Author's Note: This chapter mainly "sets the scene," with most of the "action" to follow in the subsequent chapters. I guess I could have posted one big, giant chapter, but ... sometimes, it's good to leave 'em hanging.
*****
Stephanie, Stephanie. To think that something so strange and unexpected all started with a totally dull girl like Stephanie.
Until a somewhat impromptu movie night at their apartment about five or six weeks after they'd moved in together, Chloe hadn't ever thought of her roommate Stephanie as dressing particularly "sexy," "interesting," or "provocative." But it was a warm September evening and Stephanie came out of the shower wearing a white long-sleeve crop top that said "Girl Power" on it in large black lettering (with a little red "heart" symbol in place of the "o" in "Power"), matched with some tighter than normal blue jeans.
"OK, guys, what do you wanna watch?" she asked.
Chloe and Stephanie had put out a bowl of popcorn and some sodas on the counter for themselves and their two friends, Amy and Briar.
"I'm kind of in a ... chick flick mood," Amy replied in a tone that didn't quite suggest the confidence Stephanie had been looking for.
"Let's see what's on Netflix," Chloe proclaimed with more certainty, as she quietly made note of her roommate's new top. It was just a silly little girls' movie night; Chloe didn't know why Stephanie had suddenly decided to use this particular opportunity to prominently display her bellybutton, but ... whatever. "How about
Silver Linings Playbook
?"
"I think I just watched that a couple of months ago," Briar said.
"Sounds good to me," Amy added. "Bradley Cooper's pretty hot."
"I don't think he's all that," Chloe responded. She kept flicking through the options. "How about
The Social Network
?"
"Hmmm." Amy thought for a moment. "Jesse Eisenberg. Not as hot." The four of them giggled.
"Just pick something," Stephanie said. "I can't stay up too late, though. I've got volleyball practice in the morning."
Chloe couldn't have known it at the time, but that was sort of the beginning of it all. Of course, it
really
began a couple of weeks later.
*****
For Chloe, half of Stephanie's original appeal as a prospective roommate was that she seemed to be more boring than a cube of tofu soaking in water. In other words, in the mad spring scramble for off-campus housing, Stephanie had seemed like a nice, reliable, level-headed choice for an apartment mate. "Nothing crazy and unpredictable bound to ensue with
this
one," she figured.
Chloe and Stephanie had shared the same dorm hall in their freshman year, which is how they'd gotten to know each other, but they'd each had different respective roommates. Chloe still planned to see plenty of her former roommate Amy, who had been a little too fond of the herb for Chloe's taste, and was now living with another one of their mutual buddies, Briar, who took more readily to the stoner ethos. Chloe thought she could roll more easily with boring than with bong.
But "bland" certainly didn't mean "lazy." Unlike Chloe, who cringed at the very thought of competitive physical endeavor, Stephanie was a hardcore volleyball girl. "Perfect," Chloe figured, "she can do the exercising for the both of us!" Was Stephanie there on a volleyball scholarship? Chloe didn't know, and didn't want to ask. She couldn't quite detect her roommate's passion for Economics, a perhaps hastily chosen major. By contrast, Chloe was an English major, not because she thought it sounded cool, but because she couldn't stomach majoring in anything else.
Ah yes, the volleyball player and the bookworm: two low-key, clean-cut, conventional suburban girls.
Although others sometimes described her as "shy," Chloe preferred "introverted." She could speak her mind when she felt like it, but wasn't big on risky behavior like most of her peers. Her new roommate certainly came off as more outgoing, but also strangely private and reserved; Chloe couldn't always tell what she was thinking. When they'd been in the dorms, Chloe had seen Stephanie briefly snag a boyfriend for a couple of months, but she'd apparently broken up with him before the summer arrived.
If Chloe had been asked to make a bet as to which of the two of them was more likely to get some play with the opposite gender, she would have put all her chips on Stephanie, with her long, straight blonde hair (often tied back in a ponytail) and tremendous athletic gifts. By contrast, Chloe sported chin-length brown hair (which she thought, in her more fanciful moods, sometimes made her resemble an actress in a French new wave film), and she usually wore glasses. A couple of guys had told her she gave off a "nerdy cute" vibe, but she was skeptical.
What Chloe didn't see, or want to admit, was that, with her slender nose, high cheek bones, and intense green eyes, she was probably prettier than Stephanie, whose forehead protruded oddly over her eye sockets, and whose sharp nose hung over her abnormally thick, prominent lips. Chloe possessed a slight overbite, and when she smiled, the right side of her mouth would open a little more widely than the left side, giving her grin a sly, knowing, mischievous quality.
One seemingly random detail Chloe had noticed was that she and Stephanie were almost the same height: Stephanie was about 5'9" and Chloe was about 5'8", but Stephanie was thin as a beanstalk, while Chloe had a touch more meat on her bones -- although not much more. Another seemingly random detail was that Chloe's breasts were slightly larger than Stephanie's -- not that she ever took much advantage of this attribute.
And up until that day in September, neither of them would have lit up a fashion runway. Chloe usually just stuck to jeans and a t-shirt, or slacks and a sweatshirt. Stephanie dressed much the same, but with the addition of a slightly hippie-ish vibe: velvet shirts, peasant blouses, flower-print skirts. It wasn't quite what she'd expected from Stephanie when they'd moved in together, and she wasn't sure where that side of her had even come from.
To be honest, they still didn't know each other very well. She certainly didn't think of her new roommate as "sexy" or "hot" like so many of the other girls she'd seen around, wearing skimpy halter tops and super-tight leggings. The closest Chloe probably ever got to "sexy" was a pair of snug jean shorts that showed off her legs quite nicely. Sometimes she would wear those in the summer, but the rest of the time, she hardly even thought about her wardrobe. She wasn't, shall we say, a particularly confident young woman.
*****
A couple of weeks after their movie night, on a slightly cool Friday evening in early October, Chloe returned home from her Victorian Lit class. Based on the texts in ALL CAPS she was receiving from Amy roughly every five seconds, she deduced that her former dormmate was apparently experiencing some "roommate drama" with Briar, so Chloe offered to be supportive and meet up with her and calm her down.
As far as Amy was concerned, Briar was 100% in the wrong, and while Chloe sensed that Amy was at least
partly
fueling the drama, she decided to keep that little theory to herself. Frankly, Chloe sometimes enjoyed letting Amy vent and go on her little rants, which could end up being hysterically funny -- and the best part was, she didn't have to live with her anymore! But first, she needed to swing by her own place, drop off her books, and grab something to eat.
Chloe plopped her bag down in her bedroom. A few minutes later, she heard Stephanie head into the kitchen. There was an odd "squeaking" sound traveling down the hallway that Chloe didn't recognize. After a couple of minutes, Chloe went out to the living room to grab a glass of water she'd left on the table. In the corner of her eye, she saw Stephanie apparently wearing something ... bright red?
"You going over to Isabel's?" Stephanie asked.
"Oh yeah, she's having a birthday thing, isn't she?"
"Yeah. I'm gonna go get something to eat with Robbie," Stephanie explained, the lower half of her body blocked by the kitchen counter. She was wearing a white Hard Rock Café t-shirt that Chloe had seen her wear a couple of times, her blonde hair pinned back tightly behind her head in a bun. But what the hell was that reflective, red garment she thought she'd noticed?
"So you're not going?"
