He was the embodiment of chaos. An unpredictable cartoon character. He represented everything Jennifer Laurent should have abhorred -- crude, goofy, lackadaisical, kind of lazy, spontaneous... agnostic. Even the first time they met, Jennifer didn't really think much about Alex, but clearly she had some kind of effect on him. It was some event where their respective colleges sent teams to research something together. The colleges paid for hotel accommodations and sent their best and brightest students. Alex was on his college's team. Jennifer wasn't even on hers -- she was just the person they brought along to take pictures for the inevitable interviews the team would face afterwards. She didn't feel like part of the team, but... she was there, so she still was representing her college.
Alex noticed she wasn't participating much in the research and, as if it was a joke, involved her. He kept showing her charts and tables and going, "How about you, shutterbug? What do you think?" When Jennifer explained that she wasn't part of the official team, he shrugged and smiled. "So? Got any thoughts anyways?"
Jennifer wasn't easy. She didn't blush or bite her lip or anything. She just smiled at his sheer tenacity and gave a tepid boring answer. That seemed to satisfy him and he turned back to discuss more with the group.
He was such a white boy. The kind her mother wouldn't ever approve of. Tall, skinny, pale as a ghost, with short black hair, a strong jawline, and a big silly grin that had the unfortunate effect of being contagious. Whenever a conversation was happening, half the time he was leading it or voicing his objections clearly. He had no problem butting his way into the conversation. Again, such a white boy.
Jennifer's mother wanted her boyfriend to be black like her. It's not like her mom was racist, per se, she just had ideas of what white boys were like... ideas that Alex seemed to embody. Jennifer herself broke up with her black boyfriend the day before that trip, to her mother's dismay. Her mother was equally hopeful that the two would reconcile and that Jennifer would find another boy. She was, after all, an incredibly attractive girl. She was short with an adorable smile (with a cute little gap between her teeth), hair and eyelashes that she took pride in taking good care of, and of course, good genetics. Even though Jennifer saw herself as too chubby, it meant that her impressive breasts were hard to hide. It wasn't the greatest thing in the world to be sexualized by boys because of this, especially since she was a good girl that knew that sex came after marriage, but it was like having a coupon to free attention when she wanted it from boys, and... there were worse things in the world. Boys would be boys, so even though her breasts could sometimes get overwhelming (particularly on her poor back), it meant she'd always get that kind of attention.
Given Alex's almost annoying jokes and bits where he'd get her involved, she figured he had a thing for her. She expected him to be like every other skinny tall white boy he knew where he'd either joke about her being black (point out how our skin color is different, hilarious, it never got old) or make some weird comment about her breasts but... she had to admit, it was refreshing how neither of those ever came.
What he did do, less than a day after he went back home to his college, was find her social media account and add her. It wasn't surprising, but then again, Jennifer did get added by a few other people, and he did involve her in the conversation too. It was the least she could do to add him back.
Almost immediately, she was met with messages. "How did the pictures turn out," "did your college really just drag you there only to take pictures of other people," and intriguingly, "I hope I didn't make you uncomfortable when I kept involving you. I thought you just might be bored."
That last one gave Jennifer pause. She was used to boys hitting on her over text, but one thing she was not used to was a blatant level of care for how comfortable she was. She'd never realized it before, but he was the first boy to slide into her DMs, especially after meeting her in person, who expressed care for her comfort levels.
That was the turning point. Beforehand, she was being polite and enjoying this silly boy like he was some kind of exhibit at the zoo or something. But before long, she realized she was opening up to him. She kind of wanted a male friend that she could open up to about things, one that knew her just enough to be interesting but not enough to make her feel weird for being vulnerable, and she found one from the most unlikely of places. And of course, he lived nearly an hour away, so if it turned out that he was a walking red flag in disguise, she could just block him and be done with it without any fear of running into him.
That moment never arrived. Alex was run through the gauntlet -- how did Alex feel about this one girl on his team (the easiest way to see if a boy was a red flag was to see how he talked about women he wasn't interested in), what did Alex think about feminism, what was Alex's love life like... and boy, was Alex honest. Jennifer hadn't even heard of the term "polyamory" before meeting him, and when he described it, she knew her jealous ass could never accept her theoretical boyfriend having several other girls, but she oddly felt compelled to say "good for you though." She had no idea why she said that. She certainly didn't have a habit of saying it, especially to boys like him. Maybe it was because he had nothing but nice things to say about Tamsin, that other girl on his team that already had a boyfriend (a monogamous boyfriend). Maybe it was because he was an avid supporter of feminism, to the extent where he had been following a feminist page before he even added her. Jennifer hated how rare it was for boys like him to be like that. But maybe, just maybe, it was because when he heard about how recently she'd gone through a breakup before going to the event, his first reaction wasn't to hit on her, it was to apologize. "Oh, sorry, you must have had a lot on your mind," he wrote. "My annoying little jokes must have been the last thing you needed that weekend."
That was the first time he made Jennifer blush. It was clear that his joking persona wasn't the only thing to his personality, nor was it a bluff. He somehow was a complete comedian on the weekend she saw him and yet, a deeply caring guy underneath. What's more, Jennifer felt comfortable now telling her college friends that Alex Leblanc from that one college summit was messaging her, and it was like telling them that an old friend was in town.
"Oh, Alex. What an absolute character," one remarked.
"Where does he get all of his energy from?" another one laughed. "He's like a character from an internet story, the kind that seems made up."
"I heard he's a bit of a manslut though," yet another remarked. "He goes from college to college, leaving a trail of destruction and wild stories behind."
Her friends just laughed. "Yeah, these events are like a rite of passage," her friend Sachin would laugh. "You meet Alex, you sleep with him, you bear his child, you don't hear from him for seven years, the cycle continues." Sachin was a jokester himself, and it was clear that they all thought highly of Alex, but that remark was enough to scare Jennifer back into reality. Sachin was, accidentally, a hundred percent correct. That's what Alex was, that's what he wanted. He himself admitted he was a manslut. Polyamorous, too. For shame. He may have been kind about it, but he had an end goal in mind when it came to Jennifer... and it was up to her not to fall for it.
