“Oh, this is Benny and Mike,” Luke said and gestured to the two guys next to him.
“Ben,” the taller of the two said and stuck out his hand for me to shake. “College was a long time ago but these assholes still insist on calling me Benny.”
“You’ll always be Benny to us,” the shorter one said. “Hi, Penny, I’m Mike. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
“It’s great to meet you guys too. So… you were talking about me?”
“Nothing bad, I promise,” Mason said.
“We were just talking about how much better you are than Isabella,” Luke said.
I tried not to flinch at the mention of her name.
“I don’t even know you and I can tell you’re better,” Benny said.
I laughed awkwardly. “Thanks, I guess.” I didn’t want to be talking about Isabella. “Luke promised me some stories once the two of you arrived.”
“That I did,” Luke said and took a sip from his glass of scotch. “Have you heard the professor story?”
“The professor story? I don’t think so.” I felt James hand slip protectively onto my lower back.
“Mason has already told Penny plenty of stories,” James said.
“Surely not the ones we’re going to tell,” said Luke.
Mason laughed. “I have told her lots of stories.”
“But Penny wants to hear embarrassing stories about James,” Mike said. “Right, Penny?”
Mason smiled at me. “I’ve already told her loads of those too.”
“See,” James said. “Penny, didn’t you want to go find some dessert?”
“Oh, no,” I said. “I want to hear their embarrassing stories. Starting with the professor story.”
James groaned. I was pretty sure I was the only one that heard it though.
“It was hilarious,” Luke said. “We were all taking poli-sci together sophomore year.”
“They forced me to go to it,” James said. “I wanted us all to take psych.”
“But no one else wanted to take that,” Luke continued. “So we had all agreed to take poli-sci.” He emphasized the word agreed. “When we show up on the first day of class, the professor was late. So James here,” he put his hand on James’ shoulder, “decided that he was going to teach it. He walked up to the front of the class and started talking about how politics is all about the distribution of power and resources. Actually, the lecture wasn’t half bad. He made some valid points about how elections are basically popularity contests…”
“You’re missing the punch line,” Mike said.
“Right, right.” Luke took another sip of his drink. “So he asks for volunteers and makes Mason, Benny, Mike, and I go to the front of the room too. And he makes the class vote on who they’d want to listen to speak next.”
“I won,” Mason said matter-of-factly.
“Beside the point,” Luke said and waived his hand dismissively. “But as the professor walks in, James grabs Mason face and says, ‘You voted for your new president based on his pretty face. Suck it America, politics are a sham.’ And then he made an incredibly rude gesture to the whole class.”
I started laughing. Before today I wouldn’t have been able to imagine James doing that. But I was pretty sure he had made the same rude gesture outside of the police station earlier.
“We ended up all getting kicked out of the class,” Mike said. “And the only class left with four openings was psych. The evil bastard.”
James shrugged his shoulders.
“I never got to take poli-sci,” Benny said. “I’m still pissed about that.”
James laughed. “You guys ended up loving psych. Don’t lie.”
Benny shook his head. “What? I hated psych. We had to memorize all those stupid studies instead of just having awesome debates in poli-sci. You screwed us.”
“Wait, Mason, please tell me you’ve told Penny about the streaking incident,” Luke said.
Mason started laughing. “No, I never tell anyone that story. It makes all of us look bad.”
“That’s true,” Mike said. “I thought we promised never to discuss the night of November 9th ever again.”
“Well now you have to tell me,” I said.
They all looked at each other.
“No, you have to tell me now. You can’t just put that out there and not deliver.”
Luke laughed. “Fine. I’m not ashamed. They’re the ones that got the street wrong, so it doesn’t make me look bad at all.”
“We were all completely wasted,” Benny said. “That included you.”
“But I wasn’t the one that pulled out a map and was rambling about all the hottest chicks. Here’s what happened, Penny. It was homecoming our senior year. All the fraternities and sororities were having huge parties. It was almost a competition every year to see who could throw the wildest one. So Mike here got this brilliant idea…”
“It wasn’t me,” Mike said. “It was James.”
I glanced up at James. I wasn’t sure I had ever seen him trying so hard not to laugh.
“What? Don’t blame this on me,” James said. “I’m pretty sure Mason…”
“Fine blame me. I’m completely comfortable with my body,” Mason said.
Luke laughed. “Either way. One of these idiots decided that in order to prove that we had the craziest party, we had to end the night with streaking.
“Makes sense,” I said as I tried to stifle a laugh.
“Right? So when everyone was starting to pass out on our front lawn, we decided it was time. We were going to shove it to the sororities by streaking through sorority lane. But we went to the wrong street because our party really was fucking crazy. Were we stoned too? I feel like we were.”
“We definitely were,” Mike said.
“Anyway, we made our way to the street we thought the sorority houses were. And we started running butt naked down the street. When we were about halfway done, we started hearing all these catcalls. So we turned around and all these guys were cheering us on.”
“No, we thought they were cheering us on,” Benny cut in. “Turns out we had accidently streaked through a neighborhood where there was only one house belonging to a frat. The only gay frat house on campus.”
I started laughing.
“They were cheering us on, but also hitting on us,” Luke said. “But at the time we didn’t realize they were checking us out, so we stopped and were like doing cartwheels and stuff. Really working the crowd. Some of this.” He put his hands on his hips and stuck his butt out.
“Oh my God,” I said through my laughter.
“For months after that our frat house got invites to all their social events. Our phone wouldn’t stop ringing.”