Swish

.03

When the hell did I develop asthma?

One look at the infamous Eli Shepherd and I had forgotten one of the basic functions of human survival: oxygen intake.

The fact that I had a strict no boys rule and that Maddie had practically sworn me off of him immediately did nothing to quell the raging desire I felt for this mountain of a basketball player upon seeing him for only the second time in my entire life.

School had just started and I kept to myself and my fellow theater geeks, so I'd heard no peep of anyone 'popular' if that was still a thing in college. Apparently, it was, considering the way everyone made a wide berth around him and his two buddies beside him, both equal in stature and beauty.

It was going to be like bleach to my eyes having to look at 'ordinary' people from then on out. These perfect specimens of the male body had done me in, and I was a large proponent of cutting out beauty standards for both men and women, but there I was acting like a hormonal fool just at the sight of them walking in almost perfect synchronization towards us. Me. Holy shit, they were walking towards me...

I was going to faint. This was going to be the end of my social career at college. Maddie would have to push my limp body off the court with the giant paddle mops we'd been using to clean the floors.

'Mercy' by Shawn Mendes came to mind and I started humming along to the chorus absentmindedly to calm myself down, casting my eyes to Maddie to distract myself and while it helped slightly, I was still achingly aware of the fact that I was about to be bombarded by a conversation I wasn't wholly prepared for.

"Does that sound good to you?"

I just realized that Maddie was speaking and I was not paying any attention. At all.

"I'm sorry, what?"

She laughed a little, noting the starstruck look on my face and continued without pointing it out as they grew closer, and bless her soul for doing so because I didn't think I could've survived being embarrassed at any level in front of any of them.

Being an introvert was hard, especially when my life goal was being a performer, but I settled for socially awkward on my best days.

"I asked you if you wanted to come to Patrick's party that he's having next Friday night. Everyone's going to be there, and since you'll be at the gym you'll need to get to know everybody anyway."

"Yeah, that sounds awesome," I told her, completely distracted for the first time since the rest of the basketball players had walked back onto the court.

My first college party. It wasn't like I was unpopular in high school, quite the opposite really, but with my cousin who lived with me, there was no competition with her. She was the petite blonde with big boobs, and I was the leggy brunette, with my dark skin that everyone said made me look 'exotic' but really was just code for something that I didn't understand until I left.

There was a preference for girls back at my high school, and that didn't include a girl with Cherokee coloring and brown eyes and pitch black hair that fell to the waist and didn't hold a curl no matter how much hairspray was involved.

I had no experience with makeup, but over the summer I took to the internet and Ulta, and voila a new Virginia was born, or rather, V as I had allowed more and more people to use that as my nickname. Too bad it was too little, too late, and my ex Jared had moved on in two months. Right on over to my cousin, Sara, to be exact.

It was hard enough sharing my home with her like a sister, but even harder would be going home every weekend and seeing her with Jared like they'd been the couple all along. But, it was one of my dad's 'stipulations' for paying for my college education.