If you didn't already know, parties are loud. Like, I can hear you 3 streets down kind of loud. Especially if you didn't want to come to said party in the first place and the loud bass thumping from the speakers is slowly making you deaf as you stand in the corner muttering to yourself. Sophie should have never agreed to come, but Biana insisted and she was Sophie's best friend, and roommate. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad if Biana hadn't abandoned her only 5 minutes in. To be fair Sophie did think the boy she was dancing with on the "dance floor" was the same one Biana had been stalking for the past few weeks, so she couldn't ruin this for her. Still, standing alone at a party sucked. Sophie escaped her corner to the much quieter kitchen to look for some snacks. If she was going to be here a while, Biana was her ride, she was at least going to get free food out of it.
When she finally dodged all the couples making out with each other or "dancing, she found herself at a mostly empty food table. The table consisted of mostly half-eaten cookies, suspicious-looking brownies, a full bowl of punch, and an empty chip bowl. Not willing to try what remained for her own safety she sighed loudly and turned around to look for a better place to wait the night out. As her fruitless search continued a boy several inches taller than her made eye contact and headed towards her.
Oh god, Sophie thought as he headed towards her. He was blond and had a smirk that could only mean trouble.
"Hey" he yelled over the music as he got close enough for her to hear. "Enjoying the party?" She could tell he was being sarcastic as she clearly didn't look like she was enjoying herself.
"Totally," she replied harshly, she just wanted a quiet place to sit. Not a loud boy who looked like this wasn't even close to the first party he had been to. "This party sucks." If possible, his smirk got bigger.
"Yeah I get that, how'd you end up here anyway?" He was holding a plastic red cup full of what looked suspiciously like apple juice. He took a big sip.
"My friend, roommate, dragged me with her but took off at the first sign of some dimpled blue-eyed boy" Could this be any more annoying?
"Dragged? I can take that you aren't much of a party person" He shifted.
"Yeah, you guessed correctly. I mean, what's so great about parties anyway? They're loud, obnoxious, deafening, and this one doesn't even have good food," she gestured behind her to the mostly empty table.
"You got a name party hater?" He asked smirking again, did he know any other facial expressions?
"Sophie," she paused and narrowed her eyes at him. "Sophie Foster, you?"
"Keefe, Keefe Sencen. You want to go somewhere quieter?" He gestured to the backyard that remained mostly empty save for a few people also looking for relief for their ears.
"Yeah, sure that'd be great." She followed him outside and they talked for about half an hour about nothing important, the news, the newest Star Wars movie, their shared disdain for brussel sprouts, and their favorite foods. Eventually, the conversation circled back around to the party topic and set Sophie back into her former sour mood.
"Are parties that bad?" Keefe asked, looking amused at her expression on the topic.
"I just don't see the point," she replied. They were sitting on the deck stairs, the backyard was nice with a big deck that overlooked a decent-sized lawn. The house connected to it was large, a 3 story building with columns and everything, but all of it seemed just a little overdone.
"I mean, if I wanted to meet new people I definitely wouldn't want to meet them in a loud dirty-" She was cut off by a loud bang as the door to the house slammed open and closed. Biana rushed towards her with a relieved look on her face.
"Sophie there you are! I couldn't find you anywhere" Biana's makeup was smudged but otherwise, she looked ready to party. Biana backed up from hugging Sophie and noticed Keefe.
"Oh! I guess you already meet the host of this lovely party, Keefe Sencen" Sophie gasped as Keefe gave her his signature smirk. Biana looked back and forth between the two of them and smiled.
"Okay well, I'm going to head out with dimples over there in about 5 okay?" Biana winked at Sophie whose face was still flushed in embarrassment for all the bad things she had said earlier.
"Yeah," she muttered looking slowly at Biana. "I'll be there"
"Oh!" Keefe exclaimed a huge grin lit up his face, "I can take Foster home if you want"
"No, you don't have to-"
"That sounds great!" Biana wiggled her eyebrows at Sophie as she went back inside to get dimples and head back to their dorm.
"Hey, you didn't have to do that," Sophie said, her flushed face finally feeling the cool night air.
"Aww I couldn't leave poor Foster to a sad night of watching her roommate make out with 'dimples'" Keefe's grin was still plastered all over his face. Satisfied with his decision.
"I'm sorry for-"
"No problem, in fact. Let's get out of here" Keefe said interrupting her for the 3rd time. "Your right, my party does suck. Let's go on a walk" He stood up and held out his hand to her.
She grabbed it and stood up. " You know maybe your party would have been acceptable if you had more than one bag of chips I mean come on, isn't that partying 101?"
He laughed a deep stomach laugh that sent butterflies to Sophie's abdomen. "Okay, I'll tell Fitz not to eat them all before the party next time."
"What is a Fitz?" Sophie asked.
"A Fitz would be the name of my best friend" he answered still smiling.
"Well that's a weird name" The night was dark and chilly but Keefe had let her borrow his jacket, claiming he wasn't cold. They walked for hours talking and getting to know each other. Sophie learned the house that the party had been in was Keefe's dad's and he just wanted to break some rules while his dad was out of town. They both went to the same college where Sophie was studying to become an environmentalist lawyer and Keefe was becoming a child psychologist. Finals had just ended earlier that day and they both had plans to stay in their dorms over the break.
"What's your reason?" Sophie asked curious. They had stopped to sit on a park bench with a streetlight nearby.
"No family to share it with" He replied simply, like it didn't bother him.
"What about-"
"If I liked my dad would I have let a couple hundred horny teenagers into his house unsupervised?"
"Good point"
"What about you, mysterious Miss Foster? Why in the whole world would you be spending Christmas with your roommate who clearly has no problem bringing boys over to a shared dorm?"
"First, this is the first boy she has brought over. Second, Biana isn't staying for the break so I get the dorm to myself. Third, I don't have parents to spend it with really. I was orphaned as a baby and never got adopted. I studied hard, got myself a scholarship, and never looked back."
"Shit, sorry I shouldn't have asked" His face was sincere and she noticed how vividly bright his blue eyes were.
"No, I brought it up. I don't mind telling you, I trust you." She surprised herself with that statement but didn't take it back. She did trust him. She looked at her hands.
"Hey," She looked back at him. "Do you want to go back to my dorm and watch a movie?"
"Yeah," she smiled. "That sounds nice"
After a small walk back to campus they turned towards a tall dormitory that the juniors stayed in. She herself was a sophomore but was still surprised to see he was a year ahead of her.
"I thought you said you were 20 too," She said as he buzzed them into the building.
" I am" They walked into the elevator. "I skipped a year," he tapped his head. "Photographic memory" he smirked again.
"You too?" She hadn't met someone else with a photographic memory.
"You have a photographic memory?!" He looked as shocked as she did.
"Wow, I guess we have more in common than we thought. He unlocked a room on the 6th floor of the building. Inside was a room very similar to hers, with two beds parallel on opposite sides of the room, two desks along the far wall, and two dressers at the foot of each bed. The beds were the loft kind that you could fit a mini fridge under, along with other normal college stuff. Of course, this was Keefe so his bed had a thick blanket covering the underside of the bed.
Sophie pointed at it, "What's with the blanket wall" Keefe gestured for her to follow him as he crawled through the blanket wall. On the other side of the blanket was a very cramped space that barely held the two of them side by side. It was impressively covered with pillows and blankets with a TV on the opposite side. He had a blanket fort to watch movies in.
"Wow, and I thought I was a nerd..." A pillow was promptly thrown at her head. Keefe put on a movie, singing in the rain, and they watched surrounded by pillows and every so very noticeably leaning against each other. They stayed that way until the movie ended and Sophie looked over to see that Keefe had fallen asleep. She didn't know what to do, she couldn't carry him out and put him in his bed, she was much too small, so she slowly crawled out from their position and wrapped a blanket around him and stood in the middle of his dorm unsure of what to do. She was across campus at almost 1 in the morning without any sort of transportation to her dorm room. She couldn't walk alone so she stood there thinking until she heard a grunt as Keefe hit his head on the bottom of his bed and crawled out of his fort.
"Hey Foster what are you doing?" He was rubbing his head and blinking to wake himself up.
"Just contemplating how to get back to my dorm" His eyebrows shot up in realization.
"You can stay here, take my bed I'll sleep over there" he gestured towards his roommate's bed.
"Doesn't your roommate need that?" That seemed like a pretty big problem to her.
"Naw seeing as he left the party with his girlfriend before you even showed up" He sat on the bed. "He probably won't be back for a while. He's leaving on a plane tomorrow night to spend the holidays with his family so he will probably just grab his stuff and leave sometime around lunch tomorrow"
She looked at Keefe's ridiculous purple sheets and white comforter but they looked comfortable and she was so tired that she gave in and jumped up on the bed. She kicked off her shoes and looked over at Keefe who had already snuggled into his roommate's completely blue bed, save for the dinosaur stuffed animal near the wall, and seemed to already be falling asleep. She laid down in the blankets and felt Keefe's pillow beneath her head. It smelled like cologne and had a faint scent of marshmallows. She smiled and reminded herself to tease him about that in the morning.
"Night Foster" Keefe whispered in the dark, they had left the lights off for when they were watching the movie.
"Night Keefe"
To be continued...