Serial Dating

The Starbucks Guy Complex

It wasn't that Milo exuded straightness or anything, but coming to terms with the fact that Park was bi was enough to send Lee into a spiraling pit of despair. It was easier to convince himself that he didn't have a shot because of Park's sexuality, but now?

He just didn't have a shot because he had the social backbone of a squirrel.

Lee slumped as he returned to the cash register. As if my self-confidence wasn't already spiraling down the drain, he mused miserably.

But that was all old news, hours ago, long gone. It really should have been irrelevant by the time Lee was found slumping in one of the Organic Chemistry lecture hall seats. It was that same day Lee discovered Park's multifaceted sexuality, and his souring mood seemed to fester the air around him at the back of the auditorium. Students gave him a wide birth as he crossed his arms and radiated that brooding, eerie atmosphere.

This was precisely how his lab partner Rushil found him.

Rushil Patel started out as Lee's best friend by default. They were two of a total of ten "diverse" students in the class that weren't, in fact, international students. On the first day of fall semester, they made an unspoken pack to stick together. What started as a default situation swiftly turned out to be the best decision of their adolescent, inconsequential lives. Lee wasn't sure what he would have done without Rushil at his side, or their TA, for that matter.

There was strength in numbers when it came to tackling OChem.

Due to Lee's attitude clearing the orbit around their auditorium spot, the seats in front of him were open for the taken. He had his feet kicked up on the seat as Rushil strategically stepped over them.

"Is it that guy again?"

"The situation has progressed at an alarming rate," Lee reported, slumping even further. "And not for the better."

"Oh no. What happened?" Rushil whispered. There was a constant murmur in the auditorium, both from the echo, and also from the fact that they were in a lecture hall of approximately three hundred students. Those two factors combined made for a noisy start to the class.

Lee glared at the stairs where a familiar blonde TA was hiking up to reach them. The TAs tended to claim the back row of the lecture hall, near the back corner where Lee and Rushil sat, so they had become friendly with their lab TA, Alex Pikaart. It was because they were friendly that Alex paused a few steps away, alarmed by the murderous tendencies written all over Lee's face.

"What happened. It's not the midterm, is it?" Alex said.

"No, I did fine on that," Lee said, only to shrivel again. If just barely, he thought. No one did 'fine' in OChem.

Well, aside from Alex.

"It's the guy from Starbucks," Rushil said, facing Lee. He put an arm on the back of his chair as Alex proceeded to claim the seat behind them and lean over to listen. "I still don't know his name."

"Well, we can't help without a name," Alex said, and Rushil hummed his agreement.

Lee sneered a little. They went to a massive university—one of the largest in the state, actually, but then again California was a monster of a state anyway—so it would have been different if Park's wasn't such a prevalent character on campus. Lee wished the damn idiot was unknowable because that way, he could make a fool of himself and not have to worry about seeing the guy again. That way, he could tell Alex and Rushil, and neither of them would be able to look Park's up and say, "Hey, he's on the USFC Hunter's football team!"

"I don't know his name," Lee lied, as he always did.

"You literally work at Starbucks," Rushil insisted. "You literally write his name every day."