Page 8 of Play With Me

“Yeah, it’s fine. My best friend from home’s moving up here once we close on our house, but she’s itching to get out of New York. She found a studio up here and wants to crash there until our place is ready.”

Brooks, who’d mostly been quiet until now, piped up. “And that’s… bad.” Glad he said it.

“It’s not a studio apartment. It’s a literal art studio, she’s a ceramicist, and she wants to use all of her rent money to lease it. She won’t have a real place to live, and a ceramic studio has so much shit you don’t want to be breathing in.” He inhaled and exhaled audibly, lifting a hand to greet Mike a few tables over. “We’ll figure it out.”

Brooks spoke up again. “She single?” We all burst out laughing.

“No.” Hasan’s smile never wavered. “I mean, she is, technically, but not for any of you assholes.” The table erupted in false indignation. I smiled on one side of my mouth as I sipped my beer. “Yeah, Hawkins already threw his hat in the ring this morning when he jerked off to her making a smoothie on FaceTime.”

Fuuuck.

Hasan looked like the cat that caught the canary, and the guys were on their feet, hooting and hollering and generally making a racket like sixth graders at the lunch table. Eilidh stared daggers at me from the other side of the bar, but softened when she saw they were smiling.

“I’m only telling this story once, so shut the fuck up. Bust my balls all you want, but if any of you dipshits ever make her feel uncomfortable over it, Hasan’ll rip your arms off and beat you with them,” I said.

Ah, let’s hear it now—I’ve been waiting all day! Put on a show like your old man taught ye.

Ortiz slapped his hand on the table. “We need another round.”

4

The Third Roommate

Boston, MA

Will

Classes had been in session for a few weeks, and Hasan was easily the best roommate I’d ever had, aside from one glaring issue: Lou. There was close, there was beyond close, and then there was Louisa and Has. I’d never judge anyone for weirdness in relationships developed during stressful circumstances—and I got the impression that those two had been through some shit together—but living with it was harder than I expected.

Don’t get me wrong—I liked her a lot. Too much. She was funny and had a smart mouth. She could give as good as she got. It wasn’t even that I couldn’t be myself around her. She was unapologetically herself, which made it easy. I talked to her more than Hasan most weeks, and when we were all hanging out, shooting the shit, she felt like one of the guys.

But our dorm was one shared room.

Twice already, Hasan had left his call running—once while he was in the bathroom, once when he wandered down the hall—and I’d come home without realizing I was on camera. It was like having another roommate living in my closet, and I never knew if she was home or not unless I remembered to check behind the door.

Nothing embarrassing had happened yet, but the possibility was enough.

The whole thing made me anxious in a way that was hard to communicate without sounding like a complete asshole, but it felt like I had to put my pants on before I got out of bed in the morning, for Chrissakes.

When I explained the situation to Mom, Ortiz, and Eilidh, they all agreed it wasn’t ideal and suggested I try to get out more.

They reckon you’re due a bit of action, is all.

It wasn’t terrible advice. It had been a while for me—a couple of months now. During a weekend in Vegas with some of my buddies from The Stumps, I became some poor schmuck’s ex-wife’s first fuck post-divorce-and-new-tits, and it’d been… tolerable at best.

I’d never gone out with the goal of getting laid, but I do love women. I love being around them—how they laugh and smell and taste. How soft they are and how hard my cock gets when they take their clothes off.

Unfortunately for me and my dick, whether it’s just about sex or sex and friendship, I go hard for older women. A college campus was not the right playground, but between my family, coursework, and NROTC commitments, I didn’t have the motivation to go out and pick up women at bars. I made the mistake of venting about it to Hasan—and by default, Louisa—a couple of weeks back, and she’d been relentless about setting me up with one of her girlfriends ever since.

“Rachel just turned twenty-seven. She swore off JDate and has been exclusively hooking up with blonde, bisexual men to piss her parents off, but based on her reaction to a screenshot of you, I think she’d be willing to make an exception,” Louisa offered.

I took the toothbrush out of my mouth and spit into the sink. “Tempting, but I can’t start something with a friend of a friend right now. It’s too complicated.”

Truth is, I wasn’t about to tiptoe through a double-dating minefield with Has when I was still inconveniently attracted to his girlfriend. I wasn’t hard up enough to add her friend to that shit sandwich. Has and Lou kept it platonic around me, and Lou was a flirt, so while I suspected they weren’t exclusive, I already knew I couldn’t stomach seeing them together in a different context.

“I am pretty fuckable, aren’t I?”

Was I doing it again? Maybe. Probably. The girl who always chose the seat next to me in Technical Writing was getting more and more attractive by the day. She was cute and obviously interested. We probably exchanged names that first week when I wasn’t paying attention, and now she’d been sitting next to me for long enough that it would be weird to ask. Cue Operation Jane Doe.