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After high school, sometime after she transferred to your university, the first thing you learned about her was that she refuses to shower with the lights on. Regina’s never been more of a mystery than in her junior year of college when she transfers from Arizona State University. There’s a distinct difference between the version of Regina that you know from high school and this version that you accidentally happen upon when you’re picking up your best friend from the Classics Building. Micki initially makes fun of you for doing a literal double take at the hot blonde woman that walks out of the building. (You knew at the first look that it was Regina George but you’re so lost on what she’s doing at UChicago and not ASU.) You’re staring. You know that you’re staring (you’ve never been able to not stare at Regina George). And you know that Regina has the innate ability to feel the weight of your stare, yet you’re still surprised when she picks you out of the crowd.
(“You’re, like, really pretty.”
“Thank you.”
“So you agree: you think you’re really pretty.”
You flush, just thinking about that first interaction.)
Just like the first time you saw her in the cafeteria, daydreaming about that vinyl jacket, you’re rooted to the spot, your grip on your iced coffee loosening. Micki takes your cup out of your hand before you can spill it all over yourself.
“Do I know you?” Regina asks, a playful smile dancing on her lips, her voice pitched up a bit.
Out of the corner of your eye, you see Micki rapidly turning their head as if they’re watching a fast paced tennis match because there’s no way you, Cady Heron, physics student extraordinaire, knows Regina George, hottest woman alive.
When you can’t find your words, Regina rolls her eyes and tilts her head the other way.
“It’s been a while, Cads.”
“Uh, hi, Reggie. What are you doing here?”
“Please don’t call me Reggie. I transferred. Arizona isn’t for me. Are you doing anything right now?”
“Uh, no,” you rush out, eager to spend time with her, as if you’re a foreign jungle freak who just moved to Illinois again.
“Buy me lunch and give me a tour. I’ve only been here for a couple days.” There’s the version of Regina that you remember: the one who bosses you around, but there’s something different about this one. It’s probably the way that Regina asked if you have anything to do for the rest of the day.
Regina being in Chicago again takes you right back to high school. You’re following her around like a lovesick puppy again, and even Micki, the biggest simp you know, thinks that you’re a bit much. You carve out time to spend time with Regina, going so far as neglecting your homework, something that you’ve never done since your time as a Plastic ended.
You don’t tell Janis. You’re in sporadic contact with her anyway. Damian is even less available. You still don’t understand what Karen’s emojis mean. You text Gretchen regularly, talking on the phone once a week as she goes through culinary school, but you know that Gretchen’s not on the best terms with Regina anymore. You don’t want to dismantle Micki’s perception of yourself or Regina, so you can’t tell them about junior year.
It’s been two years since you really saw her, but you’ve never been able to not tear your eyes away from her. You notice more things about her now. She’s good at hiding her chronic back pain, but she’s always let you have a little bit of a glimpse into her world. You watch, one day at the overpriced café on campus that Regina insists that you go to because they always get her order right and everywhere else near campus can’t get the foam right, as she shifts in her seat, wincing a little. The chairs aren’t the most comfortable for you, who didn’t get hit by a bus and break your spine, so they cannot be comfortable for Regina. You bite your tongue, chewing slowly on your muffin so you don’t come across as the same eager girl who changed her hair, her wardrobe, her attitude just for Regina.
Sometimes you catch her looking at you. Maybe it’s because your style has changed since your time as a Plastic but she’s just elevated her high school trend-setter aura. She hasn’t changed her style much, but you’re wearing flannels and cargo pants and crop tops that you DIY with Micki. You usually braid your hair now, mostly because it’s too long and starting to annoy you but it’s not long enough for you to donate it yet. Every time she looks you up and down, those critical eyes burning holes into your body, you have to fight the urge to make yourself smaller, to blend in like you’re just another one of the “mouth breathing idiots with no style and no class” (as Regina puts it).
You’re not sure what your life has become when you start spending time with Regina rather than Micki. Micki thinks that it’s hilarious, even though they only know that you knew Regina in high school. Regina doesn’t exactly invite you over, but you end up in her apartment anyway. It’s so different from high school Regina but so similar. The neon “dramatic” sign still hangs on her bedroom wall, her room is accented with pink; everything still screams Regina George, just not in the same way that it used to. You’re doing a physics assignment in the living room, Regina somewhere else in the apartment (and of course she doesn’t have roommates, she’s Regina George after all) speaking French. You don’t mean to look around, but she snaps at you when she finds you looking at the photos on her living room walls. You suddenly feel like you’re in high school again, being yelled at about the Burn Book, but you stare Regina down. You’ve grown, and you’re not the same person you were four years ago. You apologise easily, but you don’t really mean it.
Regina says that it’s too late for you to get back to your apartment, especially because you bike everywhere. She cooks for you, but dinner is a weird sort of stilted silence. The noise of chewing is hurting your head a little bit, but you’re still a little afraid that she’s going to kick you out if you say the wrong thing.
Under the cover of darkness, she invites you to stay. She refuses to turn on the lights as the two of you get ready for bed. You offer to take the couch, especially because you’re not sure if she’s comfortable with sharing a bed. She rolls her eyes and says that you’re stupid. You don’t touch her, uncomfortable on the edge of the bed as you try to not make her uncomfortable. You can’t sleep. Between the lights that shine through the mostly closed curtains, the sound of Regina’s soft breaths, and the way you’re stock still on the edge of the bed and giving Regina a wide berth, you can’t sleep. You miss the casual intimacy that you grew used to with Micki, tucked together in your freshman year dorm bed and watching bad rom-coms instead of studying. Restless and still wide awake, you slip out of bed. Since moving across the world, you haven't been able to sleep very well. She finds you sitting on the floor and doing an assignment on the coffee table, rubbing sleep from her eyes.
“Come back to bed, baby.”
You’ve never been able to resist her, so you let her link your fingers lightly as she walks back to her bed. She falls asleep with you wrapped up in her arms, half on top of her. It has to be less comfortable for her than it is for you.
Things change from there. Regina is weirdly handsy in her own apartment. When you study together, you find that you’re always in contact. Thighs pressed together as she writes essays and you work through a problem set, her head in your lap as she makes voice memo after voice memo and trying to do her at-home oral assessments, her non dominant hand resting low on your back when neither of you are focusing too hard but still trying to do work. She refuses to touch you in public. Around campus, you’re just two women. In the sanctuary of her own apartment, in the customary darkness, you’re Cady and Regina. Micki asks if you’re dating. You tell them, honestly, that no, you’re not dating. When they ask if you want to be, you’re not sure what your answer is.
You don’t know why things change again but you end up sleeping at Regina’s apartment more often than not. It takes a while for you to get used to her touchiness, but you often find yourself tucked into Regina’s side in bed. You still don’t call her “Reggie.”
You don’t know why you sleep with her the first time. She keeps the lights off and refuses to let you look. It’s rushed and you only sort of hate it. It’s both satisfying and incredibly frustrating. She doesn’t kick you out afterwards but she refuses to look at you. You lie awake, thinking about how you could have ruined your friendship for a shot at Regina George. Nothing changes after this. It’s weird.
You know exactly why you sleep with her the second time. The lights are still off and she won’t let you look for longer than just a couple seconds. Though it’s dark, you can see enough of a reflection in her mirror, and maybe it’s weird of you to be staring at a mirror as she curls her fingers in you when she doesn’t want you to be watching her, but you can’t help yourself. She’s always been pretty. You spent a whole year watching her and the way that she carried herself. You spent so much of junior year staring at her, a small part of your brain consistently and constantly focused on how pretty she is, even when you wouldn’t expect lime green pants to be attractive. She doesn’t say anything about the mirror.
The third time, the mirror is covered. The third time, there’s blackout curtains over the window and you have a hard enough time distinguishing Regina’s mess from the floor. It’s about as effective as a blindfold, which is bad because the one and only time you fooled around with blindfolds, you panicked and neither you nor your partner got off. You do everything in your power to not let Regina know that you’re having a slight panic attack. She seems to think that the way that your hands stay on her isn’t because you need to feel grounded, which is all for the better. You scamper off to the bathroom as soon as Regina is finished. You leave no room for opportunity for her to disappear into the bathroom. You flick the lights on as soon as you close the door.
The cold tile is grounding, pulling you out of that uncomfortable, untethered space that the harsh darkness leaves you in. It dawns on you that she’ll never even notice that you had a panic attack in the middle of sex because she never speaks to you after, even though she lets you sleep in her bed, and the lights always stay off. You don’t want to leave the bathroom because it’s inevitable that you’re going to find yourself floating again. She knocks on the door eventually.
“Cads, baby, I need to get cleaned up.”
The selfishness of her statement doesn’t even phase you because it’s just how she is. You have to stop making excuses for her. You’re not in high school anymore. Regina should know better, right?
She turns the light off almost as soon as you open the door, but you know that she’s already put a shirt on. You made the mistake of turning the light on when she was in the bathroom after the first time, but she’d snapped at you and you now know better.
The fourth, fifth, six times go like the third. You’re not enjoying it anymore, but you’d do anything for Regina George. Micki thinks you’re insane, but they understand. They’ve ruined themself like this for a girl before.
The seventh time, she figures out that you’re having a panic attack. She still doesn’t turn the light on. She withdraws her fingers and opens the blackout curtains. You can finally make out the piles of dirty laundry on the desk chair, the books and papers strewn across the floor, the miscellaneous jackets and shoes a mess all over the room. She slips on a shirt and leaves her bedroom without a second look at you.
You turn the lights on once she’s gone. You sit on the floor and just breathe for a minute. When she comes back in the room with a glass of water, she turns the lights back off. She doesn’t understand that this is all because you can’t fucking see. You want to yell at her, to tell her you want the lights on, but last time you defied her, things didn’t go well.
(“Sorry Regina. Rules are rules.”
“Fine. Take a picture, losers. It’ll last longer!”)
She keeps checking in on you. Whenever you check your phone after lectures or recitations, you have at least one text asking how you are. You wish that she’d stop. You’re not dating. She’s made that explicitly clear the first time you asked.
You don’t know why you sleep with her the eighth time. There’s something that comes with the knowledge you, Cady “jungle freak” Heron, are the reason that Regina comes apart on a semi-regular basis. She comes apart, sobbing, your face still between her legs and one of her hands tangled in your hair.
“I’m so sorry, Cady. I’m so, so, so, sorry, Cads.”
You don’t like the way this is going. You wipe your mouth inelegantly, waiting for Regina to say that she never wants to see you again. She doesn’t say anything after that. She pulls herself off the bed, puts on a shirt, and disappears into the bathroom. You decide to see yourself out.
Biking back to your apartment at 2am isn’t your smartest move, but you can’t bear to be in Regina’s for a second longer. Your phone buzzes incessantly, but you know it’s Regina. You don't pick up.
Micki’s on the couch, their laptop propped on their knees and a documentary playing on the TV.
“Oh baby,” they frown.
You resent the way you start crying when they say that. Between hiccups and heaving sobs, you explain all of junior year, hating yourself for how you still crave Regina, even after all these years.
You find yourself waiting for Regina outside the Classics building, filled with the need to apologise for running away. She doesn’t deserve it—Micki has told you as much—but you’re unable to not care about what she thinks of you. She takes the peace offering without a word, but she doesn’t look mad. Unfortunately, you count that as a win.
You end up in her bedroom again, your face pressed into her pillows and her hands on your hips, fingers drawing light circles on your bare skin. The “dramatic” sign casts a pink glow, which you're grateful for, but she won’t let you take off her shirt. It’s not like you can see her anyway, with how she shoved you face first onto her bed. You don’t panic this time; the pink gives you the ability to look over your shoulder at her if you crane your neck enough. It should be illegal, how pretty she looks with her fingers buried deep inside you, her other hand curled possessively around your hip. Though the neon pink is a little harsh on her features, she’s still stupidly gorgeous.
With a sort of reverence you’ve never had for anyone else you’ve slept with, your head ends up between her legs again and somehow, without words, you try to tell her that you want to date her. She’ll never get the message, but you need to tell someone other than Micki. Tracing letters with your tongue, you spell out how you want to love her, if she’ll let you.
She doesn’t even notice, which might be a relief and might be a burden that you’re forced to carry. Of course, you shouldn’t be surprised that you’ve fallen for her. You’ve been captivated by her—her beauty, her passive aggressive and bitchy personality, her power, the way that while she was fucking with you but there was some sort of genuine friendship in the cracks—ever since you first laid eyes on her and certainly, this is the first time you’ve ever actually been in love. You would choose her over math any day, given the opportunity. You continue to choose her, your physics notes abandoned on her coffee table and the once steaming cup of hot chocolate hardly room temperature beside it.
<>
Micki takes you to New Zealand for winter break. You’ve been planning it for months, but a part of you can’t leave Regina behind. Both of you wanted to study abroad, but your scholarship didn’t apply and you couldn’t afford it, so Micki stayed behind with you. They probably regret it because you’ve spent nearly the entire semester you would have been abroad in Regina’s apartment. You spend two weeks in their cousin’s house in Waitangi going hiking, fooling around on the beach, and driving around the country.
Only sometimes do you think about Regina. In the dark of the guest bedroom when Micki is asleep on the other half of the bed, you think about Regina and the darkness. You think about how she won’t let you see her body, how she refuses to let any more light in than what is necessary to stop you from having another panic attack.
Two weeks of blissful freedom come to an end far too soon, and you’re on a flight to California to see your dad while Micki goes home to Montana. Your dad lives alone and his apartment is a little dark, and it hits you that it’s the darkness that’s reminding you of Regina. The two of you do Christmas together, eating Chinese takeout and watch soap operas on the couch, heckling whenever something absurd happens on Christmas Eve. You’ve always been a sort of daddy’s girl. You fall asleep on the couch watching Dynasty and wake up to your phone buzzing on your stomach. Not letting your hopes up, you answer Regina’s call.
“Merry Christmas, baby,” she greets, her voice soft with sleep. You wish that this were part of your everyday life.
“Merry Christmas, Reggie.”
“Please don’t call me Reggie.” The sleepy softness is gone and you should have known better than to push your luck.
“Sorry.”
An unfamiliar awkward silence settles into your half-conversation. You fall back asleep to the stifling silence, hoping that Regina says something.
You dream of her—her hands on your thighs, her hair tickling your face, the shirt she never takes off, the shadows that paint her face, how more often than not, she uses you and excuses herself to the bathroom, waiting for you to either see yourself out of her apartment or fall asleep in her bed. You don’t dream of loving her. You’re quite sure that you already do, but you try your best to not. It doesn’t always work, but you’ll continue to try because it gives you something else to do instead of thinking about how much you love her.
You spend New Years with your mom and her boyfriend, but you’re at Gretchen’s house and definitely not telling your mom about your underage drinking habits. Gretchen hands you a shot as soon as you walk into her house, the two of you preparing for what will probably be the most boring NYE party of your lives. The weight of your mother’s stare is your burden to bear as you down the shot, not even grimacing as the hard alcohol burns on the way down. Gretchen leads you to the bar. You know your mother strongly disapproves of the drinking habit you’ve developed, but there’s no point in going to a New Year’s party and not getting smashed.
You don’t mean to spill everything about Regina to Gretchen, but it’s easier once you’re both pretty drunk. Ever emotional, Gretchen cries along with you. It’s so stupid, you realise. You have no reason to be sobbing in your friend’s childhood bedroom during a New Year’s Party over a girl who genuinely doesn’t care about you (she’s told you this before, it’s not just conjecture).
<>
You hate the way you seek her out as soon as you’re back in your apartment. You find yourself texting her in the morning and you’re in her bed that evening. You’re desperate for something, anything, from her, and maybe that’s why her fingers are wound in your hair and she’s gasping out praise into the pillow she’s buried her face in. The light is off but the “dramatic” sign casts the same pink glow across the room. She’s ethereal. Hair splayed out against her white sheets, an oversized t-shirt for some band that you don’t recognise falling off her shoulder, eyes shut and chest heaving.
“Stop looking at me,” she mumbles, her arm tossed across her face. You drag your eyes away from her and stare down at the bed until you feel her move. Uncharacteristically, she drops a kiss close to your lips as she pulls herself off the bed and into the bathroom. You hate how you crave more. You hate how desperate you are for any sort of affection from her.
The longer that she stays in the bathroom, the more sick to your stomach you become. You should leave. If you knew what’s best for you, you would leave. But you’re helpless when it comes to her, so you stay in her bed. Floating between half awake and half asleep in one of her shirts, Regina emerges from the bathroom. She strips her shirt and you can’t help but stare. She pulls on a pair of obscenely short shorts that allow you to stare hungrily at her thighs. Still without a shirt on and with her back turned to you, you can’t make out what she’s doing, but she sits down on the edge of the bed, her shoulders shaking. You’re frozen, unable to do anything to attempt to comfort her. You hope she doesn’t notice that you’re awake. You’ll be in trouble if she finds out that you’re still awake.
Sometime between her crying and her getting in bed, you fall asleep. You dream of her under the warm fluorescent light of her ceiling fan that she hates, your hands on her thighs and her not squirming away when your fingers accidentally brush the stretch marks or scars. You dream of her peeling her shirt off, finally letting you marvel over her body. You dream of her hands under the blue hoodie that you always end up sleeping in when you stay over, of her fingers fumbling with buttons of the patterned shirts you always wear now, of her fingertips pressed into your sides, leaving her prints all over your body. You belong to her, which is a horrible notion when she doesn’t want you.
You wake up before her. She expects you to be gone in the morning, and as much as you don’t want to get in trouble (though the punishment is often devastatingly delicious), you stay. You steal a pair of shorts and a crew neck from her drawers before traipsing into the bathroom to take a shower. With the lights on, you step under the warm spray, trying to let the weight of your anxieties over Regina wash down the drain. Off-key and without a second thought, you sing a song that’s been stuck in your head. You’re washing the shampoo out of your hair when one of her hands settles on your hip, scaring you out of your mind.
She left the lights on, you notice. But she won’t let you turn around. With one hand splayed on your stomach and the other dancing along your hip, she bites down on your shoulder and prevents you from either turning toward the mirrors or around. Your brain’s already clouded by the fact that she’s finally allowed you to touch her. You hope that you can get a glimpse of her, but she’d never let you.
She steps out of the shower and wraps a towel around her body before you can catch a glimpse. At least she left the lights on this time.