When In Doubt - Freshman Year

Chapter 6

Heather

September was over, classes had been in full swing, and the piles of homework every week had continued to stack up. Actual projects kept being assigned and after their first major critiques, everyone who was in the art & design program had all begun to realize they weren't in high school anymore. If a project hadn't measured up, the instructor was not afraid to say so, and no one really had experienced that prior. It'd been frustrating as much as it'd been constructive.

Heather always loved that time of the year: the air becoming more crisp with no humidity, the changing of the leaves, hot apple cider with steam rising from the mug, the crackling of leaves underneath feet, cozying up to a warm fire, layering up in sweaters and scarves; all of it representing change and new beginnings.

The first weekend in October had been their homecoming, and the atmosphere on campus had become even more festive; kings and queens had been crowned, a parade had slowly rolled down Mainstreet, the fraternities and sororities had done a couch-a-thon—where members had to sit on a couch outside the MSC for days until one was left standing—the football game, and of course there been a plethora of house parties.

Unfortunately, it'd seemed like the art instructors had all known about the extracurricular activities, and had all assigned big projects due that following Monday. That'd meant most of the art and design students were staying in over the weekend in order to evade the wrath of their art instructors and not having a project turned in, because they didn't play around.

After the night the "Bedbreaker" had been born, Heather had become super close to Matt. It'd taken a while for Matt to get over the whole ordeal, but with plenty of reassurance from herself, along with major props from Jared and Brayden, he'd slowly warmed up to the newly found nickname.

Heather had felt a genuineness with Matt that was a rare oddity. After everything she'd been through over the last couple of years with torment, rumors, and betrayal; Heather had learned to listen more to her gut instinct when it'd came to other people. It also helped Matt never poked and prodded into her own life, asking questions she hadn't wanted to answer anytime soon.

Heather had wanted a fresh start when she'd enrolled at UW-Stout, and so far, all had been considered good. She'd intended to keep it that way, and felt like she'd made decent friends with Matt, Jared, Brayden and even Peter and Tony. Ali and Eden had both seemed like pretty fun girls, but both had seemed too occupied with their own inner circles to want to branch out quite yet. That was fine, but Heather only felt like giving as good as she'd got.

Over the last couple of weekends while being able to go out and freely enjoy the small, but rambunctious UW-Stout party scene, Jared and Brayden had befriended two preppy, blond guys whom everyone had seemed to call 'The Bryans' because they'd both just happened to have the same first name. When Heather met them a couple weeks prior, she'd thought they'd both looked like they'd stepped out of an Abercrombie & Fitch catalog. There was Bryan Schmidt, a taller guy with wavy blond hair and brown eyes full of mischief. Bryan Evans was equally tall, equally handsome, but with lighter eyes and a sly, crooked grin. It'd turned out they'd actually grown up together in Stillwater, which was a beautiful, posh town along Minnesota side of the St. Croix River. They'd naturally gotten along with Jared and Brayden perfectly.

Speak of the devil, the four of them had passed by the lounge in that moment and spotted her working with Matt.

"Don't worry guys, we'll take a shot in your honor or something while we're out," Jared smirked. They hadn't even stopped walking to actually talk to them.

Annoyed, Heather had thrown a sharpened pencil at him, and smiled when she'd heard yelp in pain along with the other guys laughing at him, knowing she'd hit her mark. The victory had been short-lived, however, and the floor had once again become a ghost town.