The Way We Learned to Love ✓

18 - lily

august 2017 : 3 years and 1 month ago

"I don't like this," Lily muttered, the late morning sun forcing her to squint as she peered across the square at the herd of pharmacy students.

Katie glanced up from her book. "Don't like what?"

"Henry's attracting the female species."

After three years of being at different schools, she was one week into college and finally getting to see her cousin on his home turf.

It was not at all what she expected.

The only context she ever saw him in before now was with her. Their dynamic didn't change that much when he went off to college, so she didn't notice that he was slowly changing over time, growing into his own skin. She still thought of him as the dorky boy from high school, so it was quite the jolt to her system to see him not holed up in the library but smack at the center of attention and appearing to enjoy it.

The Starbucks patio, right by the center square of campus, was a great place for people-watching. She and her friends were just there while they waited on their drinks, but moments after they sat down, Henry and his entourage of at least ten people (seriously, why did the health sciences majors seem to always travel in packs and gallivant around campus like they owned the place?) wandered into the square. Lily watched on in surprise at him smiling and laughing and joking around with who were apparently his friends, including - she really couldn't believe she was seeing this - some blonde chick who was practically glued to his side and not at all being subtle about the fact that she was interested.

Katie, however, didn't seem to find this nearly as shocking as Lily did and simply slurped her iced coffee. "I think it's the tattoos."

There were a few more of those, all black, littered across his arm now. Katie was probably right. High school was the land of cookie-cutter jocks, but college was an entirely different ball park. This city was a magnet for hipster girls who were convinced that they were going to become famous musicians and thought that somehow made them stand out despite the fact that literally everyone else around them was doing the exact same thing. And those girls had no interest in the bowl-cut, pot-smoking football players; they liked boys who were "edgy" or "different." They liked...the Henrys, apparently.

Katie and Lily's new friend Izzy followed their gazes until her eyes landed on Henry. "I'm gonna go out on a limb and assume he's the one with the tattoos."

"I'm sure you'll meet him soon enough," Katie nodded. "I'm surprised you haven't already. They're kind of a package deal."

The future of that was questionable, however, considering that his attention was currently very occupied by the girl fawning over him. He was probably over there impressing her with the whole five sentences of Italian he knew and pretending it was romantic even though Lily knew for a fact that it was all stupid stuff like where's the bathroom?

She pulled her attention off of Henry and whatsherface and back to her friends. Katie was always a consistent presence in her life, sometimes even more so than Henry, but looked like a new person these days due to the pair of thin-rimmed round glasses that had replaced her old square ones and the bangs she now sported. Lily would never be able to pull that look off, but it worked really well with Katie's fair hair and hazel eyes.

Then there was the newest addition to their little friend group, Isadora Anderson - or simply Izzy - who they met on move-in day. She lived in the room next to theirs and they immediately got along despite the fact that she was way cooler than either of them would ever be, both in looks and personality. Her black hair was trimmed down to a pixie cut, she had a nose stud, and she played the freaking saxophone.