Chemistry of Love

Instinctively Jen turned right, towards her dorm; then just as quickly she remembered that Kathy had Jay over. The two of them were probably blushing redder than a couple of apples and trying to work up the courage just to take their shoes off in one another's presence, and Jen still wasn't sure Jay wasn't up to no good with that prick Bill. But she had given Kathy her word, and Kathy was a big girl who needed to learn about men and the real world anyway. She would just have to find a friend's couch or floor to crash on for the night.

The best place to do that at the moment was probably Hagan Hall, where Jen recalled seeing signs for a party that night. She turned on her heel and headed up the walk to Hagan.

The party there was in full swing, with the music too loud for asking about places to stay, but Jen figured it was just a matter of falling in with a group of her friends. She drew a beer from the keg and took a sip, and looked around. To her disgust, the first familiar face that jumped out at her was Bill's. Desperate times, desperate measures, and maybe she could get some useful dirt on Jay. Forcing a smile, she waved at him.

Bill, who had been making small talk with a clutch of guys he'd seen at the gym, tried to look cool but couldn't entirely hide his delight when Jen approached him. "Hey, didn't think I'd meet you here!" he said. True enough; he was sure she'd be sucking Brett's dick right then.

"Why wouldn't you?!" Jen said. She took his hand in her free one. "Come on, let's dance!"

Bill flashed a victorious grin at the guys in his group, none of whom looked up to notice, but maybe Jen didn't see that. She led him into the thick of the dancefloor, hoping she might find one of her girlfriends in the mix. When that didn't happen through the next song, she followed along when Bill invited her off to the sidelines for another beer. Good luck smiled upon her at last when they ended up waiting behind Meg, a senior she knew through the equestrian club. "Meg, dear?" Jen said, tapping her on the shoulder.

"Jen!" A clearly-inebriated Meg took Jen in an exaggerated embrace. "How in the world are you?"

"Homeless for the night, I'm afraid."

"Homeless?! Are you locked out of your room?"

"Sexiled is more like it," Jen said.

"Kathy found another guy already?" Bill interjected; both women ignored him.

"Aw, geez, that's a tough break," Meg said. "I'd let you stay with me but my fiancé's in town."

"Fuck," Jen said, the first beer and the lousy situation having done away with her filter for the evening.

"Tell you what," Meg said. "Don't leave the party, I'll ask around. I know there are at least two girls here who have free beds in their rooms at the moment. I'll see if I can get a favor from one of them."

"Thanks, Meg!" Jen said, and with a sigh of relief she drew another beer.

"I have a free bed in my room," Bill lied.

"Thanks, Bill. I'll keep that in mind if Meg can't find someone." But I'd rather sleep on the football field, she thought to herself. There was always her dorm's lounge in a pinch. With her immediate problem maybe out of the way, it was time to dig for warning signs for Kathy. "So, Bill," she said, once again forcing a smile. "Did you have that man-to-man talk with Jay about keeping his big mouth shut?"

"Yeah," Bill said, following it with a swig of beer so he'd have a moment to think. "Yeah, he was a whiny little brat about it, too, but I don't think he'll talk behind Kathy's back again. Especially not if she's got a date with another guy already."

"No, Bill, she is with Jay tonight," Jen said. "I'm surprised you didn't know."

"Well, then, see, he's doing a better job already!"

"I guess. But I hope you'll understand if I still don't really trust your friend."

"No, I totally understand. I do hope you also understand just because Jay is my friend doesn't mean I'm like him."

Jen was, at long last, finally beginning to believe that.

Kathy's responses were even more guttural and intense with Jay inside her, and the close-up view of her face in the throes of passion was just as delightful as the loving embrace of her vaginal walls around him. The tender look in her eyes as he came was something he vowed never to forget. At last he let out a grunt of his own at the big moment, and as he lay his head on her breasts he was rewarded with the gentle caress of her fingers through his hair.

"Sorry if I didn't get you off, he said.

"You did! Before!"

Jay looked up. "I meant..."

"I know what you meant. It's okay, it just takes practice. And I promise you'll have lots of that if you want it!" She laughed, then added, "It was nice, wasn't it?"

Jay rolled off onto his side so he could look her in the eye more easily, and also admire her body; Kathy welcomed both. "It was. Better than I expected!"

"What did you expect?"

"I didn't know what to expect, really. Just that, I've been imagining this for years, and you can only ever guess how it feels."

"Well, how did it feel? Like you imagined?"

"Better! How about you, Kathy? I've heard it can hurt a woman's first time. I hope it wasn't too bad..."

"It was wonderful!" Kathy gave him a comforting rub on his side. "Yes, it hurt a little at first -- I was expecting that -- but it was beautiful, Jay. Better than I always imagined, too."

"Glad to hear that," Jay said, snuggling up beside her.

Kathy reached over to turn off the lamp. She lay back on her pillow for a moment, then thought better of it. "Jay...can we do it again?"

At the party, Bill sensed an opening. He regaled Jen with a few stories from high school about how naïve and shy and dumb Jay could be sometimes. Jen remembered to smile and laugh at all the right points while she kept an eye out for Meg or her friends, and her charade was good enough to fool Bill. Finally, he asked the question he'd been trying to worm into the conversation from the very beginning. "Where's Brett?"

"Oh, God, don't ask!" Jen was almost glad he'd brought that up; now she was free to look as disgusted as she felt. Once the dam was broken, though, Jen realized she was desperate to vent to someone. With no other option for the moment, she plowed ahead with her venting to Bill. "Brett plays a good gentleman, but...well, let's just say he doesn't have the foggiest idea how to treat a woman when he doesn't have an audience."

"Wow, you'd think it'd be the other way around," Bill said, without a trace of irony that Jen could detect.

"Would you?" Jen asked. "Sorry, right now I just don't get guys at all. Just like I don't get why our mousy little friends are the ones getting lucky tonight and here we are lapping up cheap beer! And meanwhile, Brett probably doesn't even think he's done anything wrong. Just like I'll bet Jay didn't when you talked to him."

"Well, you know," Bill puffed out his chest. "I could talk to Brett, too."

Jen couldn't help laughing. "Thanks, but I don't think you can help with his problem!"

"Maybe I can help with yours, then." Bill set down his beer on the windowsill and cornered Jen against the wall, leaning in for a kiss.

Jen had fought off enough grabby guys in high school to have no problem with a clumsy fool like Bill. A well-placed left hook in the jaw sent him sprawling against the window, spilling his beer and three others. "What the fuck, Bill?" she shrieked.

Before Bill could regain his balance, he'd attracted the attention of four guys who'd been drinking on a nearby couch. "Let's go, asshole," one of them said.

"You leave Kathy alone, too, and don't expect me to believe anything else you say about Jay!" Jen snarled, as her rescuers dragged him off toward the door. She turned away just a bit too late to miss Bill giving her the finger, but too soon to see one of the other guys smack his hand down.

Jen did find a bed for the night with a friend of Meg's, and she had the discretion to stay away from her and Kathy's room until well after breakfast. When she did finally return, she found Kathy dressed for the day and seated at her desk, trying to study but looking very much like her mind was off with her heart.

"So..." Jen began as she shut the door after herself, following that word only with a smile.

"So, it was the best night of my life!" Kathy declared. "I'm in love, Jen. It was amazing! I hope you get used to having Jay around here. Oh, and thanks for letting me have the room last night."

"I see it was for a good cause!" Jen said.

"It sure was! Jay had to run off right after breakfast for some committee meeting, but it was lovely right up to the end." Lowering her voice to just above a whisper even though there was no chance of anyone else hearing, she added, "We even showered together this morning!" and then burst into girlish giggles.

"He didn't hog all the hot water, did he?" Jen said, remembering all too well how Brett usually did that.

"Of course not!" Then, perhaps guessing why Jen had asked such a question, she added, "How's Brett?"

"He's...fine." Jen didn't care to taint her friend's wonderful mood with sad news. For the same reason, she opted to keep up her vow of silence about Bill as well. "Listen, I'm really happy for you and Jay, Kathy. I'm sorry I haven't warmed up to him more."

"You will," Kathy promised. "Like I said, I think he'll be around here a lot from now on. Oh! You know what's weird?"

"Nothing about last night, I hope," Jen couldn't resist saying. "Sex often seems a little weird the first time."

"No!" Kathy laughed. "That part was great. No, it was just as we were saying our goodbyes this morning. I don't remember if I told you, I asked him once before about that note he slid under the door and he acted like he didn't know what I was talking about? I brought it up again this morning -- 'Jay, I'm so glad you sent me that note' -- and he did it again!"

"That is weird," Jen said. "I could see a guy acting like that if it didn't work, but when it does work..."

"It gets even weirder," Kathy said. "He also said I was the one who deserved the credit, for sending him that rose. I've never sent him a rose! I mean, it's not a bad idea, but I didn't do it!"

Jen bit her lip. The time was probably right.

"Then I made a big mistake, Jen," Kathy continued. "I let him know I hadn't sent it, and then he said it was actually signed, 'a secret admirer.' So apparently someone else sent him a flower and I got the credit for it. I don't know what to make of that."

Jen nearly decided to come clean, but she had second thoughts about what other subjects it might force her to open up on. "Wow, that's unlucky for the secret admirer, whoever she is," Jen said instead. "But you know, Kathy, he already liked you before he got the rose. That's why he thought it was from you. So it wouldn't have worked out with this other girl anyway." With a wicked grin she added, "If it even was a girl."

Jen nodded and smiled. "I guess you're right, Jen. Still, I wonder why he's playing dumb about the note." She turned and looked behind her at her bed, and concluded she wasn't going to get anything done that close to it. "Well, I think I'd better go hit the library," she said. "Change of scene, you know?"

"I'll bet you could use that," Jen agreed. "Congratulations, Kathy."

After gathering her books together, Kathy hugged her friend. "Thank you."

Kathy was halfway to the library and Jen's encouraging words were still ringing in her head before it occurred to her. Jen had said "he already liked you before he got the rose." How did she know when Jay got the rose? Even Kathy herself didn't know that! The realization stopped her in her tracks, and for a moment she wanted to rush back to their room and confront Jen. But then, what if she had sent it? Jen had no designs on Jay herself, and if she'd been presumptuous in assuming Kathy would never do such a thing herself, she'd also been right. Feeling relieved, Kathy resumed her walk to the library. She would not go so far as to thank Jen for the trick, but she wouldn't complain about it either, she concluded.

The "committee meeting" that Jay had used to extricate himself from Kathy that morning was, of course, really another tutoring session with Dennis. Like Kathy, Jay was so aglow with love and goodwill that it couldn't be missed. Not even by Dennis, who looked happy about something other than chemistry for once when he answered Jay's knock at his locked door. "I see you had a great night!" he declared, standing aside to welcome Jay into his room.

"It shows, does it?"

"Completely," Dennis said. "You look like you're floating instead of walking. Here, just a second before we get started. I was in the middle of something." While Jay sat down and got his chem book and notes out, Dennis stood on his desk chair and set about rigging a wire into something behind his curtain. "I don't mean to freak you out, Jay," he said. "But my room got broken into last week. So I got a webcam and I'm pointing it at the door. If it happens again, the jerk's on Candid Camera this time."

"Wow," Jay said. "I'm sorry to hear that. You know, Kathy -- she's the one I started coming to see you for -- she told me last night her roommate's started locking their door for the first time because someone she knows got hit. I wonder if it's one guy breaking into a lot of people's rooms?

Dennis looked down at Jay and arched his eyebrow, but didn't comment further. He ran the line from his new camera down to a laptop under his bed, and then sat down to help Jay with his homework.

Just as Jay and Dennis were getting down to work, Bill awoke with a murderous hangover and an even worse sense of defeat. His usual remedy -- a heavy breakfast at the student union -- didn't do the trick this time, so he headed back to his room for Plan B. Relieved to find no sign of his roommate, Bill opened his underwear drawer and got Jen's panties out. He unbuttoned his pants and then clutched his prized contraband in his left hand; but it was no use. All they brought to mind now was the sting of her hitting him and the dressing down he'd gotten from the other guys at the party. Defeated, he zipped his pants back up and took a long last look at the panties -- what to do with them now?

And what to do about Jay?

Ever since junior high, Jay had been riding his coattails, resisting his warnings to come out of his shell and live a little or else, and now what? Here he was getting lucky without ever even knowing Bill had arranged the whole thing, and meanwhile Bill was striking out with a bimbo who had no idea what was good for her?! It wasn't fair and it wouldn't stand.

Bill pulled on his windbreaker, and stuffed Jen's panties in the pocket. He would fix this!

Dennis was off to his own lab project when the tutoring session was done. Jay was surprised he didn't lock the door after what he'd told him. Dennis noticed as much, and explained: "It's a trap. Whoever did it might do it again, and this time I'll get it on camera. I went to campus security and they said there was nothing they could do without evidence. This time they'll have it."

"Aren't you worried about anything getting stolen?"

"They didn't take anything last time. They just turned the place upside down. If they were looking for anything, they didn't find it."

"Which means they might come back, and this time you'll know who it is," Jay said. "Good thinking."

"Thanks," Dennis said as they stepped out into the late morning sunshine. "Good luck on the homework." He turned right, toward the science building, and Jay turned left toward the library.

From halfway across the green, Bill saw them saying their goodbyes, and he made a run for Jay. "Hey, Jay!"

"Bill!" Jay was still too elated about the night before to come down on his friend for his lying. Besides, proving Bill wrong about Kathy was its own reward. But he couldn't resist twisting the knife a little bit. "Hey, what'd you get up to last night?"

"Went to a party with Jen," Bill said. "She said you and Kathy took over her room to play checkers or something like that, so we chilled at the party. Guy, what are you doing with that Dennis freak? You want word to get all over campus that you go around with two nerds?"

"I'm studying with him! What's wrong with that? And if Kathy's a nerd, I'm proud to be one too!"

"Jesus H. Christ, guy, what's this chick got on you anyway? Is she a porn star underneath or something?"

"I've got to study." Jay turned and went on his way to the library.

"Okay, wait, wait! I'm sorry, guy," Bill said. "Really, I'm happy for you."

"Really? Then why the constant insults about her?"

"We've been friends forever, guy! I just don't want you to get your heart busted by falling in love with a dead battery who only cares about her GPA!"

"Kathy isn't a...geez, Bill. You need to grow up, you know that?"

"I said I was sorry."

"Yeah," Jay said. "I mean, I appreciate that, but you're all wrong about her, okay?"

"Am I, guy? Really? I know chicks like that, I know what a brick wall they can be when you try to...you know."

"Oh, no you don't!" Jay couldn't help laughing.

"You didn't!" Bill was truly surprised.

"None of your business if we did, is it?" Jay replied.

"Okay, okay, you're right," Bill said. "Listen, could you introduce me to her at least? Maybe we could all get dinner tomorrow?"

"Good idea," Jay said. "I'll tell Kathy we can join you and Jen this time."

"No, I don't want Jen around for that!" Bill said. "She always monopolizes the conversation. It ought to be just the three of us. Maybe we could meet in your room around dinnertime tomorrow?"

Jay nodded. "Fine. We're going on a walk tomorrow afternoon -- our reward for getting our studying out of the way, you know? -- and yeah, I can bring her by my room after that and meet you there."

"Perfect." And already Bill could see his plans taking shape. "Now, about this Dennis freak..."

"He's never hurt you, has he, Bill?" Jay demanded, and this time he did resume walking away.

Not except by horning in on my best friend, Bill thought as he watched Jay walk away. Leave it to shy little Jay to throw him over the side for two people who were even more bookish and introverted than he was. But Bill was pretty sure he could get another dig in at Dennis while he was on Jay's floor tomorrow. It was just a matter of timing and a little luck.

Since their last attempt at studying together had been a failure, Kathy and Jay had agreed to set aside all day Saturday and Sunday morning for studying. "A nice way of saying we won't be seeing each other until tomorrow afternoon," Kathy explained to Jen over lunch. "But it's got to be done."

"I know," Jen said. "I remember when Brett and I first got together, it was the same way." Then as soon as she had said his name, Jen felt the tears welling up. She grabbed up a napkin and held it to her eyes. "Sorry, Kathy!"

"Jen, what's wrong? Trouble with Brett?"

Jen nodded, and got herself back under control. "It's over, Kathy. He's...a little different in private than in public. And I've had enough."

"Oh my God, Jen, did he attack you?"

"More like he barely wanted to touch me. All about his needs, you know?"

"Oh, my...I'm sorry, Jen. I'm really sorry to hear that. He does seem like a nice guy."

"Mostly he is, that's the frustrating thing! I guess it's for the better that I'm getting out now, though."

"I thought you looked a little wound up when you came home this morning," Kathy said. "I'm glad to hear it wasn't anything really ugly."

"Yeah." Jen figured she ought to tell Kathy about what her true love's best friend had pulled on her the night before. But she just couldn't do it.

Sunday morning was always so quiet on campus, with only the few students who went to church out and about. Perfect for a stakeout, Bill reasoned as he watched the door to Jay and Dennis' dorm from across the green. He was getting sick and tired of all the waiting and watching, but he was quite sure he wouldn't have to do it again. Today's operation would cook Jay's goose with Kathy forever, and also drive a nice fat wedge between Kathy and that bitch Jen. They were close, but Bill doubted they were close enough for Kathy to forgive her friend for sleeping with her new boyfriend! What he had up his sleeve for Dennis was just gravy, but Bill did like gravy.