Emily Morgan was 14 minutes late, mildly damp, and spiritually unraveling. Her notebook was clutched like a flotation device, her map app had betrayed her for the last time, and she was starting to suspect college wasn't built for people with a clear moral code and a tragic fondness for Elizabethan verse.
Emily Morgan had the kind of beauty that didn't register all at once.
At first glance, she looked sweet -- the sort of girl who'd offer you a handkerchief embroidered by her grandmother. Soft brown waves, skin kissed faintly by sun, a gentle slope to her nose. But then -- her eyes.
Those eyes.
Gray-green and always watching, always plotting. Eyes that lingered too long on details, that glittered with barely-suppressed sarcasm and the kind of curiosity that could turn dangerous if given time and proximity.
Innocence, yes. But not the boring kind.
Emily's innocence had teeth.
She burst through the door marked 104B, mumbling a rushed, "Sorry, sorry, wrong building," only to freeze mid-step.
There were no lab coats.
No beakers.
No faint smell of formaldehyde.
Instead, a circle of students sat on bean bags in what appeared to be a hybrid between a daycare center and a yoga cult.
At the center stood a girl who seemed carved from myth: black curls like spilled ink, crimson lips curved into a smirk, and legs that probably had a dedicated fan club. She wore leopard-print leggings, a cropped Sappho Was Right sweatshirt, and a magician's top hat that somehow didn't look ridiculous on her.
Emily instantly recognized her.
Everyone knew Zoe -- not just from flyers for "Queer Improv" and "Radical Consent Yoga," but from the rumors.
Zoe was a foster kid -- raised in at least four states, rumored to have emancipated herself by age sixteen, and walked into freshman year already a legend. Some whispered she'd dated three RAs simultaneously. Others claimed she had a "100% conversion rate" for straight girls, which was both mathematically suspect and deeply unnerving.
Zoe wasn't just beautiful -- she was predatory poetry in motion.
Ravishing didn't even cover it. Her hair, long and dark, curled around her face like shadows curling around candlelight. Her cheekbones could've cut glass, and her lips -- always slightly parted like she was about to say something devastating -- were the color of stolen cherries and far too practiced in smirking. She didn't walk; she prowled. Every move was fluid, deliberate, magnetic.
People didn't just look at Zoe. They watched her like a bomb with a timer ticking in iambic pentameter.
She didn't dress to impress. She dressed like rules didn't apply. Crop tops in winter. Combat boots with ballet skirts. Fishnet stockings as sleeves. Somehow, every piece made sense on her body -- like she owned contrast.
There was something about Zoe that whispered:
"I've been through fire and now I play with matches."
And then there were the other stories:
-- the one about a missionary's daughter who dropped out of school after two weeks of "roommate tutoring."
-- the rumor that Zoe once made a girl climax using only her voice and a strawberry popsicle.
Emily swallowed. Hard.
"Welcome," said the girl with a theatrical bow, "to Queer Improv: where the only thing straighter than our scripts... is nothing. Absolutely nothing."
Emily blinked.
"I--I think I'm in the wrong class," she stammered, already turning toward the door.
"But are you in the right moment?" the girl countered.
It was said with such Shakespearean flair, Emily half-expected the fire alarm to go off just to complete the absurdity.
"I'm looking for Chem Lab?"
"Aren't we all," said a student in a mesh tank top, nodding solemnly. "Aren't we all."
The girl in the top hat stepped forward with the theatrical ease of someone who once monologued through a cafeteria fire drill. Her name, as it turned out, was Zoe, and she wielded her stage presence like a weapon of flirtatious mass destruction.
Emily opened her mouth to explain again, but Zoe cut her off with a finger in the air.
"Let me guess. Small town. Just arrived. Map app hates you. British family?"
Emily's jaw dropped.
"How did you--?"
"You carry yourself like someone who's read A Midsummer Night's Dream unironically... and enjoyed it."
Emily stared.
She had, in fact, memorized Puck's final monologue at age nine and once tried to do a book report comparing Twelfth Night to Legally Blonde. It hadn't gone over well.
"Tell you what, newbie. Stay. One scene. You can be the straight girl in love with her married vampire fencing coach."
"That's... oddly specific."
"Oh honey, specificity is foreplay."
Before Emily could object, she was handed a rubber sword, a cape, and a stuffed bat named "Carl."
By the next morning, Emily had mostly convinced herself it didn't count.
The cape? An accident.
The velvet blindfold? Probably standard at liberal arts colleges.
The improvised love poem Zoe whispered in her ear before the "vampire duel"? Clearly a group activity. Like duck-duck-goose. But with more innuendo.
She was determined to return to her regularly scheduled life of Intro to Chemistry, overpriced textbooks, and avoiding human interaction in any form. She even printed out a new campus map and highlighted every single science building.
And yet.
At 12:03 p.m., as she stood in the cafeteria salad bar line, someone cleared their throat with theatrical purpose.
Loudly.
She turned.
Zoe stood atop a cafeteria bench holding a rolled-up parchment, wearing a faux fur cape and what appeared to be chain mail leggings.
"People of the carbohydrate section," she proclaimed, "I hereby declare my undying admiration for Lady Emily of the Small Town and Even Smaller Wardrobe Choices!"
Emily froze. Every head turned. The hummus spoon clattered from her hand.
"She, who braved the Queer Improv Gauntlet with nothing but a notebook and residual British trauma!"
"I'm going to die," Emily whispered to the garbanzo beans.
"And thus," Zoe continued, "as tradition demands, I humbly offer a token of my regard!"
She reached into her satchel and pulled out...
A laminated coupon.
"One free tutoring session in Sexual Identity Recalibration. No strings attached. Except maybe metaphorical ones, and definitely a harness if we reach Advanced Placement."
The entire cafeteria burst into chaotic applause. Someone in line yelled, "She gave me one of those last semester! Five stars!"
Emily did the only sensible thing.
She sprinted.
Emily had barricaded herself in the library's "Silent Zone," surrounded by thick volumes of 19th-century British literature like a fortress of repression.
She stared at a page of Middlemarch for forty minutes without absorbing a single word.
Because Zoe -- chaotic, mythical, absurdly attractive Zoe -- was not just flirting.
She was campaigning.
Emily had already received:
• A scroll delivered by a medieval studies major, reading: "Your honor has been besmirched. Duel me with scones at dawn."
• A Spotify playlist titled Straight Girls I've Emotionally Compromised.
• A handmade zine with tips like "How to Kiss Girls Without Causing an Existential Crisis (Vol. 1)"
And the worst part?
Emily was laughing. She liked it.
No one had ever pursued her before -- not like this. Not with such ludicrous devotion or devastating confidence.
Certainly not with chain mail leggings and coupon-based foreplay.
That night, Emily lay curled beneath her blanket, the dorm room cloaked in shadows and faint moonlight. Danielle's side of the room was quiet -- a lump under a comforter with earbuds in, presumably asleep and dreaming of physics midterms or Tinder misadventures.
So Emily let her guard down.
Her thighs tensed. Her hand moved.
It was supposed to be quick. Just tension relief. A way to forget Zoe's voice trailing down her neck like silk. The way she said "Juliet," like it was a sin worth sinning twice.
