Fair warning to readers new to this series: I don't usually 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 A Reputation 1: Cleaning Up. 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 9: DRY SHOWER
The week after what some fucking wag (Mitch, I bet it was you) had dubbed the Library Incident was mostly unremarkable. It was not sex free, but a week with sexual encounters had in and of itself become unremarkable. It would have been a remarkable period if no one had hit on me. Two girls, in fact, had been more than worth taking up on the offer. The first, on Tuesday, had been a sweet little firecracker of a fellow sophomore who actively sought me out and made me miss lunch, though I did do a lot of eating... The second was a grad student. Gretchen was seriously one of the nerdiest people in the Mechanical Engineering community. When she decided to come on to me, it took me an embarrassingly long time to even realize that it was what she was doing. I almost avoided the whole experience because I was guessing that she was a virgin. She managed to convince me that that was not the case. I'm glad she did, because the image of her gold-flecked green eyes, magnified by her huge, thick-lensed, heavy-framed glasses as she looked up at me, with her lips completely enclosing my cock, is one that I will carry with me forever. And the two of us managed to get away with it all, and I mean all,
in Professor Clark's private office
no less, without getting caught! So I guess that last bit made it a remarkable week after all, come to think of it.
*
I was just walking up the wide pathway to La Floridita after my Russian class Friday afternoon, when Shawn the RA fell into step beside me, her own backpack full of textbooks hanging from her shoulder.
"Hey Will!"
"Fearless Leader," I replied with a grin.
"Ready for Sunday?" she asked me easily, but with a new color of uncertainty in her voice.
"Dale and I are ready," I reassured her. "The vehicle works smoothly, and is rock-solid."
"I had no doubts about your work," she smiled. "It looks like we are going to have quite a turnout from the dorm..."
"Excellent," I laughed. "The department's promotional posters went up this week, have you seen any of them?"
"Yes. They are all over the Mathematics building. But I think Jimmy did a better job on ours," she said, loyally... and accurately. "I will admit that they did do a pretty good job with their video on Instagram. Made it look like Sunday will be a comedy demolition derby," she chortled. "There is always a crowd for the competition, but I'm betting you will have the biggest cheering section. Ready for that?"
I sighed, and rolled my eyes at her as we pushed through the doors to the dorm. "I have some experience with notoriety of late."
Shawn shook her head cheerfully. "Yeah? I hadn't heard..." We parted ways at the second floor landing, and she headed up to the third floor. She looked back over her shoulder at me and added, "Just be ready for some enthusiastic support..." There was almost a foreboding nature to that parting shot, but I didn't worry. Dale and I were going to win. Probably. And the way Shawn called back to me gave me an excellent excuse to stop and watch her ass as she continued up the stairs, before I headed to my room.
Friday night for me was, as usual, Crash A Frat Party Night. Mitch once again was unavailable, as he and Kate were off romancing. Being left on my own would in a previous life of a month ago have left me upset and uncertain, but now I felt sure I could find a way to entertain myself, socially or otherwise.
The Tau Beta Lambda frat house was quite unusual. They were the most recent addition to campus Greek Life, the chapter having been established only... 47 years ago. At the time that the frat had been applying for recognition, the University was demolishing the original Fergussen Dorm to make way for what now stands as the low-rise cluster of Walpole Dorm. Like most dormitories at our school, Fergussen had been a cluster of 'houses' sharing central dining facilities. The farthest south house in Fergussen was outside of the footprint needed for Walpole, and so had been spared the bulldozers.
Tau Beta Lambda, probably by virtue of possessing a few excessively wealthy parental alumni, won out over various other entities of all sorts bidding for use of the building. This is why they had ended up with a rather unique, drab, but large fraternity house that was set up and looked like a dormitory, not a white-pillared plantation house. The occupants were cut of the regular frat boy cloth, of course, in that strange brew of welcoming, entitlement, generosity, arrogance, and good-humored secrecy that I perceived pretty much across the greek community--among the frats at least. I tended to avoid the sororities after a few unpleasant interactions my freshman year.
My brother, who had graduated from Vanderbilt back east, had loved sororities. I suspected that he had loved a number of specific sorority girls, so that might explain the difference.
It occurred to me that I and my Reputation would probably be a big hit among the sorority girls these days. I wondered if exploring a few events largely consisting of giggly, gossipy chicks would be worth the painful memories of bitchy teasing...
I made a mental note to check out the sorority social scene as soon as possible.
But for the time being, Tau Beta was my selected event for that weekend, and I shoved my way through the above average-sized crowd to see who I could meet up with, or simply meet. The frat had popped for a band, which was probably the draw, even though the band's chief talent seemed to me to be in how high they could crank up their volume. Maybe the band were members of the frat themselves. I did not foresee great commercial success for the group.
I found myself talking at one point with Redd Franklin and Tawny Baker, who were in my Mechanical Engineering class, and were one of the teams competing with me and Dale in the Vehicle Demonstration. They both seemed confident in their machine, which worried me because I respected them both as engineers. But they both also clearly didn't expect Dale and me to be a threat, largely because they seemed to think I must have spent too much time... um... screwing around, to get the job done.
I was going to enjoy beating them.
After we finished our mutual, good-natured taunts, we parted ways. I found it interesting to see them out together on a Friday night. Were they an item now? I would have sort of thought that Redd was out of Tawny's league...
Speaking of items, I shortly thereafter nearly collided with Pete Rollins in the press of the crowd. It is hard to see your way very far forward in a crowd where everyone is holding their beers up above their heads to avoid spilling them.
"Excuse me," I muttered, before recognizing Pete.
"Will! Hey dude. Good to see you," he said, smiling happily. He had a good base going on his buzz already. "Listen, meet my girl Maisy. I told you about her, didn't I?"
Yep. There she was. At least she had the decency to actually be out on Friday night with her 'boyfriend' this week, instead of catting around.
"Hi, Maisy. Nice to meet you," I said, holding out my beer-free hand. Our eyes met quietly.
Maisy shook my hand. "Will, is it?" she said, obviously having an easier time pretending to not know me, than I was having, pretending to have not met her.
Pete leaned over and whispered in her ear. She pretended to be shocked. "Him?" she exclaimed. "Well, well..." she said in a sultry voice, looking at me again, this time with a repressive sparkle in her eye.
"Hey there! Easy girl," Pete laughed, putting his arm around her. She snuggled in comfortably against him. I was pretty sure from their body language, that whatever else she might be up to, Maisy was providing Pete with more than just the minimum he required, sexually speaking. That confirmed in my mind that I did the right thing by not telling him about her pass at me earlier.
She probably would still break his heart eventually, but at least he was enjoying himself... immensely, in the meantime. And maybe he'd get enough confidence to break up with her organically, on his own.
It took me a while to extricate myself from the conversation, and I hoped that Maisy was as uncomfortable with me standing there as I was with her presence. I doubted it. That girl was stone cold.
