Love At First Night

15.

LISA DOESN'T SEE me at first, since the crowd is so thick and I'm half-hidden behind my friends. But I see her.

Her dark hair shines under the neon glow of the cyan and magenta lights, and her face is something carved out of Greek antiquity-all hard angles and romantic curves cast in chiaroscuro. Even surrounded by assorted student athletes, Lisa is impressively tall and broad. She looks more dignified than a prince of the underworld. More dangerous than a mafia hit man on the job. More dominant than a billionaire in a tailored suit. Which is an utterly silly thing for my brain to decide, since she's just wearing a black t-shirt, dark wash jeans, and scuffed white sneakers-basic party attire.

The brace that's been on her left arm for weeks is gone. The sight of her bare wrist, lightly freckled, shouldn't be this erotic, but fuck, I'm gawking like a Victorian who's spotted a stray ankle.

My gaze trails up a few inches and lands on the two black marker lines drawn on her forearm. Tally marks. I'm not so totally out of touch with campus culture that I don't know about the Clement birthday tradition of having a drink for each year of life you've survived, but it's a little hard to believe that our star basketball player is only two drinks deep at nine o'clock on her twenty-first birthday.

And then I see Lisa's face, and I know for a fact that she's sober.

The girl looks exhausted.

Jisoo claps her on the-back a move that seems half comforting and half mocking-and Lisa startles, then sighs wearily when she recognizes whose arm is slung over her shoulder.

"Lis, I've got some good news-"

"Oh, God. What did you do?"

"What do you mean, what did I do?"

"You look like you did something. I don't trust you."

"Damn, you're in a mood. Do you need another drink? Because I'll get you a drink. Vodka Sprite? Rum and Coke? I don't know what the fuck goes in an Old Fashioned, but I'll do my best."

Lisa cracks a smile-reluctantly and scrubs a hand over her face. "I don't need a drink. I need about two hundred fewer people in this house. We're going to get shut down before everyone who was actually invited gets here. Seriously. Who are half these people?"

"Alright, alright," Jisoo concedes. "I'll tell Griffin to turn down the music, and I'll personally keep an eye on the freshmen and make sure none of 'em end up with alcohol poisoning. But before I go do that-"

"I told you, I'm not doing body shots."

"-I got you a birthday present."

Lisa winces like she's expecting the worst, but then Jisoo steps aside, presenting me with a sweep of her arm like she's one of the showgirls on The Price is Right and I'm a brand-new jet ski that some poor bastard is going to have to pay exorbitant taxes on.

Lisa, the poor bastard in question, goes slack-jawed.

"Holy shit," she says. "Roseanne."

Jisoo throws back her head and hollers, "Suh-prise, shawty!"

It's not exactly how I pictured our reunion (it definitely doesn't have the sublime romantic impact of Mr. Darcy marching across the misty moors to tell Elizabeth he loves her), but I try to push through the disappointment. It's fine that it's almost too loud to hear each other and too dark to see each other. It's fine that there are dancing, sweaty bodies writhing on all sides of us. It's fine that Jisoo, Joy, and Jennie are watching Lisa and I stare at each other like we're both exams that the other hasn't studied for.