Chapter 2

L ila trudged up the legendary 150 stairs that most of the students who lived south of Bradley U took to get up to campus, satisfied that they no longer winded her in the same way they had at the beginning of the year. As was the custom with most freshmen, she'd lived on campus her first year in a tiny apartment-style dorm room on the east side of campus with a kitchen and five roommates.

She hadn't known any of her roommates when she moved in but had been pleasantly surprised by how much she enjoyed living with them that year. The summer before their sophomore year started, they all decided to move to the same apartment complex but split up into different groups, with Lila deciding to share a room with a friend of theirs who she'd met during freshman year. Which, in hindsight, hadn't been the best idea. But she liked her other new roommates, and her old roomies were nearby.

She crossed the grid-like campus, expertly designed to ensure that all students could walk the length of it in any direction in 15 minutes or less, passing by a mixture of older buildings from the late 1800s and newer, more modern buildings along the way, each shortened into quirky abbreviations of their actual names. For instance, the student union building's official name was the Jonathan Bradley Student Center, which everybody just referred to as the "Brad."

The administration buildings were situated to the south, the business school building and the athletic facilities to the west, the law school, law school library, and dorms to the east, and the football stadium and basketball arena on the northwest and northeast corners respectively, flanking the buildings housing the science museum and the museum of art. The main library and liberal arts buildings sat in the center of campus, as did the Brad, which was her current destination. After hearing Wren's telltale ringtone, Lila answered her phone.

"Lila, where are you?" Wren's voice came through Lila's phone and echoed through the room, since Lila had already spotted her bestie at their usual table in the large common area of the Brad and was already navigating through the series of tables heading in Wren's direction.

Though best friends and self-proclaimed "soul mates," insofar as they were concerned, Wren and Lila looked nothing alike. Where Lila was shorter than her friend by a handful of inches, angular and olive skinned, with long dark hair and light-brown eyes, Wren was curvy and 5'10", a veritable Jessica Rabbit with a short auburn lob and bright-blue eyes. Though outwardly different, they shared a love for big words, sarcasm, and the pursuit of law school.

"Behind ya." Lila plunked her giant purse that doubled as her backpack down on the huge round table. "What a day… I seriously need a vacation." She twirled her raven hair around her fingers and sighed.

Wren looked at her sympathetically, shaking her head. "So I'm thinking a Schitt's Creek marathon and popcorn tonight at my place, yeah?"

Lila nodded vigorously. "At last, we both have the same night off. And forget about homework. I swear I can't do it anymore. It's hard enough trying to do it with all of my roommate drama."

"So Becky is still in the middle of her dramatic love triangle with your next-door neighbors?"

Lila nodded with a groan. "Seriously, I don't know why she thought dating a guy who lives next door was a good idea in the first place, but to then start dating our other next-door neighbor at the same time? I can't even with all of the reality TV-esque situations. Plus, she's in a ‘I'm only eating wheat toast with no butter' phase, so she's in a perpetually terrible mood. I have no idea why I didn't find a place with private bedrooms. Thankfully Dani and Vicky are normal. Otherwise I would have moved out by now."

Dani and Vicky were both seniors, best friends from way back in the day, and pretty drama free. Dani was in the art program, and Vicky was an aspiring accountant. And both were hilarious and fun and liked to watch movies and hang out. Much to Lila's relief. Because she'd thought that Becky was chill too, until they moved in together.

"Next year, my friend. Next year," Wren promised.

Currently, Wren lived in an apartment about 20 minutes away from campus, whereas Lila lived just south of campus within walking distance. But they'd made a pact to live with each other their junior and senior years…somewhere closer to campus for Wren, with two bedrooms so they'd each have their own.

"Plus," Wren continued, "you know you can sleep over whenever you'd like. Like tonight, for instance. I just made the executive decision."

"I love you, Wrenny."

"Tell me something I don't know." Wren started to gather her hair into a low pony and then abruptly stopped as she noticed a person entering the building.

"Well, look who it is. Mr. King Spencer himself," Wren commented loudly, pointing at King in her typical unsubtle manner.

Inwardly, Lila groaned, for she liked to be as inconspicuous as possible. A hard feat when she was with Wren. She hoped he was out of earshot. Otherwise, she might as well crawl underneath the table and never come out again.

It had been just over a month since she'd seen King and his friends at the restaurant, not that she was counting or anything, and she refused to ask Jason if King had come in again. She wasn't going to give her co-worker the satisfaction of her curiosity.

She nonchalantly turned in time to catch a glimpse of King from a distance, walking with the swagger that was common amongst all of Bradley's athletes. Since she'd found out his name from Jason, she'd done a mild amount of "research" on the soccer player. Apparently, he was the star forward on Bradley's soccer team, a senior who'd redshirted a year, so he actually had another year of eligibility to play if he wanted.

King carried himself as if he hadn't a care in the world, almost daring people to judge him, to see what really made him tick. Lila couldn't fight the little burst of nervous excitement that crept in when she saw him. Dismissively, she turned back, only to feel Wren's perceptive stare upon her.

"You like him." It was a statement, not a question.

"How can I like someone I don't even know? There's just something about him that intrigues me is all; and I highly doubt a guy like that would condescend from his throne of athleticism and date a 19-year-old sophomore." Her sarcasm was apparent.

"Heaven forbid." Wren wrinkled her nose in feigned disgust. "And he'd probably wither away if he heard you utter a word that was over two syllables."

The one thing that Lila and Wren definitely did not share was their taste in men.

"Though I suppose he is attractive in the way that you seem to find so incredibly appealing," Wren teased. "And I'm woman enough to admit that his ass is a thing of absolute beauty." She whistled. "My heavens, Michelangelo would have spent weeks sculpting and chiseling to try to reproduce that beautiful behind."

Lila simultaneously laughed and blushed because her best friend was all sorts of right about that particular observation. Indeed, King was exactly Lila's preferred physical type. He was at least a couple of inches over 6 feet tall, with a gracefully muscular frame, including the aforementioned ass. His closely cropped dirty blondish hair was just slightly longer on the top, and Lila had a feeling that his piercing dark-brown eyes could eviscerate his opponents with one look. Add in tanned skin, a jawline that would make Zeus weep, and gleaming white teeth, and he was the epitome of the all-around, good-looking athletic type, with just a hint of an edge that Lila found so irresistible. The type that, up to this point, had been almost completely unattainable.

Sure, she'd dated the captain of the baseball team in high school, the year they'd only won one game after winning the state championship the year before, and though she'd tried to be the dutiful, appropriately soothing girlfriend, their fledgling relationship was doomed by the end of the season. Apparently she wasn't "supportive enough" of his needs, whatever that meant. The fact that Lila happened to be debilitatingly shy and thoroughly into academics in high school did not help matters. But she was getting much better at managing her timidity, and Wren never let Lila retreat too far back into herself.

Lila laughed at her friend's semi-serious derision. "Thanks, I am so blissfully happy to receive your blessing. I'll have to promptly find him so that the wedding plans may commence. I better tell Jason. After all, he'll be the best man. Yay!"

"As scintillating as this wedding planning sounds," Wren replied, "we need to get to Nelson's class. Perhaps our illustrious professor will, once and for all, decide who's the greater misogynist: Fitzgerald or Hemingway."

The friends gathered their things and stood up, glancing at each other knowingly. "Hemingway," they said in unison as they burst into giggles.

"Obviously always Hemingway," Lila added.

"The chauvinist of all chauvinists," Wren happily concurred as they headed off to class.