Was Jackie’s date invented to get her out of the friend zone?

The Washington Post story U-Va. students challenge Rolling Stone account of alleged sexual assault offers “Jackie’s” friends’ explanation of how Jackie came to go out on her date with the man she told them had orchestrated her rape.  Given the way the WaPo story is written it is somewhat difficult to follow, and I have to wonder if this isn’t intentional.  I might be reading the WaPo story wrong, but here is what I gather from the article:

Jackie was friend-zoned by a fellow freshman the story calls “Randall”.  Sometime after Randall gave her the LJBF talk, Jackie started talking to her group of friends (“Randall” “Andy” and “Cindy”) about an attractive guy in her chemistry class who was interested in her (I’ll call him chem guy moving forward).  Jackie provided her friends with chem guy’s phone number, and they started exchanging texts with him.  Chem guy explained that Jackie was amazing, but that sadly she was interested in some lucky freshman and not chem guy.  The lucky freshman isn’t named but all indicators seem to point to Randall, who coincidentally was one of the friends receiving the texts.  Chem guy even texted pictures of his studly self to Jackie’s friends, which WaPo describes as pictures of “a man with a sculpted jaw line and ocean-blue eyes”.

One day Jackie announced to her friends that she was going on a date with chem guy.  This is the night Jackie’s friends say she told them she was raped, and chem guy is the man her friends say Jackie told them orchestrated it.

The pictures of chem guy Jackie’s friend provided to WaPo appear to be social media pictures of someone Jackie went to high school with:

The Post identified the person in the pictures and learned that his name does not match the one Jackie gave friends in 2012. In an interview, the man said he was Jackie’s high school classmate but “never really spoke to her.” 

…

“I have nothing to do with it,” he said. He said it appears that the circulated photos were pulled from social media Web sites.

Chem guy continued to communicate with Randall even after the rape:

After the alleged attack, the chemistry student who Jackie said had taken her on the date wrote an e-mail to Randall, passing along praise that Jackie apparently had for him.