The Date, Part Two

Part Two

Sure, Hallie’s lifestyle could seem a little slutty to some, especially for a college first-year. But she was careful. And to her, at barely nineteen years old, it didn’t seem that crazy for her to have had sex a few times since the beginning of freshman year. Hallie bounced between parties enough that mutual acquaintances rarely overlapped, and she was always able to nonchalantly wave away the gossip if it ever came up amongst her girlfriends. 

‘She said that? Wow, she was more drunk than I thought!’

‘Psh, you know David. He’ll say anything to make himself look good.’

‘Oh my God, someone saw that? It was just a kiss, don’t worry . . . Yes, I regret it! Trust me, he enjoyed it way more than I did.’

A series of half truths and omissions did the job. Hallie knew how to be casually dismissive without being defensive, and her low key innocent appearance helped too. It wasn’t out of the question for her to sleep with a few guys over the years. She just downplayed the quantity.

Tara, however, knew otherwise.

It all started two months ago. Her boyfriend, Mark, had been invited to a Christmas party by one of his friends at a university across town. He invited Tara, of course, but she told him to go ahead without her. She was already busy that night, but said she’d try to make a late appearance if possible.

Unbeknownst to both of them, Hallie would be there too. 

Through sheer coincidence, considering the girl that invited her didn’t know Mark or his friend at all. And Hallie couldn’t help herself when she ran into Mark. She had always thought he was kind of cute, and now he looked like a lost lamb at a party with only one mutual friend to guide him. Hallie sidled up to Mark with a warm smile and a tight hug, and he latched on immediately. A friendly face amidst a house of strangers was the perfect bait.

In the same vein of Hallie not being a slut, she also wasn’t normally this kind of girl. She didn’t steal boyfriends away from girlfriends, especially not when it came to girls she knew. All of her usual efforts to gain experience were with boys she knew were single and easy, but not desperate. Not that desperate guys would be at the parties she attended anyway. 

However, the multiple drinks in her assured her that it was okay. Tara had literally talked multiple times about how she and Mark would probably split up before the end of freshman year. The two of them had made it past the honeymoon phase, and didn’t work very well as a couple now that the initial spark was fading. They’d probably be done by New Year’s. So what harm was there in pursuing Mark for just one night? He and Tara were going to break up anyway. And the temptation was too much for Hallie. Some of the promiscuous stories Tara shared during girls’ night just made his ‘kind of cute’ nature shift more towards ‘I must try him for myself.’

The one thing she didn’t count on was Tara showing up.

Within an hour of greeting Mark, Hallie already knew it was going to happen. First it was playful touches on his arm and shy brushes of her own hair. Then it was taking his hand and guiding him to the hallway since it was ‘too loud’ for her to hear. Then it was his back against a wall and her standing very close to continue the casual conversation about what they’d each be up to over winter break.

Technically, they hadn’t done anything wrong. Yet.

Hallie just kept up the innocent conversation, but now was doing so with her chest less than an inch away from bumping against his. Looking up at him with her big brown eyes. Constantly getting away with flirty touches - holding his hand for a few long seconds, running her fingertips up his bare arm that his v-neck barely covered, and sometimes just letting the side of her hand nudge his thigh on the way up or down from the other two movements.

It was easy shifting from winter break to the next semester to his relationship with his girlfriend. Asking about Tara. Asking how serious they were moving forward. And, as horny boys tended to do, he lied. Said that they were basically broken up already. Said that they were mostly just together to keep up appearances and not disrupt the status quo before Christmas. Something told Hallie that he and Tara had talked about potentially calling things off, but she knew for a fact that most of what he was saying was bullshit.

And she didn’t care. 

The position of their bodies, her own inhibitions being down from drinking, and the collective warmth that both the mixed drinks and Mark’s body provided. If she pounced forward for a kiss, he would absolutely reciprocate with just as much enthusiasm, if not more.

When Tara arrived, she was just as alone as Mark originally was amongst all the unfamiliar faces. But when one of the guys Mark met that night told her that her boyfriend had wandered down the hall with some girl a while ago, she went from overwhelmed to furious. She arrived a sober stranger amidst a drunk crowd, and was now a determined girl with a vendetta. A girl who didn’t care about storming through some stranger’s house, even if it meant bursting into every bedroom without knocking.

But she didn’t have to go very far. Following the random guy’s directions, she made a beeline for the kitchen and the hallway on the opposite side of it . . . and found Mark with HALLIE?! She had expected Mark to be cheating on her with a girl who Tara would never find out about. A girl from a different school. Never in her wildest imaginations did she think it would be one of her closest friends.

The shock of it all caused Tara to freeze for a moment, but then she came to her senses and ducked out of sight. As badly as she wanted to race over and tear the two of them apart, she had to be sure. So she tuned out the music and the drunk voices around her and listened. Hallie asking about their relationship. Mark blatantly lying about her. Tara snuck a peek or two around the corner and was met each time with Hallie looking at him with her flirty doe eyes and gently running her hand up and down his arm. Mark, in response, let the continuous flirting happen with no objections whatsoever.

Not too much later, Hallie was taking her boyfriend’s hand and walking him to the stairs at the end of the hall. Tara didn’t hear the last thing Hallie said, but she knew it must have been the last straw for whatever pitiful resistance Mark may have had left. Hallie leaning in, pressing her breasts against his chest, and whispering something in his ear. And then they were gone. 

Tara was stone cold sober, but anyone watching would have thought otherwise. For a moment, she was frozen like when she first spotted the two of them. But then she was racing for the nearby kitchen sink and throwing up. Ignoring the cries of amusement and disgust of those hanging out in the kitchen, Tara shamelessly wiped her mouth off on her sleeve and fled back the way she came. Through the living room, through the front door. 

She made it as far as the front porch. Leaning against one of the wooden supports, Tara almost heaved again, but managed to hold it back this time. Closing her eyes and exhaling heavily, she tried to let the cool outdoor air shake off the sickened feeling. 

Hallie. Mark. 

One of her closest friends and her boyfriend. If someone had overseen the two of them and told Tara about it, she would have had trouble believing it. Surely that person must have been mistaken. But Tara saw them. She heard them. And for some reason, Tara had been unable to barge in to intervene. The whole time, a small part of her wanted to believe that she was mistaken. But even when it was crystal clear where they were going and what they were going to do, Tara had been rooted to the spot.

As she shivered in response to a particularly chilly breeze, Tara finally came to her senses. This wasn’t Mark. This was Hallie. 

The more she thought back to what she witnessed, the more she was sure that Hallie was the one leading the flirting, and Mark was just the one unable to help himself. Granted, that didn’t let him off the hook, but it was enough to shift her anger from him to her. 

No longer feeling the urge to throw up in the middle of a stranger’s yard, Tara stood up with the help of the wooden support and took another heavy breath. She only noticed then that she was shaking, and not from the cold. How had she spent the semester being so blind? If Hallie would make out with a random sophomore she met at a bonfire, why wouldn’t she fuck Tara’s boyfriend? Tara knew that Hallie didn’t seem too interested in having a boyfriend, but the word ‘slut’ never crossed her mind until that night on the cold porch. The girl she met at the beginning of the semester seemed better than that.

There was still time to race upstairs and kick in every bedroom door until she caught Hallie and Mark in the double act of betrayal, but that was no longer what she wanted to do. For all intents and purposes, she already caught them. Showing herself now would just ruin the element of surprise. 

Tara had never thought of herself as a cruel or devious person, but the thoughts that she had about Hallie on the way back to her car were borderline psychotic. She wanted to destroy Hallie. She wanted the mortifying act of throwing up in a stranger’s sink to pale in comparison to whatever Hallie had coming. And, most importantly, she wanted it to totally blindside the slut. Just like the sight of them in the hallway had blindsided her.

By choosing not to confront them at the party, Tara ensured that both Hallie and Mark were completely oblivious to her plotting. Once she had a few hours to cool off, she was actually a little proud of herself for staying so level headed amidst such a shock to her system.

The problem was, Tara wasn’t devious. Once the aggressive and psychotic ideas faded away, she didn’t have much left to work with. And, since she couldn’t collaborate with any of the girls at school due to a newfound lack of trust towards girls in general, Tara was on her own. Christmas and New Year’s were a welcome distraction, and the perfect excuse to avoid thinking about Hallie, Mark, or college in general as she visited her family over the break.

And then, just a few days after New Year’s Eve, Tara was handed an opportunity on a silver platter. 

For the first time in years, Hallie had a boyfriend.