Chloe and the Red Vinyl Jeans Ch. 01

Author's Note: This chapter mainly "sets the scene," with most of the "action" to follow in the subsequent chapters. I guess I could have posted one big, giant chapter, but ... sometimes, it's good to leave 'em hanging.

*****

Stephanie, Stephanie. To think that something so strange and unexpected all started with a totally dull girl like Stephanie.

Until a somewhat impromptu movie night at their apartment about five or six weeks after they'd moved in together, Chloe hadn't ever thought of her roommate Stephanie as dressing particularly "sexy," "interesting," or "provocative." But it was a warm September evening and Stephanie came out of the shower wearing a white long-sleeve crop top that said "Girl Power" on it in large black lettering (with a little red "heart" symbol in place of the "o" in "Power"), matched with some tighter than normal blue jeans.

"OK, guys, what do you wanna watch?" she asked.

Chloe and Stephanie had put out a bowl of popcorn and some sodas on the counter for themselves and their two friends, Amy and Briar.

"I'm kind of in a ... chick flick mood," Amy replied in a tone that didn't quite suggest the confidence Stephanie had been looking for.

"Let's see what's on Netflix," Chloe proclaimed with more certainty, as she quietly made note of her roommate's new top. It was just a silly little girls' movie night; Chloe didn't know why Stephanie had suddenly decided to use this particular opportunity to prominently display her bellybutton, but ... whatever. "How about Silver Linings Playbook?"

"I think I just watched that a couple of months ago," Briar said.

"Sounds good to me," Amy added. "Bradley Cooper's pretty hot."

"I don't think he's all that," Chloe responded. She kept flicking through the options. "How about The Social Network?"

"Hmmm." Amy thought for a moment. "Jesse Eisenberg. Not as hot." The four of them giggled.

"Just pick something," Stephanie said. "I can't stay up too late, though. I've got volleyball practice in the morning."

Chloe couldn't have known it at the time, but that was sort of the beginning of it all. Of course, it really began a couple of weeks later.

*****

For Chloe, half of Stephanie's original appeal as a prospective roommate was that she seemed to be more boring than a cube of tofu soaking in water. In other words, in the mad spring scramble for off-campus housing, Stephanie had seemed like a nice, reliable, level-headed choice for an apartment mate. "Nothing crazy and unpredictable bound to ensue with this one," she figured.

Chloe and Stephanie had shared the same dorm hall in their freshman year, which is how they'd gotten to know each other, but they'd each had different respective roommates. Chloe still planned to see plenty of her former roommate Amy, who had been a little too fond of the herb for Chloe's taste, and was now living with another one of their mutual buddies, Briar, who took more readily to the stoner ethos. Chloe thought she could roll more easily with boring than with bong.

But "bland" certainly didn't mean "lazy." Unlike Chloe, who cringed at the very thought of competitive physical endeavor, Stephanie was a hardcore volleyball girl. "Perfect," Chloe figured, "she can do the exercising for the both of us!" Was Stephanie there on a volleyball scholarship? Chloe didn't know, and didn't want to ask. She couldn't quite detect her roommate's passion for Economics, a perhaps hastily chosen major. By contrast, Chloe was an English major, not because she thought it sounded cool, but because she couldn't stomach majoring in anything else.

Ah yes, the volleyball player and the bookworm: two low-key, clean-cut, conventional suburban girls.

Although others sometimes described her as "shy," Chloe preferred "introverted." She could speak her mind when she felt like it, but wasn't big on risky behavior like most of her peers. Her new roommate certainly came off as more outgoing, but also strangely private and reserved; Chloe couldn't always tell what she was thinking. When they'd been in the dorms, Chloe had seen Stephanie briefly snag a boyfriend for a couple of months, but she'd apparently broken up with him before the summer arrived.

If Chloe had been asked to make a bet as to which of the two of them was more likely to get some play with the opposite gender, she would have put all her chips on Stephanie, with her long, straight blonde hair (often tied back in a ponytail) and tremendous athletic gifts. By contrast, Chloe sported chin-length brown hair (which she thought, in her more fanciful moods, sometimes made her resemble an actress in a French new wave film), and she usually wore glasses. A couple of guys had told her she gave off a "nerdy cute" vibe, but she was skeptical.

What Chloe didn't see, or want to admit, was that, with her slender nose, high cheek bones, and intense green eyes, she was probably prettier than Stephanie, whose forehead protruded oddly over her eye sockets, and whose sharp nose hung over her abnormally thick, prominent lips. Chloe possessed a slight overbite, and when she smiled, the right side of her mouth would open a little more widely than the left side, giving her grin a sly, knowing, mischievous quality.

One seemingly random detail Chloe had noticed was that she and Stephanie were almost the same height: Stephanie was about 5'9" and Chloe was about 5'8", but Stephanie was thin as a beanstalk, while Chloe had a touch more meat on her bones -- although not much more. Another seemingly random detail was that Chloe's breasts were slightly larger than Stephanie's -- not that she ever took much advantage of this attribute.

And up until that day in September, neither of them would have lit up a fashion runway. Chloe usually just stuck to jeans and a t-shirt, or slacks and a sweatshirt. Stephanie dressed much the same, but with the addition of a slightly hippie-ish vibe: velvet shirts, peasant blouses, flower-print skirts. It wasn't quite what she'd expected from Stephanie when they'd moved in together, and she wasn't sure where that side of her had even come from.

To be honest, they still didn't know each other very well. She certainly didn't think of her new roommate as "sexy" or "hot" like so many of the other girls she'd seen around, wearing skimpy halter tops and super-tight leggings. The closest Chloe probably ever got to "sexy" was a pair of snug jean shorts that showed off her legs quite nicely. Sometimes she would wear those in the summer, but the rest of the time, she hardly even thought about her wardrobe. She wasn't, shall we say, a particularly confident young woman.

*****

A couple of weeks after their movie night, on a slightly cool Friday evening in early October, Chloe returned home from her Victorian Lit class. Based on the texts in ALL CAPS she was receiving from Amy roughly every five seconds, she deduced that her former dormmate was apparently experiencing some "roommate drama" with Briar, so Chloe offered to be supportive and meet up with her and calm her down.

As far as Amy was concerned, Briar was 100% in the wrong, and while Chloe sensed that Amy was at least partly fueling the drama, she decided to keep that little theory to herself. Frankly, Chloe sometimes enjoyed letting Amy vent and go on her little rants, which could end up being hysterically funny -- and the best part was, she didn't have to live with her anymore! But first, she needed to swing by her own place, drop off her books, and grab something to eat.

Chloe plopped her bag down in her bedroom. A few minutes later, she heard Stephanie head into the kitchen. There was an odd "squeaking" sound traveling down the hallway that Chloe didn't recognize. After a couple of minutes, Chloe went out to the living room to grab a glass of water she'd left on the table. In the corner of her eye, she saw Stephanie apparently wearing something ... bright red?

"You going over to Isabel's?" Stephanie asked.

"Oh yeah, she's having a birthday thing, isn't she?"

"Yeah. I'm gonna go get something to eat with Robbie," Stephanie explained, the lower half of her body blocked by the kitchen counter. She was wearing a white Hard Rock Café t-shirt that Chloe had seen her wear a couple of times, her blonde hair pinned back tightly behind her head in a bun. But what the hell was that reflective, red garment she thought she'd noticed?

"So you're not going?"

"Well, we're gonna get something to eat and then go over to her birthday thing." Stephanie stepped out from behind the counter and headed back to her room. Chloe could now see that her white t-shirt was tucked into a pair of ... red, shiny pants?

Oh-kayyy. Not what Chloe would have expected.

When Stephanie came back to the kitchen and put a few dishes away, Chloe got a closer look. The pants sported several belt loops, through which Stephanie had threaded a black leather belt. What in God's name? Chloe hadn't seen anything like them before.

"I dunno, Amy wants me to go over to her place, she's dealing with some 'roommate drama'," Chloe explained.

"Oh," Stephanie replied, chuckling knowingly. "Well ... I'll be there. Isabel's invited some of the guys from the men's rowing team. It should be fun. You don't have to stay the whole time, you know, just pop in for a bit. Up to you."

Stephanie then headed out the door. Chloe cooked some ramen soup and made her way to Amy's apartment.

*****

"Briar just thinks she can leave her shit all over the place, and then expects me to clean it up! She thinks I'm like a -- like a fucking human vacuum!"

"Well you certainly do a lot of inhaling," Chloe responded.

"Oh, shut up." Amy looked at her phone. "All right, it's almost 9 o'clock, I've got some reading to do. Thanks for letting me bitch for two hours."

"Don't mention it." Chloe then headed over to Isabel's.

After a loud knock, the door opened. "Hey, nice to see you!"

"Happy birthday!" Giving Isabel a quick birthday hug, Chloe stepped inside and noticed some drinks on the table, but she merely grabbed a soda. She spotted Stephanie chatting in the corner with a couple of guys they both knew, Rasheed (who had almost dated Briar at one point) and Marco (who was in Chloe's Victorian Lit class), but otherwise, honestly, this wasn't really her "scene."

God, Amy could be so unreasonable sometimes. Chloe had tried to explain that there were several ways she could, as they say, "de-escalate the situation," but Amy was just stubborn as hell. "Thank God Stephanie and I don't have that kind of drama," she thought to herself, as her attention wandered briefly toward Stephanie's pants.

Chloe was trying to figure out what kind of pants those were. They were like ... rubber or something, with back pockets and seams down the legs like jeans. They were easily the most interesting aspect of her roommate that she had yet to come across. She kind of wanted to make fun of them, but Stephanie didn't seem to make a big deal out of them at all, so Chloe didn't feel the need to mention it.

She did overhear one of the boys from the rowing team say to Stephanie in passing, "Nice pants," with Stephanie simply replying a nonchalant "Thanks," but otherwise, no one seemed to notice anything particularly unusual about the outfit.

An impromptu dance floor formed in Isabel's living room, but Chloe didn't budge. OutKast's "Player's Ball" came on the stereo, followed by some Ariana Grande song Chloe didn't know the name of, then Tom Petty's "You Wreck Me." She watched as Stephanie showed off her moves for a couple of guys, smiling and giggling as they cheered her on. Eventually, Chloe headed home by herself.

*****

A couple of hours later, Chloe put a bookmark in her copy of Thackeray's Vanity Fair, turned off the light, and crawled into bed. She tossed and turned for a little while in her silk pajama bottoms. She began thinking about a couple of guys she'd had crushes on in high school. As the minutes rolled by, she began to feel kind of ... horny. Maybe it was time for a little "bedtime treat"? She honestly just wanted to go to sleep, but some other part of her was slowly taking over and asking to be catered to. Her pajamas felt really nice against her sensitive place.

Suddenly she began thinking about Stephanie and her glossy red jeans. Where did she even get them? What would it feel like to wear those? Well, Stephanie was bold enough to try it. Chloe couldn't have even tolerated for one second the idea of being made fun of for wearing pants like that. But somehow Stephanie didn't give a shit.

Chloe tried to think about some boys again, but for some reason, her roommate's trousers kept popping into her mind. What the fuck? Chloe wasn't supposed to be fantasizing about girls -- let alone her roommate, of all people. But somehow the sense that she was doing something "wrong" only made it all the more tantalizing.

She liked the contrast between the soft, comfy, white, relatively loose "everyday" t-shirt (with that overly-familiar brown, yellow, and black logo), and the stiff, constricting, weirdly unfamiliar, abnormally reflective, slightly menacing red pants. The t-shirt wasn't remotely out of the ordinary -- more like a bad middle-class tourist cliché -- which made it the last thing anyone would have expected to be paired with pants like those, which were at least several galaxies away from cliché.

God damn. Chloe wished she had the kind of confidence to wear an unusual outfit like that. She kept thinking about her roommate dancing and laughing at the party and not caring what other people thought about her attention-getting pants and the thoughts kind of built up inside her and she felt a wonderful release of pleasure in her pajamas.

When Chloe woke up the next morning, she hardly gave any more thought to Stephanie and the pants and her late-night "transgression" at all. "Probably the end of that," she figured.

*****

However, although she would have never dared to admit it to herself, Chloe viewed Stephanie just a little bit differently from then on.

One afternoon, about a week or so after she had first worn the shiny red jeans, Stephanie invited a few of her volleyball teammates over for a small barbecue. Chloe was reading a textbook in the living room when she saw Stephanie walk through the door with two grocery bags in her hands, wearing a black ringer tee with a glossy "outer space" illustration on it, and a rather short flower-print skirt. She had sunglasses on and her long blonde hair flowed over her shoulders.

"You want any burgers or anything?" she asked Chloe. "We've got plenty of food."

"Maybe I'll grab something in a bit," she answered.

The volleyball girls really weren't Chloe's crowd, and besides, she had plenty of reading to do. But about an hour later, she wandered back to the patio and grabbed a veggie burger.

"You taking a trip to the moon, Stephanie?" one of her teammates asked curiously.

"What?" She looked down at her shirt. "Oh. Ha ha. I just thought this was a cute top," she replied.

Chloe didn't say anything, but she agreed with Stephanie. She was really admiring some of Stephanie's new looks. This one had a bit of a retro, funky, art school, thrift store vibe about it. She wished she could pull it off herself, but ... ah, forget it.

Later, as Chloe tried to fall asleep, once again she began thinking about how much fun it would be to dress in these colorful outfits like Stephanie's outfits, and wear cute shirts, and super short skirts, and not be so self-conscious. She began thinking about Stephanie's thighs, and the way her breasts pressed up against the painted graphic on the ringer tee, and how all-around carefree she suddenly seemed to be. It still felt taboo, but ... her body responded to her arousal and she swiftly dozed off.

*****

Three weeks later, Chloe was hanging out in the living room watching TV, when Stephanie came home from her last class of the day. Chloe immediately felt her heart leap out of her chest.

Stephanie was wearing those shiny red pants again.

She had paired them with a blue and white-striped long-sleeve button-up blouse, which was tied in a knot over her belly. Underneath the blouse she wore a grey tank top, which was tucked into the jeans, this time sans black belt. Her blonde hair was tied back in a ponytail. A pair of black open-toed shoes covered her feet. Chloe had to admit: it was a nice look all the way around.

"God, I'm exhausted," Stephanie announced as she threw her backpack onto the carpet. "Maybe I'm just gonna order something for dinner." She sat down on the sofa across from Chloe, her pants letting out a crinkle as she did so.

"There are some leftovers in the fridge if you want."

"What kind of leftovers?"

"Pasta."

"Thanks. That might be good." Stephanie tried to get into the episode of The Crown that Chloe was watching, but she seemed to have other things on her mind. She leaned forward and started speaking softly. "I swear, there were these guys at the student union ... who were just staring at my pants." She proceeded to giggle wildly, and Chloe smiled back. "Guys are so weird sometimes."

Of course, Chloe understood exactly why those guys in the student union were staring at Stephanie's pants. But all she found herself able to say to Stephanie was, "They certainly are interesting." However, for the next hour or so, she continued to take various peeks at her roommate's outfit -- it was almost impossible to look elsewhere -- until Stephanie finally went into her bedroom and shut the door.

Sure enough, when she crawled under the covers that night, although she had really been hoping her mind would find something more appropriate to focus on, Chloe couldn't think of anything else except Stephanie's weird, wetlook jeans. There was more than a hint of thrill in that giggle of Stephanie's -- the perverse excitement of knowing that she was having such a powerful effect on all the other boys. Too bad Chloe would probably never enjoy that kind of thrill.

She thought about Stephanie's blouse, and how it might feel if she were wearing that blouse, and if some cute guy came along and just tugged on the ends and undid that knot. She wondered how it would feel to be wearing something so stiff and thick on her legs. Were they plastic on the inside too? She held the image in her mind of those front pockets and the belt loops and the way they pressed against Stephanie's tank top and that suddenly did the trick, Chloe rubbing her breast with her free hand and kicking her feet as she came. Immediately she felt a wave of shame and confusion wash over her, and yet, part of her also felt naughty and free. She never quite sorted things out by the time she fell asleep.

*****

The next day, as Chloe attended her classes and tried to concentrate on all the reading she'd been assigned, various images of Stephanie's pants failed to leave her mind. What were they? She decided to try to find out when she got home. That night, after a little internet sleuthing, Chloe saw something that looked a lot like what Stephanie had been wearing.

Vinyl.

That was it. Stephanie was wearing red vinyl jeans. It looked like she must have bought them from either Topshop or Mango, or perhaps Pull & Bear -- she couldn't be sure. Chloe discovered that black was also a very popular color for vinyl jeans, and sometimes, they even came in other colors like pink, purple, and white. Good to know.

Huh. Whoever came up with such a thing? A fabric you might see in a purse, or a raincoat -- but as jeans! Chloe wasn't sure what was more surprising: that someone would bother to make and sell vinyl jeans, or that girls out there were actually willing to purchase and wear them.