Los Angeles, California: a city filled with hopes, dreams, botched nose jobs, and smog. Maybe I was naive when I moved here for college four years ago, but I honestly thought that the city would be, well, more like the movies, to be honest. I'm not sure why, but when I got on that plane from Logan International Airport, I'd been convinced that the entire town would be filled with palm trees, women walking the streets in tiny swimsuits, and celebrities in every coffee shop. That's what had been sold to me all my life but what did I get instead? A lot of parking tickets, for one, and the realization that I'd rather stab my eyes out with a fork than drive to the beach from where I lived, bikinis or no bikinis. For the most part, though, what I've come to realize is that this city is just weird.

Really, really weird.

I leaned into a turn as I brought my longboard around a curve in the street, swerving between the herds of students on their way to the first day of class. I heard a girl protest loudly when I skated between her and the brunettes flanking her on either side. They all wore matching Greek letters on their crop tops -- Gamma Alpha Xi -- and I turned and waved apologetically to the trio, flashing a smile. The whiny girl sneered and rolled her eyes but I saw her two friends smile back. Shrugging, I decided that two out of three wasn't terrible at nine in the morning.

Pumping my leg to pick up speed, I rolled across the street that led to campus and wondered why I wasn't more excited about the first day of what should've been my senior year. Maybe that was it --knowing that I wasn't graduating in May had definitely put a damper on my summer, especially because I knew that most of my friends had been off doing big important things at big important internships. Meanwhile, I'd been stuck scanning key cards at the campus gym for three months. I shook my head, trying not to think about it too much. When I was growing up, my mom always told me not to compare myself to other people, which would've been a nice life lesson if my dad hadn't always followed it up with, "Be the best so that everyone compares themselves to you."

As if that's ever going to happen.

"Yo, Donahue, wait up!"

Hearing the familiar voice of my childhood best friend jerked me out of my thoughts and I looked over my shoulder to see him weaving his brand new board through the same group of girls that I'd cut through earlier. All three of them eyed him appreciatively, even the girl who'd given me grief, but, as usual, Parker didn't even notice. That was actually the thing I appreciated most about the guy. He had more reasons to be conceited than anyone I knew but he was genuinely too nice to even realize it. Then again, I suspected that he might have just been clueless.

"Hey," I said, slowing as Parker caught up until we were skating side by side.

"Dude, I've been calling your name since you left the house," Parker said, his backpack slung casually over one shoulder and his gaze trained on my face.

"Sorry, man, I didn't hear you." I squinted ahead of us and wished I'd worn sunglasses as my eyes began to water. I wiped away the tiny droplets before they could pool on my lower lashes, worried that Parker might think that I was crying. "It's way too early."

Parker laughed. "I guess I'm pretty used to it."

"Yeah, well, you would be after working all year, wouldn't you?"

Parker let a shoulder rise and fall noncommittally. "It's so weird being back on campus," he said, looking around. "Like, everything looks the same but I can tell that things are different now, you know?"

I nodded, though I could only speculate as to what he was feeling; nothing ever really changed in my world. "What've you got this morning?" I asked.

"Petroleum Geophysics and then I have Advanced Fluid Dynamics right after. You?"

I stared at him, having heard what he'd said but not understanding a word of it. "What the hell is Petroleum Geophysics?"

I drew out the words like I was trying to rid my mouth of a bad taste and Parker looked embarrassed. "It's, like, uh..." He frowned, trying to think of a way to explain it in simple terms. Parker always did his best not to make me feel like an idiot when he talked about what he was studying, but we both knew that even a dumbed down explanation would still end up going over my head.

"Never mind," I said, and Parker's face relaxed. "I'm on my way to my first blow off class of the semester."

"Which is?"

"Business Ethics."

"Are you sure that's a blow off class?" Parker asked, swearing as he swerved to avoid a boy who'd stopped in the middle of the pathway to consult a campus map. "Freshmen," he grumbled as he rejoined me further along the sidewalk.

"I mean," I said, answering his question, "how hard can it really be?"

Parker didn't say anything, although I could tell from the way his eyebrows were raised that he was skeptical.

"Michael took it," I continued. I didn't know why I felt the need to convince him about the easiness of the class but, for some reason, I did. "He said it was alright."

That made Parker shake his head. "And you listened to him?"

I sighed. My older brother, Michael, and I had never gotten along and, for the life of me, I had no idea why. It went beyond the usual childhood rivalry that all my friends with siblings told me they'd experienced with their brothers and sisters. No, even now that we were in our twenties, Michael still always made it perfectly clear that he hated me. It honestly wouldn't have surprised me if he'd encouraged me to take the class as a cruel joke. "Yeah, we'll see, I guess."

"What else have you got?" Parker asked, always knowing exactly when to change the subject.

"Introduction to Business Negotiation at one-thirty."

"Oh, I think Sophie's in that class. Who with?"

"Wallace."

"Yeah, she definitely is."

"Cool," I said. "Tell her to look out for me. I'll save her a seat."

Of the handful of girlfriends that Parker had cycled through during his life, I definitely liked Sophie the most. It had nothing to do with the fact that she was famous either, although it certainly didn't hurt that she always paid for the best table in the club when we went out. Truth be told, though, she was nothing like the tabloids had ever made her out to be. When Parker called me last year to tell me how they'd met, I'd nearly ripped a stitch in my side from doubling over and laughing at him. Typical, I'd thought at the time, still under the impression that Sophie spent her days drunk on tequila and mainlining blow.

On the other hand, from what I'd gathered through my interactions with her since then, Sophie Winters was like a misunderstood Mother Theresa: donating to the needy, championing for mental health reform, and probably rescuing puppies in between. In those aspects, I respected her a lot. How many twenty-year-olds could say that they had a hundred million in the bank and a conscience, too? Beyond furthering those noble causes, however, Sophie's primary interests in life seemed to consist solely of working, Parker, and her exercise bike. She was funny enough, and definitely nice, but in the grand scheme of things, there was no denying the fact that the girl was about as exciting as stale toast.

Still, it was obvious that she cared about Parker and he'd loosened up a lot since they'd started dating. Incredibly serious by nature, it was good to see Parker smiling more these days, even if it would've been nice to spend some time with him without Sophie always in tow... And she was always in tow.

"Hey," I said, hit with the realization that Parker probably knew more about the science classes offered by the school than I did. "What have you heard about kinesiology?"

"What do you mean?"

"I'm taking a kinesiology class to knock out my science G.E."

"You don't mean Concepts in Kinesiology, do you?" When I nodded, an incredulous expression crossed over Parker's face. "Why the hell would you take that?"

I scratched the back of my neck, suddenly worried that I'd made the wrong choice by not signing up for the Intro to Oceanography course instead. "I figured it'd be easy."

Parker shook his head in disbelief. "Kinesiology is one of the required classes for biomedical engineering."

I shrugged, not understanding. Still shaking his head, Parker continued, "That class is the reason why half of the biomed majors switch to mechanical after their first semester."

"You're joking." I groaned. "Is it really that hard?"

"I mean, I think the class average when we were freshmen was a forty-five percent, so I'm pretty sure that it isn't easy."

"Fantastic," I muttered under my breath, wondering if any other science G.E.s were still available. "Thanks for the heads up."

"No problem," Parker said, leaning into a turn as we reached the unofficial divide between north and south campus.

The longstanding joke among students at our school was that the north half of the university's grounds had all of the looks, while the south half got all of the jobs. In a way, it was probably true. Traditionally, the engineering, architecture, and general science classes were all taught on the south side, while the north boasted the film, journalism, and business schools, along with all of the other majors that didn't require their students to take upper-level calculus.

"See you later," Parker called over his shoulder as he skated away, and I lifted a hand to wave goodbye. "Don't forget, there's an exec meeting at six!"

Groaning inwardly, I cursed my drunken decision to take a spot on our fraternity's executive board for the second year in a row. Being a pledge master the year before had been fun at first, but then the phone calls from parents started coming in. By the end of the spring semester, I'd disabled the voicemail feature on my phone and only answered calls from unknown numbers when I knew that I had an hour or more to spare.

More often than not, if it wasn't some suburban soccer mom complaining that her precious child was being kept out too late, then it was an irate dad who was furious that his son had been dropped from the house. Although I always explained it in every way that I knew how, parents never seemed to understand that whether or not a pledge got initiated ultimately boiled down to how the house voted. Maybe that was the problem. How do you tell a someone's mom and dad that no one likes their kid?

But, that was in the past. This time around, my grades had precluded me from all of the fraternity's officer positions except two -- V.P. Risk Management and V.P. Campus Relations. Knowing that signing up for the former would be a recipe for disaster, I'd quietly accepted my nomination for V.P. C.R. and run virtually unopposed. Being on exec was a time suck, that was for sure, but at least it gave me something to put on my résumé, and even my dad couldn't complain about that.

Maneuvering around a parked golf cart, I tried to psych myself up -- to convince myself that no matter how things might be looking at the moment, there was still a chance that this would be a great year. My dad and his friends always loved to tell me that college had made up the best years of their lives but I wasn't sure that I believed them. The past four years had been pretty terrible for me, but maybe I was doing something wrong. It would've been nice if the bookstore sold crib notes on how to get through life.

I ended up tuning out throughout the first half of my Business Ethics lecture, largely ignoring my professor as he told us about the thirty-page paper that we'd have to submit in November. "You won't be able to finish this assignment in one night," Professor Nelson warned, his brown eyes staring out at us behind the coke-bottle lenses that filled his oversized glasses frames.

Watch me, I thought, arrogantly confident that the rest of the class shared a similar sentiment. Deep down, I knew it was stupid, but I honestly couldn't remember the last time that I'd started an assignment earlier than the night before it was due. Maybe that explained some of my lower grades but at least I always got the work done... Even if it did require the ingestion of a toxic amount of caffeine and the occasional nervous breakdown.

For whatever reason, Nelson kept his focus trained on me for the rest of the lesson and I squirmed under his unwavering stare. The paranoid voice in the back of my head cautioned that the man might be a mind reader but a quick text to Parker reminded me that I probably wasn't the first Donahue that he'd taught.

Dude, Parker's text read, he's probably afraid that Michael's come back to haunt him.

Both relieved and annoyed, I realized that Parker was probably right. Every teacher who'd ever had Michael in his or her class had been quick to compare the two of us, always holding me to a slightly higher standard than my peers simply because Mike and I shared the same last name. It was agitating, but most of all, it was depressing. Part of me wished that I could sit them down at the beginning of the year and tell them, "Look, whatever you're expecting of me, it's not going to happen."

It never did.

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I arrived early to my Introduction to Business Negotiation lecture, more than a little embarrassed that all of my classmates were freshmen and sophomores. For a solid five minutes, I internally berated myself for dropping the class during my first year of school so that I could use my Friday mornings to nurse my hangovers. Instead of having gotten it over with when I was supposed to, now I was going to be stuck babysitting eighteen-year-olds whenever we worked on group projects.

Great.

Still feeling sorry for myself, I almost didn't notice when a silence fell over the room as an attractive blonde stepped inside the lecture hall, clutching the straps of the designer backpack that she wore over both shoulders. I watched her look around, eyes wider than the Pacific as she searched for someone -- for me.

"Sophie," I called after a moment, piquing the interest of several guys who turned to look at me. I ignored them and waved until the actress' gaze met mine. I watched her face brighten and she quickly began making her way towards the row where I sat, silver bangles clinking as they slid up and down her arm. The silence turned to a chorus of poorly hushed whispers and although it felt like everyone seated in the room was staring at us, the attention didn't even seem to register in Sophie's mind. Setting her bag down on the ground, she gracefully slid into the movie theater-style seat next to mine and gave me an awkward one-armed hug.

"I can't believe we have a class together," Sophie said, her eyes twinkling with genuine excitement. "I mean, I still can't believe I'm in school. I feel like I'm in some sort of Twilight Zone episode."

I couldn't help but smile. "It gets old pretty quickly," I assured her but she shook her head.

"I'm really excited." She twisted in her seat to look behind her, as oblivious as I imagined Parker would've been to the stares that gawked back at her. "How's your day been?"

"Alright," I said, shrugging. "Yours?"

"Busy." Sophie pointed at her heavily made up face, grimacing as she gestured towards her multi-colored eyelids. "I had a photoshoot this morning, which is why I look like this."

"What are you talking about? You look nice," I said automatically, and Sophie's lips curved upwards slightly, obviously relieved by my compliment.

"Thanks," she said, her fingers flitting upwards to tug at a styled ringlet. "I actually didn't even know if I'd make it here in time but thankfully the traffic coming in from the Valley wasn't too bad."

"I can't believe you enrolled in these classes for fun," I muttered, shaking my head and wondering if this was what rich people did. Maybe her enthusiasm was all an act and she was really mocking the plight of the average Joe...

That thought disappeared as quickly as it came when she reached into her bag and pulled out a sleek laptop, along with a copy of the course textbook and a pink highlighter. "I wanted to be prepared," she explained, as she rummaged through her backpack until she found a pack of sticky tabs. I stared at her unabashedly, unsure if I should laugh or cry at her zeal.

Considering the fact that I hadn't even brought a notebook or pencil with me, I suspected that the answer fell somewhere in-between.

We chatted about her work until the professor stumbled through the doorway, a stack of papers precariously balanced in his arms. The man looked no more than thirty and his flip flops sounded with each step that he took. Sophie glanced at me from the corner of her eye as if to ask me if this was normal and I shrugged; I'd never had a professor who looked like he'd escaped from a hippie commune before.

One girl in the front row hopped up to help him but the professor smiled and shook his head as he made his way to the podium in the center of the elevated stage. The room went quiet again as he set down the documents with a loud thud and then rubbed his hands together while he hummed to himself. He looked around as he searched for something, and when he found it, he let out a triumphant, "A-ha!"

A stick of chalk gripped between his fingers, I watched as the words Professor Wood were etched onto the blackboard in a frenetic scrawl. The chalk shattered as Professor Wood drew an underline beneath his name and he simply clucked his tongue, obviously unperturbed by the lost office supply.

"Alright, then," Professor Wood said, his shoulder-length curls moving with his head as he nodded. "Let's get started."

Despite his apparent eagerness, Professor Wood lived up to his laidback appearance by promising that he'd dismiss us as soon as we'd all stood up and introduced ourselves to the class. It was a pointless exercise, largely because there was no way that I'd remember the names of fifty strangers even if I wanted to. Still, thirty minutes later, Professor Wood kept his word and said that we could go. Armed with a syllabus in hand, I held the door to the business school's main courtyard open for Sophie as we joined the rush of students hurrying out of the classroom, the younger students clearly afraid that the professor might change his mind and call us back in.

As we stepped into the afternoon sunlight, I was surprised to see Parker leaning against a wall with his hands stuffed deep inside his pockets. No longer dressed in the casual outfit that he'd worn this morning, Parker had traded his skateboard for a collared shirt and a pair of tan brogues. He looked up at the same time that I glanced at Sophie, amazed by the way that her entire face lit up when she saw her boyfriend. I turned back to see Parker walking towards us, the same goofy expression on his face as Sophie's, though he at least seemed to realize that I was still there.

"What are you doing here?" Sophie asked, and I noticed the way her voice softened as she reached out to take Parker's hand.

Parker shot me a quick look before bending down to kiss Sophie on the lips, a shorter peck than I'm sure he really wanted. "I came to pick you up," he said with a shrug, as if there was nothing else in the world that he would rather be doing.

I set my skateboard on the ground and nudged it back and forth with the toe of my shoe. "You're lucky you caught us," I said. "We got out really early."

Parker nodded. "Yeah, I figured you might so I got here ahead of time."

I raised an eyebrow. "How long have you been lurking out here?"

"Um," Parker began, considering the answer. "A while."

Beaming at him, Sophie squeezed Parker's arm and then leaned into him so that her head rested on his shoulder. He grinned sheepishly and I fought the urge to simultaneously roll my eyes and vomit.

"I'm gonna go," I said, hopping onto my board and pushing off.

Parker pulled himself out of his love-induced daze long enough to call after me, "You don't want to walk back to the house with us?"

A few yards away by that point, I shrugged and pointed to my ear, pretending I hadn't heard him. I watched Parker shake his head before returning my attention to the road in front of me and pumping my leg furiously, trying to put some space between myself and the world's most nauseatingly perfect couple. Was I jealous? The answer I kept trying to convince myself of was that I wasn't.

The truth, on the other hand, was yes.

I was very, very jealous.

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A/N: Ahh, I did it! I finished Sleaze and posted the first chapter of this story all in 24 hours. What'd you guys think? I really hope that you enjoyed it but, of course, I'm open to any and all feedback -- good or bad. :) I've been working on the next few chapters but, realistically, I think that I'm going to be on a 10-14 day updating schedule, and maybe even slower as finals approach. :c Hope that's alright! Votes and comments are always appreciated, though certainly not required.

<3 L