Mr. Perfect? Is that supposed to beme?
I look down at my cock straining against my sweatpants, all from the sound of Mike getting a blow job from a random girl outside my door, and it all comes rushing back.
Jason.
Pain.
Disgust and hate and everything else that comes with this need inside me that I can’t push down.
The hall is empty again, I can tell. It’s confirmed by the sound of Mike’s door shutting. I don’t listen for anything else. I don’t touch myself. I pick up my earbuds and turn the movie all the way up, and hope that these feelings go away.
They don’t.
“Thanks for letting me stay over,” I say, throwing my duffel down on the spare bed in Ryan’s room. His assigned roommate was a no-show, so he’s got the room all to himself. If only the RA weren’t so serious about the rules.
When I asked to switch a week into school, it was a very clear no, leading me to the situation I’m in now.
I drop onto the bed, burying my face in my hands. “I can’t do it anymore. He’s got a new girl over every night. Last night, it was two! At the same time!” I look up at him to punctuate my point, that I’m losing it.
He must see that because he winces in sympathy. “Jeez, dude. I thought things were alright. That he wasn’t that bad?”
“So did I! But I was clearly wrong. And now, I’m living with some kind of—”
“Some kind of what?” He asks, sitting down on his bed across from me. I lay back, staring up at the ceiling, questioning every choice that led me to this moment. I even miss my creepy old roommate at this point.
At least the dude didn’t bring home random girls every night and make me listen to him fuck them, wishing I—
No.
“I don’t know how long I can keep staying there. This was supposed to be better, and now, I’m right back where I started.”
“Offer still stands,” he reminds me, the way he always does, every time we talk about this, that we could get a place together. And this time, I actually consider it. Because at this rate, if I don’t find a solution soon, I’m gonna end up back home at Nate’s house, staying in my childhood bedroom, and commuting to school.
This was supposed to be different.
“I’ll think about it.”
Chapter 6
“Someone drank all the milk,” I inform Mike, who’s sitting at the kitchen table with a massive cup of coffee and a donut, nursing what I’m sure is a brutal hangover.
He groans, dropping his face onto the table.
What did I ever see in this dude?
Seriously.
I’ve spent the last three weeks pining over, obsessing over, this complete mess. It’s Tuesday morning, and I’ve got stats in half an hour, and the milk I bought yesterday, that I wrotemyname on, is gone.
I think uh… what’s her name?” He sits back up, looking to the ceiling for the answer. “Jessica! No. Jenna! No.” He waves a hand in the air. “Either way. She needed it for her coffee. I figured you wouldn’t mind.”
I look down at the empty carton, my fingers indenting into the cardboard. “She neededallof it?”
“I don’t know, man. Can’t you see I’ve got a headache here?”
Yes, I can see that, and I don’t care.
I pour the tiny drop of milk Jessica or Jenna or whoever didn’t drink and throw the carton away, being as loud as possible about it. Slamming the refrigerator and the silverware drawer. I drop my glass bowl down onto the table hard, letting it clatter against the table loud enough to make Mike wince.
