SELENE PT. 01

It all started with Selene.

It was a Thursday afternoon as Arthur was finishing up his work. The campus office building was clearing out slowly but surely as the administration wing workers started heading home. They tended to leave in shifts and waves anywhere from three-thirty to four.

The clock read five when he finally stood up from his desk, straightened his tie, and threw on his jacket. He locked the door to the office behind him and started walking toward the building exit. He only made it a few paces when his phone buzzed. It wasn't unusual. The office had little to no signal, so he usually got a wave of messages from the various text-chains he was in as soon as he left it. He checked the messages, and there was one that stood out.

Selene: U eating in the cafeteria tonight?

Arthur: I was thinking about grabbing a bite, yeah.

Selene: Want to have dinner with me instead?

Arthur: Your place?

Selene: Ur place. I'll bring pizza?

Arthur: Sure. I'll be home in a few. Just leaving the office now.

Selene was a friend he'd met his Sophomore year, which was her Freshman year. He was a senior now, but they'd been friends since they'd met. They were in the theater club together, though she was an education major, and he was a business major, so they had no classes together once Arthur finished his gen eds.

It wasn't unusual for them to see each other in the cafe or the cafeteria and grab a meal together. Nor was it unusual for them to hang out with friends or have a movie night since they lived in the same apartment complex. Many of the students who lived off-campus lived there. It was close and much nicer than the apartments the school offered.

Sometimes though, impromptu requests like this one were because she wanted something. Last time she'd needed his help with a class project. The time before that, she'd wanted his help shaking off some creepy stalker guy. This time, what she wanted was anyone's guess.

Arthur walked pretty quickly to his car, and then it was just a short drive to his reserved parking space in the apartment complex. Selene was already waiting for him when he arrived, a pizza in her hands. She had her purse instead of her backpack with her, so it wasn't homework help she needed then.

Selene had a wide smile. She was a small woman in stature and build, at five feet and three inches tall with the lithe build of a ballerina. Her hips curved from a narrow waist, her butt was round but small, and her breasts were a solid B if he had to guess. She wasn't his type, physically. His last girlfriend had been almost her opposite, right down to short black hair instead of Selene's long blonde hair. Selene often braided it and was quite proud of it because it was her natural color. She dressed in long skirts, chains, and simple tops, often with scarves or sweaters thrown over them.

She had a rather retro hippy style to her clothing that always stood out in the crowd, though the loose and baggy clothing never showed off the figure she had, which was how Arthur assumed she wanted it. She'd dressed a little more typically her freshman year, and she'd loathed the attention from the jerks on campus. Not that she was hot in the bombshell fashion, but she was fit and cute and had an innocent way about her that you couldn't help but love. It made Arthur feel protective of her, truth be told.

Arthur returned her smile with one of his own as he unlocked his front door and let her in behind him. She immediately took the pizza across the living room to the dining room table and set it down.

"Still hot?" He asked.

"Piping. I picked it up from Gianni's on my way over." Selene said as she wrinkled her nose a little and rubbed her hands together.

"Good, help yourself. I'm gonna go get changed real quick." Arthur's stomach yearned for the pizza as soon as he'd smelled it in the hall, but the urge to get out of his tie and shoes was even greater.

"You don't mind if I start? I'm kind of hungry." Selene was hungry too, it seemed.

"Go ahead." Arthur encouraged her as he headed out the other end of the apartment's living room and into one of the two-bedroom doors against the wall. It was only a few minutes before he emerged wearing a pair of jeans and a t-shirt, far more comfortable than his formal clothing. In that time, Selene had secured plates, set two slices of pizza on one for him, one slice of pizza on the other for her, opened a beer for him, and poured herself a glass of water.

"Thanks." Arthur nodded to the plates. "You want to eat in the kitchen or living room?" Eating in the kitchen meant sitting and talking. Eating in the living room meant watching a movie or something, and just relaxing in general.

"Kitchen," Selene said decisively. "I wanted to talk to you about something anyway, and I'm worried that if I wait too long, I'll lose my nerve."

"What's up?" Arthur asked. "What rates the in-person visit rather than just asking me over text?" He was a little curious. It must have been something big, but for the life of him, he couldn't imagine what. Did someone drop out of the fall musical, and she wanted him to cover?

"Okay. So, I don't know how to broach this subject, really, but um... I've been talking with Lori." Selene slowed the last half of her sentence down so that it was practically a confession when she uttered the name of Arthur's ex.

He sat down and took a bite of his pizza. People did this from time to time, as though he were going to be upset at the very mention of her name, but the split had been... even. Amicable, almost.

Lori transferred to a different school and was going in a different direction. She wanted a clean break, and yes, they'd been close, and it hurt for a while, any loss will, but he'd recently started going on dates again. Well, one so far, but he was starting to get back out there, was the point. It had been almost a year.

"Oh?" Arthur asked. "Well, I know you two were friends. I'm not that surprised."

"Yeah." Selene nodded. "So, we've been talking, and well, naturally, you come up from time to time."

"...okay." Arthur was still very unsure as to where this conversation was headed, but at the moment, he felt it best to listen and take to eating his pizza slices.

"Mostly just keeping in touch, sometimes we talk girl-talk. You know." Selene continued.

Arthur nodded. He seemed to sense that Selene needed some encouragement to get to the point that she was trying to get to.

"And you know how girls are; we talk about things," Selene said. "Like guys, for instance."

Arthur felt he knew what was coming and swallowed the bite of pizza in his mouth so he could respond. "I'm really okay if she's dating again. You don't have to like... warn me or anything."

"Oh no, it's not that. She's actually-" Selene started to wave his comment away with her hand and stopped herself for a moment. "She's still single. Not looking for a romantic attachment last I knew, she wants to focus on her school and then grad school after that."