by Mia Archer
“There’s a chance someone might wander in and figure out what’s going on,” I said. “I figure that’s what makes it so much fun. We’ll just have to be careful and sneaky.” I turned and gave her my best sultry stare. Admittedly it wasn’t a very good sultry stare. I didn’t have any practice, after all.
“Are you up for it?”
Sarah nodded as though she was in a daze and then followed me. I took her hand and gave it a good long squeeze. Butterflies danced in my stomach. I felt my legs almost go out. It was like they’d turned to rubber as we walked back to one of the shower stalls and pulled the curtain shut. As I turned the water on and we both yelped as cold water hit us for a moment before it turned warm.
These stalls really weren’t designed for more than one person to comfortably fit in them, but for the moment that was just fine with me. Even though we were both still in our suits, I wasn’t quite ready to go so far as to take them off, the tension between us was electric.
I turned around so my back was to Sarah and pulled my hair up. I let the water wash over me and enjoyed just standing there with her for a perfect moment. This was something I was always going to remember, and whenever I was in one of those moments that I knew I was always going to remember I figured it was a good idea to stop and enjoy what I had while I had it.
“Would you mind getting my back?” I asked.
It didn’t feel too weird asking her to do that even though I was still in my suit. I’d showered in the suit plenty of times before when I was in a hurry. There was a moment of hesitation then Sarah reached out and got some soap. Her hands ran along my shoulders and I squeezed my eyes shut and let the feelings wash over me.
“I really have been having a good time with you lately,” I said.
Sarah paused. Odd that she would hesitate now of all times when it seemed like we were hurtling forward full speed ahead.
“I have too,” she said. “I… I think I really like you Alyssa. Like, I really like you.”
I spun around. That pulled her hands away from my shoulders which was a bummer, but I wanted to look her in the eyes for this. I wanted to see her face.
“You like me? Or maybe more than that?”
Sarah’s mouth worked and I giggled. I leaned in and brushed my lips against hers. “I’m not talking about that word. Not yet. I think what we have going here is definitely more than friends though, don’t you think?”
Sarah licked her lips and nodded. “Were you thinking like girlfriends?”
Sarah nearly fell back against the wall as I leapt into her arms. It was a good thing she was so strong and there wasn’t much soap in the stall yet, otherwise we might have both gone tumbling. In retrospect it might not’ve been the best or smartest thing to do, but I was overwhelmed by the moment.
“Yes,” I said, and I leaned in for another kiss.
I lost track of time after that. Suffice it to say we were very busy with each other until we heard the telltale sound that meant practice was almost over. Voices. No more swimming so people on the team had time to talk.
We got out of there pretty quick out of that. Well before anyone came into the locker room where they might see us and suspect something. Not that I cared. Sarah was my girlfriend and I wanted to shout it to the world.
Only maybe it wasn’t a good idea to get caught making out in the shower stalls. We could tell the girls on the team about our new relationship status later.
As we walked away from the natatorium hand in hand I peeked over at Sarah.
“What are you thinking about?” she asked.
“How do you know I was thinking about anything?” I asked.
“Because you have that funny look on your face,” she said.
I stuck my tongue out at her and we took a few more steps before she prodded me again.
“So are you going to tell me what’s on your mind?”
I sighed. “I was thinking about the dorms in the fall.”
“Yup. Gonna be interesting staying in one. I just hope we get close to each other. I had to go in for the random lottery.”
“I had to go in for the random lottery too,” I said. “Thing is, I was looking on the university housing website a few nights back for no particular reason…”
Sarah turned to me and cocked an eyebrow. “Yeah? And what did you find there?”
“Well maybe I discovered that it’s not too late to switch to an assigned roommate. If we wanted to do something like that for whatever reason…”
I felt a little tingly all over. This felt almost as intense as when I was trying to get her to come out and say how she felt about me. I could totally understand why she wouldn’t want to stay with me considering the turn our relationship just took. I’d been looking up roommate stuff when I only thought we were friends with a hell of a lot of simmering tension, but it was a whole different situation now.
Sarah smiled. Squeezed my hand and leaned in to give me a kiss. “I think I like that idea.”
I took her other hand in mine and stopped walking. Had another one of those moments where I stared her in the eyes. This was a situation where I wanted to be absolutely positive this is what she wanted.
“Are you sure about that?” I asked. “I mean this is still early days. If we were roomies for the whole year and something were to go wrong…”
There. It was out in the open. The one thing that I really feared. That somehow all of this was going to come crashing down around us. That being roommates would turn from a dream to a nightmare.
I should’ve known that Sarah would put all those fears to rest. She smiled and shook her head.
“In that case I guess we’ll have to make sure things work out, won’t we?”
I grinned. This was going to be a very interesting semester indeed. Absolutely nothing like what I expected when I started applying to colleges, but that was just fine with me. This was so much better than anything I’d imagined!
Part 3: Falling
17: Move In Day
Sarah:
“The blue zone over here is for unloading only. If you are unloading your car please pull into the blue zone. Any cars that park in the red zone on the left will be towed and no one wants that,” some college kid in a yellow safety vest shouted through a megaphone as he made his way down the long line of cars pulling into campus.
I sat on a bench at the turn that led towards the dorm I’d be calling home with Alyssa for the rest of the semester. She was right next to me, but uncharacteristically for us she wasn’t holding my hand.
I felt the loss, but I could also understand why she was doing that. Her parents were coming and she hadn’t exactly told them about our relationship status.
Given the brief encounters I’d had with her mom I could understand why she wanted to keep that on the down low. I didn’t want to have a shouting match with her any more than Alyssa probably did.
“See them yet?” I asked.
“Nope,” Alyssa said. “This whole thing is stupid. I told them I could move my stuff any time over the past couple of days but they insisted on coming today so they could have the stupid “move in day experience” along with the rest of the parents.”
“They said they wanted to have that experience?” I asked, my eyebrow raised ever so slightly.
Alyssa blushed. “Okay, so my mom said she wanted to have the move-in day experience. Said she wasn’t going to miss out on what all the other parents had.”
I rolled my eyes as I looked at the long line of traffic going down one of the many main roads running through campus. At least people weren’t honking or getting too upset. Yet. There’d been a special move-in day for people who paid a little extra yesterday and some of the fights that broke out later in the day as tempers flared had been interesting to watch. You hadn’t lived until you’d seen a couple of balding older dad types trying to duke it out and not being able to hit nearly hard enough to get through the layers of pudge they’d built up over the decades.
I could only imagine
that was going to get worse today. There were far more people trying to move in today than yesterday.
“Sounds like something your mom would say,” I said. “Does everything have to be about her all the time?”
“Pretty much,” Alyssa said. “It was exhausting growing up around that. I guess I didn’t realize how exhausting it was until I got here and I was free of it.”
I reached out and patted her leg. And immediately pulled my hand away when I saw how she winced at that touch. Right. There was a chance her parents were out there in that long line of traffic and we didn’t want them to see us getting too close with each other.
“It’s going to be fine,” I said. “They’ll be in and out in a jiffy and then we’ll have the room all to ourselves for a whole semester!”
Alyssa frowned. “Except for fall break.”
“You could always come back to my place for fall break,” I said. “My parents would love to see you again.”
Alyssa sighed again. “Why can’t my parents be cool like your parents? Why couldn’t my parents come a couple of days ago like your parents did? What’s the point of being able to move in super early if you don’t take advantage of it?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Not all parents can be like mine.”
They’d been very cool about the idea of me dating a girl. Not that I expected anything less. They were a couple of old fashioned lefties who’d grown up hating Reagan and loving Clinton, and they seemed more stoked at the idea of having a lesbian daughter than they were at meeting Alyssa. I knew I shouldn’t knock that reaction even if it was a touch annoying how overbearing they got about it before I told them to take it down a notch.
“I think I see their minivan,” Alyssa said.
She leaned forward and peered down the long line of traffic. Someone opened the passenger door even though they were in the middle of traffic, stuck traffic to be fair, and started walking briskly down the sidewalk. I frowned when I recognized Alyssa’s mom. It hadn’t hit me just how little I wanted a reunion with this woman until I saw her coming closer.
“Yup. Definitely mom,” Alyssa said.
It was another half hour before her parents got over to the unloading area in front of the dorm. The place wasn’t as nice as the new palace we’d been in over the summer, but our position as student athletes meant we got dibs on one of the nicer freshmen dorms available, at least. There was air conditioning, which was more than could be said for some of the other places.
In that time I also saw my first fight of the day. Someone tried to pull into the left lane that was reserved for thru traffic and emergencies and the dad nearly got into a fight with the resident adviser who showed up and told him he needed to move. Then he nearly got into a fight with the tow truck guy who showed up to move him by force.
He didn’t get in a fight when the campus cops showed up, at least.
Soon enough we were out of the heat and in the dorm walking ahead of Alyssa’s dad. He’d loaded all her stuff for the semester onto a cart, and it didn’t look like there was all that much. There really was no reason for them to come out here today and inconvenience themselves other than Alyssa’s mom wanting to do it that way. It boggled the mind.
“I can’t believe my little girl is all grown up,” her mom said for perhaps the twentieth time since we got onto the freight elevator.
“Yeah mom. I’m at college now. It happens to everyone,” she said.
“Well yes, but you’re my little girl and you’re all grown up now. You should let me have this moment,” she snapped.
Alyssa looked over at me and rolled her eyes ever so slightly. I had to suppress a giggle. Damn it Alyssa. Now was not the time to be making faces or doing things that would make me laugh in front of her mom.
“So how has your summer been?” her mom asked.
“Pretty boring actually,” Alyssa said. “I’ve been spending most of my time at practice, and then in between I mostly hang out with Sarah.”
I blushed as I thought of exactly what kind of “hanging out” we’d been doing. Sure we hung around on campus and went to movies and did all the usual dating stuff. Then there were those nights in one of our dorm rooms when things got hotter than the mercury on the thermometer outside, and no amount of air conditioning could keep that down.
Probably not the kind of thing she wanted to share with her mom right now though. Better to say we were hanging out together and leave it at that.
Her mom looked over at me and sniffed. When she looked me up and down she made it abundantly clear that she didn’t care much for me or for her daughter hanging out with me.
“That’s all you’ve been doing? You’re at college! You’re supposed to try new things as long as it’s not illegal. Meet new people.”
“Yeah, well there’s not much to do on campus during the summer,” Alyssa muttered.
“Have you met any boys?”
Alyssa looked up sharply at that and I schooled my face to a stony impassiveness. At least I tried to. I’m not sure how good a job I did. Her mom looked between the two of us and the suspicion there was pretty damn obvious, but she didn’t say anything. Which was probably a good thing because my poker face was terrible in that brief moment.
“No mom. I haven’t met any boys,” Alyssa said. “Now could we please focus on getting me moved in so the two of you can get home?”
Her mom sniffed and looked at me again. Yeah, I got the feeling she suspected something but I wasn’t going to go confirming any suspicions. If she was acting like this around me when she wasn’t sure that I was corrupting her daughter then I really didn’t want to see what she’d act like when it was confirmed.
“Well you should try to meet a nice boy. And make sure you meet a couple of nice boys. You wouldn’t want to settle for the first one to come along,” she said. Alyssa’s mom turned to look at Alyssa’s dad. Damn. I had a pretty good feeling she was talking about her husband there, and that was harsh stuff. The more I learned about this woman the more I didn’t like her.
Alyssa must have taken after her dad more than her mom. She was so unassuming and sweet. It was a miracle a girl that nice could be raised by a woman this self-involved.
“What about some of the nice church groups? Did you get involved with any of those yet? I know they’d be happy to have you, and maybe you could work on that problem you’re having meeting a good guy,” her mom continued on as we reached our door.
Without thinking I reached out with my key and waved it in front of the door. Even the most ancient doors on campus had been replaced with the electronic system. I didn’t realize what I’d done until I turned to see her mom staring at me with an unreadable expression and Alyssa was shaking her head ever so slightly.
“Why does she have a key to your room?” Alyssa’s mom asked.
Alyssa took a deep breath and let it out. She squared her shoulders as though she was getting ready for a fight. I realized, too late, that she hadn’t even told her parents that we were rooming together. It might’ve been nice to get a warning about that before I unlocked the door like an idiot.
“She opened the door because we’re roommates,” Alyssa said.
“I thought you were in the random drawing for a roommate,” her mom said. “Which isn’t great, but still…”
The conversation continued but I held the door open as Alyssa’s dad wheeled the cart in. It seemed like he wanted a break from his wife, and I certainly needed to get away from her. Especially with what sounded like a full on argument happening out in the hallway. I didn’t bother trying to listen in. The last thing I wanted was confirmation of my suspicions that Alyssa’s mom hated me.
“I should probably apologize for my wife,” Alyssa’s dad said. He held out his hand. “I’m Hank, by the way. I know we’ve met a couple of times, but we were never properly introduced.”
I took his hand and shook it, and then I said something that probably wasn’t very nice, but it was how I felt.
“How can you de
al with her all the time?”
Alyssa’s dad, Hank, shook his head and chuckled. He seemed like a nice enough guy so far. I definitely knew where Alyssa got her nice and decent streak.
“Honestly? It was mostly for Alyssa more than anything else. Now that she’s here at college…”
He shut his mouth and looked at me again, his eyes wide. I had a good feeling I knew what he was talking about, and that he’d just said more than he intended.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll keep my mouth shut.”
Hank winked at me. “Good. As part of the deal I’ll keep my mouth shut too until the two of you are ready to let cats out of bags.”
I blinked and stared at him in astonishment. That more than anything else is probably what gave me away. If I’d been smart enough to play it cool then he wouldn’t have confirmation. As it was I might as well have admitted I was dating his daughter. I was like an open book. He chuckled again.
“Don’t worry. It’s not too obvious. I just know my baby girl better than Tiffany does. She always was too wrapped up in herself to really notice what was going on with her daughter. I saw the way she looks at you and I knew.”
I looked down and kicked my feet back and forth. Damn. And here I thought we’d been so good about hiding it from them. And to hear him tell it it’s not like there was even anything we could do to hide it from him. He knew because he knew Alyssa so well.
Alyssa and her mom, Tiffany, chose that moment to step through the door. I tried my best to look like I was studying the loft bunk beds we’d set up while her dad suddenly tried to look busy messing with her laptop.
Not that it did much good considering the laptop was off. Oops.
“Alyssa and I have discussed the matter and it’s okay that she’s rooming with you,” her mom said with a sniff.
I opened my mouth to tell her a couple of sharp things about what I thought about her trying to give us her permission to room together. Her daughter was an adult who was going to school on a full ride scholarship so it’s not like this crazy woman had any sort of leverage.
