“Cool. I’ll tell her we’ll be right back.” Then I hesitated. Blair’s sister was here somewhere—she was an upperclassman and we were staying at her apartment tonight—but I had no clue where she was. I didn’t want to leave my roommate with a creep. “He’s not gonna be a jerk, is he? I won’t leave her alone with him if he is.”
“Who, Beekman?” Oliver snorted. “Nah, he’s harmless.”
“Okay, give me one sec.” I went over to Blair and whispered in her ear. “Hey. Oliver and I are taking off for a bit. We’ll be back.”
She held up one finger at Beekman and turned to whisper back, “Are you sure about this? I still think it’s a dumb idea.”
“Yes. I’m sure.” I rolled my eyes at her doubtful expression. “Look, I just want to get it over with. It’s my choice, so quit harassing me about it.”
“Okay, okay,” she said, giving me a hug. “But come back fast or I’ll be worried. And be careful.”
“I will.” I made my way back to Oliver. “Okay, I’m ready.”
Outside, the late autumn air was crisp as we walked down High Street from uptown Oxford toward the cluster of dorms on the edge of campus. On a Saturday night, the sidewalks were crowded with students heading out for a good time. We seemed to be the only ones walking in the opposite direction.
“This campus is pretty,” I said.
“Yeah.”
“Do you like your classes?”
He shrugged. “Yeah.”
“Your roommate seems cool.”
“Yeah.”
It was like trying to talk to a brick wall, but that was okay—I hadn’t come all this way for sparkling intellectual conversation. Well, technically, Blair and I’d come all this way to visit her sister, but I was also on a personal mission.
“You ever get back together with that girl?” I asked, pulling my hands inside my sweater.
“What girl?”
“The girl who dumped you right before prom. The one who gave the good blowjobs.” It had only been five months since that night, but it felt like forever ago. Going away to college had made my former life seem as if someone else had lived it.
Oliver laughed. “Oh yeah. Caitlyn.”
“Right. Caitlyn.”
“No, we didn’t get back together.”
Good. A girlfriend would have been a complication. “How’s your family?” I asked.
“They’re good. Hughie got into Harvard’s MBA program so my parents are all fucking geeked.”
“Harvard, wow.”
Oliver grumbled something I didn’t hear.
“And how’s your sister, Charlotte?”
“Fine. She came down with my parents to visit last month.”
I’d pretty much exhausted all topics of conversation by the time we were climbing the stairs to Oliver’s third floor dorm room. As we walked down the hall, which—as suggested—did smell pretty terrible, like a locker room and old, sweaty laundry—he did ask me one question. “You like Purdue?”
“Yeah. It’s pretty cool. I ended up with a great roommate, so that helps.”
“This is it.” He stopped at a wooden door with a dry erase board on it, upon which was written EAT MY BALLS. He unlocked the door and pushed it open, gesturing for me to go in first.
It was a typical dorm room—two twin beds and two desks with utilitarian lamps attached to them were along the walls. One of the lamps was on. The window was straight ahead, shade down, and there was a closet on either side of the door. No rug on the wood floor. One navy blue comforter and one blue and white striped. Neither bed was made, and there were random baseball hats, sneakers, and sweatshirts tossed around. It was a stark contrast to my dorm room—Blair and I had matching paisley comforter sets for our twin beds, a coordinating rug, and decorative pillows, thanks to a shopping trip to Target we’d arranged beforehand. We kept it pretty neat.
“It’s nice,” I lied, taking a tentative sniff. “And it doesn’t smell too bad.” It smelled sort of good, actually—like the cologne Oliver had been wearing the night of the prom. The night we’d kissed on the lounge chair. I hadn’t forgotten about that. In fact, I’d thought about it quite a bit since then. It was one of the reasons I was here.
Folding my arms across my chest, I moved farther into the room. I heard Oliver sigh and the door shut behind me.
“Which one’s yours?” I asked, glancing at the beds before looking back at him.
“That one.” He pointed to the striped comforter and I sat down at the foot of his bed. That’s when I noticed the monogrammed sailboat sheets. Of course.
I bounced on his mattress a few times, trying to work up the nerve to say what I’d come here to say.
“So what do you want to do?” he asked, shoving his hands in his jeans pockets. “I’m kinda hungry. We could go—”
“I want to have sex,” I announced, looking him right in the eye.
His jaw dropped. “What?”
“I want to have sex.”
“With me?”
“Yes, with you. Why else would I be in here?”
“I have no fucking idea.” He shook his head. “Ever since you texted and said you were coming here and you wanted to hang out, I thought it was weird.”
“What’s so weird about it? We’re friends, aren’t we?”
“Yeah, but …” He struggled for words. “I didn’t know this was what you meant. I haven’t even heard from you since prom.”
“I know.” I lowered my head a little and peeked up at him through my lashes. “You still mad about that night?”
“Kind of.” He crossed his muscular arms over his chest. He’d filled out a little since coming to college. “You fucking baited me into messing around with you, and then you took off.”
“I didn’t bait you. I dared you.” I leaned back on my hands and swung my feet. “It’s not my fault you couldn’t resist.”
A scowl appeared on his face. “Well, I’m not having sex with you.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s a trap. You’ll dare me to take my pants off or some shit, and I’ll get all worked up, and then you’ll decide at the last second that you don’t really want to fuck me, you’re just mad at your dad or something, and you’ll—”
“Oliver, that’s not what this is.”
He eyeballed me warily and took a step back, dropping onto his roommate’s bed directly across from me. “Then what is it?”
I took a breath and launched into the speech I had prepared. “I put off having sex when all my friends were doing it in high school because I wanted it to be right and meaningful, with the perfect guy. But now I think that’s stupid.”
“It was stupid then too.”
I ignored that and went on. “The longer I put it off, the more it builds up in my mind. I want to get the first time out of the way so it doesn’t feel like such a big deal.”
“Are you drunk?” he asked, squinting at me.
“No! I haven’t had a drop of alcohol tonight.” I stood up and started pacing back and forth between the two beds. “Look, all my friends are being pressured into having sex with these total assholes who don’t respect them and treat them like shit. I want my first time to be on my terms with someone I know and trust.”