"No more moping, you're coming with us tonight."
Cabe cringed at the sing-song voice of Melissa, his roommate's girlfriend. She was sweet, fun, smart, and impossibly friendly with everyone -- even him. Tonight, however, those were exactly the sort of traits that were most likely to set his nerves on edge.
He looked up from his laptop and found her standing in the open entrance to his dorm room, looking at him encouragingly. She was even more attractive than usual tonight, dressed in a tight Houston Texans uniform that would more likely have belonged to one of their cheerleaders for the amount of cleavage that was on display in the jersey's v-neck. Cabe did his best not to stare.
"No, really, that's okay," he said lamely. "I'm just not in the mood tonight."
"It's Saturday night and Halloween," she said, walking into the room and leaning casually against his desk. "No way we're letting you stay behind. Jason's cousin and his roommates are throwing a party at their house across campus. Come on, it'll be fun."
Cabe shook his head. Going to a party at which he knew almost no one did nothing to further motivate him into leaving the comfort of his personal exile.
"I appreciate it, really, but I don't have a costume," he said. "It's not a big deal."
"This better not be about Chrissy," Melissa said. "You two dated, what, a handful of times? That doesn't even count as a break up."
Four dates, two lunches, and one chemistry lab partnership, Cabe thought. Chrissy's rejection of him the prior weekend for another date, however, had still hit him hard. Melissa was right; it hadn't been much of a relationship. For him, however, already lacking self confidence in the area of relationships, it had been an unpleasant blow to his early college experience.
"I'm over her," he said, lacking conviction.
"Good, 'cuz there's bound to be other opportunities at the party."
"Costume." Cabe shrugged helplessly and hoped she would drop the matter.
"Costume," Melissa said, giving him a sly grin and producing from behind her back a black eye patch and a ratty red bandanna. "Pirate Cabe, scourge of Drannon Hall, wooer of wenches. Just grab a white shirt and some dark pants and you're golden. Chop chop."
As much as he wanted to decline, Melissa was one of those people who pulled everyone else along in her wake. He was helpless to refuse and, admittedly, he found that she had put at least one small chink in his wall of self-pity.
Just then, his roommate Jason, bedecked in a furry barbarian outfit complete with a plastic battle axe strapped across his back, filled the doorway. "You coming?"
"Yeah, he's coming," Melissa said, giving Cabe a wink.
* * *
Not wanting to be a third wheel Jason and Melissa, Cabe excused himself from the couple shortly after arriving at the house party. The place was packed and felt even more claustrophobic by the darkness and the awkward bulkiness of some of the Halloween costumes. He found at least a modicum of refuge in the costumed nature of the crowd, however, as it gave him a bit of anonymity. For a while, at least, he figured he could just wander around and enjoy the variety of costumes while pretending he was looking for someone.
Black lights set up around the living room brought unexpected twists to many of the costumes of those who danced to the loud, thumping music. Several girls, to Cabe's appreciation, wore rather sexy outfits, including one as a belly-dancer and another in a spandex cat suit. Disappointingly, nearly all the girls here seemed to be either attached or at least intermingling with so many other people that he couldn't discern if any was approachable. None, it seemed, were lonely wallflowers like him.
After about an hour of hanging around without seeing his friends or scarcely saying a word to another person, Cabe concluded that coming to the party had indeed been a bad idea. The way he seemed to be studiously avoided by others made him feel like his scarlet V for virginity had been brilliantly revealed to all under the black lights. He was out of his element and being smothered by people who knew cool, who moved easily through social circles, and who all undoubtedly had sex lives.
It was something Cabe had wrestled with for a year or more now - was he still a virgin because he lacked self-confidence? Or did he lack self-confidence because he was a virgin? He knew it shouldn't be a big deal -- after all, he was still only eighteen and a freshman in college. He thought he was headed toward an end to his frustrations with Chrissy before the unexpected dumping. Perhaps that had stung all the more as he was surrounded by hundreds of other freshmen who seemed to have little problem hooking up with one another.
Certain his slump would not end here, Cabe decided it was time to leave. As the crowd had grown even bigger since their arrival, he abandoned hope of actually finding Jason or Melissa to let them know he was leaving. A text message should suffice, he decided, and began to work his way toward the door.
Before he made it halfway across the room, Cabe found himself pressed face to face with a woman he had not yet seen during his people watching. She was tall, lean, and elegant, dressed in a slinky black dress that was cut obligingly low in front and high up the sides of each leg. Stiletto-heeled knee-high boots further accentuated both her imposing figure and, somehow, her graceful motion through the throng. Her face, with dark eyes and full red lips, was serene as if detached from the crude music and revelers that filled the room. The only part of her outfit that separated it as a costume from a sexy clubbing outfit were the horns -- realistic looking curled ram horns that spiraled out from the thick, wavy mass of red hair.
Cabe caught himself staring far too long. "Excuse me, sorry," he mumbled and tried to shuffle aside to clear a path for her.
