Fair is Fair

A peal of laughter rang out in the late night, and for Kat Harlow it was practically the last straw. Fuck.This she thought bitterly to herself. That evening was supposed to be a good one, a fun one, a night for mending bridges and forging a new start. In the end it hadn't been any of those things.

The night had started well enough, and its concept was simple. Kat had arrived at her boyfriend's apartment that afternoon with a straightforward plan: to prepare a delicious home cooked meal for Luke, her boyfriend, and Travis, his roommate. That meal, her grandma's cherished pot roast recipe, a classic across generations, would be followed by an evening of wine and board games, itself a concession to Travis' interests.

Travis ultimately, had been the point of the whole endeavor, the objective of the plan. Kat's relationship with Luke was three months old, and they had been three of the better months of Kat's young life. Luke was almost everything Kat could hope to want in a partner: tall and fit, with an effortlessly perfect mop of blonde hair and piercing blue eyes. Those eyes while piercing were also frequently alight with mirth, because Luke was funny, seeming to share a laugh with the world at every turn. He was attentive to her, attuned to her in a way none of her previous boyfriends had been, while also being eminently comfortable in his own skin, at peace with his place in a world in a way that Kat frequently found herself jealous of. And in bed...well, Luke knew what he wanted there too. He wasn't demanding, or aggressive, but he pushed her beyond her normal comfort level in multiple ways, ways that she pretty much always found thrilling.

For where she was in life, and what she needed, Luke was practically perfect and Kat would have considered her relationship with him to be equally perfect if not for a single dark stormcloud over it, a stormcloud named Travis. Travis and Luke were lifelong friends. Literally lifelong, because according to a too often told story the two of them had been in adjoining cribs at the same maternity ward. When the two of them 'reunited' in preschool a few years later they 'resumed their friendship' as the two of them liked to joke, and never looked back. They were university seniors now, and still as close to each other as any pair of friends Kat had ever seen. The two of them called each other 'brother', but Kat hadn't ever even met any siblings as close as her boyfriend was with his best friend.

Conceptually Kat found that relationship, the idea of being so close to a person who wasn't even related, to be sweet. Certainly it showed a level of loyalty and devotion from both men that was, in her experience anyway, hard to find from the male half of the population.The problem with that level of loyalty and devotion was that when it went bad, it could go very bad, and between her and Travis it had gone very bad. Passive aggressiveness encapsulated and weaponized, that was what she thought of when it came to Travis. The guy was quick witted and sharp tongued, and Kat felt that edge on a daily basis these days. If she left a dish in the living room she was 'surprisingly slobish, for a girl', never mind that their apartment had the cleanliness you would expect from two college guys. Alternatively if she ever so much as insinuated that they should clean their toilet or do dishes more than every fortnight she was met with muttered insinuations about trying to control them. When it came to Travis, Kat simply could not win.

That particular evening had been no different. Kat's pot roast, slaved over for hours, had been picked at sparingly by her boyfriend's roommate, while he muttered pointed questions about the seasonings she had used. The wine she had served had gotten an exaggerated grimace, and a mansplainy explanation about proper pairings. This from a guy who I know regularly drinks swill made in bathtubs, Kat had thought to herself, while desperately wanting to point out that Luke had purchased the wine because Kat, having just turned twenty, wasn't old enough. She had kept her mouth closed and a forced smile on her face, because that was her only strategy for dealing with Travis.

The rest of the evening hadn't gone any better. Travis had picked out a board game, one of those that involved building decks of cards. He'd seemed excited about it but it quickly became clear that he'd never played it before and had only a vague understanding of the rules. Kat had continued to bite her tongue throughout almost half an hour of debate about set up and ad hoc googling. Her self control had slipped momentarily just once, when she quietly suggested that they could maybe play something Travis was actually familiar with.

That had been a mistake. Travis' normally pale features had immediately turned a faint blustery pink, contrasted by his terminally messy head of black hair. When the game finally started, Travis had been on full attack mode, muttering darkly at every misstep Kat had made in regards to half explained rules. Kat had endured the constant barrage of slights for another hour but the final straw came when Travis, after Kat had committed the mortal sin of forgetting that Luke possessed a card that changed the turn order, had leaned over and whispered something into Luke's ear. It had been one of those fake whispers, the kind intended to be loud enough for her to hear, and Kat had been able to make out the words 'not with her for her brains.'

Kat had been carefully watching her boyfriend's reaction in that moment, and so she had seen, flickering momentarily across his face, a smirk of amusement at the insult. And then even worse, an audible chuckle. It had been brief, but it had been a betrayal, and in the flash of anger that she felt Kat had stood up and excused herself with a cold 'good night' before practically storming out of the room.

Luke had followed her immediately, but Kat had been too angry to talk. "Go back to your buddy. You guys can have more laughs about what a dumb bimbo I am." She'd snarled at him, and Luke had complied, skulking away like a kicked puppy, his normally open jovial face clouded with sadness.. Kat had almost been moved to call him back, almost let the handsome young man work his charm and assuage her hurt, but she hadn't. She'd wanted to hold on to her anger, to stew in it. Her mother had often told Kat that her long held temper was a Scottish thing, something she had in common with her dad. At that moment Kat had just been hoping that if she honed her rage for long enough she could use it productively, maybe convince Luke that two of them living under the same roof as Travis that summer was simply not going to happen.

The impending summer was the catalyst for everything that had happened that night, the impetus for a lot of what had been happening in their lives lately. Kat, on the verge of finishing her sophomore year, technically still lived at the university dorms, though for the past semester she'd probably spent more nights in Luke's bed then her own. The previous summer Kat had returned home and spent three months under the critical eye and constantly wagging tongue of her mother where everything from her clothes (too slutty, even though Kat knew she actually tended to dress pretty conservatively compared to her peers) to the hours she kept (sleeping until ten equated to lazing her life away in her mother's eye) to how many boys she saw (A handful of meet ups with old friends from high school, none of which ever led to sexy times) Never again, Kat had decided, and she had spent most of the past semester looking for opportunities to remain at school, three hundred comforting miles away from her mother. She'd been more successful then she'd hoped, securing an internship for the summer at an ongoing project in the Sociology department. She wasn't exactly clear on the parameters of the project or what her role as an intern would involve, but it was at least within her major and would grant her upper level credits.

Her internship also meant that she needed to find a place to stay over the summer. Luke, naturally, was eager to cohabitate with her, but the general housing situation around campus was an obstacle. Rents were always high around the university, and to be fair the landlords involved suffered a lot of grief from their rowdy and generally drunken tenants, but in the summer those rents skyrocketed across the board. One would imagine that a decrease in demand would cause prices to fall but the property owners of the region knew that the people who did need a place to stay from May through August usually really needed that place. Kat had crunched the numbers and determined that there was no way, even with Luke going full time at the gym where he worked as a personal trainer and with her supplementing her pitiful internship stipend by waitressing, that the couple could make rent work with just the two of them. They needed to find a roommate and of course Luke would consider no one but his best friend/brother for the role.

Luke and Kat had done all of the legwork in setting up their new living situation. Luke had scoured local listings and found an ideal spot just a few blocks further out from campus than he currently lived. The only problem was that the landlord, a greasy heavyset man in his mid fifties, would only offer them a one year lease, rather than the more flexible arrangements other places around campus offered. This was a major problem because Luke, himself on the verge of graduating, was waiting to hear back from a plethora of business schools across the country and did not want to be tied down. Kat didn't relish the idea either but before they'd completely written off the idea she'd gone to meet the man herself. That had been Luke's idea.

"Dress up sexy, turn on the charm, I'll bet you'd have him eating out of your hand in no time." He'd told her, with a smoldering look in his eyes and a dangerous smile on his lips. It was one of the areas that Luke was 'pushy': he saw her as a gorgeous and inherently sexual person, in his words, and he frequently encouraged her to express that part of herself beyond the confines of the bedroom.

It had worked too, both his encouragement to her, and her..display for the landlord. Her first meeting with the man had occurred in his basement office. She had been wearing her shortest skirt, one that ended halfway up her thigh, and a thin low cut shirt with no bra. It had been chilly in the somewhat dank basement that day, and Kat would remember for a long time after the sensation of sitting across from an unattractive stranger while he stared intently at the outline of her hard nipples through her shirt. She should have found the entire situation gross, and some part of her did; she'd been disgusted and scared both, sitting across a desk from the man, but at a certain point, and it was subtle, just the ways his eyes would widen and track her every tiny movement, every shifting of her legs or slight lean forward, but it made her realize that she did have some measure of power. In the end he'd agreed to a three month lease with two months paid upfront, and when Kat had returned to Luke's apartment she had been soaking wet and desperate for his touch.

No matter how they'd got there, they'd gotten there: an apartment secured, a plan practically completed. Unfortunately the last thing they'd needed for the plan had proven to be the most difficult because Travis, every time Luke broached the subject, dismissed the notion of living with Kat out of hand. Hence the charm offensive. Hence the pot roast, and playing games that neither Luke or Kat had interest in, and hence the fuming ball of raging annoyance that was Kat Harlow, curled up in her boyfriend's bed and listening to him laughing with Travis as they played video games. The thing she resented the most, she'd decided over the course of her time impotently stewing about her situation, was that the best case scenario for her still sucked pretty hard. Luke would continue to have his best friend as a roommate, and Kat would have a sulky passive aggressive shadow in her own home.

At long last Kat's fitful reverie was broken when the door opened and Luke walked in. He flipped on the light switch and Kat rolled onto her back and squinted up at him. "Hey." Luke said simply, and cautiously, while approaching her with slow footsteps as if he were stalking around the lair of some predator. Asshole. I'm not that bad. Kat thought to herself, though her anger at the boy was fading slightly, as it tended to do when she was in his presence.

When Luke was stripped down to his boxers he slid into bed next to Kat and tried to put an arm around her while pushing his body against hers. Kat put up a hand to stop him. "If you're seriously trying to hook up right now, you have severely misread the room." Kat did her best to keep her voice steady but she could feel a tremble of annoyance slip in.

Luke seemed to deflate at that, sinking in place next to Kat. His eyes were fixed squarely on his navel as he replied with a sigh. "Yeah, fuck babe, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have laughed at Travis' joke, it was just a timing thing you know?" Kat's response was a cold, impassive stare. "Yeah, no that's a shitty excuse too. I do feel shitty about it. If it makes it any better, I had words with Travis about it, and I think he's sorry too. So I was thinking that maybe tomorrow the three of us could sit down and really hash out the situation for the summer..."

Kat scowled at that. Luke was many things, and infuriatingly persistent was one of them.

"Luke...no, I'm done. We have to find an alternative. Even if Travis agrees to live with us, I don't want to live with him. I don't want to spend the next three months being harassed in my own home."

Luke winced. "No babe, you're right. You shouldn't have to. I just hate it because normally he's such a chill dude. He and I have always been there for each other, but when it comes to you..."

Kat pursed her lips. "When it comes to me, what?"

"Well it's fucking messy, isn't it? How all of it went down when we all met. Some of it is my fault, I know, and some of it is Travis', but some of it..."

Luke trailed off as a coiled knot of anger formed in Kat's stomach.

"Go on," Kat said quietly, deliberately. "Don't mince words now."

"I'm just saying from Travis' perspective, you know?." Luke protested."He feels like he missed out on an opportunity, or opportunities. There's bitterness there."

"So was I supposed to fuck him the day you and I met, or a week later when I was already falling for you? It's not like it was my decision that we didn't hook up the night he and I met."

Luke winced and shook his head. "I know it wasn't, but, and again this is just from Travis' perspective, that just makes it worse. He was a decent guy that night, and he lost out. It sucks." Kat was trembling slightly in anger now, her blood felt hot. She opened her mouth to respond but Luke spoke before she could.

"Look, I really don't want to argue more about this right now. I have an early morning session at the gym and then an exam. I need sleep. Goodnight babe, you can yell at me more about this tomorrow evening." Luke leaned over and planted a gentle kiss on Kat's head. She let him, and then watched as he flipped around so that he was facing away. He really would be asleep soon, she knew. It was a quality that she was deeply envious of: that he could just decide to go to sleep and it would happen. Her own mind was racing, and she knew that despite being deeply weary from the stressful day, it would probably be more than an hour before she drifted off. She frowned at her boyfriend's back. Suddenly determined to have the last word, she jostled him slightly.

"Just answer me this then, what the fuck am I supposed to do? Let your best friend fuck me because he was a nice guy once?"

Kat saw the reclined hulk that was Luke shrug slightly. When he spoke, his voice was slurred and heavy with impending sleep.

"Or let my best friend fuck you because we need a roommate. Either way, fair is fair."

Kat didn't know how to respond to that, so she flipped back over onto her side, facing away from Luke. The coil of anger in her gut had bloomed into something that was practically painful. It was usually something she avoided thinking about, the root of Travis' dislike for her. It was the past after all, and something that she wanted to move on from. It wasn't as if she were proud of how things had unfolded those many weeks ago, but it had led her to Luke. Or rather, Travis had...Kat sighed softly as for the first time in months she allowed herself to think back to the night she had first come to this apartment.

***

It had been late January. Classes had just come back into session, campus life had settled back into its usual routine, and that routine of course meant raging parties on the weekends. Kat had certainly felt the need to go out and cut loose.

She had, just a few weeks prior, broken up with her boyfriend Alec. The two of them had been separated by hundreds of miles during the month long winter break, so it had been a surprise when a few days after Christmas she'd gotten a text at two o'clock in the morning informing her that he wanted to come over and give her 'more of that dick you loved so much.' In the morning Alec had played it off as just a drunken text 'because I miss you so much.' Kat had had her own suspicions, and those suspicions were confirmed when she discovered that he had been liking his ex's swimsuit pictures on Instagram. On one of them the busty redhead had commented 'r u in town? HMU!!' Later Kat had had a hard time deciding what she was most disappointed by: the cheating, or how bad he had been at trying to hide it. Their final confrontation and tearful breakup had occurred the moment the two of them were back at school together.

After two weeks of a mopey breakup routine and struggling to get back into the flow of her classes, Kat had been more than ready for a night out. Her friends had almost universally encouraged her to 'go and get some', and to that end Kat had donned her sexiest little thong, a form fitting club dress, and had even fully shaved herself. She wasn't about to hook up with anything that moved, she'd assured her friends as they left for the evening, but if a good opportunity presented itself, she was ready to act on it.

The apartment building where Luke and Travis lived was ninety-five percent occupied by university students and there was a long established tradition where the residents would host huge parties in which an entire hallway worth of apartments were opened up and crammed full of revelers. It was one of those parties that Kat and her friends had set out to attend that night, and it was there that Kat had first met Travis.

He had stood out immediately because he was good looking, in a dark and stormy 'pretty boy' way, and fashionably dressed too; he was also alone, standing off to the side away from the crowd, just nursing a drink and watching the raucous party play out in front of him. Kat, her boldness bolstered by a few pre-game shots, had approached him. Upon questioning him she had learned that Travis was down in the dumps because his ex-girlfriend, who he'd been hoping to reconnect with, was currently two apartments down the hallway 'practically giving a lapdance to some stranger'. Knowing Travis as she did now, Kat had her doubts about how true that was but at the time she'd been full of sympathy for the handsome dark haired boy. She'd confided in him that she was newly single as well. From that confession their conversation flowed naturally into a wide ranging discussion about life, the foibles of the heart, and more.

They'd talked for what turned out to be well over an hour, a fact that Kat hadn't realized until her pack of friends tracked her down, and through the power of peer pressure pulled a reluctant Kat away to do some shots with them. "It was nice talking to you. I'll find you later?" Kat had said to him quietly as she downed the rest of the beer she'd had with her when she'd approached, that she'd somehow never gotten around to finishing.