Chapter 35

Crystal
Crystal’s phone rang. It was her mom.

“Are you ready for tomorrow?” her mom asked.

“Yes, I am. Andres has promised to get the whole baseball team to show up, and I got both the Trojan Dance Force and Song Girls to commit to coming,” Crystal ticked off.

The Trojan Dance Force had been modeled after professional NBA and NFL dance teams. They’d been called USC’s version of the Laker Girls. They performed routines that focused on hip-hop and jazz dance at USC home basketball games.

The USC Song Girls were referred to as ‘The Ambassadors of the University of Southern California.’ They cheered and danced at Trojan athletic sporting events, as well as at the Heritage Hall ‘jock rallies’ on Friday afternoons before all USC home football games. They also performed at other activities for alumni and the university. The girls were involved in charity work, so they were easy to convince to come out and help.

“Is the actor still going to be your DJ?”

“He promised to be there as soon as he gets out of class. He did us a favor by letting us pick out the music. I hate to think what he listened to back on the farm,” Crystal carped.

“Who did you put in charge of that?”

“Milena. And get this: she went heavy with Euro Techno.”

“I hope you made her change it.”

“What do you think? I got my inability to suffer fools from you, after all,” Crystal said.

“Yeah, I don’t do well with them, either.”

“My point exactly, Mom.”

“So, it’s all sorted out?”

“It’s all good. Once Milena figured out that she wasn’t back in Armenia, she got it together,” Crystal assured her mom.

“I thought she’s American.”

“Well, she is, but sometimes I wonder,” Crystal said.

She and her mom chatted for a bit longer, and then Crystal had to get back to work. The next day’s fundraiser was part of her grand plan to become the president of the Panhellenic Council. Doing well with the fundraiser would give her a leg up.

“Careful with that,” Milena ordered John.

While Crystal was grateful that John had come, he hadn’t been pleased to find that she wanted him to help set up and not be a DJ. She, in turn, was unhappy that Matt wasn’t there helping. When she’d texted him to find where he was, he hadn’t responded.

It wasn’t the first time Crystal had wondered why she was dating him. Matt was affectionate, though a bit too clingy; had an unimpressive but decent cock; and had an unimpressive but decent ability to last for longer than a minute in bed. Those, and the fact that he was into her, had her hanging on to him.

Crystal had a type: men who were going to make something of themselves. The campus was full of directionless posers who talked a good game, but when push came to shove, they were more into partying and skirt-chasing than making something of themselves.

She’d heard that people thought she was only looking for a payday. They said that was why she had dumped her last boyfriend when he’d hurt his knee, and it became apparent he would never play professional basketball. The truth was that while Tim Carlyle had been everything she was looking for, once he got hurt, he changed. The happy, outgoing guy she knew had disappeared as he wallowed in self-pity.

The deal-breaker had come when he’d raised his hand to her. Her father had been abusive to her mother when she was younger. Crystal vividly remembered what had happened. Finally, her mother had kicked him to the curb. So, when Tim hit her, she ended it.

The next guy she’d been interested in had been Ridge Townsend. That one wasn’t all her fault. Ridge was dating a girl who he’d been seeing since high school. Crystal met Penny at a party, and Penny had introduced her to Ridge. Looking back, it had been a setup so that they could invite her back for a threesome. Ridge had been very attentive, and if she hadn’t known about Penny, she would have never guessed that Ridge was in a committed relationship.

Crystal had decided to go to another party before Ridge and Penny could execute their plan. She did see him the following week on campus. He’d chatted her up, and Crystal had started to wonder if maybe he wasn’t as attached to Penny as everyone seemed to think.

After that, Ridge would turn up and talk to her every so often. Over three weeks, she began to think that he might be someone she would like to be with. Then one day, he invited her to his apartment. Shortly after they’d arrived, though, Penny came in. At that point, Crystal figured it out and left.

Crystal had heard the rumors going around that she’d been the one chasing Ridge, and she didn’t like them. The kicker, though, had been the realization that Penny had no idea that he’d been pursuing Crystal since that party. When she’d left, Penny had been screaming at Ridge. Crystal had decided Penny could keep him. Men were such jerks sometimes.

Next had been Andres on the baseball team. He’d made his interest in her clear, but she’d never followed through. He was a nice enough guy, but he had a reputation as a partier. Hell, the whole baseball team did. He also was always around Mason, who was a class-A horndog.

Recently, Andres had invited her and her sorority over to the Baseball House for a party. He’d promised there wouldn’t be a repeat of last time. That was where Mason had announced, ‘I’m going to fuck you like you’ve been begging a man to fuck you for your entire life!’ Crystal had gathered her sorority at that point, and everyone had gone home, vowing to never come back.

Crystal had held firm until Andres mentioned that David A. Dawson was now on the baseball team. She’d been having lunch with Milena, who’d begged her to change her mind about the ban. She’d relented, and the girls had had a good time. The baseball team was still a bunch of man-whores, but they were big, athletic man-whores who were good between the sheets. It gave the girls in her sorority a chance to do stuff they would never get away with when going to a frat party. Alpha Mu had a reputation to maintain, after all.

Crystal had thought about dating Andres for about a minute, but she had come to realize he was like every other guy at USC, with little or no ambition. She looked into the future and saw he would be back home working in an auto parts store after college. That was not the life Crystal planned for herself.

When she started dating Matt, she quickly recognized that he would never hit her or cheat. David had asked her why she was seeing him because he felt that Andres was a better match. It all came down to her assessment that Matt was the safer bet. As the starting quarterback, he was all but assured of making it to the NFL. Besides, while he was a work in progress, he was trainable.