Modern Lovers by Emma Straub

Author:Emma Straub
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2016-04-27T16:52:19+00:00

Thirty-six

Oberlin College (population: 3,000) had more lesbians than all of Wellesley, Massachusetts (population: 27,982), if you weren’t counting the all-women’s college, which Elizabeth wasn’t going to apply to because it would mean that she could never leave home. Lesbianism was one of the things she always assumed she’d try in college, like a tofu scramble, or a cappella. She’d kissed a girl once, during a particularly good session of Truth or Dare at a party her senior year of high school, but the girl was just some random drunk sophomore who had dissolved into giggles immediately, and so it didn’t really count.

Then there was Zoe Bennett. Elizabeth sometimes thought about the improbability of her life, starting the way it did, all in a dormitory that looked like a cellblock. What if Andrew hadn’t lived on her hall? What if Zoe hadn’t lived downstairs? Oberlin was a small school, but there were certainly people whose paths she’d never crossed, and people she met years later. She and Andrew had met during their freshman orientation, and she’d met Zoe that first week, when she was sitting in front of the dorm smoking. Lots of people had bleached-out hair, but not many of them were black girls in enormous goth platform boots. Elizabeth had lost her key to the building and was waiting for someone to come out so that she could get back inside. It was the first day of September, and Ohio was beautiful, flat and sunny and full of flowers. Zoe sprang up and opened the door, and then walked Elizabeth all the way to her dorm room, as if she were the resident bellhop. They became friends so quickly that Elizabeth sometimes thought that Zoe must have confused her for someone else, someone prettier and funnier, someone with better stories and a higher tolerance for alcohol.

They hadn’t had sex.

They hadn’t done anything at all.

It was almost true. Elizabeth and Andrew were already together, more or less, kissing at the end of the night and never talking about it during the day. Kitty’s Mustache was playing shows at house parties once or twice a week, their flyers up all over campus. “MEOW,” they’d say, and then the address. Two dollars for the keg. Everyone knew who they were. Both Zoe and Andrew were living off campus now that they were allowed to, Zoe in a one-bedroom apartment next door to Oberlin’s crumbling movie theater, the Apollo, which meant that the neon marquee lit up her living room every night after dark until about ten o’clock. They were a funny match—even once they were in the band together, Elizabeth still felt like an amateur next to Zoe—an amateur woman, an amateur college student, an amateur cool kid. Even so, they had more fun together than seemed possible. They went to the Salvation Army and bought bags of clothes for ten dollars, they went bowling and came out reeking of cigarette smoke and french fries, they went to the movies and got drunk and laughed all night long.

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