It’s Complicated
The week of Valentine’s Day at Orangeside was marked by the presence of the Orangeside Human Being. Dressed as a “Cupid Thing”—which essentially meant the usual terrifying beige bodysuit adorned with a diaper and a quiver of blunt arrows—it stalked the halls, delivering tokens of affection.
Chase Wright walked toward the library with Professor Scarlett Finch. The morning air was crisp, and the domesticity of their walk felt unusually grounded for Chase.
“I’m chaperoning tomorrow’s dance,” Scarlett informed him. “You should come. Maybe your study buds will go. What’s the blonde’s name? Krista? Crystal? Catherine?”
“Christina,” Chase corrected. “And she says Valentine’s Day ritualizes a connection between affection and candy so girls can learn the ropes of prostitution.”
“Translation: she has no date.” Finch quiped
“I’m going to join you at that dance,” Chase continued, stepping into his role as a novice boyfriend. “But could I get a map of the minefield known as ‘women’s Valentine expectations’?”
Scarlett smiled, patting his arm. “Every day of the year, I want you to do what makes you happy.”
Chase replied, “Tonight, I’m gonna be happy spending the night with an insatiable statistics professor.”
She peeled off toward her office, leaving Chase to check his messages. He scrolled through his phone until he hit a recent save.
Chase Wright, I am calling you… oh, yeah. You’re probably, whatever. So, what’s up? Heh.
It was Christina. And she sounded like she had spent the night swimming in a vat of bourbon.
Inside the study room, Chase witnessed as the holiday decorated amorphous being known as ‘the Cupid Thing’ arrived. “Oh it has a bow and arrow now, that’s safe.”
‘The Cupid Thing’ started to distribute gifts. Sharon received a box of chocolates from a bearded cook in the cafeteria; Amelia got a single, poetic flower from Drake; even Elvis received a muffin basket from an actress vying for a role in his next student film.
Wilson asked the festively dressed homunculus, “Any chance that giant box on the bottom is for me?”
“Anything in there for Tyrone?” Tyrone also asked, his eyes wide and hopeful. “Barrens, comma, Tyrone?”
The Human Being shook its head and shuffled out. Tyrone and Wilson shared a look of profound rejection.
“Who cares about getting things?” Wilson grumbled, though his eyes darted toward the Cupid Being’s bag. “It destroys the true meaning of Valentine’s Day. St. Valentine kicking the Irish out of Ireland.”
The door opened and Christina slumped in, looked at ‘The Cupid Thing’ and uttered out, “Oh, look it has arrows, THAT’S safe.” She looked like she had been put through a professional-grade tumbler. Her hair was a bird’s nest, and her eyes were hidden behind dark sunglasses.
“Sorry I’m late,” she croaked.
“It’s okay,” Amelia said.
Wilson added, “Actually, you look very early.”
After the rest of the group cleared out for class, Chase leaned back in his chair. “Can I get you something? Water? Smelling salts? An alibi for Cobain’s suicide?”
“Nah, but you can help yourself to a better hairline, and less silly nose and a glass of shut the fuck up juice.” Christina muttered.
“That stings,” Chase smirked. “I mean, not the words. The clouds of bourbon vapor forming them.”
Christina let out a defeated laugh, “Me and a few girls from my Social Justice days went out last night for drinks.” She paused, “I think we drank everything.”
“Yeah, then you say, you know would love to talk to me while I’m drunk?” Chase said.
PInching her forehead Christina retorted, “Sure, the first thing I do when I’m out drinking is call…”
He pressed play on his phone. Christina’s drunken, rambling voice filled the room. Her face went through three different shades of pale before she scrambled for her bag.
“The drunk dial,” Chase mused. “So much subtext. So much intrigue. So much… BCI.”
“BCI?”
“Booty Call Implication.”
Christina didn’t wait to hear the rest. She fled the room, leaving Chase laughing at the empty doorway.
“What happened to Christina” Elvis said, appearing in the doorway as if he’d been waiting for his cue.
“Justice.” Chase said collecting his books and standing up, “after spending the last year denying her attraction to me just to be contrarian. Christina called me at 3:30am, just to ask, ‘What’s up?!?’
“A drunk dial?” Elvis asked, “Was their BCI?”
“With a capital ‘B’!”
“That’s not good.”
“It’s no biggie,” Chase said, still grinning. “We give each other crap all the time.”
“Well, that’s the point,” Elvis countered. “What crap can she give now that you hold the cards? You shifted the balance, Chase. Like in a sitcom when one character sees another one naked.”
“Is that really a sitcom staple?”
“No. I have no idea what I’m talking about. I’m Elvis, I never watch TV.” Elvis stated with obvious sarcasm.
The shift in balance became painfully obvious in Computer Science class. Christina wouldn’t look at Chase. When he tried to catch her eye, she looked away with a grimace of pure, unadulterated shame.
Pablo S. Cabar, meanwhile, was in his element, pacing the room until ‘The Cupid Thing’ interrupted with two more gifts.
“Aha!” Tyron shouted, snatching the gift firmly handed to him.
“I knew you were holding back!” Wilson said, snatching his.
Tyrone ripped his open, his eyes narrowing. “Oh, it’s from the girl I’m dating… I met her in Biology… she had a question about Bulgaria, and I said we do not study countries here!” he said nervously.
Wilson the gift from his admirer, “It’s from Sydney Sweeney. Yeah, I saw her X post and I put a funny response. Before you know it, we’re up till three AM sending messages about hotdogs.”
Cabar burst into a high-pitched, mocking cackle. “Beep-beep-beep! My bull-crap meter is going crazy!”
Cabar’s beeping kept accelerating until he got up to WIlson, and ripped the gift from his hand. “Look at this handwriting. I’ve graded enough of your papers to know you sent this to yourself.”
He then turned to Tyron’s gift. “And yours is signed… ‘Love, Tyrone’?”
“This is the most pathetic thing I’ve ever seen in the classroom!” Cabar announced to the class.
As the class erupted in laughter, Sharon and Amelia watched their friends wither.
Covertly, Amelia and Sharon followed Cabar to the cafeteria.
“Look at him,” Amelia whispered, watching Cabar eat a piece of gristle from his lunch. “Tearing through that steak the same way he tore through Tyrone and WIlson’s dignity.
“Look at him,” Sharon said, “Always tearing people down. Somebody needs to humiliate him the way he humiliated our boys.”
“And that somebody is us,” Amelia agreed.
Chase, meanwhile, was finding the “Shifted Balance” less fun than he had invented in his head. He caught Christina in the cafeteria, trying to be the “big man” and comfort her.
“Micheal & Cole had a retreat at Disney once, and when I was out there I got so drunk I started a fist-fight with the cast from Ducktales.” Chase said.
“Why are you telling me this?” Christina asked.
“The point is,” Chase said, leaning over her table, “when I’m sober, I don’t secretly hate Uncle Scrooge, even though I once fought an animatronic version of him at Disney World. So you drunk dialing me? It’s not a big deal.”
Christina looked at him, her eyes burning with a new kind of resentment. “My God. You’re pitying me now. Just leave me alone.”
Chase realized Elvis was right. The social physics of the group were broken. He found Elvis in the Spanish classroom, where Elvis was directing a student film.
Elvis finished shooting his scene with a very young asian actor with anger issues throwing a fit as Elvis calls cut. He turned to find Chase nearby.
“Wow, that kid’s like camping…intense” Chase said.
“One Palword ad read on his YouTube channel and he thinks he’s Daniel Day Lewis.” Elvis said.
Chase cleared his throat, “Look, you were right, Christina is acting really weird now, it really is like I saw her naked.”
“Tony even saw Angela naked in the opening credits of Who’s the Boss?” Elvis explained.
“And did Tony ever do anything to fix that?” Chase asked.
“I don’t know, they never really had an episode for that scene, I think they just shot it for the intro, and maybe a horny director.” Elvis continued, “But on ‘Friends’ to even the score, Rachel needed to see Chandler’s penis.”
“All right,” Chase sighed. “I’ll show Christina my penis.”
“Chase, please don’t waste my time,” Elvis said flatly. “To even the score, you have to drunk dial her. You have to lose your dignity so she can find hers.”
“That’s absurdly simplistic,” Chase said. “Would it even work?”
“She’d have to believe it was real. Have you ever acted drunk?”
Chase attempted a slurred, “I can drive… give me my keys,” but Elvis just stared at him.
“That’s a wrap,” Elvis said to Chase. “My place. Four o’clock. We’re going to work on your performance.”
“Nah, I’m not doing that,” Chase said, “because that’s the dumbest idea ever.”
You know her weakness, she cuts and runs. If you do this half-assed, she leaves and we all lose her. I’m not losing a character, that’s not happening. That’s a deal breaker, Wright. Saddle up.”
Elvis’s dorm room was less of a living space and more of a laboratory for social engineering. Chase sat on the edge of a twin bed, looking down at a bottle of whiskey like it was a prop from a tragedy.
“Try it again,” Elvis commanded, holding his camera steady. “Action.”
Chase took a breath and slumped his shoulders. “Hey, Christina. Your call got me thinking… and thinking got me drinking…”
“Stop,” Elvis interrupted. “That was terrible.”
“Ya know, I can get drunk alone if that’s how you want me to act” Chase snapped.
“That’s your problem, Chase,” Elvis said, his voice dropping into a director’s intensity. “You’ve been acting your whole life. Time to pass that act up and find the actor playing you.” He paused, looking Chase over. “Do you like Christina?”
Chase scoffed. “Sure, who doesn’t?”
Elvis replied, “Over half the people that meet her. They are put off by her vacuous face and random personality. But, you’re different.”
Chase regaled Elvis, “Ya know, she’s not the best. She loves honesty, but lies. She travels the world, but never really sees it. She fights about stupid things more than most reddit threads. Most of all, she is passionate, which I find stupid but entertaining.”
“Finch is low maintenance,” Elvis observed. “Christina is irritating, impossible, unpredictable. She didn’t like you, so it felt useless to like her. Finch likes you how you are. You’re safe from change. And passion.”
“WATCH IT” Chase snapped.
Elvis snapped back, “Watch what? A phoney drunk dial so artificial with pity it could cause cancer if ingested.” He paused, “Or, a believable performance powered by feelings”
“Look, I’m sure your a great director, but,” Chase’s jaw tightened. “I can’t feel things with you studying me like a beige praying mantis.”
“You’re right,” Elvis said, surprisingly. He reached for a glass.
“I thought you never drank.” Chase asked.
“Scorsese drank with De Niro,” Elvis replied flatly. “It’s not for me. It’s for the audience.”
The night dissolved into a blur of rhythmic music and shared intoxication. No performance was necessary as the two of them spiraled into a genuine, messy party of two. They danced, they shouted, and somewhere between the whiskey and the 3:00 AM existentialism, Chase’s thumb found the “call” button.
The next morning, the Computer Science classroom was noticeably quieter. Two chairs remained empty, but the chaos continued. The Orangeside Living Thing shuffled in, delivering a letter to Pablo S. Cabar.
Cabar ripped it open, his eyes scanning the page. “From Princeton? They want to make me an associate professor? I can name my price?” He looked up, his eyes landing on Tyrone and Wilson. “You two idiots really thought I’d fall for this? This is your pathetic attempt to punish me.”
“But we didn’t do it!” Tyrone protested.
“Save it,” Cabar snarled. “As punishment, because you obviously don’t have girlfriends, you will escort me to the Valentine’s Dance tonight wearing elegant ladies’ pantsuits. Do it, or you fail my class.”
“You can’t do that!” Wilson yelled.
“Have you met me?” Cabar retorted. “Tonight, you are my bitches.”
Back in the dorm, Chase groaned as the sunlight hit his face like a nuclear bomb. Elvis was already awake, clutching his head.
“It’s three o’clock, what happened?” Chase croaked.
“The last thing I remember, you were dancing like that girl from that detention movie,” Elvis said exhausted.
“Breakfast Club.” Chase corrected.
“You destroyed me,” Elvis said.
“Did I call Christina?” Chase asked panicked.
Elvis checked the phone. “You made two outgoing calls. One to Christina… and one to your girlfriend.”
Chase froze. “I don’t remember either of them.”
“Neither do I,” Elvis whispered. “And I don’t remember the name of the girl in The Breakfast Club.” Elvis searched his mind, “Marry…Margaret…Molly…Ringworld?”
Chase gave Elvis a confused but also concerned look.
Elvis replied, “You broke me, Chase.”
The Valentine’s Dance was a sea of cheap streamers and desperate hope.
“I still can’t believe I’m a size fourteen,” Wilson grumbled. “I know the twelve was tight, but I could have pulled it off.”
“You guys are actually going through with this?” Christina asked.
Defeated, Tyrone said, “We have to, otherwise he’ll fail us.”
“I’m going to find out who sent that letter,” Wilson said sitting down, “we have leads.”
Tyrone added, “Whoever sent it used fake Princeton letterhead. So that means, that whoever wrote it, ran out of stationery and didn’t have enough time to go to the store.”
Amelia perked up, “Um, you guys..”
Sharon interrupted the truth bomb Amelia was ready to deploy with a gruff cough.
“…girls sizes runs slimmer, I’m sure you’re a 12 where it counts.”
Chase and Elvis entered, both looking disheveled and wearing aviator-style sunglasses.
“You look like you’re about to marry Courtney Love.” Christana heralded when she saw Chase.
Chase gave out a genuine chuckle, “That’s the same joke I gave her, but upside down and backwards.”
“Please stop shouting,” Elvis pleaded, “I feel like that person from that movie during that part.”
Before sitting down Chase was asked a question by Christina, “Do you remember calling me last night?”
Chase and Elvis looked at each other nervously, “Yeah, why?” Chase asked, “Are we cool?”
Confidently Christina replied, “Oh, yeah, more than cool. Take a seat Drunkpad, McHammered.”
Chase turned to Elvis, “Balance restored.”
“TV SHOW REFERENCE.” Elvis replied.
That night at the Valentines Day dance, Chase was navigating a different crisis. He found Scarlett Finch by the punch bowl.
“Happy Valentine’s Day,” he said, her voice reaching. “I’ve been calling you.”
Finch kept a distant tone, “I figured I’d let it go to voicemail, just in case you had the wrong number again.”
“Elaborate?”
“What, you don’t remember calling me around four in the morning, expecting Christina and hanging up once you found out it wasn’t her.”
“Scarlet,” Chase called out, “Scarlet, I was trying to call a Christian!” Chase lied frantically. “To see if we could find a church we can go to together! It sounds dumb, but, I needed to open with it to make the truth less ridiculous.”
Finch walked off, and Chase followed, “Two nights ago, Christina drunk dialed me and left a goofy message, and it embarrassed her and made her sad. The only way I could fix it, is to get drunk too and leave her an equally stupid message.”
Finch, exhausted, “It seems like you and Christina are friends, the same way my mom’s pool cleaner was my uncle.” She took a breath, “Did you have sex with her?”
“Not even a little.”
“What confuses me is that you went through all this trouble for some random girl in your computer class, but you have a hard time picking up ice-cream on our TV nights because it seems to ‘marriagey.”
“First of all, ‘Chubby Hubby’…I mean could you pick a scarier flavor.
“Look, we’ll touch back on this later, I have a dance to chaperone.”
On the dancefloor, Cabar was dressed in his sharpest ‘Dance-Fighting’ costume, and was doing complex fighting moves in the center of the dancefloor to the thumping EDM.
Tyrone and Wilson, both wearing trench-coats, nervously walked towards the dancefloor from the hallway, each regretting this decision and whether or not going through with this was worth the science credit.
Moments before hitting the dancefloor and revealing their form fitting pantsuits, Tyrone and Wilson were accosted by Amelia and Sharon.
“Wait,” Amelia yelled out running to them with Sharon. “We were the ones that sent the letter to Cabar.”
“WHAT?” WIlson said confused and enraged.
Tyrone, confused, asked Amelia “You…you work at Princeton?”
“We were mad at him for humiliating you.” Sharon passionately replied.
“Well, nice fix, Tweedle Dumb and Dumb-ass”
Passionately Amelia said, “Look, we’re going to tell Cabar the truth.” Amelia and Sharon nervously looked at each other, “And we’ll pay the price.”
“We can’t make you do that.” Tyrone said.
Wilson agreed, “That’s right. First we have to get out of these pantsuits.”
“No,” Tyrone said, standing tall in his floral silk blazer. “This thing started because we were ashamed we didn’t have ladies who cared about us. The good news is, we obviously do. The bad news is, it makes it our manly duty to protect you tonight. Step aside. We’ll handle this like men.”
“Tyrone is right,” Wilson added.
With that, Wilson and Tyrone joined Cabar on the dancefloor.
“Hey ladies, get into my Mercedes!” Cabar called out to Tyrone and WIlson.
WIlson and Tyrone danced intensely with Cabar. Wilson barely moving, while Tyrone put his entire soul into ‘dance-fighting’ through tears in his eyes.
Chase’s heart sank. He looked across the room and saw Christina. She was wearing a stunning dress, her makeup perfect, looking like she’d stepped out of a different, more sophisticated novel. She caught his eye and smirked.
“Looking for someone?” Christina asked slyly.
“Yeah, Finch.” Chase said nervously.
“Ha, very funny.” Christina said sauntering over looking into Chase’s eyes. “When you called me last night and invited me to the dance, I was shocked..thrilled.” she noticed a frozen fear in Chase. “Are you okay?”
“Yes…no…Sorry.” Chase stuttered out. “I don’t remember asking you anything with asking you to the dance.” Exasperated he continued, “And now Finch knows about the drunk dialing stuff…and again, I’m so so sorry.”
A sinister smile grew across Christina’s face.
“You’re messing with me right?” Chase asked relieved.
“I KNEW you didn’t remember anything from that call”
“What, you dressed up. Just to mess with me.”
“Oh, trust me, your face right now, was worth it.”
Scarlett was walking over on her patrol of the dance, Chase ran up, and she did her best to ignore him.
Chase caught up with Scarlet, she turned around,, her arms crossed. “Chase, what’s left to say?”
“I…I don’t know.” Chase stammered out.
“I do,” Christina interrupted. She turned to Scarlett, her expression softening. “He said it last night on the voicemail.
Christina continued to play the voicemail she received from Chase, regailing and appreciating their friendship, and saying how grateful he was to having Christina as a friend, then regailing on how much of a perfect girlfriend Scarlett is, and how he wants Christina to be as happy as he is.
“Thanks Christina,” Scarlett said, relieved.
“Yeah, thanks.” Chase said as Christiana went for a hug.
During the hug she whispered, “That was the first 20 seconds of a 45 minute voicemail. Very enlightening.”
Scarlett’s face melted into a smile. “Happy Valentine’s Day, perfect boyfriend.”
“Yeah,” Chase said, exhaling a breath he’d been holding since 4:00 AM. “That’s me.”
As Scarlett led him away toward the dance floor, Chase paused. He looked back over his shoulder. Christina was standing alone by the snack table, the light of the disco ball catching the edges of her dress. She caught his gaze, gave him a small, knowing nod, and started to dance—alone, awkward, and entirely herself.
Chase turned back to Scarlett, but for a split second, the balance of the world felt exactly as it should be.