by Rebel Hart
3
Devon
The way Nina stared me down, even though she was nearly a foot shorter than me, struck a chord in me. Anyone who was willing to size me up despite being smaller immediately earned my respect. Also, at first glance, Nina just didn’t seem like the spitfire she was turning out to be. She was bookish, with glasses and her hair pulled back. The tips may have been dyed purple, but I had a feeling her wilder best friend had something to do with that. I expected her to be mousey when I first laid my eyes on her, but she had some fight in her.
I liked it.
I wondered briefly how someone like Nina could come to be friends with someone like Sydney, who I’d seen engage in more than one party over the summer, but it was becoming a little more clear. I guessed that Nina still wasn’t the kind of person who would totally let her hair down and get loose like Sydney, but they probably had a yin and yang thing going on.
“How do you know about Kai?” Nina asked.
I chuckled. She had spunk, but she was maybe a little dense. I nodded my head toward her computer. “You left your journal up.”
Nina’s head whipped in the direction of her computer, and her cheeks turned red. She jumped over and slammed the top down and then leered back at me. “You shouldn’t read people’s private business.”
I shrugged. She was probably right, but it was a convenient excuse. “I didn’t realize it was private, given that it was just sitting open with a bunch of people standing in the room.”
“I wasn’t the one who invited all the people into my room,” Nina spat back. “Besides, I’m not worried. I highly doubt you know who Kai is, anyway.”
I scoffed, imagining the full-of-himself teenager who’d spent plenty of time on campus during his senior year. “He’s the dean’s kid, right?” Nina had a haughty smirk on her face that faded instantly. I nodded. “Yeah. I know him.”
Nina went silent and just stared at my face. I could tell she was mulling over her options in her head. Her journal entry had mentioned having feelings for Kai and some of their history and not expecting him to be at Presper. She talked about him too much for him not to carry some weight in her life, but the fact that he’d completely brought her to a halt was curious to me.
I reached behind myself and closed the door to the dorm room. Nina eyed me, but I just leaned back against it and crossed my arms, waiting for her to make another move.
“I don’t get it,” Nina said finally. “You’re in the same position as me. You probably don’t want a girl hanging around in your dorm room, so why would you agree to something like this?”
I shrugged. “I have my reasons.”
In truth, I had just one reason—I owed Henry everything, including my life. He wasn’t just my best friend. He was the only person who stepped out of a fray of people who could give less than two shits about me to hold out a hand and pull me up out of a deep, dark hole that I’d dug myself into. We’d known each other since we were toddlers. We grew up in the same neighborhood, and as a result, we always played together. There were several kids in the neighborhood, and my brother and I were two of the many.
Everyone always loved my brother, Dante, more than me. He was my twin brother, so we looked exactly alike, and by five, it wasn’t like he’d made amazing strides in the world that I hadn’t made, but it didn’t stop people from leaning in his direction. In fact, those isolated accomplishments a five-year-old could claim, I did first. I started walking first and started talking first. None of that mattered. Dante was the golden child, and I was covered in soot. I couldn’t call my parents bad parents by any means, but if it was against the parenting creed to have a favorite child, my parents failed around the globe and back again. They fawned over him, and the neighborhood kids all wanted to hang out with him. I didn’t know what I was doing wrong, but evidently, something.
The only exception to that rule was Henry. When he came to the door to ask for friends to play with, he asked for me. When we picked teams to play kickball on hot summer nights, Henry picked me. He was the only one who was really and truly my friend, but as such a young kid, I didn’t understand how wonderful that was. I still saw all the favoritism my brother got, and I wanted it. I chased it relentlessly. I fought for good grades, I joined tons of clubs, and I tried to keep good people around me all the time, but none of it ever made a difference. Dante was favored simply because he was Dante, and when I finally realized that nothing I did was going to change that, I crashed and burned.
Hard.
I was thirteen at the time, and I started getting the kind of attention that I was looking for from some of the older guys in my new high school. They noticed that I always kept to myself and approached me, looking to make friends. No one but Henry had ever wanted to be friends with me, and I’d long since abandoned Henry, so when they proposed friendship, I scooped it up without question. They weren’t good guys, though. Some of them did drugs, and some of them dealt. They would take me to the mall on the weekends and have me distract store clerks so that they could shoplift, and the oldest one, Matthew, had a car that was stolen that he drove us all around in.
I didn’t care.
My parents weren’t going to pay attention to me, and I was never going to be the coveted Dante in their eyes. What was the point of working hard and staying on the straight and narrow if I was always going to be in his shadow? In the new world I discovered, Dante didn’t exist. There was no comparison of him to me because he wasn’t there. I was just Devon, standing on my own two feet, even if I couldn’t quite see that my feet were covered in muck.
Then came that fateful day.
It was a weekend day near the end of my senior year. I’d done what I had to in order to graduate, though my grades were barely enough. I’d dropped all the clubs I’d once maintained and spent any free time I had running around with my friends. My parents didn’t seem to notice nor care, so I had total freedom with my actions. Matthew picked us all up and said we were just going to get something to eat, but then the car was pulled over. If it wasn’t enough that the car was stolen, it was also full of drugs. The police pulled us out of the car, and there must have been some unspoken rule that I didn’t know because the second everyone was out of the car, they bolted, leaving me behind with a stolen car full of drugs, packaged to sell.
I was fucked.
The police took me to jail, and because I was already eighteen, I wasn’t entitled to having my parents around before any questioning or processing. It wasn’t even required that they were contacted. I was offered a phone call but didn’t know anyone’s number to call. They let me see my cell phone long enough to get a phone number out of it, but very few of them were helpful. It was a toss-up as to whether or not my parents would even answer if I called, and I wouldn’t dare call my brother. I had all my friends’ numbers, but they were the same jackasses who’d taken off and left me to carry the weight of their crimes. I scrolled through the phone nervously, being constantly badgered by the officer holding the phone to pick a number, and I landed on the only number that felt like it wouldn’t make things worse.
It was Henry’s.
I called, and not only did Henry answer, but he responded much like a superhero would. He told me he’d get his dad, who was a lawyer, to help me, and he happened to have a large sum of money in his savings account that he’d saved up over the years for school. He used the bulk of this to bail me out. That one little boy, the only one who’d been my real friend in my entire life—and after years of not speaking to each other—dropped everything to come and save me. I owed him my life. Henry’s dad was able to see me through the process of getting charged, and ultimately, he earned me a deal after proving I was simply a passenger. If I did some community service over the summer, the minor charge would be expunged. It was a second chance that I didn’t deserve, and it came at the hands of a man who had every reason to leave me behind.
Henry had been my best friend, nearly inseparable, ever since.
He refused to l
et me pay him back for the bail money. Instead, he told me that if I went to college with him, he’d consider us even. I didn’t like it, even if I went to school with him, which I’d already been considering, because he deserved to be paid back the money he’d shelled out to save my ass. Any attempts to argue this fell on deaf ears. Again, Henry extended a hand. Me simply improving my life would be enough repayment for him. I was grateful. I did as he asked and applied at Presper. It took hard work to get my grades to a good spot with such little time left until graduation, but I did it, and with a recommendation letter from a former club teacher and Henry’s dad, I got accepted. I became Henry’s roommate, and the rest was history.
“Are you listening to me?”
Nina’s shrill voice pulled me from my memories. “Huh?”
She crossed her arms. “Honestly. I’m trying to talk to you, and you’re zoning out.”
“Maybe I don’t care a whole lot about what you have to say.”
“What reason could be strong enough to make you want to go through all this, just to let them be in the same room? Sydney’s my best friend, too, but I’d still rather not risk my entire college career so that she can get laid anytime she wants.”
I wondered how much of their relationship Sydney had shared with Nina. Evidently, not much if she was just finding this all out today. I knew Henry had bumped into something different the night he came back to the dorm after Presper’s preview night. He’d been the chosen pre-law school representative for the night and came fluttering back through the door afterward like he’d met a unicorn. I’d never seen him so dazed and happy in my entire life, and he spent the entire night texting back and forth on his phone like a school kid. I later found out he was all sparkly because he’d met Sydney. She became a regular part of our summer get-togethers, and when Henry mentioned that he wished he’d met her soon enough to move in with her instead of living in the dorms, I was presented with an opportunity to pay back a modicum of the kindness that Henry had shown me.
“Just let her live in our room,” I’d said to him then. “I don’t mind.”
The look on his face when I offered said it all, and for the first time in a lifetime of Henry always giving, I was finally able to give something back to him. It felt good.
“I already told you, I have my reasons. The details aren’t important,” I replied to Nina.
“They’re important to me,” Nina said. “This was supposed to be a fresh start for me—none of Sydney’s antics, and no drama. I could just focus on school, living with my best friend, and getting over Kai. Now, all of a sudden, I’m rooming with a stranger, my best friend is up having the time of her life, and Kai’s wandering around.” She was flailing her arms around dramatically as she spoke. “I mean, fuck,” she hissed. “What does a girl have to do to get a little bit of normalcy around here? The RA is nuts, and Sydney pissed her off, so now she’ll be looking even more closely here. She’s definitely gonna notice you, and I’m gonna end up on academic probation.”
“Whoa!” I yelled, holding my hands out. Her rant was a borderline panic attack. “Just, will you relax? Jesus, are you always this uptight?”
“Yes!” she yelped. “And for the record, I don’t think it’s so unreasonable for me to expect my roommate to be my roommate and to not have to sleep in the same room with a guy I don’t even know. I want to do normal, college-student things while I’m at college.”
I felt bad. She wasn’t wrong. She’d kind of been thrown into this whole thing against her will. It wasn’t her fault that I was a shit-head in high school, so now I had a complex for giving my best friend whatever he wanted. It also wasn’t her fault that Henry and Sydney were too lost in one another to think about how it was affecting her. Still, if Henry wanted Sydney in his room with him, I planned to give him that. I guess I’d just have to put in a little work to make it worth Nina’s while, too.
“Why haven’t things worked out with Kai?” I asked. “You seem close, going from your journal entry.”
Nina held out her arms. “What? What does that have to do with the current issue?”
My blood was boiling a little at Nina’s incessant need to yell, but I did my best to remain calm. She had every right to be freaking out right now. “I was thinking,” I said through gritted teeth, “that I could help you.”
Nina recoiled a little, and her attitude softened. “What?”
“Guys aren’t really that complicated. Maybe I can help you figure Kai out so that instead of getting over him, you can be together.” I took a step away from the door as a sign of good faith. “What is it? You guys dated, and he cheated? You guys dated, and you cheated?”
“No.” Nina sank down onto her bed. “We never dated. We’re just really close. We’ve always flirted and stuff. There were times it felt like maybe he liked me back, but he has a girlfriend.”
“So, you just need to show him that you’re a better option?” I said. “I mean, you’re halfway there. I don’t know what his girlfriend looks like, but you’re beautiful, even if you’re loud.”
Nina’s cheeks got a little darker at the compliment. She looked up at me, her eyes suddenly sparkling with hope. “You’d really help me? Why would you do that?”
I snickered and took another few steps in and sat on the opposite bed, facing her. “I know it may shock you, considering the way you’re treating me like a supervillain, but I’m actually a good guy. Plus, I realize you’re getting the shit end of the stick here.” Nina eyed me suspiciously, and I shrugged. “Look, I’m trying to give you a little stake in the game here. It’s happening with or without your approval, but this way, you at least get something out of it. Take it or leave it.” I raised an eyebrow. “And I would suggest taking it, because the way that journal entry is written, you clearly need to get some.”
Nina’s cheeks darkened even further as her gaze trailed away. She was deep in thought, and I grinned. She had that kind of sexy, hot-cold thing going on. It was slightly confusing to me how a guy would not want to be with her, especially if she was as crazy about him as it seemed. Maybe helping her get him wouldn’t be too difficult.
Finally, Nina looked into my eyes with a resolved nod of her head. She stuck out her hand, and I took it to shake. “Okay,” she replied. “Let’s do it.”
4
Nina
It was difficult to get through lunch with both Sydney’s mom and my mom without letting on that I was still pissed at Sydney for abandoning me, but it went okay. The second it seemed like I was nice to Sydney, she took it and ran, and I just let her dominate the conversation. She talked about our upcoming first day, the school buildings being open so that students can do dry runs of their courses, and the different events going on around campus to welcome the new students. The moms cheerily discussed how proud they were of their daughters, and eventually, the meal came to a close with both mothers heading their separate ways to go home. Sydney and I walked back to the dorms.
“That was nice. My mom can be such a dork sometimes. Thanks for putting up with her,” Sydney said, and I didn’t respond. “Nina?” Sydney skipped a little ahead of me so that she could look right into my face. “Nina.”
I walked around her and continued into the East Tower. Sydney fumbled behind me, calling my name and attempting to get me to stop and listen to her, but I ignored her. I’d played nice to get through a meal with our parents, but now that they were gone, I was back to being annoyed.
Sydney charged ahead of me when we got to our door on the fourth floor to throw her body in front of the door and block it. I thought of Devon doing something similar the day before, and it made me even madder. Even if it had been borderline sexy when he did it, I’d had just about enough of people blocking my path when I wanted to get somewhere.
“Move,” I growled.
“Not until you talk to me,” Sydney said.
“I’m talking to you right now.”
Sydney raised an eyebrow. “We can discuss this inside?”
“Whatever,” I hissed.
Sydney nodded, then stood aside, and I used my key to let us both into the dorm room. Devon was still lying on Sydney’s bed, having stayed the night before. Apparently, he was a late sleeper. He was still under the covers but was scrolling through his phone and looked up when I came walking in.
“Oh, hi, strange man,” I greeted.
Devon flashed a toothy grin. “Hello.”
I rolled my eyes, threw myself down at my desk, and pulled my headphones out, preparing to put them in my ears.
“Hey!” Sydney yelped. “You said we could talk!”
I looked over at her, deadpan. “I lied.”
I turned to face my computer and started to power it on. I jumped at the sudden intrusion of another body as Sydney kicked one leg over me and brought herself down to sit in my lap, facing me, squeezing us both in between the chair and the computer desk.
“Cool!” Devon said from the corner. “Nothing like a little girl-on-girl action first thing in the morning.”
I pointed back at Devon without looking in his direction. “You shut up.” I pointed at Sydney. “You get off of me.”
“No.” Sydney crossed her arms. “I’m not moving until you talk to me.”
“We don’t have anything to talk about. Move.” I tried to push her off of me, but for her small stature, Sydney was freakishly strong. She’d been on the track team in high school and spent a lot of time at the gym. It was to my detriment now. “Ugh! You’re like a brick wall!”
“A brick wall that is going to sit on you until you stop ignoring me.”
I looked up at her. “You have five minutes.”
Sydney looked at me with disbelief. “Come on, Nina, don’t be so—”
“Four minutes and fifty seconds.”
“Ugh! Okay. Look, I know you’re mad. I really thought I’d told you about rooming with Henry—”