Fair warning to readers new to this series: I usually don't bother with much in the way of recaps, and this story is no exception. You can certainly enjoy it on its own, but it will make a lot more sense (I think), if you were to start with Chapter 1. Regardless, as always, do not hold your breath for realism in my work. I aim to be plausibly ridiculous.
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A REPUTATION 2: REFERRAL
So the whole thing with Rachel turned out to be a mixed bag.
I mean, I had awesome, wet, loud, shower sex with a very attractive girl in my dorm, with the promise of the odd future encore, so no matter what else, I was chalking it up as one of the biggest wins of my life... But, there were consequences.
For instance, no matter how much I wanted to publicly ignore what happened, there had been multiple, obvious ear-witnesses. And when two people in the dorm put on the kind of audio performance that Rachel and I had, and those two people hitherto had not been on the general populace's mental list of 'people who had sex,' much less the on the far smaller list of 'people who have epic, freaky sex'... there was going to be talk. Thank God there had not been anyone ballsy enough to sneak into the bathroom and become an eye-witness.
As it was, we both suddenly had a reputation.
Rachel dealt with it in her own way, and perhaps more effectively. She certainly managed to defuse her own part in things, and avoided becoming a subject of discussion. First, she resolutely stayed away from me in the closely following days, while remaining open and friendly when we met by chance. She neither was, nor acted, hostile, but she made damned sure that the two of use were never so much as walking in the same direction in the same hall for quite a while after. Second, she rather irritatingly continued to hang out with Chad. It wasn't like she was suddenly his girlfriend, but you did see them hanging out more, in the dining hall and common rooms. She presented the face of a normal student who was mildly involved with someone else other than me. For people who heard about the shower second-, and especially third-hand or more, it was easy to dismiss her as really being the rumored female in question. She had a completely normal relationship that seemed to be utterly unaffected by what happened, so it didn't sound like her. How she persuaded Chad to act like nothing had happened, I don't know. But I had my suspicions.
Her process worked fairly well, I thought. She certainly avoided the dreaded S-word label.
As for me, I handled things differently--which is to say, I took no steps to handle the situation at all. Also, I had not slunk away in the immediate aftermath, but just owned my embarrassment. And I had no other casual relationship to hide in. Most importantly, I had a loud-mouthed roommate with impulse control issues.
*
Later that same Saturday, the evening after it went down with Rachel and me, I was in my dorm, having gotten dressed for the upcoming planned night of crashing frat parties and drinking their beer. I was way more relaxed about that prospect than I had ever been in the past. I had gotten quite thoroughly laid already that day. My dry spell was over, and I had no rush to go on the hunt again. I was finally going to be able to just relax from a hard week of work, get a buzz, and maybe meet some new friends.
The door to our room slammed open, and Mitch stood in the doorway, feet spread wide, one hand balled into a fist on his hip, and the other pointing dramatically at me. "You!" he said breathlessly. Honestly, from my vantage, sitting on the floor working on my shoe, he looked like someone in a dramatically over-wrought comic book panel from my vantage. I just bent back to putting a new showplace in my Nike. My roommate slammed the door behind him and flopped into his desk chair. "You!" he hissed a second time, exhausting his temporarily limited vocabulary.
I looked up at him passively. "It's usually me," I said, looking down at my shoe again. "I live here, you know?"
"You..." he sputtered. "You nailed Rachel!" I gave him no response. "In the showers!" He gathered himself to find more words. "In the middle of the after-fucking-noon!"
My inner gentleman wanted to deny or at least refuse to confirm the situation. But he had obviously heard the word. Denial would be pointless, right?
I looked up at him and just grinned. I could not help it.
"Holy shit, man," Mitch groaned. "I am not worthy to breathe the same air as you. I know you've hung out around her some, but how long have you been working up to this?"
"I wasn't working up to it at all," I said. "It just kind of happened." It was rapidly occurring to me that I should not place an iota of trust in Mitch's discretion, or even in his simple ability to keep his mouth shut in the least. But still... Bro Code. I would have to give him something, didn't I?
"Details," Mitch demanded. "I want them all!"
A blow-by-blow was not going to fucking happen. Unlike Mitch, I am capable of discretion when appropriate. But I was also hardly going to stay totally silent either. The urge to brag was warring with the dawning realization that I must not fan the flames. I bit my lower lip in consideration of what I was going to give him, and what he was going to have to live without. Finally, I said slyly. "It was hot. It was epic. It was soaking wet. And it was unwisely loud, as illustrated by the fact that you had already heard about what happened before you came in here. Who told you?" I asked.
"Rob Gerande," Mitch said promptly. "He saw the two of you come out of the bathroom. I hear there was applause. He says his hands still hurt from clapping."
I let my head sag in despair. All I said was a long, low, "Fuuuuuck..."
"What's the matter?"
"Rob Gerande was
not
one of the people standing outside the bathroom," I said firmly.
"Nooo!" Mitch said in distress. "Then he was lying? Wait... but you said it did happen."
"It did happen," I sighed. "But this is fucking bad. It has only been a few hours, the story has spread so fast, and douches like Rob think it is so juicy, they are claiming to have been there. By next week, half the house will have themselves
believing
that they were in that hall. I'll be a laughing stock."
"Or a god," Mitch snorted.
"Do I look like a god?" I grimaced.
For a moment, Mitch looked at me seriously, then we both burst into laughter.
"DKE House tonight?" he said, shaking his head and getting up to change his shirt. The Deltas were usually good for frontline, brand-name beer. I shrugged and nodded. Anywhere not in our own dorm that evening sounded just peachy.
The party was fairly calm, for a frat open house, and I enjoyed myself. No one there knew who I was. This was a situation that always used to make me feel frustrated and a little sad, but that night, it was just what the doctor ordered. Only once did I catch sight of someone who even looked like they might be talking about me.
*
I grabbed a very early breakfast the next morning and was at the Frederick H. Donaldson Applied Engineering Laboratory before my partner, Dale. I set about my work with new energy and a very positive attitude. Getting laid, and laid hard, sure did wonders for the old motivational centers.
Dale strolled in shortly after me, and aside from noting at one point that morning that I sure seemed to be in a good mood, we worked in a blessed absence of discussion about my shenanigans the day before. Dale lived in an off-campus apartment by himself, and was a clueless shut-in to boot. He would hopefully never learn about the episode at all. It would suck if he ever did hear about it, because he would either demand a detailed breakdown of how sex actually worked, with diagrams of the leverage employed, etc., or he would pester me about why anyone would want to waste time on girls anyway. I was unsure which it would be.
Dale was a strange ranger, but a helluvan engineer.
Our new design came together very well and, due to my not lazing in bed that morning, very fast. Fast enough that we were able to take the vehicle out and see how it took at least the straight part of the test hill. Our steering mechanism was not ready yet for the curve at the top. Our little beauty scuttled up the hill like a mountain goat, even with a couple of good-sized pebbles taped on top to make a simulation of other components to be added later.
