It's a Romance, when you finish reading it this story will still be a Romance, please just enjoy the story two people did their level best to bring to you and not tell me it's sitting in the wrong category. The temptation was to break it in half and post two chapters instead of one, as you can tell common sense won out. My thanks as always go to SouthPacific for his editing.
*******
I still remembered the day I first noticed the girl, in my first week at college. Dianne Barrett was her equal in my old high school: she could be alone when she started walking along a corridor, but would always have someone magnetically attached by the time she had got to the other end. Sadly, being a geek meant that I was also relegated to being a people watcher - please read watcher, and not stalker. Dianne Barrett was well worth watching, but this girl had her beaten all ends up.
I was at college to get the education I needed to progress and pay back my folks for sending me here, not to party all the way through like there was no tomorrow. It didn't take long to find out the girl's name - Taylor Dennison. Although I knew HER name, it was odds on that she had no idea of mine - that was, if she even recognized me at all. I was under no illusion about my place in the pecking order of college freshmen. Events were to prove that theory was oh so correct.
I had foolishly placed Taylor in amongst the Dianne Barretts of this world: stuck-up bitches who thought their looks entitled them to an easy path in life, treading on everyone else's toes to get their way, and dating only the jocks who acted the same way, or could be used to their advantage. Seeing her from time to time, however, sure made me change that opinion of Taylor Dennison. The jocks got to her first: she was polite right up to the time you didn't hear polite when she said "no thanks" to a date, and then she got real ugly.
The pretty boys and the guys with trust funds decided to have a go next. She dated a few, but word was that you got only one shot at Taylor. If you messed up on the first date you never got a second. From what I saw in our first year, she could hold her own in the conversation stakes with everyone. I heard her cuss as bad as the Neanderthals and speak as elegantly as a royal visitor.
After our first year was over, and the headlong rush to get into sororities started, Taylor got her hands as dirty as the rest of them to get into her sorority. That seemed to earn her more in the way of kudos points amongst the women who couldn't seem to place her into any category. All through our second year Taylor was still liked by everyone, but with her the boys all knew that "no" really did mean NO.
*******
It was in the back end of my second year at college when I first really met Taylor. Well, that's not exactly true: when I first spoke to her perhaps. Nope: that's not entirely true either. You see, I was reading in my room, the computer was on and my buddy's social media page was up. He liked this group because it had a section where you could hide your own friends and visit a general page on the site.
He liked it because, when he got stuck on some topic he was working on for class and I wasn't around to explain it to him, he would just throw it out there. You could pretty much guarantee that someone out there knew the answer. A bit like going on Google, only the person on the other end would actually help explain it in better terms, so that even my track jock of a room-mate could understand it. That was Tony for you: always taking short cuts whenever he could.
As for me, I still liked books. The head librarian and I were on first name terms, and had been since my freshman year. Tony was out for the evening at some party; I had some course research I wanted to get started on, so I stayed in. The computer still pinged from time to time, often with stupid questions. "Did OJ really do it?" "How many times is a katana blade folded to make a perfect sword?" Oh boy, did that debate get heated.
Hell, even the question of how to make the best home-made apple pie got asked once. That debate brought out so many of the students phoning home for mom's traditional recipes that even the Dean put his two cents worth into the debate. It shocked the heck out of everyone that he even had an account.
So to borrow a well-worn phrase, there I was, minding my own business, when the screen pinged and the next question rolled over from someone with the handle of TTBG. "In a room full of people, why do I feel so alone?"
The Neanderthals got in first and told whoever it was to get drunk. The women online took a more defensive approach and told the woman to seek out her friends or leave before the knuckle draggers looked on her as vulnerable and tried hitting on her. The name calling came next between the two groups and in amongst it all, the woman only known as TTBG got pushed to one side.
While all this was going on, I took a more philosophical point of view. As the name calling went on all over the general page, I clicked on 'private message' and, by the time I had pushed send, the damn thing looked like an essay. Seconds later the debate was about sending people to colonies on the Moon before sending any to Mars. I switched my roommate's computer off then, and got back to my own research without any of the distractions that his social page was bringing me.
A few weeks later Tony said he was off to the canteen to see some girl. Since it was none of my business I just shrugged and went back to reading. He came back about an hour later, scratching his head and telling me that the girl was a weirdo and he couldn't wait to leave. To me that meant he made some excuse about going to the bathroom and kept on going. I really did like the guy - hell, we had been roommates for a couple of years now and hadn't even had an argument - but Tony was never one for emotional entanglements on any level.
It was six weeks after that I really met Taylor. The rest of the people in the corridor at the time can attest to that.
"Excuse me. Are you Mitchell Cromwell?"
When I turned around, Taylor Dennison was standing there with a few books resting on her arm and an intense gaze in her dark eyes, two of her friends waiting patiently behind her. When I nodded in the affirmative she handed her books to one of her friends and slapped me across the cheek. The whole corridor heard the slap and looked on, waiting for whatever was going to happen next. Other than her friend handing her books back and all three walking off talking to each other, nothing else did happen.
Both the heat of the slap and the confusion as to why I got it troubled me throughout the day. Even when I got back to my apartment and told Tony about the slapping incident, I was still as confused as hell. The Taylor Dennisons of this world may pass people like me in a corridor, but to actually talk to one of us? Not in this lifetime. And, for the life of me, I couldn't imagine any possible reason for her to hit me.
"Let me guess, tallish? I would say five six, maybe seven. Long hair that stops between her shoulder blades and small of her back, tits that say come home to momma, and an ass that you feel could keep you company in the bedroom for the rest of your life?"
Other than the fact he missed out the fact she was African-American, he all but nailed the description of Taylor. I nodded my head once again.
"Thought as much. She was the one I took to the canteen and then she started talking weird - something about being in a room full of people."
Tony was heading out the door when I got that little tidbit of information, and suddenly the whole puzzle came together. Now I knew the face behind TTBG, not to mention the answer to what I sent her in reply to her question.
*******
The slapping incident quickly became a thing of memory, as do many subjects on a college campus. Too much going on and just not enough hours in the day, I suppose. The next interesting thing that happened was a conversation with Marta. Now Marta is a great girl, and we had some interesting conversations in our time, both on campus and in the library. We learned real quick that we would never be anything but friends, but we did know that this friendship would last well past our time at this college.
She called herself a free spirit; I thought "promiscuous" described it better but, other than the concern I had for her health, and her reassurance that no one got into her body without a coat on, followed by me going ever so pale and muttering the words "too much information," we had as solid a friendship as anyone could have in any mixed gender sequence you could think of.
Marta caught up with me at the library, and what raised an eyebrow with me was the lack of books, or even a bag, in her hand. She scanned the room, so the fact she was looking for someone was a dead giveaway. As her eyes found me a frown marred her face, and the only thought that came to me at that moment was "What have I done now?" I swear that, friendship or not, and with the way she behaved around me, I sometimes felt I was married to this woman.
As Marta pulled a chair out she said, "OK. Spill it."
Quickly running my past transgressions through my head while she sat and stared at me, and realizing she knew most of them, I just shrugged my shoulders.
"Why has Taylor Dennison made you persona non grata?"
Confusion was my only defense, and even then I had to put it into words.
"Marta, what the hell are you talking about?"
The stare she gave me simply got her my "I haven't got a clue" look back at her. She knew me well enough to know when I was bluffing. It wasn't in my make up to begin with, and I had never lied to her in all the time we had known each other.
"The girls at the sorority were finishing up this month's meeting when Taylor asked that you be given 'hands off' status. Her friends backed her up, and it was passed before I could figure out what the fuck was going on. You're in the cold, Mitch, and the girls will see to it that you stay there."
Still feeling nonplussed about what she had just said, my only question was, "Just out of curiosity, do I have a right of appeal?"
"In a court of law anything is possible, but you're talking about a sorority house full of women. You're a guy; you figure it out. So tell me: what did you do to her? I have never seen her so bent out of shape about anything since she came here."
Since I had no idea of the answer, Marta seemed to think it her mission in life to find out. Even placing my hand over hers, and telling her to let it - whatever it was - be, didn't dissuade her. Yes, Marta was my friend, and I loved her greatly for it, but causing friction with her sorority sisters wasn't something I wished on her over something that I neither had a clue about nor, to be honest, cared about.
Although we talked for another hour on other subjects, the topic of Taylor Dennison seemed to be a shadow that hovered. I was due to visit my folks in a few weeks so, other than not giving a shit since, in Marta's opinion, I could do nothing about it as it was now a sorority ruling, why put my friend in the firing line over something that clearly pissed off Taylor, and only Taylor.
