Hunter's Prompt Responses - 5. Prompt 538 - “I need to find a way to make this right.”

“I need to find a way to make this right.”

I knew I shouldn’t have done it, but I didn’t expect anyone to find out and for it to blow up in my face as badly as it did. Alexa and I were taking the same major, so of course we had the same classes at Northwestern. That’s where I met her, at a guest lecture on structural engineering. It didn’t take long for us to figure out we played for the same team, but as the only two girls in many of our engineering classes it did mean we were subject to the whispers about how fitting it was that both girls in class were lesbians AND dating each other.

But, I needed to find a way to fix things. It wasn’t my fault that we were in the same group project, it was just some random assignment done by the professor that put us together. Or at least I think it was random. Either way, we’d done a group project and of course with group projects we get to evaluate our peers.

We did exactly what you think we did. We said we were perfect. Cue the gagging, I don’t mean that kind of perfect. I mean we both deserved perfect scores for our work in the project. Although she is pretty perfect. Tall, wavy brunette hair and the fullest lips I’ve ever seen.

We did a lot of the work on our own, trying not to be distracted by the glances our group mates had for us anytime we did work as a full group. It was easier than having to be around them, and we actually got our share of the work done faster than if we had to keep coordinating our schedules around the other guys in the group. It was easy to stay motivated too; once we’d finished the section we needed to do that day, we had other activities to spend our time on that were much more enjoyable.

We thought we had gotten away with it too. I mean, these are supposed to be anonymous and submitted only to the professor for him to use as part of his marking scheme. There shouldn’t have been any way that the rest of our group found out, but if they hadn’t, we wouldn’t be having this wonderful meeting we’re on our way to. We decided to go together, walking through campus on the way to meet the people who think we’ve cheated them out of needlessly taking marks away from ourselves. The whole concept was ludicrous, it wasn’t like we were mean to any of them, we just might have been a bit generous to ourselves.

The walk was nice, and we decided to hold hands. My charcoal skin clashing prominently with her alabaster tones. We made an interesting pair, at least for people who saw us. At least she wasn’t resting her chin on my head. That got old fast, but it usually meant a hug was coming so I put up with being her headrest.

It’s funny, on the way to the school library no one paid any attention to us. Campus as a whole didn’t seem to see anything weird about a lesbian couple, but our engineering classmates couldn’t stop talking about it. Two different worlds, I suppose.

When we got there, I took a deep breath and looked up at Alexa. “Ready babe? They’re pretty mad, think it’ll be okay?” I asked.

“You worry too much, Shonda, we haven’t done anything wrong. We’d have marked each other similarly even if we hadn’t been dating. Right?” She replied.

I nodded, and we went in to face the three boys who felt we’d wronged them.

All three were sitting at a table, with the two remaining chairs on the opposite side of the tables empty and presumably meant for us. The inquisition style of seating didn’t bode well, and it was a bit of a petty way of trying to intimidate us.

We both sat down, still holding hands and I noticed the looks on each of their faces when they saw us come in like that. They were still mildly uncomfortable with the whole idea of two girls together, and I felt like that was an opportunity for us to have all of the issues between us as people brought into the open.

“So you’re both finally here. Good” That was Tyler, the self-appointed leader of our group who bossed everyone around and didn’t actually do much that we didn’t have to fix up afterwards.

“And you’re still trying to pretend like you’re in charge. At least that’s going to stay consistent” Alexa returned.

Oh good. Thirty seconds into this meeting and we were already having a conflict. This was going to get interesting.

“You two marked each other really well. Better than we think you deserve and it’s better than we marked either of you. Any reason why you gave each other such good marks, other than the obvious?” Spencer asked, leaning back in his chair.

I decided to take the question instead of having Alexa bite his head off too. I loved the girl, but she was fiery.

“We’d been doing a lot of work outside of the main group meetings, and since we worked together on those aspects of the project we knew better than any of you what was involved. We felt that our contributions were strong enough to merit perfect scores, especially when we compared how much work we got done on our own to how much work was done during our full group sessions.”

Alexa took that time to add her two cents. “That, and we spent a lot of time fixing the design aspects that you submitted as part of the project. Fixing your mistakes as well as doing our own part of the project took time, and we noted that accordingly in our review of your performance.”

That, predictably, brought three looks of male indignation to their faces. Alexa had a talent for saying exactly what would drive the knife in deepest with people, especially when she was upset like she is right now.

Tyler stood up, so maybe Alexa had gone too far. “Listen here, we don’t care that you’re dating, but don’t pretend that this whole project was done because of you two and that we held you back. You threw us under the bus, and it’s pretty clear that you’re not interested in making this right. Since you’re not interested in fixing things, we’ll just let the protest process play out. See what happens once the prof and faculty deal with it.”

The remaining two boys stood up and left the table, with Alexa and I staring back in shock at what’d happened.

“I guess they didn’t really want to fix things, but now they could at least say that they’d tried and we’re the ones at fault” Alexa said, ever the cynic.

I was worried. We didn’t really think we’d done anything wrong, and it was all a matter of opinion. I didn’t want to face an academic investigation because of this, but that seemed to be where it was going.

“Babe… could we have stopped them?” I asked.

“Probably not. Just let it be, we’ll be alright” she replied. “Let’s go back to the apartment. We have other classwork to do, we may as well do something productive instead of worrying about those three.”

We got up, and with a final sad look back and the boys retreating forms, we headed out the same way and turned back towards our apartment, hand in hand. Alexa standing confident