Two Years Ago, Chi Epsilon Tau Frat House
Bridgette
Age: 19
I’d seen a lot of good-looking men in my life.
My mother, Bettina Cordello, America’s beauty mogul, had a storm of male models that paraded around her office in Manhattan.
My brother, Bishop, Mr. Rugby Star, had a lot of male friends, most of whom were athletes and were your typical hot, super fit Men’s Fitness magazine model types.
There was no shortage of eye candy in my life and that’s what they were to me.
Pleasing to the eye, but then a minute passed and they were completely forgotten.
Just like candy.
You put it in your mouth, the flavor hits your tongue, and after a few seconds, it’s gone.
It was sad, but that was my perception of what the weight of physical beauty had been distorted to from the minute I could rationalize what was important to me.
Just like right now when this cute guy, clearly of mixed ancestry, was talking and all I could think of was how to get out of this conversation without being rude.
“…Bishop’s sister, huh?” He’d introduced himself as Takei, one of Bishop’s frat brothers, and his smile was probably meant to charm women out of their underwear, but mine stayed comfortably snug and dry.
I nodded my head and smiled, “Yes,” shifting the conversation to neutral territory, I followed it with a, “What time is his game going to be over?”
Kara, Bishop’s girlfriend, had asked me to be here as part of her surprise for my brother’s birthday.
Bishop was playing his last college game today, and since his birthday was a week ago, she wanted to throw a party to celebrate both.
If there was one person in the world I would suffer through the attention and presence of frat guys and athletes for, it would be my brother.
The collegiate sports world knew him as Bishop Cordello, high school star hockey player who famously quit the sport and shunned it for rugby. To this day, top coaches of the National Hockey League still have him on speed dial, hoping to convince him to return to the sport that he was born into.
But my brother would never play professional hockey.
We owed his hatred for the sport to our father, Hall of Famer, Beau Cordello.
“His game should be done by now,” Takei said and another frat brother, Silas, joined him.
It was the first time I had met the thirteen guys in the room, but I knew their names like I’d been saying them my whole life.
My photographic memory made sure of that.
Takei was the one with the almond-shaped brown eyes and the crooked smile.
Silas was the Math major who opened the door for me when I rang the doorbell thirty minutes ago. I would have been here an hour ago, if not for the infamous L.A. traffic. I’d texted Kara letting her know I’d arrived. I was actually worried that I’d get there after my brother, and I didn’t want it to ruin the surprise.
I hadn’t seen Bishop in ten days because we’d both been busy. We stayed in contact via texts and we were supposed to have brunch three days ago, but I had a last-minute study group and he had to practice early.
“You want anything?” Silas asked with his eyes on me. He’d been asking if I was comfortable since I’d arrived and sat on the couch in their living room.
“I’m fine. Thank you,” I replied, hoping that I’d conveyed enough feeling so that he didn’t feel obligated to ask me every few minutes if I was okay.
I didn’t like being catered to.
It made me uncomfortable.
It took five years of speech pathology and a decades’ worth of visits to Johns Hopkins neuropsychiatry department before Dr. Fortez concluded that I was ready to be on my own.
I started to get anxious when all eyes were on me.
Maybe that’s why I refused to speak at the age of two when my mother put my face in the front of every children’s product she could dip her hands into, and I didn’t say another word until I was eight.
My memory may be exceptional, but even I had no power of tracing my history from way back when.
Silas seemed appeased by my answer and gave a slight shake of his head.
Takei was now texting on his phone and I looked down to mine, swiping through the news reports.
I didn’t spend much time on the news articles. My brain selected the highlights and I could pretty much regurgitate the information back to anyone who asked as if I read the whole thing.
I turned my head to the side and saw Trev, the bubbly redhead who reminded me of Ed Sheeran, give me a slight tilt of his head in acknowledgement. He was talking to another guy, Stan, who was casually munching on the chips in a bowl with the letters SDU all across it.
I watched Bishop’s game on my phone and I had to recharge my phone with the Uber driver’s battery charger attached to his car.
Bishop didn’t like it when I paid for a lift, but he couldn’t do anything about it until I got a car of my own and that would be in less than two weeks. I’d recently gotten my California driver’s license, and as much as I hated being stuck on the roads, I had to start driving on my own especially now that my brother’s future was unknown. He was going to try out for US Rugby after graduation and his agent had scheduled him for international rugby tryouts, so everything was up in the air.
An entertainment article about my favorite singer grabbed my attention, and I was just about to click on the headline when I heard the front door open.
A dark haired guy in a fitted shirt with blue eyes just like his sister’s said in a loud voice, “Beauty! You’re here!”
Beauty.
I couldn’t help but smile at that.
I’d been called beautiful, but not like that.
Not in the teasing, funny way that Rikko Chamberlane did it.
“Hey.” I stood up from the couch, stretching my legs in the fitted jeans I’d grabbed from my drawer at the last minute.
Big, bulky arms wrapped around me and it wasn’t hard to believe that he was a football player.
“Hug me back, beauty,” Rikko ordered and my whole body was imprisoned in his muscled arms, the tight fitted black material he wore as a shirt was slammed into my face.
“Jesus, leave her alone, dumbass.” A voice commanded from behind Rikko.
I was engulfed in the arms of the behemoth who radiated warmth and friendship without any malice, but it wasn’t the reason why my chest started to constrict.
The air around me felt like it was being sucked away by a vacuum.
I’d been around attractive men.
Breathed the same air as guys who were the faces and bodies of Vogue.
But none of them gave me the chills –
The tingly feeling of want that the man who was now standing in front of me elicited from my otherwise dormant hypothalamus, the region of the brain that affected desire, lust, attraction.
His eyes reminded me of the foliage in Montreal when they turned green after a long winter.
His brows were furrowed, but it did nothing to redact from the beauty of his sculpted jaw and the slightly crooked nose that I’d heard had been broken when he was tackled by a giant defender from Alabama.
He was the man who could put all of my mother’s male models to shame, and yet the way his dark blonde hair was ruffled around his head made me think that he could care less about how he looked.
Rikko was saying something, but no words came out of my mouth.
And I tried. I couldn’t even use my history of stuttering as an excuse because it would be a total fallacy.
The truth was, Scott Strauss, SDU’s quarterback, soon-to-be number one draftee in the NFL, if the emcee at the College Sports’ event was to be believed, my brother’s frat brother and former enemy, held the unique power –
Of stealing my breath away.
Scott
My ex-girlfriend, Kara, was still cheering on the field when, Rikko, my best friend and Kara’s brother, asked us if we could go.
We drove to our frat house with me silent, which was almost ninety percent of the time and with Rikko yapping away about his escapades with the cheerleaders.
I loved my best friend, but sometimes I wished he would shut his mouth.
For a full minute.
“Kiki said we gotta get there before Bishop does,” he yammered away, his tight shirt bunching against his shoulders.
Since Under Armour made tight shirts hip, Rikko hadn’t stopped wearing them. Most of the time, I wondered what would happen if his shirt caught a nail and he’d be plastered against the wall or whatever the nail was attached to, and he’d have the hardest time disengaging himself from it.
“Right,” I nodded as I maneuvered my Audi to make the left turn.
“You know how Kiki gets excited for the dumbest shit,” he stated but there wasn’t a hint of annoyance in his voice. Both of us hadn’t gotten over calling Kara “Kiki.” She’d been Kiki to me since my family moved to Southlake and Rikko became my best friend after he joined me during lunch when no one wanted to have lunch with the new kid in school.
Kara. The thought of her still brought a sharp slice inside my chest.
I’d loved her for so long and just because she’d said she didn’t love me anymore, not in the way I wanted her to, didn’t make the pain go away.
“She wants to make it special for her rugby star,” Rikko said and I shook my head and focused on the road ahead.
I used to be the star in Kara’s life.
I used to be the guy she prepared these parties for.
But that was then.
This was now.
I’d seen the way Kara’s blue eyes lit up whenever she was with Bishop, and I almost always had to look away.
She watched him as if he could solve all the equations in the world for her.
I’d heard Cordello was a genius. Maybe he was, he always helped our frat brothers who had a hard time in their classes. It was easy to like the guy and I liked him.
Before he took my girlfriend away.
When Kara broke up with me I thought she was kidding at first.
Then I saw the resolution in her eyes, and in that moment, I knew that I had messed up. Big time.
I’d asked for time apart between us before. Most of the time it was so I could focus on football and having a girlfriend was a distraction.
For the most part, Kara wasn’t a drama queen, but I did feel guilty when I missed a lot of her calls and couldn’t Facetime with her because I wanted to watch film.
I tried to get back with her, but even if I wasn’t a genius like Cordello, I knew when the gig was up. My father’s act of blackmailing Kara from being expelled from SDU because she’d defended Hanna, her BFF, was the last straw that broke me.
I loved her, but I couldn’t keep her.
Not anymore.
I had to let her go.
I made the right decision, but it was still hard to swallow because when Kara and Bishop were hanging out in the living room of our frat house, I still found myself wanting to lift the couch, toppling them over. It was quite sickening, the way they were all over each other. As if they couldn’t keep an inch of space between them.
When I was with her, she kept a healthy distance from me and it was cool. She gave me space and I gave her hers.
But maybe that’s where our relationship went wrong.
We gave each other too much space and we found out that we were happier without each other.
“Empty space. Cool.” Rikko pointed out the space behind his Nissan GT-R and it broke me out of reminiscing memories of my relationship with his sister. Rikko, for all his antics, was the best friend a guy could have. He had an issue when I asked his sister to prom when she was 17, but didn’t say much when I dated her two years later.
Much could be said for the guy who sat in my car and didn’t let the drama between Bishop, me, and his sister taint our friendship. He let his sister decide who she wanted to be with.
And when she decided that she wanted to be with Bishop, Rikko had asked me to yield for her sake, and because Cordello was the one who made her happy.
I turned off the engine and as we walked to the door, I reached inside myself and breathed in.
As much as I loved being in college, I couldn’t wait for the challenges that awaited me in the NFL. The distance away from Kara and Bishop would be good for me. It would heal the broken heart that I was still nursing and I couldn’t wait to play football on the grand stage.
It was what I’d been waiting for…all my life.
My frat brothers were on their best behavior.
Some of them were huddled in the corner and there wasn’t a lot of arguing going on.
Meaning there was a girl around.
A girl that they respected. Or had to show respect.
All women had to be shown respect, but the oddity of the scene in front of me made me think that one of our frat brothers’ sisters were around.
Sisters were placed in a different category, for the very reason that they were related to the frat brothers.
I didn’t have a sister, but I knew that if I had one, I’d want her to be treated well.
Two plastic chairs that were haphazardly blown over by the wind caught my eye, so I placed them on top of each other and carried them inside.
I heard Rikko call someone Beauty. He called everyone different nicknames depending on his mood.
If my brothers weren’t acting all weird, I wouldn’t think anything was out of the ordinary.
Then I heard Takei say to Quan as they walked away from where Rikko was standing, “Damn, Bishop’s sister is hot. With a capital H.”
Quan sniggered and agreed before they both turned their hands up and gave me high fives low in the air as a greeting.
It was then that my eyes lasered in on the small figure that was probably suffocating inside Rikko’s hug.
I heard a small grunt. Yep, she needed help.
“Jesus, leave her alone, dumbass,” I said as I slapped Rikko on the back.
I saw the top of her head emerge from the beast engulfing her since she was tiny, reminding me of those Disney fairies that Kara used to watch when she was younger.
Her hazel eyes met mine and they looked amused, almost smiling.
Her nose was sloped so gracefully, complimenting her full lips.
Lips that were stretched into a grin.
I’d met Bridgette Cordello.
Once.
It was at the American Express’ College Sports Awards.
Her brother and I weren’t speaking at that time, and Kara was within my arm’s reach.
But I couldn’t negate the pull that she had over me.
She looked me over, smiled, and dismissed me as if I was nothing but a speck of dust in her world.
She wasn’t rude or anything.
It was just the way she brushed me off.
Women often looked longer than a second at me.
But not Bridgette.
And the way she did it, in an almost non-obtrusive manner, nagged at me.
I couldn’t agree with Takei’s assessment of Bridgette.
She wasn’t HOT.
Her face was arresting; it made a man like me want to look more and want to find out what she was hiding beneath those mysterious hazel eyes.
The way her long dark brown hair framed her face…
No, I would definitely not call her hot.
It was too blasé, too simplistic of a word to describe her.
She was beautiful.
And when she finally smiled, twin dimples appeared between her cheeks…
Stunning.
And completely off limits.