Spencer lets me spend the night in his bed. With him. It's not exactly ideal, but I can't go back to my room or else I would kill Brendon. Besides, truth be told, it does feel kind of nice to have someone to sleep next to, even if it's Spencer. He actually smells really nice. But it's another night of bad sleep as Spencer has a narrow bed (though I swallowed my pride and agreed to let him cuddle me), and Sisky snoring on the other side of the room.
I kill time trying to figure out how to get even with Brendon for humiliating me, for invading my privacy. The sad thing is, I can't come up with anything. Anything at all.
In the morning, I learn to hate my life even more. I decide to go for a shower, because I haven't showered lately and I am starting to stink. Spencer says he'll shower too, which is fine with me, until he leads me to the showers along his corridor. We enter a room of white tiles and five showerheads on both walls, giving a total of ten. It looks like the perfect setting for a badly acted eighties' porno titled Oops, I Dropped My Soap. I stand in horror as I realise the Sigma house has communal showers.
Spencer's got his t-shirt off and is about to take off his pyjama pants, when I blurt out that I've changed my mind.
"I don't need a shower. At all. Really okay," I say with a dismissive wave of the hand. I leave the showers as a Sigma, who is all muscles and a six pack, walks in with a towel wrapped low around his waist.
I look over my shoulder as I walk out, and the last thing I see is Spencer loosening the strings of his pyjama pants and the Sigma greeting him casually as he drops his towel with perfect ease. I remember Spencer boasting that living in the frat house was even better if you were gay, and I suddenly know what he was talking about.
Communal showers? There is no way I am going to be washing my groin with other Sigmas in the room. No fucking way.
I go to my room to change, and Brendon isn't in. Good. I think last night I screamed, "It's fucking on!" right to his face, and I am glad that he isn't home, because... I have nothing to throw back at him. I could always act like a bitch and throw witty, insulting remarks, but would that really be gratifying? Well... it would, but I still wouldn't win.
After my lectures, I bump into William and Tom, who are going shopping. I have some shopping to do myself, so the three of us cram ourselves into Tom's silver Aston Martin that, apparently, Tom's parents gave him for his twenty-first birthday.
"So, uh, what do your parents do?" I ask Tom as William and I attempt to share the passenger seat.
"My family owns fifty-one percent of the Tribune Company," Tom says and flashes a smile at me.
"Chicago Tribune?" I clarify.
"Los Angeles Times too," the heir of the newspaper empire says charmingly. Suddenly, having friends in high places has a whole new meaning to me. "You, Ryan?"
"Oh hey, hey, pull over here," I advise Tom, seeing a hardware store through the window. He does, and I conveniently escape from having to tell William and Tom that my mum has been in between jobs for years now and that my dad is a mechanic.
I finish my shopping quickly but realise going to town with William and Tom is not something I can do half-heartedly. We go shopping, and in two hours, William has spent two thousand dollars on clothes and headphones, Tom three thousand and five hundred on camera lenses, a new iPod, dinner for everyone, and he also very randomly said that he felt like buying a new mountain bike, which will be delivered to his Chicago home and will wait there until he goes home the next time. Me? Well, I buy myself a smoothie, two dollars well spent.
William and Tom have no clue how lucky they are. Now that I think about it, I am the only Sigma I know who isn't rich as hell. The monthly membership fee of Sigma Chi Beta is ridiculous to begin with, but luckily, Pete is paying for that.
