She likes to think she learned from her first two years of college.
In fact, Kelley is damn sure that junior year is going to be the Best Fucking Year because she learned so damn much from freshman year. Enough to make a list and pin it to the door of her room in the house, shared with Sydney and Tobin and Ali, with her blocky engineering handwriting taking up the entire page.
Rule Number One: Don’t sleep over at frat houses
This happened approximately ten times (okay more than that, but Kelley feels that she keeps her decency if the number remains low enough to count on her hands) last year and it was a mess every time. Her personal favorite was the morning she rolled off a couch at Pi Kapp and stuck one bare foot straight into a Taco Bell bag filled with, inexplicably, six lukewarm Cheesy Gordita Crunchwraps.
She hasn’t been back to Pi Kapp (sober) since.
Rule Number Two: Unless it's a top house
Okay yes, so Julie scribbled this in the first time she came over to visit their new room, mainly because she’s “totally talking to” some football player in Phi Psi and she won’t shut up about it. (she’s trying to make #TopHousesOnly trend on Twitter. it’s not working.)
Rule Number Three: Don’t puke in an Uber
This should be obvious, but given the three overdrawn charges she earned in her first semester alone, she figures it should go on the record that girls on Puke Watch should be positioned on the outside seats of any car, preferably with an open window.
Rule Number Four: If you challenge a boy to a drunken pick-up game, win.
This was actually aimed at Ali, who learned the hard way that she can’t out-play three TKE pledges in a game of H-O-R-S-E with a bottle of Fireball in one hand.
Rule Number Five: Sisters come first, no matter what
This was something Mittsy — her big and also partner in crime — taught her the hard way, leaving her crush behind at a party to carry a half-conscious Kelley home after their first football game of Kelley's freshman year. She promised she didn’t care, even during hour two of holding Kelley’s hair and playing Christmas music for her because “it helped the mood.”
The next day, Heather promised that it wasn’t a big deal as she handed her a full bottle of Gatorade and a plate of toast, but Kelley felt like shit for a week, apologizing profusely for ruining Heather’s shot with the boy.
(an unnecessary apology. he called the next day to ask Heather to lunch and they now own a tiny studio apartment together just outside of San Francisco.)
She remembered that feeling the next time she saw Morgan stumble into a wall at a party, and ditched her beer pong game to steer the smaller girl away from the boy with a leering smile and an arm around her shoulders.
Rule Number Six: Don’t be a soft-ass bitch
This means many things, depending on which roommate is reading it.
For Ali, it means not crying when she watches The Notebook, which she does basically once a month much to the displeasure of the rest of her sisters. For Tobin, it means to stop acting like she’s tipsy when she’s only one beer into a tailgate. For Sydney, it means to cuss out boys who catcall her and to actually shoot straight tequila without chaser, rather than coughing it up like she did at Pike the first time a boy challenged her to a drinking competition.
For Kelley, it means to get the hell over Alex Morgan.
Pretty much everyone in the house knows about Kelley’s crush, and pretty much everyone in the house denounces it on a weekly basis for a myriad of reasons. Mittsy said she was too much of a cliche — that whole long legs, tanned skin, designer clothes, flawless hair thing that all the Theta girls seemed to effortlessly pull off.
“There’s no substance there, I promise you,” she had said, pointed a spoon at Kelley as they ate ice cream, propped up on the back of Mittsy’s Jeep after a long day at the beach.
Sydney promised that the girl would be a bitch, and Tobin flatly drawled that she was out of Kelley’s league.
“Nobody’s out of my league,” Kelley said, and she took it as a challenge for most of freshman year. And she wasn’t a bitch, Kelley was certain of it from a few key interactions.
Item A: They sat next to each other in a snooze fest of a psychology class during first semester and, on occasion, made eye contact and rolled their eyes at the professor. When Kelley had soccer games, Alex took haphazard notes in a neat script that she studied carefully when she was alone in her dorm room. Once, after finishing a test at the exact same time, they walked to Starbucks and chattered about the upcoming football game and their preference of East Coast autumns over the warm weather of a California November.
Item B: The first weekend of second semester, Alex had startled Kelley into dropping the ball while she was juggling in the Kappa front lawn. She wordlessly motioned for Kelley to pass her the ball, and they ended up kicking around for almost an hour. It became a regular occurrence on the weekends, a kind of mindless pastime that worked to cure Kelley's hangovers better than any combination of coffee and brunch could ever achieve.
Item C: Her eyes crinkle up at the corners when Kelley makes a joke, when they bump into each other on campus and hug and make worthless promises to grab coffee sometime. They seem to shine with some type of shared secret, and even though it probably means nothing, even though she probably smiles like that at everyone it's nonetheless enough to make Kelley soften slightly whenever she sees Alex.
And that's what is completely unacceptable, what she won't be doing this year. Because of Ali's argument, the strongest argument of them all.
"She's straight," Ali said almost immediately the first time that Alex retreated back into her house after an hour of kicking around with Kelley. "Don't even try."
She's probably right, but Kelley would never say that, which is about the most Kelley thing possible.
But this year, she needs to get on with it, because there are "bigger and better things to do" as Morgan is always reminding her with a grin. So this year, she won't be a soft ass bitch.
This motto is first tested on the final night of rush.
They're absolutely exhausted, worn out from a week of fake smiles and overly wide smiles and dull conversations, and as excited as they are for bid day, Kelley knows that her friends are even more excited for their first drinks in two weeks.
Which is why she accepts immediately when two of her friends in Pike shoot her a text inviting them to an unofficial party at a senior's house.
Two hours later, she lets herself into the gate, a 30-rack of Natty Lite dangling in one hand and a grin splitting across her face when she sees a familiar face.
Jake is a year older and two inches taller, built with a slender, wiry frame, dark hair cut short, tan face coated in freckles. They share a major and a love for Fireball and they're mistaken for siblings at least once a week, and Kelley has never met a better guy in her life.
"My dude!" Jake catches her a bone-crushing hug, immediately grabbing at the beer. "I'll take that off your hands."
"Give me something hard, please Jake, I'm dying." Kelley clutches at her chest, feigning a heart attack. "If I don't take a shot I'm going to die."
"Shots then shotguns?"
Kelley responds with a sloppy smile, and Jake swings an arm over her shoulder before guiding her towards a table covered in handles of various liquors.
It's half an hour later and Kelley has sucked down two beers and three shots and she feels off balance in the most wonderful way. And then she looks up and a pair of green eyes are fixed on her and she nearly drops her third beer.
"Kelley, my wonderful frat star." Jake's eyes are glittering with amusement. "This beautiful girl needs a beer pong partner and, since you're practically a gentleman of Pike, I figured I would offer your services."
Jake cocks an eyebrow at her and it's a very clear message — get your shit together — because Alex is beaming at her like she's the second coming of Beer Pong Christ and if she's ever had a shot it's hinging on the next three seconds.
"You brought her to the right place." Kelley juts her chin out slightly, a challenging grin filling her face. "I'm not exactly the type to lose."
"Same." Alex meets her eyes. "Sounds like we're a good match."
It's not flirting.
That's what Kelley tells herself when Alex brushes her fingers against her wrist to signal that she should go first, or when she presses the flat of her palm against Kelley's back in celebration when she nails a cup in her first shot. It's also not flirting when Kelley leans into the contact, shooting a wink and a cocky grin up at Alex and grinning even wider when she sees Alex flush slightly (from the beer, of course, nothing else).
Alex takes her first shot and misses the table. Kelley groans, dropping into a crouch and covering her face.
"It wasn't that bad," Alex whines petulantly, knocking her foot against Kelley's back, and she stands, grabbing the taller girl by the arms.
"Alex, that was historically terrible." She forces her tone to assume a grim tone. "I thought you were cute as hell before, but I need you to pull your weight.
(that was also the beer, nothing else, because Kelley is not a weak-ass bitch and she's totally and completely over this weird little crush)
Before she can acknowledge the increasing (beer-induced) flush in Alex's cheeks, Jake shouts something vulgar across the table and Kelley whirls to toss a "fuck you" back, planting her palms on the table and letting loose a string of insults until Alex grabs her by the shoulders, shaking with laughter.
They win by one cup, then lose horrifically to the following team (Kelley is 90 percent sure that Jake kept missing on purpose to give her more time to coach Alex on her shot) and somehow they end up sitting side-by-side on the brick wall behind Jake's house, feet dangling close to one another, fingers wrapped around the necks of bottled beer that's several notches higher in quality than Natty Lite.
"So what are summers like in Georgia?" Alex takes a long swig, leaning over slightly to study Kelley's face. She does her best to make eye contact, but something about the way Alex watches her cuts right into her.
"Hot. Long." Kelley pauses to take a drink. "Straight."
"Straight?" The question comes out as a laugh.
"There's not exactly an excess of gay girls in the deep South." Kelley shrugs, grinning around the lip of her bottle. "Summers are long."
"So you have a lot of time to make up for." It's a statement not a question, and suddenly the slight way their elbows are brushing is too much skin contact for Kelley to handle.
She lets out a huff of air in response, shrugging and taking another swig of beer to bite back the snarky comeback bubbling in her throat.
The silence simmers.
"I pulled my weight." Kelley glances up and Alex is grinning. "In beer pong. I pulled my weight."
"That's debatable—" She kicks at Alex's ankle, dirty Converse leaving a slight smudge on her calf. "You hit two cups."
"Exactly!" Alex holds up two fingers, shoving them in Kelley's face. She snatches at them, tugging at Alex's hand and dragging it into her lap. "Two whole cups."
"Out of nine." Kelley smirks. "I know you're a political science major but you have to know that two is not half of nine."
(Alex is looping their fingers together but Kelley tries not to notice because that's definitely not flirting.)
"Well do you still think I'm cute?" She tilts her head a little and Kelley notices in this moment just how glassy Alex's eyes are. "Even if I didn't pull my weight?"
Kelley drops her eyes for half a second and tries to figure out where the hell her mojo went. Then she looks back up, and Alex is studying her carefully, so she nods slowly, a smile forming.
"You're alright." She lets her eyes flick slowly up and down Alex's body. "I might make you a temporary BP partner."
"Temporary?" Alex fakes looking shocked but she's smiling around it. "Screw you."
"Is that an invitation?" Kelley takes a final swig, finishing off the beer, and she's barely pulled the glass away from her lips before Alex is shooting back a response that nearly knocks her off the wall.
"I mean, yes."
(that's not even flirting, it's just direct honesty and it's more than Kelley had honestly ever hoped for when it came to Alex.)
She's watching Kelley with raised eyebrows and she can't really find any words, so to avoid stuttering through some half-assed comeback Kelley leans over, plants a firm hand on Alex's waist and kisses her.
It lasts a handful of seconds because the second Kelley starts kissing Alex she realizes she's never going to want to stop. So she pulls back, hand fisted in Alex's shirt and breath coming short, because her lips tasted like cherry but they also tasted like vodka and tequila and beer and as much as it felt right, part of it also felt wrong.
"You need to get home," she says, and Alex sways as if on cue, and then it's a long walk back to Kappa with the taller girl leaning on her side.
"Brunch. Tomorrow." Alex says the words firmly, and Kelley realizes with a pit of dread that she's gone suddenly quite soft for this girl who she's sure will ignore her in the coming morning. So she kisses Alex on the cheek, stumbling across the street and practically crawling up the stairs to her room.
"Where the hell did you go?" Ali asks, vaulting onto her feet from her lofted bed, and her eyes narrow in a combination of amusement and sympathy when Kelley groans out the answer and flops into her bed.
"It's the first night of the year," she says, watching Kelley as she covers her face with one arm. "You have the rest of college to not be a soft-ass bitch."
Kelley nods in agreement, already half-asleep.
(she dreams of half-finished beer and cherry chapstick.)
She's woken up the next morning with a knock on her door and a shout that she has a visitor. Kelley stumbles downstairs in a pair of oversized boxers and a sweatshirt, one sock on and her hair frizzy from a restless night of sleep, and she turns beet red when she sees Alex standing in the foyer.
"Brunch," Alex says, and there's a smile curling her lips as she takes in Kelley's messy appearance. "I keep my promises even if you sleep through them, dork."
Kelley feels a smile forming, and for once she doesn't mind that her smile is soft or that she doesn't have a comeback, because Alex Morgan is standing in her house, in a little black dress with a cheesy little grin, and she maybe possibly (definitely) has a date.
(she was lying before. she'd been flirting the whole damn night.)
Rule Number Seven: Don't piss off Abby
This should be a no-brainer because Abby yells and swings her hands around and is goddamn impossible to calm down when she's angry, but Kelley put it on there anyways. Just in case.
(she pisses her off anyways when Abby walks in on Kelley in her room during a kickback with her hands up Alex's shirt and her mouth pressed into her collarbone. she gets the normal dose of yelling, but honestly, she doesn't care.)