Chapter 2 #2
Jo (roommate): remember that cutie we saw in the cafeteria
We’d seen them from a distance while eating lunch this past Monday, the first day of classes. Jo had taken one look at them standing at the self-serve salad station with their beachy, golden waves and corduroys and whispered, “Oh my god, they’re like a ray of sunshine!”
Buzz.
Jo (roommate): okay, well, i win our bet. their name is Macy. they’re a sophomore and they’re from California and i think I’m in love.
Jo (roommate): also i need the room for a while
Jo (roommate): this is my prize for winning. sorry not sorry
Jo (roommate): seriously though, do text me when you need to come home tonight. or even better, go find a hot guy to sleep with. and then text me to let me know ur ok <3
Shit.
Fine. That’s fine. My night might suck, but there’s no reason Jo’s needs to. I’ll just hole up in our common room for an hour or two before I kick Macy out.
This was not the plan for tonight. I was supposed to be hooking up (successfully) with a cute boy, preferably someone whose name I actually knew, and preferably in a bedroom instead of a bathroom.
Maybe if I had exercised a single goddamn bit of patience and not seized the opportunity of the first boy who met my questioning smile with a grin, I would still be mingling and enjoying myself, and Hot Boy from Spanish Class wouldn’t be hiding somewhere, clutching his groin.
Except the issue doesn’t seem to be with the guy. It seems to be with me. Specifically: with my vagina.
I drag myself up the flight of stairs leading to my floor.
For the past week, this climb has thrilled me.
I finally have a room of my own—not my childhood bedroom, but a bastion of autonomy.
But right now, every step sends a cramp shooting through my uterus, and the echo of my unsteady footsteps in the stairwell sounds like a dirge.
The thing about growing up and moving out of your parents’ house is that suddenly your problems are actually your problems. The hand-holding stage of my life is over, and for the first time, I’m not feeling good about it.
Not that I’d be tempted to walk into my parents’ bedroom and start crying about how My vagina clammed up when a boy tried to finger me! and No, Mom. I didn’t catch his name before I let him suck a purple bruise onto my collarbone!
But still.
Maybe I would’ve just cried and told my mom I’d had a bad day, and we would’ve gone to our favorite coffee shop to get iced chai lattes and gossip about the other teachers at her elementary school.
Or maybe my dad and I would’ve put on a low-budget 1980s horror film, as we’ve always done on low-key weekend nights.
Now my only company is an empty stairwell and an off-limits bedroom.
As I swing the door to the fourth-floor common room open, a blast of cool air hits me.
It’s mid-September in Boston, and although my Floridian brain associates this time of year with temperatures in the upper eighties, there’s fifty-some-degree air seeping into the common room through the windows, which have been thrown wide open by one of the many people in my dorm who grew up in New England and feed off fall weather like it’s an addictive drug.
For them, it’s a mood-boosting high fueled by apple picking and hot cider and weird-looking boots from L.L.Bean, but for me, it’s more like a withdrawal, leaving me with full-body chills and a never-ending flow of snot.
The chills and snot currently afflicting me may be from the brick-wall-vagina situation, but I’m happy to blame it on the open windows for now.
I collapse into a beanbag in the corner of the common room, the beads making quiet rustling noises underneath my body.
I don’t sink into it as much as I expect to, and it feels like I’m sitting on top of a rock with a slight indentation in the shape of my butt.
Cursing, I let my head fall back and knock against the wall.
“You good there?” a voice says from my right.
“Jesus,” I say, whipping my head to the side to find a vaguely familiar and somewhat confused face studying me from another beanbag about ten feet away. My neighbor, I think—room 412. Across the hallway from my room, 413.
“Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you.” His coffee-colored eyes crinkle as he looks at me, brows pinched with concern even as the rest of his face is soft with calm energy. Dark brown waves frame his face in a disorderly way that is confusingly contradictory to his otherwise buttoned-up appearance.
I scan him from head to toe. “Looks like you’re ready to party, huh?” I ask, the combination of anxiety and alcohol in my bloodstream erasing any type of filter I might normally have.
He chuckles, brushing the question aside unselfconsciously as he looks down at his light blue button-down shirt, the sleeves rolled up to just beneath his elbows. At least he’s wearing navy blue pants and not khakis.
“Homework,” he says, lifting up his book by way of explanation. The Symposium by Plato. “This is my only plan for tonight.”
“Thrilling.” My plans for the night were not supposed to include an anti-social teenage boy reading philosophy, but somehow this is what we’ve come to.
“Are you okay?” he repeats.
“Huh?” I stare at him blankly.
“You sat down and immediately started cursing.”
“Yeah. I hate this beanbag.”
“Is that why you were crying?”
“I wasn’t crying,” I lie. The obviously false nature of this statement makes him raise his eyebrows and smile, which makes me giggle, which makes him chuckle.
And suddenly, we’re both laughing, and I don’t even know why. My laugh is a hysterical giggle, but his is a quiet, breathy sound. It’s a subtle noise, even while the amusement on his face is obvious. His eyes light up, turning from coffee to caramel.
“I’m not trying to be nosy,” he finally says. “I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”
I blink before responding, startled by his sincerity. “No, it’s okay. That’s nice of you, actually.” He gazes at me expectantly, and I realize my mouth is still open as if I’m going to continue speaking, so I do. “Boy problems. Sort of. It’s complicated.”
He nods but doesn’t press me. “We’re seven days into college, so if you’re already having boy problems, I’d say you’re still a step ahead of the rest of us.
” The corner of his lips quirks up into a half grin, and my eyes are immediately drawn to a small dimple on the left side of his face.
My eyes flick back up to his, and as he realizes I was staring at his mouth, the other dimple forms.
If he were someone else, if we were somewhere else, if this were sometime else, maybe I’d find those dimples swoon-worthy. But right now, all I can think about is how much I don’t want to be in another intimate situation. Sorry, pal. Better luck next time.
“I’m Emma,” I finally say.
“Yes, Emma, I know that,” he says, frowning slightly even as the playful glimmer remains in his eyes. “We’ve been living across from each other for a week.” I cringe, and he takes the hint. “I’m Harrison. Harrison Carter.”
“Bond. James Bond,” I respond, and when he looks confused, I roll my eyes. “We’re eighteen. You’re not supposed to introduce yourself with your last name.”
He studies me intently, tilting his head to the side. “Bond is his last name, though. So, it would be ‘Carter. Harrison Carter.’ Not ‘Harrison. Harrison Carter.’ ”
“I think my point stands regardless.”
“Well, now you’re at an unfair advantage. You have more information about me than I have about you.”
I’m not sure whether he’s trying to be funny, but I grin anyway. “Emma. Emma Rogers.”
His dimples form in response. He pushes off with his feet, sliding the beanbag closer to me.
When he’s close enough, he reaches out his hand, and I lean forward to shake it.
The contrast between this interaction and the prior interaction with Hot Boy from Spanish Class is so stark I have to bite my lip to keep from laughing, because here I am, about to shake hands with this guy who reads philosophy alone on Saturday nights.
My plan was to hook up with someone tonight, and on a scale of Forced Group Project (1) to Hooking Up (10), this interaction falls no higher than Friendly Dining Hall Chat (3).
Good work, Emma. You’re absolutely killing it tonight.
As soon as our hands make contact, he flinches. “Good grief, your hands are ice.”
I shoot him a guilty as charged look as I pull my hand away and bury it under my thigh, trying to warm it. “You curse like my grandmother.”
“I get that a lot.” He gives me a lopsided smile, and I bite back a giggle.
“Cold hands are the primary symptom of being a Floridian in Massachusetts. I’m not built for fifty-degree weather.”
“Florida, huh?” A mischievous grin slides over his face.
“Yep. I grew up on an alligator farm. And my parents are swamp boat tour guides. I had the quintessential Florida childhood.”
“Seriously?” he asks, then adds, “Wait, people farm alligators? Why?”
“For meat?”
His eyes widen in alarm. “You’ve actually eaten alligator meat?”
“Tastes like chicken.”
“You’re joking.”
“Nope,” I say, fighting back a smile at his wide-eyed look. “Well, not joking about the meat tasting like chicken. I was joking about living on an alligator farm, though. My parents are teachers, and we live in the suburbs. Literally could not get more boring than that. Where are you from?”
“Connecticut,” he says, offering no further explanation.
“You’re from Connecticut, but you want to laugh about Florida? That’s rich,” I say, laughing.
He grins sheepishly. “I guess time will tell whether I’m an asshole with a superiority complex.”