not laying down my life. I mean, that's not what this contest is about. Laying down a life.”

“Some people seem to take it very seriously. And the meaning applies to less serious situations as well. Or it could, if you wanted it to.”

“But the point of the passage is clearly that you're supposed to do what your friends want you to do.”

“That's one interpretation,” Dale said. “Or it could mean that you do what your friends
need
you to do.”

To this, Rebecca did not respond. Dale was unmoved and held up a plate of fresh-cut offerings. “Brownies?”

When Rebecca answered the door in the morning, the
person on the porch was not the person she expected to see. “I haven't been paying much attention, but I suspect Casey's still mad at you.”

“That's why this is a lose-lose,” Cappie said. “You wouldn't mind giving her a message, would you?”

“I'm not doing your dirty work.”

“But you love dirty work! Or at least, some activities people would classify as dirty.” He didn't bother avoiding her glare. “Casey's not speaking to me, but I want to invite her to a party.”

“The KT anti-sweetheart party? You don't think she has other plans?”

“I have a feeling we'll be running later than anyone can last in a tuxedo. And our drinks will be better.”

Rebecca tapped her fingers on the door. “Hmm. The Omega Chis are promising an open bar, and they have a tendency to deliver on quality.”

“We have more creative drinks. The kind that need to be sucked off someone's stomach—but don't tell Casey that.”

“What, in the message I won't be delivering?”

He rolled his eyes. “Look, if I don't invite her in person, she'll be insulted. If I see her, she'll be mad at me. Again, lose-lose. I'm going with the slightly less los-ier option. Maybe.”

“Are you going to make it worth my while?”

“See, already into dirty area. Fine, what do you want?”

“You not to pull away as many sweetheart attendees as possible before I give my speech. Which is at nine, by the way.”

“Somehow I think things might be underattended for reasons not directly related to you, but I can do my best to push the party back. Now, Casey?”

“I'll tell her. And I'll add that you wussed out of telling her yourself.” And before he could answer that, she slammed the door in his face. The feeling was better than coffee in the morning.

 

“Strike two and I'm out,” Cappie said to himself, even if it didn't make much sense, as he returned to the Kappa Tau house. There were some preliminary arrangements for the party, but it was Saturday morning and he couldn't expect much until noon. The pledges had postered all thirty fliers to the front door instead of around campus, but he couldn't blame Rusty for slacking off as pledge educator. Rusty had his hands more than full, literally and metaphorically, with the robots. Now sans radio transmitters, they were back to mechanical mode, but for all of his plastic tubing and engineering ability, he could only get them to face in different directions, not punch each other. That and they still looked
like stick men with cardboard clothing, not tough robots. “Hey, Spitter. Struck out with your sister.”

“That's, um, nice to know. Thanks for the creepy update.”

“
And
I'm not 100 percent sure Rebecca's going to deliver the message about the party. How can I nominate Casey for anti-sweetheart if she's not here?”

“And how do you know she won't be insulted? Aside from the fact that she actually was, you know,
sweet
enough to win the contest last year, she does take this thing really seriously.”

“I might have noticed something in the last week.”

Rusty shrugged. “She's still upset with you over the paper?”

“Not returning calls isn't really her style, but so far she hasn't changed her voice mail to my name following a series of very unsweetheartlike curses, which she did freshman year.”

“And she'll be even more pissed if she finds out you're further ignoring her advice by partying.”

“Spitter, multitasking. It's the wave of the future. Why don't you give it a try?”

“You're going to study and party at the same time?”

“No, I have a better idea. And I'm going to need a little Rusty charm to pull it off.”

Rusty raised his eyebrows. “Am I going to like this?”

“It's that or you can stay here and play with robot junk all day. What do you say?”

 

If Rebecca didn't have her own makeup kit and comprehensive abilities in that regard, she would have had a volunteer army to help her. By six o'clock she was waxed, plucked, styled
and painted in all the right ways, as disgusting as it actually sounded. She didn't need any other help. Not that that prevented Casey from knocking on the door to her room with her game face on. “Hi.”

“Just checking on me to see that I haven't gone out the window? Because I wouldn't subject my bedspread to that. A 600-thread-count sheet needs to be treated with respect.”

“Good to know, but I wasn't expecting it. Not after the whole waxing thing a lot of people wouldn't voluntarily go through,” Casey said. “Are you ready for…whatever you're going to do?”

“Yes,” was the entirety of Rebecca's answer as she closed her makeup case with a definitive
snap.
She was not about to give Casey the answer she wanted as to the content of her speech. Playing it all out for as long as possible was too much fun. “Oh, and I almost forgot!” she said, even though she hadn't. “Cappie came by. You're invited to the anti-sweetheart party.”

“Ugh! He knows I have somewhere else to be.”

“Also something he communicated, but he said his alcohol would be more interesting. That's not precisely the way he put it, but it's all he had to offer.”

“Again, ugh. I can't deal with him right now.”

“Says the woman who is clearly putting academic responsibility above social presentation.”

“Hey, my grades are up and my homework is done. Somehow, after this crazy week. I even saw you at the library.”

“Yes, because God forbid we defy the stereotypes that this week has so thoroughly reinforced and succeed academically instead of just being college cuties. Which, if you ever refer to me as, there will be consequences. Terrible ones.”

“I wouldn't dream of it,” Casey said. “Wait, are you actually defending Cappie?”

“We can't all live up to your glorious expectations, Cartwright,” Rebecca said, her voice as neutral as Rebecca's would ever get. “At least not all the time. Plus, Cappie looks like an adorable puppie when he's trying and failing at the same time, so that invokes some unintentional sympathy.”

“He knows his responsibilities. To himself.”

“And maybe they're none of your business, at least until he fails out completely. Then you can dump him and change your answering machine message to make your feelings clear. But if I shot down Cappie every time he slacked off, forgot something important or did something even more embarrassing to try to make up for it, even I would be sick of criticizing him.”

“Which is saying a lot.”

Rebecca smiled. “I'm so glad we're on the same page. Shall we go down the path of judgment and subtle misogyny slated for tonight?”

“A kegger is starting to look more appealing when you put it that way, but yes, we should.” She was dressed and ready, of course. Casey was always ready, at least physically. Emotionally was another matter. “Do you need any help with your speech?”

“Oh, I'm sure it will be perfect.”

 

For a moment, it seemed to be last year all over again to Evan—the white, heart-shaped bouquet of roses with the Omega Chi sweetheart ribbon over it, the women in gowns usually reserved for black-tie affairs and the champagne out long before it was due. The difference was, of course, that
Casey wasn't running, and he wasn't dating her, and he wasn't supporting her against Frannie. He was supporting Rebecca, who had her own troubles, though not all of them were her fault or even within her sphere of influence. She looked beautiful and unharried anyway, even if she was wearing silver instead of the traditional red.

“Red would have clashed with my eyes,” she said. That was her opening statement to him as he went to personally greet her.

“And hello to you, too.” He supported her perhaps a bit less than he had Casey, who was at the time the love of his life, but since then he had learned how fleeting things could be and to appreciate the little things—even if Rebecca wasn't little, except physically. And there were certainly a lot of roses if he wanted to stop and smell them. “You look terrific.”

“Thank you.” Her face betrayed a hint of a smile—a real smile, not a fake one. “Where's the bar?”

He gestured and she was off without another word, and he couldn't color himself surprised. He greeted the rest of the attending ZBZs instead. “Hi, Case. Ashleigh.” They were appropriately dressed as well. Casey still looked fabulous, but Evan decided to hold his tongue on that. “I'm glad to see you both here.”

“Surprise! We're here! As if we weren't going to be,” Ashleigh said with a laugh. “Seriously, who would miss this? If anything, the scandal—ooh! Mini hot dogs!” She ran off before she could say anything else embarrassing, and Casey gave a relieved sigh.

“Sorry about that.”

“I'm used to much worse,” he said. “And I'll be in for some
really uncomfortable moments if Rebecca doesn't win. I can't wait for this contest to be over.”

“Evan Chambers! How could you not support your brothers and Omega Chi tradition?”

He kept his smile on for everyone else passing him. “I know some brothers with stronger feelings about Omega Chi traditions than I do, in the opposite direction.”

“Oh, this will all blow over. It's not house…burning. Wait, how did that become the litmus test for everything?”

He raised his eyebrows. “Do you really have to ask?”

She rolled her eyes at him. “Thank you for your support.”

 

“See how much better it is this year?” Grant said to Calvin as they made their rounds to greet their guests. Despite the scandal, or perhaps because of it, the catering hall was packed with four sororities' worth of stupendously dressed women.

“After this week, how can you possibly say that?”

“Because we're both out and no one's asking our opinions, and I don't have to pretend to like every woman equally until the voting starts,” Grant said. “Also, nice ice sculpture.”

“Swans are so uncreative.”

“But it has a rose in its beak. That must have been hard to sculpt.”

“True.” Calvin looked at Rebecca coming his way. “Hey, Rebeca. Good luck tonight.”

“I don't need luck,” she said. “Calvin. Grant.” She nodded to both of them. Her mood was hard to read, but she was here, and that was the point. “I see the Tri-Pis are in full display.”

“We couldn't find a reason to disqualify them. They put Melanie on probation, so that's that. But you know, somehow
I don't think it's going to hurt your chances.” He said the last in a whispered voice.

“Thanks,” she replied in the same whisper and gave him a sly smile. Not that either of them expected different from her.

 

Casey looked at her phone for the fourth time since arriving through the doors of the well-stocked catering hall. Cappie was still trying to get her to stop by, promising a “good time” for “his sweetheart.” It was cute, but she was busy—mostly with being concerned, as she still didn't know what Rebecca was going to do and she certainly hadn't won any points by not wearing red, but that was out of Casey's hands now. If only she could stop worrying about it.

She did get another text, this time from Rusty. “Cappie is on the ball,” it read. Whatever that meant. Her brother was supporting Cappie but seemed to be trying to indicate that Cappie had something planned to make up with her, even if all she wanted was a show of responsibility. What was he planning? There was no way to tell from the messages, and she had more important things for the moment as they were called to the area with the podium for the beginning of the sweetheart speeches.

 

Rebecca was last. That was by her own design—she specifically requested it, and the confused Omega Chi acting as concierge immediately agreed. Some people truly didn't understand politics.

Natalie of Gamma Psi put on a brave face and went first. It was to her credit that she didn't outright mention her house burning down, as it was the bright pink elephant in the room,
but it also would have looked absolutely shameless. She nonetheless made some mention of “triumph over adversity.” The gist of her speech focused on how much she cared for her sisters, a safe bet, especially given what her sisters were going through under her watch. She actually sounded pretty good, despite that shrill voice of hers. There was no hesitation or doubt in her voice, two things which could really hurt the impression she made with the crowd. On the other hand, the judges were guys, and she ran long in Rebecca's opinion, by at least a few minutes judging from the glazed-over look of the guys, even though there was no official time.

Stephanie of Tri-Pi went next, and this time a few more people put their drinks down and paid attention, but not for any reason Stephanie would have really wanted. She was the candidate of Tri-Pi (technically Pi Pi Pi, but nobody called it that). Rebecca suspected that if Stephanie didn't win, which was likely, and this all blew over, they would be very forgiving, given how poisonous the scandal was for their votes. But Stephanie didn't focus on the Tri-Pi pledge's open letter. She began with “When I was a child,” which was the worst possible way to open a college essay, in Rebecca's opinion, much less a sweetheart competition. Maybe that
was
the opening to her college essay, because the whole thing sounded a bit as if she was applying to a college that only accepted sweethearts. “And that's why I'm the best candidate” also sealed her fate as the giver of the loser speech.

Shelly of Beta Theta Tau was up next, and she made up for what she lacked in professionalism with enthusiasm. She was certainly perky, and she was a dancer. Not that she literally danced in front of them—she just told them about it, but in bits spread across a joke-laden speech that sounded suspiciously
well-written, as if someone was hired to write it. Well, according to Casey, it wouldn't be the first time. She was charming, and that was the problem. Most of her jokes landed, but at this point in the evening the alcohol was flowing pretty heavily and the jokes got points for that alone, so she didn't get full credit for being a comedian in Rebecca's book. But she had to admit, except for the Gamma Psi pity vote working hard for Natalie with all her professionalism, Rebecca felt that Shelly was a strong candidate.