Take a Lemon

After dinner, I was working on my paper when Terry poked her head in, “Hey, Marsh! You busy?”

“Not too much,” I answered. “How was the game?”

“Great! Greg got a sack and two tackles, and almost intercepted a pass!”

Ah. So it was a football game; “Greg” was evidently a close friend or relative; most likely her boyfriend. And… that was one more thing Marsha was supposed to know that I had learned without any of her friends suspecting. I am so very tricky.

“That’s great,” I agreed.

“So,” she added, “a bunch of us are going over to the Danby party. You coming?”

That was an irresistible offer. Much as I was enjoying my paper, I could really use a break, and I had always enjoyed the parties at Danby. In fact, ironically enough, it was there that I had met Lee Ann and Chandra. Lee Ann looked a bit surprised when Terry announced that she had gotten me to join, but didn’t say anything, so if I’d made an error it wasn’t excessive.

We met up with a group to head over to the party, including Lisa, Susie, and Phil, as well as a fairly large (even by my current standards) young man who had to be Greg, given the way Terry was hanging on him. I didn’t see Chandra, which presumably meant that she was already managing to get serious with Rajiv. Add Susie’s attempts to get Phil’s mind off of “Marsha” and my own disappointed hopes for a relationship with Lee Ann, and I was already seeing more soap-opera style goings on around me in a week than I had in the previous year. And I’d never really cared for soap operas.

The music was already playing when we arrived, and Greg and Terry disappeared quickly in the direction of the dance floor. After some persuasion – and curious looks at me – Phil allowed Susie to drag him there as well, leaving me sitting with Lisa and Lee Ann. We chatted for a while about things that had nothing to do with me, which allowed me actually to enjoy the conversation, when all of a sudden Lee Ann looked up and announced, “Oh, there’s Chandra!”

And indeed, Chandra was walking towards us, accompanied by Rajiv – as well as Mike and Geoff, my roommates when I was Marshall. Mike was with his long-time girlfriend, Becca Sassler, and the group also included Ted Carpenter and Tommy Ng, also friends of ours, along with a girl I didn’t know. Chandra stopped in front of us, though, and remedied that.

“Guys,” she started, speaking to the group with her, “this is my roommate Lisa, my friend Lee Ann, and her roommate, Marsha.” Then she turned to us and enumerated, “Rajiv’s roommates, Mike, Geoff, and Tommy, their friend Ted, and Becca and Anne.” As we murmured our greetings, I mused on the chance that had put Tommy as my replacement, which led me to wonder about the girl I had replaced. That was one more thing to add to my list of things to inquire about after I got back to myself.

Once the introductions were over, the couples all left to dance: Tommy and Anne, Mike and Becca, and Rajiv and Chandra, leaving Geoff and Ted alone with me, Lisa, and Lee Ann. Geoff immediately did pretty much what I would have done in his place – he asked one of the remaining girls to dance. But showing his usual execrable taste, he asked me!

Caught off guard, I flinched audibly before stammering, “Uh, no thanks, I’m just… not in the mood for dancing…”

That earned me a sharp, “Marsh!” from Lee Ann. I stared at her, unsure exactly what I had done wrong. Hadn’t I made it clear that I wasn’t interested in seeing boys now?

But Geoff just laughed and said, “Not a problem.” Then he turned to Lee Ann, “How about you? Wanna dance?”

She nodded and said, “Sure!” and followed him, but not before giving me another reproving glance that warned of a later conversation. So I had managed to draw attention to myself when I really hadn’t wanted to. But given that the alternative was dancing with my former roommate, which would have been downright creepy even if I had been prepared to dance with any boy, I didn’t see what else I could reasonably have done.

Ted, evidently learning from Geoff’s example, immediately offered a hand to Lisa, who likewise acquiesced, leaving me suddenly alone. That had not been my plan. In fact, I wasn’t quite sure what I had been hoping for when I had agreed to come tonight, except that I had had fond associations with Danby parties. My forced role-playing hadn’t even factored into my decision, when it obviously should have. Oh well.

Suddenly alone, I decided to make myself useful, which would also presumably prevent any more pick-up attempts. I found a table for my friends to sit at once the music stopped, and brought some drinks and snacks over to it. Since most of the students in attendance were dancing or otherwise socializing, I didn’t really have any competition, but once I was done I had to face the fact that I had messed up a bit. I was now alone at a party while my friends were enjoying themselves. I couldn’t think of a time when this had happened to me. The male-female ratio had always ensured that there were plenty of unattached girls to flirt with if I wasn’t actually dating anybody, but that wasn’t really going to work for me now. There were certainly “other” girls here, but I wasn’t all that comfortable at being one girl approaching another – my style was fine for pickups, but I didn’t really have any good conversation starters for my current state.

Fortunately, the music stopped after about ten minutes and my friends – and former roommates – came back looking for me. Lee Ann was particularly apologetic about having left me alone, but I lied and told her I’d had plenty to do and didn’t mind. Then she and a couple of the other girls excused themselves to go the ladies’ room. They invited me, but I didn’t feel any need, and it wasn’t until after they left that it occurred to be that going to the bathroom together was a female social thing. I was probably going to have to learn the trick of that.

Geoff watched Lee Ann admiringly as she walked away, then took advantage of her absence to corner Chandra and me. “Hey, um, does Lee Ann have a boyfriend?”

I knew where this was leading and tried to let him down gently. “She’s been seeing the same guy for three years, actually, but he’s in St. Louis.”

“Yeah, but at this point, they’re pretty much just going through the motions,” Chandra interjected. “I don’t think that relationship has much future.”

I stared at her, my mouth open. I couldn’t help myself. That was almost word-for-word what she had told me in a similar situation, nearly a month ago. I hadn’t known better, but I did now, and surely Chandra did as well. What was she doing?

Geoff hadn’t noticed my reaction. “That’s great!” he enthused. “I mean, I’m really sorry about her relationship, but I’m sure she’ll have no problem finding… I mean… you think maybe if I asked her out, she’d go with me?”

“You could try,” she answered him. “She might want to go slowly, sort of out of respect for her current boyfriend, but I’m sure you could persuade her.”

“Thank you very much!” he told her, as she nodded and rejoined Rajiv.

I waited until she had moved a bit further off then tapped his arm. “Um, Geoff, right?”

“Mm hmm.”

“Look, I don’t know what Chandra’s talking about. Lee Ann came back from break pretty enthusiastic about Stephen. I don’t see her splitting with him any time soon.”

He looked as though I had just told him the Easter Bunny wasn’t real. “Really? Chandra sounded pretty sure, and aren’t she and Lee Ann, like, best friends?”

“Trust me on this one. There’s no reason for you to get hurt. She said that she had been considering breaking with him, but I don’t know if she meant it.”

“Oh! Then there’s still a chance, right?”

I sighed. I was just trying to protect him, as I wish somebody had warned me. But if he wasn’t going to believe me, there wasn’t much I could do.

When Lee Ann returned from the bathroom, she came right over to me and favored me with a concerned look, but didn’t say anything. Two of the boys went to get refreshments for us, and we spent some time “getting to know each other.” Of course, it was mostly just Anne that I didn’t know, but I was aware enough after last night’s gaffe to pretend otherwise.

When the music started up again, Lee Ann took charge and made sure that not everybody went to dance at the same time. That meant that I wasn’t alone, for which I was grateful. It also gave me a chance to observe her interactions with Geoff, which were a lot more flirtatious than I would have expected from a girl with a steady boyfriend. I was getting a very confused picture of my onetime crush and present roommate.

Eventually, the party broke up and we separated, Rajiv joining us to walk Chandra back to our dorm. Lee Ann must have made some excuse to Geoff, as they said good night at the party and he did not walk with us. The sense of déjà vu was overwhelming, as that was exactly how my first evening with her as Marshall had gone. She had told me that she needed to talk with her roommate and she had said good night to me at Danby with a smile that had seemed so disappointed that the evening was ending so soon. Come to think of it, I must actually have seen that roommate, although of course I hadn’t really paid her any attention.

I didn’t get a chance to ask her about it, though, as she challenged me as soon as we got back to the room. “Ok, Marsh, what’s going on?”

“What do you mean?” I temporized.

“You said you were too busy to date, but you had time to go out with us both last night and tonight. When Geoff asked you to dance, you acted as though he was some kind of ogre coming to rape you. This isn’t just a question about being too busy, Marsh. What is going on?”

“N-nothing,” I protested.

She looked me carefully in the eye. “Marsha. What happened over break? I’ve seen you shy, but never actually terrified of boys before.”

Oh boy. She was expecting me to come up with an answer, and the only one I could think of was unthinkable. It was one thing to tell Tina and Chad; I’d known them for years. And I’d pretty much had to tell Alvin and Nikki at least some of the truth; fortunately, their own experiences with Ben had made them very sympathetic. But I liked what little I’d seen of the way Lee Ann related to Marsha and I didn’t want to mess that up; besides, the only obvious explanation would no doubt creep her out, given that we were roommates. So I just cringed, which didn’t really take any acting at all.

Finally, she sighed. “Fine. Don’t tell me. You’re only hurting yourself, you know. Somehow, you need to find a way to open up. Don’t keep yourself from being happy, OK? I think you could have enjoyed yourself tonight. Dancing is fun and safe; we were in public and nobody was going to do anything bad to you.”

I nodded, glumly.

She smiled and added, “Look, you’re probably just tired. Why don’t you get some sleep and we can talk in the morning, OK?”

And it wasn’t until I was actually in bed that I remembered – I’d wanted to ask her about what she was doing with Geoff and whether she was involved in what Chandra had told him. Something just didn’t seem right, there.