Chapter 17

By the time we arrived back at the dorm in Boulder, I was convinced that my girlfriend was also into girls. Not that I knew that much about bisexual women, but it explained a lot. Part of me was disappointed that she hadn’t told me, but I got myself out of that rut pretty quickly. Given my conservative background, I wouldn’t’ve told me, either. At least not early on.

But I wasn’t that guy.

And of course, part of me was really turned on. Two women together? That was hot!

But just because she was into girls didn’t mean there was a threesome in my future. Len was the guy who regularly slept with two women at the same time. I was different.

Or was I?

That sent me down another mental rabbit hole.

And maybe I was wrong. Maybe I was reading too much into things. After all, Lori could’ve been turned on listening without wanting to do anything with another woman.

What saved me from a day full of mental gymnastics was Liz pulling into the parking lot at the bottom of the hill below the dorm. I needed to get on with my day.

I walked into the dorm room to find Len lounging on his bed with a movie playing on the little TV. I glanced at the screen as I dropped my bag but didn’t immediately recognize it. The style screamed Sixties and then Sean Connery appeared, and I smirked. From Russia With Love. A classic.

Len had a textbook open next to him, but it slid off the bed when he shifted his weight and sat up. He rolled his eyes and bent to retrieve it while I unpacked my dirty clothes and replaced them with my D&D stuff.

“Good weekend?” I asked.

“Yeah.” He turned the movie off.

“What’d you do?”

“Eh. Not much. The movie wasn’t very good.”

“The one you went to with Denise?” I finished my repacking. “Lunch?”

“Yeah. To both.”

“What was the movie about?”

“God, it was a mess.”

As we walked down to the cafeteria, he told me about this art-house flick that Denise had expressed interest in but had turned out to be way too “artistic” for either of them. His explanations were confusing, and when I pointed that out, he said it was because the film was confusing. He’d seriously disliked it, and, fortunately, Denise hadn’t liked it either. They’d stuck through the end and then gone out for a drink after.

“Just you and Denise,” I probed.

“Yeah. Debbie was smart to skip it.”

“What was she doing?”

“Girls’ night with Carmen and Britt. I didn’t ask.”

I shrugged. I supposed Len didn’t have to do everything with both of them.

“Oh, we stayed in a really nice hotel,” Len said. “It wasn’t expensive, either. If you and Lori ever go to Denver, you should stay there.”

“You stayed in a hotel?” My mind boggled. He’d had a dorm room to himself even if he couldn’t crash and Denise and Debbie’s.

“We were drinking, remember? We walked to the hotel.”

I shrugged. I appreciated them being responsible, but ... man, to spend money on a hotel room when you didn’t have to?

“Anyway,” Len said, “the movie sucked. The hotel room rocked. How was the concert?”

“Pretty good.” I told him about it as we entered the cafeteria and got our food. I did not tell him about the rest of the weekend, even though I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Lori was his sister, after all.

Len seemed content with what I told him and didn’t ask anything except about the band. Apparently, he’d heard of them, but never heard them.

Finally, as we finished up, he paused.

“Oh, hey, I almost forgot. There’s a message on the machine from your sister.”

My eyebrows rose. Why the heck had my sister called me?

When we returned to the room, I played Michelle’s message. It was time-tagged that morning when Mom and Dad would’ve been in church. That was smart, but Dad still checked the long-distance bill. He’d want to know why she’d called, when I was going to be home in three days. That was another story we needed to get straight.