Unspoken(3)
Somehow that one encounter became the entire team. Once a field bunny, always a field bunny. The lacrosse squad made it their goal to see that everyone believed I was fair game, prey to be chased down and taken at any opportunity. Sober, not sober. Willing, not willing. I wished there had been an informational sheet in my freshman welcome packet warning that hooking up with a lacrosse player resulted in social ruination.
The rumors about Bo ran the gamut from him being a professional fighter to having killed some guy on the east side of campus for looking at him wrong. Oh, and don’t forget the women. Bo’s name was linked to every sort of girl here at Central. It didn’t matter if a girl was sporty, artsy, quiet, or popular, Bo seemed have hooked up with them all. Naturally, this only served to heighten Bo’s reputation with both sexes. If you were a guy, your conquests made you a god. If you were a girl, you were the conquered, no better than a toy.
I’d sat directly behind him in Advanced Economy Theory last semester and spent months battling twin emotions of lust and resentment. Resentment because of the unfairness of how differently our actions painted us in the eyes of our classmates, and lust because Bo made it exciting to go to class. It wasn’t because price discrimination was a fascinating topic or that economics was my actual major. No, the highlight of those days was staring at the interplay of muscles and skin and tendons when Bo wrote, stretched, or reached behind him to pull his backpack over his shoulder. He looked like the live model for a Rodin sculpture. Even the tinkling of what I assumed to be his dog tags striking each other when he moved generated a Pavlovian response of craving in me. About the only flaw I could see in Bo was his messy dirty blond hair, but even that just invited me to sink my fingers in it and smooth it down.
Ellie told me the only way to exorcise those conflicted feelings was to engage in a long bout of angry sex with Bo. But all I did was fantasize. Like most things I enjoyed about Central, my pleasure in Bo Randolph was taken surreptitiously and privately. Only Ellie knew.
“Miss, in the yellow sweater, if you’ll sit down, I can start my lecture,” the professor barked out.
I turned to look to the side to see if anyone else was standing, but Bo just shook his head sadly and leaned forward to whisper, “He’s talking about you.”
If my cheeks were hot before, it was nothing like the five-alarm fire blazing this time. Bo stood and waved me into the empty space beside him and I had no choice but to sit down. I rushed and tossed my messenger bag on the empty table space. If I had taken one second more, I could have moved down five seats or even farther before I bumped into another student, but in my panic I didn’t notice.
None of these things were like me. I tried to draw as little attention to myself as possible on campus. I sat in the back of the classroom. I did not make a spectacle of myself in front of an entire classroom of one hundred students. I could only be grateful that these were freshmen and hope that whatever rumors swam through the college artery system about me couldn’t be immediately attached to my rarely-seen face.
I pretended I wasn’t sitting next to Bo, that I hadn’t been called out by the professor, and that a hundred pairs of eyes weren’t pinned on my back. Instead, I pulled out my laptop and opened my IM screen to ping Ellie. Humiliation had to be shared in order to be endured.
AM_1906: Bo Randolph is in my bio class.
Eggs_Martini: What? Why is he not in Rocks for Jocks?
AM_1906: Dunno.
Rocks for Jocks was Geology 101 and was so nicknamed because all the athletes took it to pad their GPAs. It was commonly known that Bio 101 was harder, but at least you avoided spitballs hurled across the room and suffocation from the smell of gym socks and sweaty jerseys.
Before I could reply to Ellie, the professor began telling us how a typhoon would swallow us up eventually or that the sea level would rise gradually, so that all the land would be eroded. Nice. I could see Bio 101 was going to be swell.
Out of the corner of my eye, I heard the rustling of paper and then the scratch of a cheap pen. Bo was a lefty, and he took notes the old-school way. By hand. With a pen and paper. Insane.
AM_1906: Good call on changing science class. Apparently we’re all going to die soon. From a natural disaster.
Eggs_Martini: Escape now.
AM_1906: Like rocks for jocks will be better? You can die from a mudslide or avalanche or other geological disasters. Global warming, anyone?
Eggs_Martini: Rocks do not cause or are not related to global warming.
AM_1906: I’m pretty sure the class is more than about rocks.
Eggs_Martini: Clearly not or it wouldn’t be rocks for jocks.
I was so intent on my IM conversation with Ellie, I hadn’t noticed that Bo had angled himself to view my screen until I felt the brush of his arm against mine.