In Too Long (Freshman Roommates #4)

Chapter 1

I was really excited to start my freshman year.

Again.

I was leaving Wimmers Hall after my last orientation session of the week, when I saw the three girls who personified, to me, What Might Have Been.

Sydney O’Brien, Jane Winters, and Lily Spaulding were huddled together, looking at something Jane was showing the other two on her phone. Jane had a “you’re not going to believe this shit” look on her face and the other two were avidly looking at her screen.

Simultaneously, Lily and Syd lifted their heads, smiles on their faces, and all three of them burst into laughter.

I felt a pang of loss that was different than those I’d felt over the past year. Since losing my mother to a car accident.

That loss was bone-deep, almost searing pain. A black hole that I’d only recently started to crawl out of. (Only to find myself falling back into it mere days later.)

This pang was different. Watching the three girls who had been my suitemates, albeit for only a few weeks last year, it felt more of an opportunity missed. A road not taken.

Jane saw me then, put her phone away, and came my way. “There she is. “Megan Gaffney, long lost roommate. How’d it go?” She pointed to the building behind me. “Get all oriented?”

“Were you waiting for me?” I asked, surprised. When we reached each other, there was a moment of awkwardness, and then Syd reached out and went in for the hug.

I’d been hugged a lot in the past year. A lot.

In fact, one of the first hugs I received after finding out about Mom was from Syd, in our dorm room.

She’d come in as I was already packing to head back to Nebraska, leaving Maryland behind.

Though at the time I hadn’t known it would be for a whole year.

Then Lily rushed in, alerted by text from Syd, and wrapped me in her arms, rocking me back and forth. Then Jane came into my side of the suite. She didn’t hug me, just said, “That’s a really shitty break, Megan.”

And just like that afternoon a year ago, Syd hugged me first, Lily second (again with the rocking), and Jane (still not one for hugs, apparently) just hit me with some truthful words. “Sucks you missed last year. But it’s good you’re back.”

It did suck. And it was good I was back.

I’d texted a bit with Syd after I left school.

She’d send some pics of her and Jane and Lily, and updates here and there.

But when it was decided I wouldn’t be coming back to Bribury and instead staying in Lincoln, and Syd had arranged to have the rest of my stuff shipped back to me, we’d pretty much gone on with our respective years with little contact besides socials.

“It’s really great to see you all,” I said, hating that my voice caught at the end. I’d thought I was through with all that.

“You too,” Syd said. “I’m really happy you decided to come back east to Bribury. I thought maybe the closeness to University of Nebraska would win out for this year.”

“It almost did,” I said. “My dad wanted me to stay and do my freshman year there. Live at home. My aunt did too. And it would have been good to be around my brother and sister, but…”

Syd and Lily were nodding, sympathetic looks on their faces. I’d received more sympathetic looks in the past year than hugs, and that was saying a lot.

“Fuck that,” Jane said. Lily rolled her eyes and Syd sighed.

“Jane,” Lily warned.

“No, really. Fuck that. You need to live your life. Not your dad’s or your younger siblings’.”

“That’s easy for you to say,” Lily said. “Every family is different.”

That was definitely the case with the four of us.

One of our first nights living together, we’d done the rundown of homelife, and it could not have been more different.

I’d gone to sleep that night grateful (mostly) and just a little envious of their colorful backgrounds when compared to my boring, upper-middle-class, Midwestern, parents-still-together-and-in-love family unit.

“Look, I’m sure it was great to be near family last year. But, well, it sounds like you wanted to come back here. Am I right?”

“Yes,” I said. “No question.”

Jane looked at Lily with a “see?” expression. “Then it’s good you’re back. This is your do-over for freshman year. A mulligan.”

“A what?” Syd asked.

Jane waved a hand. “I don’t know. Golf term, I think.

Basically means a do-over.” She had on a funky peasant-type blouse that fluttered when she moved her arms. That and a denim skirt and chunky wedge sandals.

Syd and Lily were dressed more alike, more like me, in capri-length yoga pants, tight tee, and tennis shoes.

The typical college student uniform of early fall. At least at Bribury.

In fact, if you put the four of us together, Jane would seem like the odd man out, with her shorter bob haircut and eclectic style of dress.

But it was me who was the outlier of our foursome. Through no planning on my part. Just a fluke that I was the one who’d had to cut things short while they’d moved on with the start of the rest of their lives.

“Hmm. A do-over of freshman year,” Lily mused. She looked from Jane to Syd. “What would you do differently if you had a do-over?”

“Besides not having to leave school due to a parent dying?” Jane said.

Lily and Syd did the eye roll and sigh again, this time reversed. I might have been hurt, or pissed, but Jane’s blunt words pulled forth a laugh from somewhere deep inside me.

“See? Megan gets it. So yeah, what would I do differently…”

“Right. Any pearls of wisdom you want to pass on to someone who is about to start it all over again?” I asked. When none of them mentioned anything, I tried a different tack. “Places to go. Places to avoid. Profs to make sure I get. Or avoid.”

They all looked at each other, small smiles appearing on each of their faces.

“Definitely get Montrose,” Jane said. “But don’t try to sleep with him. Syd frowns upon that.”

I knew the bare bones about my former roommate and her former prof, Billy Montrose, now being a couple.

I was sure the story was much more complicated than I knew.

He’d mentioned her when he’d done the promo blitz for his latest book.

He’d taken quite a bit of shit about being older (though not that much older) and the power dynamic being so slanted (though because he no longer was her instructor and she no longer worked for him, that didn’t seem to matter so much), but they seemed to have weathered the storm.

And he was back here teaching this year.

“What’s he teach?” I asked.

“Intro to Creative Writing,” Syd said.

“I don’t have it this semester. My Humanities class is American Lit. Maybe I’ll take it second semester.”

“What’s your major, again?” Lily asked. I couldn’t remember if we’d talked about what we had planned on studying in the short time I was here last year. But my answer then would have been the same as now.

“I’m not sure yet. For now, I’m just getting those gen-ed requirements out of the way, you know?” I said, and all three of them nodded. They knew the drill.

“As far as other sage advice, I’ll text you the best pizza, burger, and ice cream in Schoolport,” Lily said.

“Those are definitely the building blocks of my food pyramid,” I said. “Thanks.”

“Where are you living?” Syd asked.

“I’m actually back in Creyts. Only two suites down from the one we had last year,” I said. It had blown my mind when I first realized it.

“That’s nuts,” Jane said. “Well, maybe not—it’s not that big of a school. Still.”

“I know, right?” I said. Bribury was an elite college—though not Ivy League, it was often pointed out by others—located in Schoolport, Maryland, a smallish town halfway between Baltimore and DC.

“Would you like us to text you when we’re doing a night in or something?” Lily asked. “I mean, you’d be welcome, but maybe you’ll want to hang with your new roommates instead. Build those bonds?”

I wanted to hang with these girls. The ones I was supposed to have built bonds with last year. But I also knew that they had already created those bonds. Without me.

The year that never was.

The year I spent making sure my younger sibs were okay.

“Sure. But you’re right. I’ll probably want to do stuff with my new roommates. I’m going to be living with them all year, so might as well get tight, if possible.”

Jane was nodding. “Good call. And you’re not missing much. These days we’re mostly out with our boyfriends or jobs or—”

“Campaigning,” Syd said, pointing to Jane mostly, but also a little to Lily.

Jane’s father was running for governor of Maryland. Jane had stumped for him throughout the state for most of the summer, I’d seen from her socials. “Thank God classes start soon and I could get back here,” she said.

Lily nodded her agreement. Her father was also involved in politics but I wasn’t sure in what capacity. A behind-the-scenes operator.

“It’s not just the three of us most nights now. Again, the boys,” Jane said.

“That’s right, you all have pretty exclusive relationships,” I said. Again, socials.

“You know,” Lily said, “maybe the one piece of advice I’d give you is to make sure to have some fun this year. I don’t regret meeting Lucas for the world, and I’m really happy to be with him, but…”

“Same,” Jane said. “I’m happy with Stick. But in a way I wish I hadn’t met him until this year. I wasn’t thinking I’d get so serious freshman year, you know?”

Syd tentatively raised a hand. “Also same. I love Billy, and we didn’t get together until last spring, but I do feel a bit of, I don’t know, loss over what I thought would be a fun single-girl year.”

I nodded. I got it. Happy to be where they were, but a bit sorry it came so fast.

“No problem here. I have no intention of homing in on one boy. That is so not where my head’s at,” I said.

The girls nodded and murmured things like “of course,” “understandable,” and other platitudes that I’d heard in hushed tones whenever my mental health, and grief, would come up.

Syd checked her watch and said she had to get going, prompting our circle to break up with each of us heading down a different path.

Ha! How was that for a metaphor? My path led in the complete opposite direction.

“Hey, Megan,” Jane called, causing me to turn around. “If you want to reach out, text. Anytime.”

“Thanks,” I said back, loud enough for her to hear me, but not at yell level.

“And you’ve got it so right. Don’t let any one man sidetrack you from an awesome freshman year. You waited too long for it.”

“I won’t,” I said. We both did a final wave and then continued down our separate paths.

Metaphor or not, I intended to do things differently than my former roommates.

There would be no falling head over heels for one guy this year.

Playing the field was the plan. Hookups when I felt like it.

And fun.

I wasn’t sure if that last bit was my mother’s voice in my head, or my own. Whosever wise words they were, I was going to heed them.