Fic: Do You Get Me Now (Greek, Ashleigh/f)
OMG, it's not Olympics-related content! I had a story deadline. Pairs preview tonight!
But first. Femslash.
Title: Do You Get Me Now
Fandom: Greek
Pairings: Ashleigh/f, Cal/m, Ashleigh/Casey
Rating: R for sexual content
Spoilers/Continuity: Spoilers through the current episode; slightly AU.
Warnings: None standard.
Summary: The Rainbow Alliance Charity Drag ball isn't Ashleigh's usual Saturday night - and that might be the best possible thing.
Word count: about 2,700.
Disclaimers: Greek is the intellectual property of Piller Squared, The Segan Company, and ABC Family. This original work of fan fiction is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License; attribution should include a link to this Livejournal post. This story is a labor of love, not money, so it's protected in the USA by the fair use provisions of the Copyright Act of 1976. I throw myself into the wind hoping somebody might pick me up and carry me again.
Notes: Written for the Sex Is Not the Enemy Fic/Artathon, run by the wonderful villainny. This is my picture prompt, which is NSFW. Profuse thanks to annaalamode for beta reading and for letting me pimp her into this fandom. Title is from "Pride and Joy" by Brandi Carlile.
*
"It's not really my thing," Cal said, hunching over his coffee like it was going to steam away the bags under his sleep-deprived eyes.
Ashleigh made the pink flier do a little dance. "In what way is a room full of drunk gay guys not your thing?"
"I don't do drag." He scowled like there were bad memories involved.
"You don't have to dress up. It says right here, that's optional." She poked the relevant line on the flier with her fingernail. "But I'm going to, and I need your help."
"You can't. It's, I mean, it's not offensive, exactly, but - but straight sorority girls don't - they just don't."
"Straight sorority girls don't want to raise money for the only gay teen homeless shelter in the entire state of Ohio?" Ashleigh clutched the flier tighter. "You know how much I love putting together a costume, and I've been working on my runway walk since I was old enough to walk. It's not very often I get the chance to use my talents for a good cause."
Cal sighed, defeated by her logic. "Can we wait until tomorrow to go shopping? I have a case study due for Marketing."
Ashleigh hugged him across the table, almost knocking over his coffee.
*
Everything in the men's section was so cheap, it blew Ashleigh's mind. The other mind-blowing thing was that the clothes fit her so well. It was hard to find pants narrow enough in the waist, and the shirts were tight across her chest, but other than that, everything was comfortable. And a bargain.
Cal had a wardrobe concept in mind, as usual. Navy fedora to cover her hair, matching pinstripe pants and vest, pink shirt, pink silk tie, navy dress shoes with laces. "The pink isn't too, you know, girly?" Ashleigh said.
"That's the point," Cal said. "That you're a girl dressed as a guy."
They stopped at the drugstore for black matte eye shadow and an Ace bandage, and then they went back to the ZBZ house so they could do a trial run on the costume and so Cal could teach her how to walk. Binding hurt, but it made the shirt fit better. And Ashleigh's years of perfecting her supermodel walk were no good here. "So I'm gonna win, right?" she said, admiring her eye-makeup five-o'clock shadow in the mirror.
Cal rolled his eyes and told her to go wash her face.
*
The guy taking donations and stamping hands at the door was wearing an enormous pair of lavender wings and not much else. "Actually? I need to sign up. For the show, um, thing." Ashleigh was babbling - maybe she was nervous after all. The boy with the wings picked up a clipboard and asked for her name. "Ashleigh."
"No,honey. Your stage name."
"Ash Gordon," Cal said, like he had been worried this would happen.
"Nice one," Wing Boy said, grinning awkwardly at Cal and brushing a glittery lock of hair from his forehead. He chirped, "Good luck!" but he was looking at Cal, not at Ashleigh.
"Not your type?" Ashleigh whispered, giggling, when they were out of earshot.
"I'm thinking the wings might be a handicap."
They huddled together near the punch bowl until the drag show started. The girls dressed as boys went first, since there were a lot more boys dressed as girls. All of the other girls seemed to know each other, and none of them looked twice at Ashleigh. Maybe it was because their outfits were all a little bit underwhelming. More likely, it was just obvious to them that Ashleigh didn't belong. A sorority girl in the drag show was like, well, it was like a member of the Cyprus-Rhodes Rainbow Alliance at a Greek mixer.
Ashleigh sucked up her nerves and did the walk she'd practiced with Cal, hands in her pockets, tilting her fedora at the judges when she got to the end of the runway. It sounded like people were cheering, but she was pretty sure they were just being polite.
That is, until the emcee lined everyone up on the runway and announced that by unanimous decision, Ash Gordon was King of the Rainbow Alliance Drag Ball. Wing Boy put a gold paper crown on top of Ashleigh's fedora and whispered, "What's your friend's name?"
"You should ask him yourself," she said, and something clicked in her brain: if she acted like she belonged there, then she would. So she got drunk on the punch, which tasted like two or three people had independently spiked it, and danced with the gay boys and the gay girls. She laughed through the fake-prom slow dance with the Queen of the ball, whose name was Bill and who was a dead ringer for "Beautiful"-era Christina Aguilera.
She was having a really good time.
Cal mostly danced with Wing Boy. After way too long, with Wing Boy tugging on his arm, he came over to say, "I'm getting out of here. But you should stay if you're having fun."
She tried to leave, but a spiky-haired Asian-American pixie of a girl bumped into her, very on purpose. "My friend wants to know who you are." The girl nodded at a tall person of indeterminate gender with a bleach-blond buzz cut, a silver rhinestone minidress, and a hot pink feather boa: the queen bee of the Rainbow Alliance.
"Oh, I'm just here for a friend," Ashleigh rambled. "He broke up with his stupid internalized-homophobia fraternity brother, and he needed to go out and meet someone, but he wouldn't go alone, and he's not exactly the lipstick-and-heels type, except when he's helping me pick them out, so I just thought it would be fun. I didn't mean to win."
"Are you kidding? You won because you look hot." The girl smiled shyly at her. "And you can't leave, because Scotty will have a panic attack if the King ducks out early."
Ashleigh was being hit on, which meant she definitely needed to duck out. But the girl she was talking to was practically a boy anyway: short hair, polo shirt, baggy jeans. A little flirting wouldn't hurt. "Want to dance?"
"My friend--"
"What about her?" It was a little alarming that Ashleigh's frat mixer skills worked just as well on lesbians, but it was nice to have someone to dance with.
*
Ashleigh got back to the ZBZ house at three in the morning with the bobby pins falling out of her hair. It was far from the first time she'd slipped into the house in the middle of the night, but it was the first time she'd gotten stopped by the pledge on late-night door duty, asking who she was there to see. Ashleigh took off her fedora, realizing the paper crown was still scrunched around it. "It's me. It's Ashleigh." The pledge smiled falsely, humiliated by not recognizing her sister or skeptical of the authority of a president who would stumble home from a Greek-unaffiliated event in drag. At least that's how Ashleigh would have felt.
Ashleigh went upstairs and was surprised to find Casey still awake, lying in bed reading A Vindication of the Rights of Women. "You didn't wait up, did you?" Ashleigh said.
"I have to do a presentation on this for my women's history class. The one where my professor thinks I'm dumb." Casey looked up from her book. "Wow, that costume turned out really well! You make kind of a hot guy."
"So I'm learning." Ashleigh held up what was left of her crown. "They made me their king."
"Congratulations." Casey got up and gave Ashleigh a hug. "I mean, it's a little strange. But - actually a big deal in the land of the unaffiliated. So I hear."
"I'm not going to have to be in any parades or anything, am I? Here. Can you help me out of this Ace bandage? It hurts like a beast."As she undressed, she felt self-conscious in a way she never had in front of Casey.
She liked boys. And she was kind of really seriously drunk on pink punch, and she wouldn't be this philosophical come morning.
Casey smudged the fake stubble that Ashleigh had forgotten was still on her face. "What is this? Charcoal?"
"Eye shadow." Ashleigh's mouth was really close to Casey's, and right this second, Ashleigh really loved her a lot. While she was still a boy, she tried to close the space between them.
Casey dodged her. "Wow. The gays got you drunk." She stroked a lock of hair away from Ashleigh's face, sending two loose bobby pins tinkling to the floor. "Sleep it off, Ash."
*
Ashleigh slept like the dead. Sunday mornings were for worshiping at the church of St. Mary of the Hangover. She lounged in bed until almost noon. Casey was already long gone, so it looked like that awkward conversation would be postponed indefinitely. The bathroom was empty, and Ashleigh took her time on her face and hair, wiping off a few daring eyeliner experiments before settling on the usual. As she put on the finishing touches, Pledge Also-Ashlie-But-Spelled-Wrong came running up the stairs, too loudly proclaiming, "Ashleigh, there's a... person here to see you."
It was the girl from last night, the tiny one whose name Ashleigh realized she'd either forgotten or never learned. In the light, Ashleigh could see that an intricate tattoo of chrysanthemums covered most of the girl's arm. "Nice place you've got here," she said.
Trying to scare her away, Ashleigh replied, "I'm not just a client, I'm also the president."
The girl stood up and held out her hand: she was Meg. Ashleigh was Ashleigh. "I think you're in my social anthropology class," said Meg.
"Oh, you have my notes," Ashleigh said loudly. "You should come upstairs."
As they climbed the stairs, Meg talked nonstop. Babble mode was a state that Ashleigh sympathized with. She sounded like that whenever she knew something was never remotely going to happen and now might, and she was so full of anticipation she couldn't shut up. It seemed like every time she met a boy these days, that was how it ended. That, or with being a cheating douchehole right under her nose. Every time she tried to get back up on the boyfriend horse, she fell down again.
"My friend Sparkle hooked up with your friend," Meg was saying. "And your friend was still at Sparkle's apartment when I called him, and he said you lived here, and normally I'd be all butch and wait a couple days, but I didn't really have any plans and I wanted to know who you were when you weren't, you know. And you're that girl. From my social anthropology class. Who I never would have talked to. And you obviously never even noticed me, so you can - you can stop being nice and -"
They were in Ashleigh's room by now, and the longer Meg went on, the more Ashleigh thought that swearing off men was the right idea after all. She shut the door. "I'm not just being nice."
She had never been this tall before. She'd kissed some short guys, but they'd always at least come up to her nose. She fumbled and leaned until Meg kicked her shoes off and hopped onto Casey's bed, where she stood on her knees so their noses could exactly touch. Meg grazed Ashleigh's face with her blunt fingertips and brushed Ashleigh's lips with hers. Ashleigh, brave, opened her mouth. Meg had a metal stud in her tongue. She kissed liquidly, slow but certain. Ashleigh leaned into Meg, pulling her close, pressing their breasts together, nipples tingling as they rubbed against her bra. It was cool to think that Meg was feeling the same thing.
Meg slid her hand up Ashleigh's shirt, crept her fingers under the wire of Ashleigh's bra. She squeezed Ashley's breast, circling her hand over Ashleigh's nipple. Ashleigh could feel the sting in her clit and the wet, warm rush that meant she was at that tipping point. She could have sex with this person right now, and sex was a thing she had not had in way too long. Or she could be smart, which was also a thing she had not been in way too long.
She lifted her chin to escape Meg's lips, and she kissed Meg's forehead. "Can we hold off for a little? I mean, I don't know. I'm new to this. Maybe we could go on a date?"
"Yeah, I don't usually move this fast, either, I - I just thought, you're really beautiful." She still had her hand right on Ashleigh's heart, but she took it away. "Maybe later in the week? Like, I don't have anything Thursday morning, so Wednesday? We could go to McMurphy's, I guess."
McMurphy's was a block away from Dobler's. Ashleigh had never been inside: it wasn't the bar where her friends went. That made it a really good choice. "Wednesday's good." She took a few steps back. Meg had high cheekbones and a full, round mouth. She was like a prettier, girlier version of Ashleigh's hottest ex-boyfriends. She was sort of Ashleigh's type. "Here, let me call your phone so I can be in it." Meg's number was where she'd left it, on the dresser under her own phone.
She called, and Meg's hip rang, playing a song Ashleigh didn't know. She had a date. A date for Wednesday night. She shuffled Meg out of the house a little fast, loudly thanking her for the anthropology notes, so she could go back to her room and be a happy, dancing, just-kissed girl with a date.
*
Cal called later in the afternoon because there was a shirtless ultimate frisbee tournament going on in the quad, and he thought she might like to gawk with him. They sat together in the grass watching the sweaty beefcake go by. "So what's it like to do a boy with wings?" she said. "Did you get feathers in your mouth?"
"His name is Tim. He's on the tennis team, and actually we have a lot in common." Cal grinned recklessly.
"So you're never calling him back."
"He made me forget all about certain people," Cal said. "I kind of want to leave it there. You know, rebound therapy."
"Totally." Ashleigh pulled up a blade of grass and twisted it in her fingers, dying to tell him about Meg but afraid to.
"So did you get your hat back?" Cal said, as if she had any idea what that meant. "From that girl who called. She said you left it at the dance last night."
"Oh, is that what she said?" Ashleigh laughed. "Well, I guess it worked. I'm meeting her at McMurphy's on Wednesday. And I guess we'll see what happens from there."
"You know, I've never actually been inside McMurphy's?"
"Me neither." She was tearing up her blade of grass. "It's just so - not where we go, I guess." One of the shirtless frisbee teams scored a touchdown, or whatever it was called with frisbees, and she paused to cheer. When the noise died down, she squeezed Cal's hand. "Thanks for not immediately trying to talk me out of this."
"I haven't seen you have that much fun in a while," Cal said. "At the Greek events, it always seems like you're, I don't know, working."
"That's because I am. I mean, ZBZ president, it's a lot of work. Good work! But you know, sometimes you just want to be Ash Gordon."
"Intergalactic man of mystery." Cal fired imaginary ray guns with his fingers.
"I wouldn't go that far." Ashleigh lay back in the grass, smiling like a girl who'd been kissed.
But first. Femslash.
Title: Do You Get Me Now
Fandom: Greek
Pairings: Ashleigh/f, Cal/m, Ashleigh/Casey
Rating: R for sexual content
Spoilers/Continuity: Spoilers through the current episode; slightly AU.
Warnings: None standard.
Summary: The Rainbow Alliance Charity Drag ball isn't Ashleigh's usual Saturday night - and that might be the best possible thing.
Word count: about 2,700.
Disclaimers: Greek is the intellectual property of Piller Squared, The Segan Company, and ABC Family. This original work of fan fiction is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License; attribution should include a link to this Livejournal post. This story is a labor of love, not money, so it's protected in the USA by the fair use provisions of the Copyright Act of 1976. I throw myself into the wind hoping somebody might pick me up and carry me again.
Notes: Written for the Sex Is Not the Enemy Fic/Artathon, run by the wonderful villainny. This is my picture prompt, which is NSFW. Profuse thanks to annaalamode for beta reading and for letting me pimp her into this fandom. Title is from "Pride and Joy" by Brandi Carlile.
*
"It's not really my thing," Cal said, hunching over his coffee like it was going to steam away the bags under his sleep-deprived eyes.
Ashleigh made the pink flier do a little dance. "In what way is a room full of drunk gay guys not your thing?"
"I don't do drag." He scowled like there were bad memories involved.
"You don't have to dress up. It says right here, that's optional." She poked the relevant line on the flier with her fingernail. "But I'm going to, and I need your help."
"You can't. It's, I mean, it's not offensive, exactly, but - but straight sorority girls don't - they just don't."
"Straight sorority girls don't want to raise money for the only gay teen homeless shelter in the entire state of Ohio?" Ashleigh clutched the flier tighter. "You know how much I love putting together a costume, and I've been working on my runway walk since I was old enough to walk. It's not very often I get the chance to use my talents for a good cause."
Cal sighed, defeated by her logic. "Can we wait until tomorrow to go shopping? I have a case study due for Marketing."
Ashleigh hugged him across the table, almost knocking over his coffee.
*
Everything in the men's section was so cheap, it blew Ashleigh's mind. The other mind-blowing thing was that the clothes fit her so well. It was hard to find pants narrow enough in the waist, and the shirts were tight across her chest, but other than that, everything was comfortable. And a bargain.
Cal had a wardrobe concept in mind, as usual. Navy fedora to cover her hair, matching pinstripe pants and vest, pink shirt, pink silk tie, navy dress shoes with laces. "The pink isn't too, you know, girly?" Ashleigh said.
"That's the point," Cal said. "That you're a girl dressed as a guy."
They stopped at the drugstore for black matte eye shadow and an Ace bandage, and then they went back to the ZBZ house so they could do a trial run on the costume and so Cal could teach her how to walk. Binding hurt, but it made the shirt fit better. And Ashleigh's years of perfecting her supermodel walk were no good here. "So I'm gonna win, right?" she said, admiring her eye-makeup five-o'clock shadow in the mirror.
Cal rolled his eyes and told her to go wash her face.
*
The guy taking donations and stamping hands at the door was wearing an enormous pair of lavender wings and not much else. "Actually? I need to sign up. For the show, um, thing." Ashleigh was babbling - maybe she was nervous after all. The boy with the wings picked up a clipboard and asked for her name. "Ashleigh."
"No,honey. Your stage name."
"Ash Gordon," Cal said, like he had been worried this would happen.
"Nice one," Wing Boy said, grinning awkwardly at Cal and brushing a glittery lock of hair from his forehead. He chirped, "Good luck!" but he was looking at Cal, not at Ashleigh.
"Not your type?" Ashleigh whispered, giggling, when they were out of earshot.
"I'm thinking the wings might be a handicap."
They huddled together near the punch bowl until the drag show started. The girls dressed as boys went first, since there were a lot more boys dressed as girls. All of the other girls seemed to know each other, and none of them looked twice at Ashleigh. Maybe it was because their outfits were all a little bit underwhelming. More likely, it was just obvious to them that Ashleigh didn't belong. A sorority girl in the drag show was like, well, it was like a member of the Cyprus-Rhodes Rainbow Alliance at a Greek mixer.
Ashleigh sucked up her nerves and did the walk she'd practiced with Cal, hands in her pockets, tilting her fedora at the judges when she got to the end of the runway. It sounded like people were cheering, but she was pretty sure they were just being polite.
That is, until the emcee lined everyone up on the runway and announced that by unanimous decision, Ash Gordon was King of the Rainbow Alliance Drag Ball. Wing Boy put a gold paper crown on top of Ashleigh's fedora and whispered, "What's your friend's name?"
"You should ask him yourself," she said, and something clicked in her brain: if she acted like she belonged there, then she would. So she got drunk on the punch, which tasted like two or three people had independently spiked it, and danced with the gay boys and the gay girls. She laughed through the fake-prom slow dance with the Queen of the ball, whose name was Bill and who was a dead ringer for "Beautiful"-era Christina Aguilera.
She was having a really good time.
Cal mostly danced with Wing Boy. After way too long, with Wing Boy tugging on his arm, he came over to say, "I'm getting out of here. But you should stay if you're having fun."
She tried to leave, but a spiky-haired Asian-American pixie of a girl bumped into her, very on purpose. "My friend wants to know who you are." The girl nodded at a tall person of indeterminate gender with a bleach-blond buzz cut, a silver rhinestone minidress, and a hot pink feather boa: the queen bee of the Rainbow Alliance.
"Oh, I'm just here for a friend," Ashleigh rambled. "He broke up with his stupid internalized-homophobia fraternity brother, and he needed to go out and meet someone, but he wouldn't go alone, and he's not exactly the lipstick-and-heels type, except when he's helping me pick them out, so I just thought it would be fun. I didn't mean to win."
"Are you kidding? You won because you look hot." The girl smiled shyly at her. "And you can't leave, because Scotty will have a panic attack if the King ducks out early."
Ashleigh was being hit on, which meant she definitely needed to duck out. But the girl she was talking to was practically a boy anyway: short hair, polo shirt, baggy jeans. A little flirting wouldn't hurt. "Want to dance?"
"My friend--"
"What about her?" It was a little alarming that Ashleigh's frat mixer skills worked just as well on lesbians, but it was nice to have someone to dance with.
*
Ashleigh got back to the ZBZ house at three in the morning with the bobby pins falling out of her hair. It was far from the first time she'd slipped into the house in the middle of the night, but it was the first time she'd gotten stopped by the pledge on late-night door duty, asking who she was there to see. Ashleigh took off her fedora, realizing the paper crown was still scrunched around it. "It's me. It's Ashleigh." The pledge smiled falsely, humiliated by not recognizing her sister or skeptical of the authority of a president who would stumble home from a Greek-unaffiliated event in drag. At least that's how Ashleigh would have felt.
Ashleigh went upstairs and was surprised to find Casey still awake, lying in bed reading A Vindication of the Rights of Women. "You didn't wait up, did you?" Ashleigh said.
"I have to do a presentation on this for my women's history class. The one where my professor thinks I'm dumb." Casey looked up from her book. "Wow, that costume turned out really well! You make kind of a hot guy."
"So I'm learning." Ashleigh held up what was left of her crown. "They made me their king."
"Congratulations." Casey got up and gave Ashleigh a hug. "I mean, it's a little strange. But - actually a big deal in the land of the unaffiliated. So I hear."
"I'm not going to have to be in any parades or anything, am I? Here. Can you help me out of this Ace bandage? It hurts like a beast."As she undressed, she felt self-conscious in a way she never had in front of Casey.
She liked boys. And she was kind of really seriously drunk on pink punch, and she wouldn't be this philosophical come morning.
Casey smudged the fake stubble that Ashleigh had forgotten was still on her face. "What is this? Charcoal?"
"Eye shadow." Ashleigh's mouth was really close to Casey's, and right this second, Ashleigh really loved her a lot. While she was still a boy, she tried to close the space between them.
Casey dodged her. "Wow. The gays got you drunk." She stroked a lock of hair away from Ashleigh's face, sending two loose bobby pins tinkling to the floor. "Sleep it off, Ash."
*
Ashleigh slept like the dead. Sunday mornings were for worshiping at the church of St. Mary of the Hangover. She lounged in bed until almost noon. Casey was already long gone, so it looked like that awkward conversation would be postponed indefinitely. The bathroom was empty, and Ashleigh took her time on her face and hair, wiping off a few daring eyeliner experiments before settling on the usual. As she put on the finishing touches, Pledge Also-Ashlie-But-Spelled-Wrong came running up the stairs, too loudly proclaiming, "Ashleigh, there's a... person here to see you."
It was the girl from last night, the tiny one whose name Ashleigh realized she'd either forgotten or never learned. In the light, Ashleigh could see that an intricate tattoo of chrysanthemums covered most of the girl's arm. "Nice place you've got here," she said.
Trying to scare her away, Ashleigh replied, "I'm not just a client, I'm also the president."
The girl stood up and held out her hand: she was Meg. Ashleigh was Ashleigh. "I think you're in my social anthropology class," said Meg.
"Oh, you have my notes," Ashleigh said loudly. "You should come upstairs."
As they climbed the stairs, Meg talked nonstop. Babble mode was a state that Ashleigh sympathized with. She sounded like that whenever she knew something was never remotely going to happen and now might, and she was so full of anticipation she couldn't shut up. It seemed like every time she met a boy these days, that was how it ended. That, or with being a cheating douchehole right under her nose. Every time she tried to get back up on the boyfriend horse, she fell down again.
"My friend Sparkle hooked up with your friend," Meg was saying. "And your friend was still at Sparkle's apartment when I called him, and he said you lived here, and normally I'd be all butch and wait a couple days, but I didn't really have any plans and I wanted to know who you were when you weren't, you know. And you're that girl. From my social anthropology class. Who I never would have talked to. And you obviously never even noticed me, so you can - you can stop being nice and -"
They were in Ashleigh's room by now, and the longer Meg went on, the more Ashleigh thought that swearing off men was the right idea after all. She shut the door. "I'm not just being nice."
She had never been this tall before. She'd kissed some short guys, but they'd always at least come up to her nose. She fumbled and leaned until Meg kicked her shoes off and hopped onto Casey's bed, where she stood on her knees so their noses could exactly touch. Meg grazed Ashleigh's face with her blunt fingertips and brushed Ashleigh's lips with hers. Ashleigh, brave, opened her mouth. Meg had a metal stud in her tongue. She kissed liquidly, slow but certain. Ashleigh leaned into Meg, pulling her close, pressing their breasts together, nipples tingling as they rubbed against her bra. It was cool to think that Meg was feeling the same thing.
Meg slid her hand up Ashleigh's shirt, crept her fingers under the wire of Ashleigh's bra. She squeezed Ashley's breast, circling her hand over Ashleigh's nipple. Ashleigh could feel the sting in her clit and the wet, warm rush that meant she was at that tipping point. She could have sex with this person right now, and sex was a thing she had not had in way too long. Or she could be smart, which was also a thing she had not been in way too long.
She lifted her chin to escape Meg's lips, and she kissed Meg's forehead. "Can we hold off for a little? I mean, I don't know. I'm new to this. Maybe we could go on a date?"
"Yeah, I don't usually move this fast, either, I - I just thought, you're really beautiful." She still had her hand right on Ashleigh's heart, but she took it away. "Maybe later in the week? Like, I don't have anything Thursday morning, so Wednesday? We could go to McMurphy's, I guess."
McMurphy's was a block away from Dobler's. Ashleigh had never been inside: it wasn't the bar where her friends went. That made it a really good choice. "Wednesday's good." She took a few steps back. Meg had high cheekbones and a full, round mouth. She was like a prettier, girlier version of Ashleigh's hottest ex-boyfriends. She was sort of Ashleigh's type. "Here, let me call your phone so I can be in it." Meg's number was where she'd left it, on the dresser under her own phone.
She called, and Meg's hip rang, playing a song Ashleigh didn't know. She had a date. A date for Wednesday night. She shuffled Meg out of the house a little fast, loudly thanking her for the anthropology notes, so she could go back to her room and be a happy, dancing, just-kissed girl with a date.
*
Cal called later in the afternoon because there was a shirtless ultimate frisbee tournament going on in the quad, and he thought she might like to gawk with him. They sat together in the grass watching the sweaty beefcake go by. "So what's it like to do a boy with wings?" she said. "Did you get feathers in your mouth?"
"His name is Tim. He's on the tennis team, and actually we have a lot in common." Cal grinned recklessly.
"So you're never calling him back."
"He made me forget all about certain people," Cal said. "I kind of want to leave it there. You know, rebound therapy."
"Totally." Ashleigh pulled up a blade of grass and twisted it in her fingers, dying to tell him about Meg but afraid to.
"So did you get your hat back?" Cal said, as if she had any idea what that meant. "From that girl who called. She said you left it at the dance last night."
"Oh, is that what she said?" Ashleigh laughed. "Well, I guess it worked. I'm meeting her at McMurphy's on Wednesday. And I guess we'll see what happens from there."
"You know, I've never actually been inside McMurphy's?"
"Me neither." She was tearing up her blade of grass. "It's just so - not where we go, I guess." One of the shirtless frisbee teams scored a touchdown, or whatever it was called with frisbees, and she paused to cheer. When the noise died down, she squeezed Cal's hand. "Thanks for not immediately trying to talk me out of this."
"I haven't seen you have that much fun in a while," Cal said. "At the Greek events, it always seems like you're, I don't know, working."
"That's because I am. I mean, ZBZ president, it's a lot of work. Good work! But you know, sometimes you just want to be Ash Gordon."
"Intergalactic man of mystery." Cal fired imaginary ray guns with his fingers.
"I wouldn't go that far." Ashleigh lay back in the grass, smiling like a girl who'd been kissed.