Brandon Malek was uncomfortable. Something about the bouncy blonde hanging on his shoulder, giggling into his ear like a child, rubbed him the wrong way for the first time in almost a month. He wondered if perhaps he had simply been zoning it out until now, favoring instead her visual qualities. Things like tits and a toothy smile generally ran their course in a week or so, and having a personality that could go from strong in the open to submissive behind closed doors was something that could maybe land you an extra two weeks. So where had the last week gone? Why was she still here?
He realized he had been slacking off on his girling duties. The classwork had distracted him. He didn't fancy himself the kind of guy who went to college just for the tits and the beer, and then somehow scraped by on the bare minimum of anything else. He was serious about his performance. It was the tits and beer that filled out the empty spaces while he was waiting for the lesser intellects of the world to catch up. Sometimes there was really nothing else to do. Besides, it was just one more way for him to prove his silent, modest superiority. He could outdrink just about anyone and walk away in a straight line.
So while Ellen absently rubbed her left breast against his ribs, her left arm around his back and her right clutching at his shoulder, he thought his way out of it. They were only a hundred yards or so from the place where they normally parted ways for the afternoon. He would walk down the hill to Organic Chemistry, and she would go... well, he didn't know where. They didn't talk about her classes. He had almost asked once, then realized what that would actually mean, and the kinds of things she might say if invited into conversation. Instead, he had reached around and unsnapped her bra with two fingers, and they had gone about the next fifteen minutes in a different kind of exchange. It would have to be now, before something like that happened again.
"Ellen," he said, as if he were stating his license plate number or birthdate. He had interrupted her. She had actually been talking about some other girl, but he wasn't sure who. "I don't think this is going to work out anymore."
She looked at him with her Barbie-doll eyes; they were big and blank and hopeless. She blinked twice, then let her shoulders sag. "Are you serious?"
"Quite serious," he responded. "I think we both knew this was coming. We're just kidding ourselves. You might as well go back to that heart you broke over in the computer science department. Looks aren't everything, you know."
He meant it. She had dumped a slightly nerdy freshman with a heart of gold so that she could spend a wild night eating candy necklaces off Brandon's cock at a party. It was sad, but in a way, he knew that Ellen had liked the guy, and had only walked away because of her low self-image. Try as he might, he couldn't stop attracting that kind of girl.
"Brandon, you're an asshole," was all she said before stomping off towards whatever class she had neglected to mention with his help.
He allowed himself a frown, promising that one of these days, he was going to hear that accusation and actually feel bad about it.
Organic Chemistry was spent in strict academic focus. The only moment he waivered from the prize was caused by the intrusive beeping of a cell phone directly to his right, where a friend of Ellen's called "A.J." was punching buttons, probably reading a message. The next moment we waivered was caused by her disgusted stare. He stared back, content to neutrality. The professor, Doctor Ester, was making an announcement about the Society of Young Scientists that would be meeting starting this very evening. Brandon had already written down the information from a flyer.
When class was over, she finally locked her keys and dropped her cell phone back into her shoulder bag. She glared at him once more, mouthed the word asshole to him, and then strutted out the door. He admired her. Most girls would have taken the immediate opportunity to place themselves in his lap upon hearing that he was a free man. Then again, he suspected A.J. was a closet lesbian. No great victory there.
"Brandon Malek," the professor coughed out, catching him at the door, "Congratulations on a job well done. I saw your term paper in the O.C. Journal this last week. How on Earth do you college students find the time for such genius?"
"Time isn't the problem," he remarked wittedly, smiling back with shaded pride, "Sometimes we just lack inspiration."
"I hope you plan to present your work to the society. It should be a neat clan if we can keep it going this year."
"I'm sure we will," he assured his teacher. Even if no one else went, Brandon planned to go every single week. His face must have registered this desire. If it had been anyone else, he probably would have heard quiet mockery from some other students, maybe comments about someone being an overacheiver. There wasn't a peep. Everyone was moving on into their afternoons and their fleeting freedom.
The inspiration he had been genuinely waiting for presented itself later that evening when he walked into the SYS meeting. This particular inspiration was seated front and center with her lightly shadowed eyes downcast into a book- an antisocial gesture he always admired in a woman. He didn't think he had ever seen her before, which was a good sign. It meant she wasn't a cheerleader, a sorority leader, or a Resident Assistant. Positions like these would have put her in the spotlight, and probably in his lap at some party or another. She glanced up briefly at the clock, and back down again. He was taken.
He allowed himself a moment or two to stay at the doorway, surveying the room and letting it fill up. When he had the slightest inkling that John Feldman the guitar-playing ecologist was making his way to the open seat on her right, he used six long strides to put a casual distance on the competition. He pretended not to notice her for several more moments as John narrowed his eyes and sat by the door.
When he did look at her, she was staring savagely into his eyes, meeting his gaze head on. He wondered if his surprised jolt was visible. She looked unconcerned.
"You're sitting on my dress," she stated, a tiny hint of a smile curving one side of her mouth. It was both incredibly seductive and a total accident.
"Aha," he proclaimed, rising to his feet and noticing the delicate fold of her skirt that had been pinched between his ass and the hard, wooden seat. He reached down to move it, to restore it to its place covering the honey-colored knee that had been exposed, but didn't get to it before she did. When it was back in it's place, so were her eyes- reading and scanning and taking metric tons of information into the mysterious cave of wonders behind them. He could not, for the life of him, get her damn attention. He also could not stop thinking about her beautiful knee.
