Greek: Double Date (4 page)

He nodded. “I was premed for freshman year, I think because my parents wanted it more than I did, and one year of it was enough. I think organic chemistry killed their dream of
Doctor
Howell, M.D. Maybe it was better to have it die early.”

“Definitely. I was prelaw for, like…ever. Now I’m doubling up my poli-sci courses to graduate on time and still fulfill my major requirements.”

“Prelaws can be pretty crazy.”

“You noticed it, too? They all have strange ticks and obsess about scores. Ashleigh said I was dangerously close to looking like one of them.”

“What changed your mind? The LSATs?”

“I did okay on the LSAT practice tests,” she said, which wasn’t a lie. “I even had an interview with Harvard Law. It was going really well, and then he asked why I wanted to be a lawyer, and I realized I didn’t have an answer.”

“College is supposed to be about figuring out who you are and what you want,” Rob said. “Even if it’s just girls and beer, as the strong fraternity presence on campus would indicate. At least they’re focused on an attainable goal.”

“I’ve never looked at it that way.” It was a very philosophical—and kind—way to view drunken frat boys doing body shots off girls’ stomachs. “I think the formal will have a slightly different focus.”

“Everyone on their best behavior in front of the council and the dean? Yeah, I guess that means no Jell-O shots. Which is a shame, because I really like Jell-O. Not the vodka, necessarily, but the Jell-O.”

“You’re going?”

“Nah, if Bowman needs me for anything, it’ll be the engineering event on Friday.”

“Greeks can invite non-Greeks.”

“Yeah, like a sorority girl would ask a total stranger.” He looked at her. Maybe, finally, he was reading her stare and getting the hint. “Do you…need a date to the formal? I just assumed you had a boyfriend.”

She blushed. “If you’d asked a few months ago, you would have been right. But you know, senior year. Cynicism. Changing perspectives,” Casey said. “I’m going because I’m pledge educator and I need to support ZBZ, but I am currently dateless.”

“Then…may I take you to the formal?” He looked down, his face red. “I feel like I’m in high school, asking for a prom date.”

“Formals are a lot like proms. And yes! Yes, totally, you can take me to the prom…er, formal.”

His look said,
Really?
but he just stammered, “O-okay, then.” They exchanged cell phone numbers. “Great. Awesome.” In the distance, they could see Rusty returning, a manila folder in hand. “I don’t suppose you know somewhere to rent a tux.”

“I’ll text you the address,” she said, putting on her innocent face for her brother. “Hey, Rus.”

“Here you go,” he said, turning his attention to Rob, who thanked him and raced off to his next errand. Rusty retook his seat. “So?”

“So what?”

“You have this look on your face like I should ask about something.”

There was no reason not to tell him, she supposed. “Rob and I sort of mutually asked each other to the formal on Saturday. I had the invitation and he didn’t, but he had to ask. Sort of. You know, as the guy. This isn’t Sadie Hawkins Day.” On the aforementioned holiday, girls chased around the guys—
literally—that they wanted to date. It was the only time the roles were officially reversed.

“I hope not. Getting chased by my girlfriend is totally not on my list of ideal situations,” Rusty said. “She can totally outrun me.”

“You were on the track team in high school.”

“Yeah, the year that all their first and second picks were disqualified for drinking after an away competition. And it only lasted until the Incident That Shall Not Be Named.”

She giggled. Now there was a funny memory. “The one with the hurdles?”

“The Incident That
Shall Not Be Named,
” he said more insistently. “Anyway, Rob seems cool. I don’t really know him or anything, but if you need a guy to take you to the formal, I guess it works. And, no, I will not investigate him for you and try to talk him into saying whether he likes you.”

“I would never ask you to do that,” she said, clarifying with, “
again,
anyway. But it did kind of work.”

“And it was kind of embarrassing.”

“That, too.” She nudged him with her arm. “You’re off the hook for this one.”

“Oh, my God! He asked you out!”

Excited though she was, Casey felt that not joining in Ashleigh’s overexuberance would help to calm her friend down. Casey looked out the window of their shared bedroom instead to avoid Ashleigh’s infectious stare. “It was sort of…you know, less direct than that. I did half the work.”

“Well,
duh,
you had to. It’s completely forgivable. Plus, shy guys? So cute. Especially when they’re hot. It’s like the perfect mix.”

“Ash, he has other qualities,” Casey said, feeling compelled to defend Robert as not merely eye candy to hang on her arm. “He’s a junior, so he’s not too young—”

“Because dating a freshman? Ew—”

“—and he’s a political science major, like I hope to be, so we can talk about…political stuff. Course requirements…I don’t know. And he’s, like, deep. He talks about figuring out who you are and the future, but not the ‘we’re going to be together forever and ever and our whole careers are planned out’ future.”

“Yeah, you have a tendency to date guys with plans. Not that it’s bad, but it’s a little overwhelming. Evan and Max?”

“I think Max’s problem was that he
changed
his plans for me and gave up Caltech. And then he brought it up at every possible opportunity even though I never asked him to do it and would have told him not to do it if he had asked.” She groaned. “No, no more angsting about Max. Max is gone. Done. Out of my life. Like Evan…and Cappie.”

Ashleigh hugged her pillow. “You know, it would be a little more convincing if you didn’t get these sad moon eyes every time you said his name.”

“Didn’t we just go over this?”

“I mean Cappie. Look! I’ll get a mirror so you can see.”

“I don’t need to see it.” Casey didn’t doubt Ashleigh’s judgment on her mood swings when it came to Cappie. They were chronic and terrible and happened way too often. And she didn’t even see him that much. “And he’ll be at the formal.”

“He has to go. He’s president of Kappa Tau. Unless there’s some medical emergency—”

“He could have a broken leg and he would still go for the free drinks and to say insulting things to someone—Evan, the dean, whoever came his way. And now, probably, Rob.”

“Casey, you have to think positive. Maybe he won’t come. Or he will and just moon over you in the corner and not bother you or your new awesome, hot boyfriend, who is too cute for words.”

“Are you mooning over my date? Which is all he is at the moment. He doesn’t count as a boyfriend until the second date, and this isn’t even a date. It’s a social event. He’s
escorting
me.”

“In a tux that he wouldn’t have to rent if he wasn’t taking you. That automatically makes it count as a date.”

“Is it weird that we’re both going to an All-Greek Formal with non-Greek boyfriends?”

“No,” Ashleigh said with a huff. “It just means that the fraternity guys are losers, and we’re so over them.”

“See? That would be a problem to some people.”

Ashleigh rolled her eyes. “People who don’t get it. You can’t spend time worrying about people who don’t get the deeper stuff, Casey. Life’s too short.
College
is too short. So he’s not in a fraternity. You’re setting a good example for your ZBZ sisters.”

“You think I am?”

“You made me take Rusty to our formal last year because he had no date, and now I’m president of our house! Not that the two were related. But you see my point. You’re showing them that they have options beyond fraternity life, and as much as we ZBZs value our relationships with fraternities, we’re empowered women who don’t limit our choices because of some arbitrary social code.” Ashleigh paused. “Wow. Where did that come from?”

“It was positively presidential,” Casey said. “It shows how good you are at your job. It comes to you without you having to think about it. Maybe we should put it in the pledge book.”

“Oh, please,” Ashleigh said. “Who reads that thing?”

When Calvin Owens was a pledge, he’d had to do
some disgusting things. Omega Chi Delta liked to keep up the appearance that it was not a bunch of lazy fraternity guys living together, and it did so with pledges. Calvin had used more toothbrushes to scrape floors than he had probably used in his life on his actual teeth. He’d unclogged toilets, trimmed the thorny hedges until his hands bled, and even picked up thirty boxes of pizza, sans car, and delivered them within thirty minutes to his brothers the night before finals. Now that he was an active, it was supposed to be a free ride—provided that he could find a pledge to do the work that needed doing for him.

One particular set of tasks remained. Evan Chambers was his big brother and always would be, and brothers stuck together and helped each other out, even if the situation seemed to be reversed. So when it was time to get Evan out of his drunken stupor and find a tuxedo that would make him look decent when he went to represent the Omega
Chis at the All-Greek Formal, the task fell to Calvin by a massive consensus.

Calvin was smooth. Not overly so, but he had a way of talking with people to calm them down, the very opposite of what his appearance as a built former jock implied. His wide smile showed people how easygoing he was, but he could be angry with his stare if he wanted to be. “Rise and shine, big bro,” Calvin said, trying to be cheerful without overdoing it. “You need to get your tux so we can send it for dry-cleaning.”

Evan, who was sleeping not in his bed but in the armchair in the billiards room, picked his head up. “What time is it?”

“About five. And if anything doesn’t fit, the tailor’s closes at six. You haven’t gained or lost weight, have you?”

“You can’t tell?” Evan wasn’t drunk, but he was definitely hungover. Which for him was strange. Or used to be.

It wasn’t the first time Calvin had encountered this Evan. In fact, he was witness to the entire slide down the slope from elation to depression. Evan had finally gained access to his trust fund, only to have it come with more strings than a royal marriage alliance. At first he’d tried to buy his happiness about the situation, via Frannie, two new cars and several other women. As Calvin had predicted—and even forewarned his big brother—it hadn’t worked. Evan had fought with his parents, he’d fumed and he’d given up his trust fund—and his girlfriend by association, as Frannie was mainly with him for his money and had openly admitted it a few times—in what she no doubt had thought was not an audible conversation—to the entire OX house. Now the mighty Evan Chambers had nothing—except a paid tuition bill, no college loans, a terrific academic record that would easily earn him a scholarship to graduate school, and con
nections through his fraternity to future job prospects. Really, he had everything anyone would want, if they hadn’t just had their multimillion-dollar trust fund taken away. It was all a matter of perspective.

“I don’t want to go,” Evan announced. Since it was not the first time he’d said it this week, Calvin knew he was referring to the formal.

“Plenty of presidents are going stag or picking up a date on the way. I’m told it’s standard procedure for certain fraternities. Psi Phi Pi—”

“They’re nerds!”

“Kappa Tau.”

“Because Cappie likes to mope in Casey’s presence. Wait—she’s pledge educator. She might not be there.”

“The thing holding you back is
Casey?
”

“No. It’s everything, dude.”

“Okay, so it’s not Frannie, either?”

“Well, Frannie did make things interesting. She sure did know how to wreak havoc in the Greek system.” Evan laughed. “Frannie created a whole sorority just to spite Casey. It was maniacal.”

“It’s supervillain-scale evil, for a sorority sister. I don’t think college kids build death rays.”

“What are you talking about? Your best friends are engineers.” Evan was laughing, which was good. It was still a sickly sort of laugh, and it wasn’t very dignified in a bathrobe, but it was better than outright moaning. “But, yes, it was evil on a monumental level. That’s how Frannie does things.”

“Using evil?”

“Monumentally.”

It was enough of a shared laugh to get Evan motivated to
sit up, and then even stand up and contemplate getting dressed. In other words, it was an improvement.

With Calvin’s responsibilities to his big brother out of the way, he could finally focus on his own priorities. He looked good in a tux, and he was proud of it. “So. The formal,” he said to his roommate and would-be boyfriend, Grant. Yes, it was risky to date a roommate, but their attraction had been unavoidable.
Grant
was unavoidable. “Did you get yours?”

“I don’t think I’m going,” Grant replied, unusually apathetic about the situation. It was the voice he used when he was trying to dodge something, like an obligation. The look he got from Calvin told him he had to explain himself. “Look, did you go to formals when you were still in the closet?”

“No, but I helped the ZBZs organize a mixer last year.”

“Well, I’m just not that kinda guy. Not the organizing part. The going stag because I’m not asking a girl out on a pity date or because I have to so I can keep the image going.”

“So you don’t want to go stag, and you don’t want to go with me.”

“Were you really expecting me to go with you? No offense.”

Calvin nodded. “None taken.” He hadn’t even asked. Their relationship was secret, and Grant’s sexuality was secret. Calvin had had a hard time being accepted when he came out last year to Omega Chi—actually, Ashleigh had accidentally outed him—and he didn’t want to go through that again, or watch Grant go through it, especially when having two guys dating in the house would bring up a host of somewhat reasonable concerns. Never mind that the other guys were so open and obvious about bringing home their girlfriends or the girls with whom they were cheating on their girlfriends. Calvin’s previous
roommate had been a nightmare of the bed hitting the wall, which had led to the at-first awkward switch to Grant’s room. No, hopefully, Grant would come out on his own terms. “I’m used to it. The whole stag thing. Or giving misleading signals unintentionally. Ashleigh once thought I had a thing for her. Before she was president and before I was out, yeah. It was this whole…mess.” He didn’t want to get into it. He was busy looking for his tie. At least the room was small enough that nothing could get truly lost, though his important items certainly did try. “But you don’t have to miss out entirely.”

“Miss out on what? They’ll be carding, everyone else has a date, and the food will be terrible. I’m not dancing with someone for the sake of it. I’ll catch up with you at the after-party.”

Calvin frowned, but he knew he couldn’t convince Grant to go. To be honest, formals were meant for people who had dates or liked dancing.

“Why are you going?” Grant asked.

“Me? I just like wearing the tux.”

“Which tie?”

Rusty groaned as he looked away from his computer screen just long enough to see the ties draped over the unfortunate plaid shirt and corduroy jacket Dale was so enthusiastically holding up. “They’re both red. Even I can tell they clash with the jacket. And the shirt. And whatever pants you’ll be wearing. And is that a Mickey Mouse tie clip?”

“It’s my lucky clip. My grandma Kettlewell gave it to me when I won the second-grade science fair contest, and it’s been an upward journey of scientific scholarship ever since.”

“Dale, you don’t need luck. You’re already getting an award. Your grade point average is not changing in the next twenty-
four hours.” He looked at his watch. “I have to be at the Parkside Hotel in twenty minutes.”

“Then pick a tie and you’re free to go.”

“Fine.” Rusty covered his eyes. “The one on the left.”

“You have your eyes closed.”

“That’s exactly my point,” Rusty said, throwing on his jacket. “Now excuse me, but I have to go make sure the hotel didn’t forget to put out the complimentary fruit platter.”

“Wait! You haven’t told me who my date is. What if I have to get her a corsage?”

“This is an awards ceremony for good grades, not the prom,” Rusty said. “And anyway, it’s Casey. If she cared about matching, she would have told you by now.”

“Casey?” Dale sputtered. “Your sister, Casey?”

“I don’t know any other Caseys.” And he didn’t have time to deal with Dale’s obsessive behavior. He left his roommate in a crush-induced daze—not great, but a definite improvement on leaving him in the lap of cougar Sheila. There was the same amount of drool, but far less swapping of it.

“How do engineers dress, anyway?”

Casey was standing in front of her closet, mindlessly pushing old dresses aside when she answered Ashleigh, “I know how engineers dress. It’s more an issue of how their dates dress.”

“Oh, my God! You could dress, like, supermodel hot. Don’t computer guys date supermodels now and like to trot them out? Like they’re getting back at everyone in high school who’s now pumping gas?”

“I saw
Can’t Hardly Wait,
too,” Casey said. “And I don’t need Dale any more…excited than he’ll already be.” Her cell phone rang. “Hello?”

“Hey. Um, hi.” It was, of all people, Dale. His voice always squeaked a little when he was nervous. “How…are you?”

She mouthed “Dale” to Ashleigh. “Fine. Just discussing you.”

“Really?” He didn’t—or couldn’t—hide his enthusiasm.

“In direct relation to the awards ceremony.”

“Oh. Um. Well.” He cleared his throat. “You know that Darwin Lied got permission to play at the after-party? I mean, did you know? Do you know? Can I tell you now?”

“Yes.” Casey didn’t bother to specify which one of the questions she was answering.

“Um, okay, should I pick you up? Not for the after-party. For the night. I mean the dinner! Not, you know, the whole night. However much you want. You’re probably busy. Like later.”

“It’s on campus, right? Just let me know when it starts and come by half an hour before.”

“Awesome! I mean, great. I will be there…at your house, I mean. To pick you up.” His voice went to that high pitch again. “Thanks. Um, see you later.”

“Bye, Dale.” She hung up, the only way to get Dale off the phone. “Maybe I should have asked him what he was wearing.”

“What is this event, anyway? How do engineers socialize?”

“By giving each other awards for academic achievement and inviting a bunch of software companies. It’s social networking when you don’t have a sorority sister to get you an internship somewhere. Rusty said it’s alumni and some, like, low-level HR guys scouting the talent.”

“So, in a word,
boring,
” Ashleigh pronounced. “At least you can hang out with your little sis. Jordan’s going, right?”

“Yeah, and she’ll probably be on her own a lot. Rusty’s been obsessing about this event forever. And not in a good way. In a planner way.” She stopped at an older dress. “No red,” she
decided, and moved on. “I don’t want to look like an accessory. Just because they’re engineers doesn’t mean I can’t be presentable and intelligent and treated as an equal.” She thought uneasily of her summer internship with Congresswoman Baker, where she had been regarded as the dumb sorority chick. And the people she’d worked for hadn’t even been engineers. They were politicians, and they spoke without using computer acronyms she didn’t know. “I need something subtle. Sophisticated. And that matches my eyes.”

“So the formal is not a priority?”

“The formal is easy. I have a hot, sexy date. I wear something attractive but not over-the-top. And maybe red.” She pulled out a striped gown, black-and-white. “What do you think?”

“The bar code dress? Seriously, you can do better and still not have them drooling over you.”

She pulled out another dress, this one green. “Better?”

“Green’s good. Neutral. Safe. Environmentally friendly. Wait, is that good?”

“It’s green, not tie-dyed.” She tossed the dress on her bed. “I’m obsessing too much about this.”

“Actually, I think we are dangerously close to obsessing too much about obsessing too much. Which is obsessing…too much.”

Casey looked at her best friend. “Green dress?”

“Green dress.”

It was almost midnight, and Rusty was ready to eat something, relax and not be obsessed with anything engineering-related for the next twelve hours. The reception at the hotel had lasted longer than he expected, as the alums proved exceptionally chatty, especially the ones who hadn’t been on
campus in years. Busy answering questions about the engineering program, polymer science and Cyprus-Rhodes in general, he’d only had time to grab a soda and made it last the entire evening.

Seeing his big brother was therefore not ideal, especially when said big brother was perched on his front steps. “Cappie.”

“Spitter.”

“What are you doing here?”

“I might say the same of you, Sir Hobnobber.”

“Well, I live here.” And he didn’t want to kick Cappie out, but he was sure if he went inside, Cappie would follow.

“Hmm.” Cappie just nodded in a conspiratorial manner. He was planning something. “Was it better than clothing shopping with Dale?”

Rusty took a moment to process that. Maybe he was too tired to hear correctly. “What?”

“Your roommate has some serious social impairments. Which is cool. He’s developed in other areas. But corduroy? Unacceptable.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You told Dale that Casey is his date for the engineering social.”

Too exhausted to continue this conversation standing, Rusty dropped his backpack and sat down next to Cappie. “It’s not a social, or I guess it is, but yeah. So?”

“So, as you may recall before your Kappa Tau membership threw various female-counterpart opportunities into your lap, some people of…your persuasion—and Dale’s—might get a little nervous at the notion of escorting a fine, distinguished woman such as your sister to the event of their semester.”

Rusty pondered this for a moment, trying to decipher Cappie-speak. “Did Dale freak out and call you?”

“Your phone was off, and his purity brothers are—”