Chapter Text
ONE
Her thumb hovers over his phone number to the point of fatigue, and she chews her lip thoughtfully, her stomach churning with indecision. The little red light emojis burn through the darkness, like tiny warnings from her former self, but the ache of loneliness burns just a little bit more.
Sure, she could call Sean. She could adhere to the script of the reductive little Allie-in-Five-Acts performance he had described to her and continue to push against the apparent inevitability of a tragically predictable future in Vermont.
Or there’s Dean. Mr. Do Not Call.
Dean Di Laurentis has been little more than a caricature in the background of her own college experience. Larger-than-life, supposedly charismatic, and widely coveted by girls that Allie secretly thought deserved better, Dean has been something of a figurehead for all of the things Allie finds annoying about Briar. Like at so many other universities, Briar’s athletic programs serve as a sort of feather in the cap of the university, and, like at so many other universities, programs in the arts and humanities are often treated as superfluous and insignificant.
Guys like Dean Di Laurentis and Garrett Graham have always been easy scapegoats, accessible targets for the disdain and frustration of disgruntled students on the artsy side of campus. Sure, she loves attending the occasional sporting event. She does have school spirit, after all. She has just never taken these guys seriously. They lead lives too charmed to compel her.
Which is why it brought her an exceeding (really, an exceeding) amount of joy to snub Dean at the hockey party. Sure, she’s human, so she absolutely felt a surge of pride at the fact that she drew his eye when she was surrounded by so many other beautiful girls. The man does have taste, after all, and Allie is not one for false humility. She knew she looked really fucking good that night, and she felt even better, emboldened by her shroud of pseudo-anonymity in a crowd of people she didn’t typically run with. There was freedom in her movements as she swayed and rolled with the pulsing energy on the tiny dance floor. When she felt the sudden press of fabric and heat behind her, she initially assumed Sean had returned with his stupid Dunkin cup, but within a microsecond her misjudgment became apparent. Sean would never let his hands roam so reverently, especially not in public. And Sean would never look at her like that. Like he was a parched man stranded in a desert and she was the mirage of a lush oasis.
She relished the look of disappointment on his face as she backed away, wagging her finger, and sauntered past, noting that while he was definitely disappointed, there was no anger. Rather, there was a hint of something like amusement in his eyes. Like she’d just made the first move on a checkerboard.
First and only, she’d told herself.
But then Hannah had to go and actually fall for Garrett-fucking-Graham. And then Allie had to come to terms with the fact that he was actually a really good guy. Good enough to ensure that both she and Hannah were safe in their shared drunken glee after a night of karaoke. And good enough to make sure she was tucked in safely on the couch in the hockey house where she could pass out in peace.
The fact that her peace was, quite literally, squashed by the arrival of Dean Di Laurentis himself was both fitting and predictable. If anyone at Briar could be compared to a wrecking ball, it seemed that Dean was the perfect candidate: large, impactful, and unapologetic about it.
Less predictable was the discovery that he was disconcertingly perceptive and unnervingly thoughtful–at least when stoned. Aside from Hannah (and apparently every random stranger at Malone’s that night), Allie had never really verbalized her fears about the tension between her many dreams. Until Sean, she had never viewed them as being at odds, but his continued pressure about Vermont and his dismissiveness towards her acting career had wormed into her psyche like an insidious bout of viral uncertainty.
There was something strangely calming about reassurance coming from Dean. Dean had no reason to coddle or mollify her. He had no reason to lie to her or flatter her. His matter-of-fact assertion on the validity of her goals was the first thing in a long time to quell her doubts.
Dean Di Laurentis was kind. Full of shit, sure. But a listener. A problem-solver. Someone who was never taken seriously and wanted people to believe he didn’t care.
“I’m Six Flags, baby. Everybody wants a ride. They come for a good time, not a long time, and that’s fine by me.”
His declaration was playful, but there was an undertone of self-deprecation, like the faintest of outlines around the words. Even through the weed-induced wobbly-haze, she started to see through the facade of careless bravado that had fooled even her. She stared at him for a moment before turning the tables on him.
“Is it?”
There was the slightest hitch in his reaction to her question, a barely perceptible recoiling, almost like nobody had ever asked him the question, and he wasn’t sure of the answer.
And so the caricatured mental image of the hockey bros as egotistical and boneheaded villains crumbled to dust in front of her eyes.
Damn. She hates to be wrong.
In the end, she’s not sure whether it’s a momentary lapse of function in her brain or her hand that finally leads to the fateful tap of the screen, but within twenty minutes she finds herself pressed against the wall of a makeshift dressing room, her fingertips pressing divots into the hard planes of Dean’s back as he presses into her, whispering, cupping, nipping, and sucking until she has to press her mouth against his shoulder and her heels into the backs of his thighs to stifle her moans. She’s breathless and voiceless when she finally relaxes, and she doesn’t miss the way he gently catches her head with his hand when she lets it loll back, before he guides her lips down to his in a move that feels just a bit too tender for comfort.
She shimmies free of his grasp at that point, dropping to her now-bare feet, before glancing up to catch his eye. She expects a knowing smirk, but his smile is soft and his eyes are searching hers.
“Everything okay?”
She nods after a moment, letting out a laugh that’s too shrill to be believable. “Yeah,” she assures him. “This was…” Amazing. Mindblowing. Irresponsible. Selfish. Stupid. “...fun.” She fumbles clumsily with the laces of her corset, which are splayed and tangled around her hips.
He shrugs and…yup. There’s the smirk. “Six Flags, baby.” He reaches out, gently turning her, before he begins working the laces, weaving them back into place.
The comment adds levity to the moment and she tosses her hair and looks up over her shoulder. “Too bad it was a one-time ticket.”
Dean drops his mouth next to her ear, his voice low. “It doesn’t have to be. Encore performances are a thing, right?”
She feels a tug when he has finished with the laces, and she steps forward, turning to face him once again. “You’re mixing your metaphors. And what I meant was–it’s too bad for you.”
Plucking his cardigan from the floor, she stuffs it into his hands before giving him a wink and heading for the exit. She glances back once before she lets the door close behind her.
There it is again. A glimmer of amused disappointment. A hint of triumph. Like this was his counter to her previous move on the checkerboard.
This isn’t over.