A/N: So this is an idea I've been toying with for a couple of years, but I finally decided to sit down and write it. I know it's short, but this is just a little intro. I hope you like it. :)

August 1995

Casey dropped her heavy suitcases on the ground and tried to take in her surroundings. She felt like a college freshman all over again. Instead of the apartment she had lived in last school year with her friends, she was now in campus housing and she was assigned a roommate that she hadn't met.

Casey didn't have a traditional college experience, but she had lived it to the fullest. There were no frat parties or going Greek, but she had spent four years as a starting pitcher on an NCAA Division 1 softball team. Her games had been televised on ESPN, she had pitched in the Women's College World Series and she had her fair share of achievements in the classroom—graduating Summa Cum Laude and publishing an article in her school's political science journal—but those were her undergraduate years. With the flip of a tassel on her mortarboard and the calling of her name at a graduation ceremony, Casey went from an accomplished college senior to a first-year law student. She knew nobody and nobody knew her. To make matters worse, she had no idea what to expect from law school or if she would even survive her first year. This wasn't just any law school she was attending. Casey Novak had made it into Harvard Law School and the show was about to begin.

Alex Cabot walked into her one-bedroom apartment near Harvard that was no bigger than the size of a closet in her childhood home. It may not have been the most spacious or most glamorous place she had ever lived in, but it was the first place that was ever truly her own—well, as much of her own as it could be considering she was renting the apartment and sharing a bedroom with her best friend and fellow law student Abbie Carmichael.

Abbie wasn't the easiest person to live with, but Alex loved her regardless. It had to be love if she was willing to spend countless nights on the couch while Abbie bedded nameless women whom she'd promise to call and then throw away their phone number the moment they left.

Alex would never admit to it, but she liked to live vicariously through Abbie because Abbie had the gall to do what Alex never could. Abbie had at least two women each week—sometimes two women in bed with her at once while Alex had gone without sex since—now that she thought about it—she had never really had sex with a woman. She had offers, many offers, but she never felt as if the time or person were right. She had the grades and a promising future awaited her after graduation, but there was something or someone missing in Alex's life. Alex Cabot was a third-year law student and a hopeless romantic—the most masochistic combination.