The motley group passed out colorful drinks without having to ask whose was whose. They even had a Coke for Roxie. Then, without any ceremony, Ashley leaned in, grinning like a goblin spotting a big red button labeled DO NOT PUSH.
"So," she said, voice loaded with promise, "Dianna claims you literally fell face-first off a bus. Full rom-com energy. First day of the semester. Confirm or deny."
Roxie froze mid-sip. Her fingers curled around the base of her glass like it might protect her. "I mean… technically… I stepped off the bus. Then the sidewalk just… wasn't where I thought it would be."
"She ate shit," Dianna added, sipping through her straw with the unbothered grace of someone testifying in court.
"Dianna," Roxie hissed, scandalized.
"Oh, I'm sorry," Dianna said, feigning innocence. "Are we rewriting history now? Because you went down like a majestic tower. In slow motion. I half-expected Ave Maria."
Roxie opened her mouth. Closed it. Tried again. "Okay—yes—there was a moment where I briefly lost my footing, but—"
"She hit the ground like someone dropped a mattress off a balcony," Dianna continued, grinning wider. "And I didn't even think. Just dropped to my knees like—bam—triage mode. Full hot nurse instinct. Had her vitals before she even remembered what shoes were."
"I was fine," Roxie mumbled. "I just needed a second to calibrate."
"She blinked like a baby deer with whiplash," Dianna said dreamily. "It was adorable. And hot."
Emily giggled into her straw, which caused the margarita to bubble and splash on Ashley's nose. "You were turned on while she was potentially concussed?!" Asked the softer of the two.
"Oh, she wasn't concussed," Dianna said sweetly. "I checked. Pupils equal and reactive. Pulse a little high—"
"Because I was embarrassed," Roxie groaned, half-buried in her hands.
"—no fractures, no bleeding. Just a bruised ego and a divine jawline."
"I was sweating," Roxie whimpered.
"And radiant," Dianna finished, voice suddenly-solemn. "Like a saint with road rash."
Ashley wheezed into her hoodie sleeve, as she wiped off the offending booze. "Please stop. I can't breathe—"
Elizabeth raised one hand like she was chairing a committee. "Point of order: how long after the fall did you ask for her number?"
Dianna shrugged. "Didn't have to. She asked me."
Roxie let out a high, undignified squeak. "To be fair, I wasn't hitting on her! I just—she seemed nice and I needed help finding the housing office—"
"She needed help," Dianna said, deadpan.
There was a beat.
Emily slapped the table. Her fairytale sensibilities fully under assault. "Wait, full damsel in distress?!"
"I was having a bad day!" Roxie wailed.
Ashley's grin went full pyromaniac. "Can't have been that bad! It led to you shacking up with a total baddy."
Roxie slumped onto Dianna with the drama of a woman surrendering to fate. "I hate all of you."
Tiny raised his glass. "To romantic trauma and fate!"
"CHEERS!" the Pack echoed, raising their drinks in chaotic harmony.
The laughter had barely begun to settle before Roxie lifted her head. Her cheeks were still pink, but her spine had straightened. Then Roxie looked across the table.
"All of that is true," she said, her voice soft but clear. "I did fall. She did tend to me. She went full emergency-room angel in the middle of the quad while I tried to remember what shoes were."
"You were very dazed," Dianna added, sighing wistfully and looking up at the taller woman.
Roxie nodded. "I was. But that's not what made me want to stay."
The table quieted, just a touch. Not silent, but listening.
"She walked me to the student housing office," Roxie said. "I wasn't hurt. Just… humiliated. But she insisted. And she was kind. Not loud, not uncomfortably flirty, just…" She looked sideways. "Gentle."
Dianna blinked, genuinely startled by the softness in Roxie's tone, as if she'd expected a punchline and got a hand on the heart instead.
"And then," Roxie went on, warming to the memory, "we found out we both speak Sindarin. Fluently."
Ashley's jaw dropped. "Excuse me?"
"You mean—Elvish?" Emily gasped.
Elizabeth blinked. "Like… Tolkien Elvish?"
Roxie nodded sheepishly. "Yeah."
Dianna grinned. "She said something in it first. I asked about her name and told her it sounded like it was almost Elvish. And she said it was ironic. When I asked why, those beautiful syllables fell out."
"She stopped dead in her tracks," Roxie said, and tousled Dianna's hair which earned her a playful hiss. "Then she asked if I really spoke Elvish and we started talking in it, like we were old friends."
Ashley nearly knocked over her glass, as she half-stood, ears up tail wagging excitedly. Emily caught the tail with a practiced hand whilst Ashley blurted, "You're telling me your meet-cute included a public wipeout and spontaneous Elvish?! What kind of nerd soulmate prophecy bullshit is this?!"
"We both grew up on the books," Roxie said, hands fluttering a little. "It just… happened."
Jorge clutched his chest. "I'm going to cry. I'm going to throw up and then cry."
"You're disgusting," Emily told them, beaming as she guided Ashley back into the booth via her tail. "This is the worst. I'm obsessed."
Elizabeth's voice went soft. "It's actually kind of beautiful. Like a fairy tale. If the fairy tale involved minor head trauma and emergency paperwork."
"I hate you both," Ashley said, in a huff, crossing her arms dramatically. "I've never wanted to be someone's emotional support raccoon more in my life."
And then Dianna leaned in.
She dropped her voice an octave, just enough to wrap around the table like velvet—her stage whisper in Roxie's ear was a targeted attack.
"Lúg nín na le," she murmured.
Roxie's eyes snapped wide. "Oh my God—" She seized a napkin and swatted blindly in Dianna's direction, fully blushing now. "You did not—"
Emily reeled back. "Wait, wait—what the hell does that mean?!"
Roxie groaned, clearly scandalized. "Don't ask."
"She said it in Elvish," Ashley screeched, tail wagging excitedly again. "It has to mean something sexy!"
Elizabeth, already typing into her phone, muttered, "Sindarin, present tense—"
"It means," Dianna announced proudly, "my body is yours."
Emily screamed.
Ashley made an unholy sound like a boiling kettle. Then turned to Emily, "Bitch, we are getting that tattooed!"
Roxie was half-laughing, half-melting. And trying to hide behind her hand. "That's so lewd..."
Dianna smirked and leaned against her shoulder like nothing had happened. "Hook, line, and linguistics."
Tiny popped his fingers up and started counting then stopped. "Hey Big Momma, how many languages do you speak?"
Roxie, still trying to recover, just whined, "Five. I speak five languages, if you include Sindarin."
Jorge nearly spilled his slushie—only saved by Lizzy's casual hand nudging the cup upright before it tipped. The man blinked, then blurted, "Ay dios mio... You serious?"
Roxie nodded and looked up sheepishly. "Farsi was first, then English because we became Americans, Latin for the Mass, Sindarin because I wanted to, and now I'm working on Spanish." She took a sip of her drink to steady herself. "My Spanish is still rough but I can get my points across and give people directions if they need it. My next one, once I'm fluent in that, is going to be Japanese or Mandarin."
Dianna was floored. "Oh Jesus, I am so fucked..." She had never known that. Five languages? She stuttered through two! But here was Rox just casually ticking them off on her fingers like she was filling up a Pokédex. In five goddamn languages.
Plates then began to arrive in waves—sizzling mozzarella sticks, a mountain of nachos that looked like it had survived a war, and at least three orders of fries already half-decimated by the time someone noticed. The table looked like a battlefield of joy: crumpled napkins, greasy fingerprints on cheap paper menus, and drinks in neon colors passed hand to hand without discussion.
Jorge had just finished recounting how Roxie might actually be a cryptid made of dead languages when Ashley froze mid-bite, a mozzarella stick dangling like a weapon of truth from her fingers.
"Wait a damn second," she said, eyes narrowing like a terrier who'd caught a laser pointer. "Something is missing from this story... Dianna didn't tell you?"
Roxie paused with her Coke halfway to her lips. "Tell me what?"
Elizabeth leaned back against the booth wall, one eyebrow lifting in polite disbelief. "Oh, she's serious. She really doesn't know."
Dianna's voice dropped to warning levels. "Guys. Don't."
Emily gasped like she'd just witnessed nudity at a royal wedding, blinking rapidly. "She didn't drop the band line?!"
Roxie blinked. "The what?"
Jorge grinned and leaned forward across the clutter. "You know—'I'm in a band.' It's her one pick-up line. That's the opener. That's the closer."
Roxie tilted her head, slow realization dawning. "Wait... you're in a band?"
Dianna groaned. "I mentioned it once."
Ashley accidentally inhaled cheese as she tries to gasp mid-nacho. Emily gently patted her back as Ashley wheezed out, "Once?! Girl, you used to staple flyers to your own backpack!"
Elizabeth added, "She introduced herself to my grandma as 'Violet, vocals, no autographs please.'"
"I was joking!" Dianna whinged, "Oh, c'mon! I got more respect for Mama Morris than that!"
"You were in eyeliner and a floor-length velvet cape."
Dianna collapsed facedown onto the table, a muffled groan escaping as her friends dismantled her social defenses with surgical precision.
Emily nudged Roxie with a sly grin. "You haven't seen her perform yet, have you?"
Roxie shook her head, hands cradled around her glass, voice quiet. "I didn't even know."
Ashley leaned over the table, mozzarella stick wagging like a pointer. "She's amazing. Like, full-on leather and screaming and vampire royalty. Her stage name's Violet. She once hissed at a guy and made him cry."
Dianna's head thunked against the table, like she was adding punctuation with her face.
"You skipped the band intro," Jorge said. "Damn. You must really like her."
Dianna didn't respond. She was clearly weighing the pros and cons of faking her own death.
Roxie watched her, a fond smile twitching at the corners of her mouth. She shifted her hand slightly, brushing crumbs off her napkin like she needed something to do with her fingers. Then, just above the din of the booth, she asked—softly, sincerely—
"Would you… sing for me sometime? If you wanted to. No pressure."
The table went still in the way only real moments can silence chaos.
Dianna sat up slowly. Her expression was unreadable at first—caught somewhere between surprise and something softer. She looked at Roxie like she wasn't expecting the question to be so gentle. Or to matter so much.
"Yeah," Dianna said, a quiet smile curling her lips. "Yeah, I think I'd like that."
Ashley promptly made a noise like a broken tea kettle trying to escape its own body.
Elizabeth just smiled and propped her chin on one hand. "That's the look," she said, to no one in particular.
Emily raised her slushie like it was communion. "To band girls who fall hard and sing harder."
"CHEERS!" came the cry around the booth again, Ashley howled in victory, and this time Roxie raised her glass with them—just a heartbeat behind, but glowing all the same.
The booth had taken on that middle-of-party sprawl. Napkins crumpled, stray fries cooling on a shared plate, drinks diluted into pastel ghosts of themselves. Someone had ordered more mozzarella sticks. No one remembered who. But they were half gone and still warm, so the party continued.
Dianna had shifted again—naturally, unthinkingly—until she was fully settled in Roxie's lap, back pressed to her chest, the kind of comfort earned through sleepless nights and shared shampoo. One of her boots swung lazily beneath the table. Roxie's arms had circled around her at some point. No one questioned it. This was simply how the scene arranged itself.
"You're in a band," Roxie said, softly, like the realization had only just clicked into place. She wasn't teasing. She wasn't even trying to impress anyone. Her voice was all hush and wonder.
Dianna stilled—but didn't interrupt. Roxie was doing it again. And Dianna loved it.
"It just… makes so much sense now," Roxie went on. "Of course you are. You're the archetype made flesh. You walk through the world like a song only you can hear. Head high. Music braided into your veins."
Ashley looked up from her sauce-doodled napkin. Emily blinked, mozzarella half-raised to her mouth.
"You're jagged and rough but… beautiful," Roxie said, like she was painting the words into air. "Like marble before the sculptor. You're not broken. You're just wild. Like something half-tamed by the gods and set loose again."
Her arms tightened slightly around Dianna's waist, unconsciously protective.
"And that night at the living room—DDR—it wasn't just a game to you, was it? It was a challenge. A question. Could I move in your rhythm?"
Dianna's head tipped back slightly, just enough to glance up at her with something unreadable.
Roxie's voice dropped to a reverent whisper. "She's the suffering minstrel given form. Every step she takes is cradled by some invisible music. She sings because the world would break her if she didn't."
Silence.
Until Roxie blinked, looked around, and realized—everyone was staring.
Her whole face went crimson. "Oh my God. Did I say all that out loud?"
Dianna made a small choking sound and hid her face in her hands.
Ashley's chair squeaked as she turned toward the others. "Holy shit. Dianna wasn't kidding!"
Emily slapped the table. "She does just do that!"
"She opens her mouth," Jorge whispered, "and out comes a fuckin soliloquy."
Tiny nodded solemnly, fries forgotten. "She's like if a haiku got hit by a truck full of feelings."
Elizabeth raised her eyebrows at Dianna, who was now half-buried in her roommates arms, clearly dying of secondhand affection. "You told us she did this. I thought you were exaggerating."
Dianna peeked through her fingers. "I told y'all."
"She wasn't showing off," Ashley breathed, delighted. "She was possessed by the spirit of language."
Emily melted into Elizabeth's shoulder. "Can someone write that down? That was like… I don't know, courtship from another dimension."
Jorge flailed with one hand. "No, no—she just casually described our goth queen like she was a bard in a tavern. That wasn't flirting. That was epic poetry."
Roxie whimpered and tried to hide her burning face behind Dianna's hair.
Dianna turned her head slightly, just enough for her voice to reach Roxie's ear, equal parts smug and starstruck. "I knew you liked my boots. But damn, babe."
Roxie buried her face in Dianna's shoulder and muttered, "Never speaking again. I'm done."
Ashley raised her glass. "To Roxie's accidental soul-exorcisms and Dianna's face when it happens."
The Pack roared, chaotic harmony restored. Then the absurdity of what happened got to Tiny.
At first it was just a low rumble, like someone trying not to laugh in church. Then it grew—into a belly-deep, full-throated, helpless howl.
"Music braided into her veins?!" he wheezed, slapping the table so hard the ketchup packets jumped. "Bro, you're killin' me!"
The entire table detonated.
Ashley cackled so hard she wheezed. Emily doubled over with a choked squeak. Jorge literally slid out of the booth and onto the floor, gasping for air. Elizabeth just pressed her face into her hands and howled.
"Y'all!" Dianna managed between breathless snorts. "I'm trying to look cool in her lap—stop making this harder!"
"Too late," Emily wheezed. "You're a song! A suffering minstrel!"
"I didn't mean to—!" Roxie started, but her voice cracked into laughter too, hopelessly swept up in the wave.
"She said—" Jorge flailed as he tried to crawl back up, face red from laughing, "She said 'wild like something half-tamed by the gods!' Broooo! That's romance novel final boss energy!"
Tiny gasped, still chuckling, "I ain't never heard someone describe eyeliner like it was a sacred relic before."
"I was having a moment," Roxie tried to defend, her voice pitching high as she clutched Dianna like a life raft. "It just came out!"
Ashley slammed her palm on the table. "We know! That's why it's perfect!"
"Bitch said archetype made flesh," Emily muttered, eyes glassy with laughter. "I swear I almost levitated."
Even Dianna, caught in the epicenter, couldn't pretend to be cool anymore. She turned slightly in Roxie's lap, cheeks pink, eyes glowing. "I'm not even mad. That was... the most embarrassingly beautiful thing anyone's ever said about me. I'm honored. Horrified. Aroused. Mostly honored."
Tiny wiped tears from his eyes, still grinning. "Man, I love you two. Y'all are the worst in the best possible way."
Elizabeth finally resurfaced from her hands, glasses slightly askew. "Okay, okay—point of order: Roxie is never allowed to write wedding vows. Unless we all get front-row seats and a defibrillator."
"Seconded," Ashley gasped.
"Unanimous," Jorge croaked from the floor, finally giving up on getting back into his seat.
After he managed to get ahold of himself, Tiny leaned forward, forearms on the table, grin like he was about to light a match and toss it into a haystack. "So, Big Momma—I heard you're religious."
The nickname hit Roxie like a poke and a compliment. Her brow twitched, but she didn't rise to it. She just nodded, posture still soft. "Yes. I am. I was baptized when I was five. And I've only missed three Sunday Masses and one Easter Vigil in the past thirteen years."
Tiny gave a low whistle. "That's dedication."
Roxie shrugged, almost bashful. "I'm just a marshmallow. Jesus does the heavy lifting."
Dianna choked on her drink.
She hadn't expected that answer. It hit her somewhere between the ribs and the spine—a line so simple and unguarded that it made her feel… what? Smaller? Humbled? Hungrier?
She couldn't stop staring.
But the moment didn't last.
Because it was a setup.
"Oh yeah, we know," Tiny said, grinning like a man about to commit war crimes. "Dianna brags about it all the time."
"Tiny—" Dianna warned, but it was already too late.
He launched into falsetto—some unholy mix between Bluey and a drunk Mick Dundee.
"Oh Tiny, you should see her! She prays for people whilst she cooks rice! And she quotes scripture in daily life, like it's no big deal! And she gives the softest hugs, even when I'm being bitchy, cause she said that's what Christ would doooo—"
The table howled.
Roxie blinked. She had curled instinctively inward, caught between embarrassment and disbelief, her face flushed like a sunburn. But she wasn't angry.
Not really.
Dianna was.
"I told you that shit in confidence, you oversized asshole!"
A napkin went flying. It struck Tiny in the face and he caught it like it was part of a sacred ritual.
"Don't look at me like that," he said innocently. "We all knew you were gone for her the minute you described her voice like it could resurrect the dead."
"I didn't say that."
"You said," Tiny cleared his throat dramatically, "'It's like velvet and fire and gospel and maybe it's just cause I'm broken, but I wanna lay my sins in her hands and see if she thinks they're worth keeping.'"
Dianna groaned and dropped her head to the table with a muffled thunk.
Roxie blinked again. Slowly.
Elizabeth leaned over and patted Dianna on the back like she'd just lost a bet. "It was kind of beautiful, in a wildly unhinged way."
Emily nodded, teary from laughter. "Poetry, really. Filthy, emotional poetry."
Tiny wasn't finished. "Oh! And then she told us all about your little habits," he added, looking back at Roxie. "How you walk around like you're dreaming half the time—but when someone talks to you, you laser focus. Like they're the only one who exists."
"She's not wrong," Elizabeth muttered, sipping her drink.
Tiny grinned wider. "Did you really set your notebook on fire once cause someone got you talking about—what was it, Di?—'early pre-Raphaelite works' or some shit like that?"
Roxie let out a noise that could only be described as a slow, dying whistle.
Dianna sat back up, pink-cheeked, glaring daggers at everyone and no one. "I swear to God, I am never telling any of you anything again."
But Roxie was staring at her now.
Open. Flushed. Still very much trying to process the idea that Dianna had spoken of her—softly. Had remembered things about her that even Roxie forgot.
It was too much. It was too kind.
Dianna glanced back, caught the look, and froze like a deer in a chapel aisle.
For one moment, they just stared at each other—caught in a silence no one else noticed. Not quite smiling. Not quite breathing.
Still no kiss.
Still no admission.
But something curled in the air between them like smoke from a prayer candle.
And then Jorge, unhelpfully, farted from laughing too hard. Ashley nearly fell off the booth.
And the moment was lost. Or, no—not lost.
Just saved. For later.