Will has turned into an excellent wing-man, but he has hooked up with very few girls himself. Considering that, and the amount of time he spends with our neighbors, I was worried I was going to have to do some detective work and figure out if he had a vagina. When he joined the intramural rugby team, he put my mind at ease a bit. I’ve been to a few games, and fuck, those guys are crazy! No vaginas allowed, for sure. I usually tag along and go to the games to watch, and when I see Will after the game with Vivian, I can barely contain myself. There isn’t anything going on between them, but it still pisses me off to no end that she thinks so little of me, and yet so freely spends time with him. When I see her hanging out with Will, watching movies and eating in the dining hall together, my jealousy spikes, and I swear I could spit nails. When I first met Red, I was merely interested in fucking her, but the more I’ve been around her, she has somehow found her way under my skin. I’ve used half of the female population on campus to try to exorcise her from my body, erase her from my mind, but then I see her, and she wiggles right back in.

Every day after our class together, I come back to the dorms hoping that she’ll invite me to hang out like she does Will. It has yet to happen. I don’t dare invite myself over without Will. Bulldog Jen would not take too kindly to that, and I have become quite fond of my balls; I’d like to keep them. I swear those girls think Will walks on water, while I am the green goopy scum under a rock. I have yet to meet their elusive fourth roommate, Campbell, but I’m sure word of mouth has given her a pretty similar opinion of me. Really though, they can all kiss my ass; I have nothing to apologize for, and the only person’s opinion that I even care about is Vivian’s.

Once again, I make the lonely pathetic trek from Comp class to the dorms, and I’m met with disappointment. Today, Vivian didn’t even come back to the dorm. Instead of Red at their door like I was hoping, it’s a dark-haired Goth chic, which I can only assume is Campbell. At first appearances, I can’t imagine that she fits in well with the other girls. She is completely and utterly punk rock, with her short choppy hair, tattered jeans, Nirvana tee-shirt, and purple Converses. We are a month into school and Jen hasn’t done any fashion magic on her, so I would say that she’s a pretty independent strong-willed girl who won’t get pushed around. I haven’t even talked to her, and from that assessment alone, I like her.

Her eyes slide to mine as she starts to push the key into the lock. Her notice of me catches me off-guard, and I fumble with my keys trying to avoid the awkwardness of being caught staring. She smiles for the tiniest of milliseconds, but it gives me just enough of a reprieve from feeling like the king pricks of the ninth floor. “Are you going to stand out in the hallway all day, or would you like to come over, Brooks?” she says, directing her attention back to the lock.

Shit, she already knows my name, which can be no big deal, or the most likely option, my reputation precedes me and she already hates me like the other girls do. My brain pounds with the possibilities of why she would invite me over. Running my fingers through my hair, pulling the ends to snap myself out of the mental clusterfuck I have rolling around in my head, I take a deep breath and put my keys back into my pocket. “Campbell, right? Are you sure it’s alright that I come over?”

She laughs and opens the door. “Jen’s not here; you’re safe for now,” she says, walking through the threshold, leaving me in the hallway to make up my mind. “What the hell,” I say under my breath and follow her into the living room, taking a seat on their couch. My leg won’t stop bouncing, and I try to calm down by wringing my hands together. It feels so weird being here without Will, my safety net.

After placing her backpack on the long wooden desk that runs the length of the living room where the girls have lined their computers, she walks down toward the bedrooms without saying another word. I look around like I’m being set up on some kind of sick and twisted joke. Kneeling down on my hands and knees, I lift the bottom of the giant purple sheet that they have used to cover the tacky brown couch to see if anyone is hiding underneath, but the only thing I come up with is a black high heel.

“You know, if you really want to play dress-up, I’m sure Jen would call a truce long enough to give you a tour of her closet,” I hear Campbell say behind me, halting my movements. My ass is still straight up in the air while my head is half-under their couch.

“Um, sorry, I dropped something and it rolled underneath, and I found this under there.” I stand, dusting myself off and handing her the shoe, hoping that she believes my little fib.

She accepts it, but throws it back under the couch, and turns to head toward their kitchenette. “Would you like a soda?” she says, opening their tiny fridge.

I have no idea what is happening, but I’m pretty sure that in the last five minutes, she has broken about a million girl code rules. My opinion of her has skyrocketed from admiration, to where I might have her name tattooed on my ass. When I don’t answer her right away, she grabs a soda for me, shoves it into my chest, and walks past me. The pop of her soda lid brings me back to the present, and I sit back on the couch across the room from the recliner where Campbell is slouching with both legs hanging off the sides. She looks completely comfortable with me being here; she’s not flirting, not nervous…it’s like she’s just one of the guys.

“Don’t you think someone is going to miss their shoe?” I ask, opening my Coke and taking a drink. The tension in my shoulders eases as she begins to talk, and I realize this is what it’s like to have a friend that’s a girl. She is being nice for no other reason than to be nice to me, and the newness of this feeling, this situation, has me buzzing.

“Of course Jen misses her shoe,” she laughs. “She is constantly losing her things because she leaves her shit everywhere. We all know that those are her favorite heels and we know exactly where it’s at. We have a bet going how long it will take her to find it.”

Exuding comfort and approachability she speaks to me with such ease that all of the anxiety from being in this dorm room, and any fear of what she may or may not think of me, vanishes. I melt into the cushions, allowing myself to feel the fabric, taking in the lavender scent of the room, and hearing light rock music softly playing in the back bedroom. No wonder Will spends a lot of time here; the only thing that would make this scenario ideal would be if Vivian was sitting here with me and I had my arms wrapped around her.

“Well that’s seven shades of fucked up; I thought you guys were all friends?”

“We are, but the princess needs to clean up after herself. That shoe has been there since the first night they went dancing. I found it while cleaning up two weeks later, and that’s when Vivian came up with the bet.” She smirks like she’s been privy to the plot of a lifetime, which is endearing considering it’s just a damn shoe. I hear Red’s name and I sit up straighter on the couch; fuck, even her name winds me up. My stomach feels like curtains of hair being twisted around a round wire brush.

“You know she actually does like you, right?” Campbell says, setting her soda down on the brown coffee table between us. It looks just like ours, shit. The covering has been peeled away in patches, exposing the particleboard underneath, but the girls have done a decent job of masking it with random placemats and a huge wooden bowl filled with pine cones in the center.

Swinging my leg up on my knee and leaning into a throw pillow, I settle into a conversation I’m not sure I want to have. The idea that Vivian might actually like me, has my heart racing, but I try to remain cool and collected, logical. “Yeah, I don’t think it would matter who exactly you’re talking about; all three of your roommates like me about as much as a nurse likes laxative day at the nursing home.”