A/N: Hi everyone! Welcome to a new story I've started a while ago. It's still very much a work in progress but I felt that I understood enough about these characters to be certain that I wanted to share them with you. This is going to be a little different from what you've seen from me so far. This is in the New Adult genre which I'm a big fan of. I'm hoping to post weekly and I hope you all stay with me as we start this new love story. Happy reading!
***
I was told that college is going to be a time in my life when I lose a lot of things I've held on to for years.
I was going to lose the rose-colored glasses, if I wore any to begin with, my dislike of alcohol and loud, drunken parties, and definitely my virginity.
No one said I was going to lose my fucking mind.
But that was what I was struggling to hold on to when I walked into my dorm room and found a large male body—stripped down to a pair of jeans that were precariously hanging on to a perfectly curved ass—drilling for gold in my roommate who was spread-eagled on a bed. My bed.
I was no naive child.
Sex didn't offend me—people did.
I didn't make my own mountains to move to get away from one crude life and jump into another.
I've been extraordinarily patient these past couple months, telling myself it was all part of the new me, but while I was ambitious, I was far from delusional.
"I'm going to forgive the fact that this is the third time this week that I've come home to an amateur porn movie," I said in a seething but controlled voice as I dropped my messenger bag on the floor and walked over to the gyrating bodies, trying to find my roommate's head in the tangle of limbs. "But I'm not going to forgive the fact that it's my goddamned bed you're desecrating! Get off it!"
Kendra's head surfaced from under the guy's muscular chest, her red and black-striped blonde hair plastered across her face. "Come back in a minute, Star!"
"In a minute?" I demanded incredulously. "You think I'm just going to calmly step out of the room so you can finish contaminating my bed? Did you bang your head in the wall, Kendra, or is nothing working inside it at all?"
When she answered me with a gusty moan confirming that yes, she was mindless with sexual rapture to even pay me any attention, I absolutely lost it.
I haven't been feeling well all day, my head pounding and my stomach swirling uncomfortably. I've also already endured nearly two months of Kendra's sexcapades. I couldn't find any charitable feeling in me to step aside and let rabbits be rabbits.
I turned to the guy, caught off guard when I found that his mossy green eyes weren't rolled back in his head as he continued to pump into Kendra. He was watching me in amusement instead. I smacked him in the head hard.
He was hunched forward that his head was the same height as mine and I thought I had a pretty good swing but his head barely tipped to one side. Only his grimace indicated he felt anything.
"Hey! You! Take your carrot out of her, Casanova, because she and I need to have a serious discussion right this second," I barked at him, trying not to get distracted by his disheveled mop of a hair and the way the light seemed to catch streaks of gold in it when it was supposed to be a dark, nondescript brown.
His mouth curled up in one corner in a smile that amazingly softened what would normally be sharp features on his too strong, too masculine a face. "Um, we're not quite done yet, sweetheart."
"Oh, I'm sorry but do you think I care?" I snapped, smacking him on a sweaty shoulder which made me wince and wipe my hand on my jeans. "Run while it's still attached to you or I'm going to break it off and cram it down your throat."
"Don't you dare go!" Kendra shrieked, her hands flying to anchor on his broad shoulders, chipped neon pink fingernails digging into hard muscle. "I'm so close, baby."
At the combined sounds of her breathy gasps and their slick bodies moving together, and the undeniable smell of sweat and sex that filled the room, my gut clenched.
"Oh, God."
And before I knew it, the spicy taco salad I grabbed for dinner before heading back to the dorm surged up my throat and exploded into a spectacular volcano of vomit, annihilating this pair of doomed, star-crossed lovers who should've left my bed and my life alone.
***
I stayed in a shower stall in the common bathroom, vomit-free and shivering in a towel.
I'd walked out as soon as I was done puking, armed with a towel and my shower basket, and holed up in the bathroom wishing that my life didn't feel so horrible at that moment.
In the grand scheme of things, my life really wasn't that awful. There were hundreds of far worse possibilities. I had a unique kind of scholarship, some savings, and an amazing future ahead of me-that is, if I didn't murder my roommate nearly two months into the fall semester and get locked away in prison for life. The alternative was that instead of murdering her, I'd die myself a quick, awful death either by lack of sleep because Kendra was always bringing guys into the dorm on top of making my life a living hell, or by loss of sanity where I walk in front of a speeding car or something stupid like that.
I have to do something. Because as always, it's only up to me.
So I forced my feet to trace back the path of my hasty, humiliating escape.
I'd lost track of time but I must've been out a while because the room was now clean and smelled thickly of Kendra's cloying cherry blossom lotion.
"Um, what happened here?" I asked in confusion, frowning at the sight of my bed all tidy and draped with fresh sheets—the same ones I clearly remembered decorating with salsa and chili beef earlier.
Kendra was sitting cross-legged on her own bed in her electric orange tank top and red pajamas, applying moisturizer on her face. Her murderous glare was hard to miss even without the racoon eyes she usually accessorized with.
"Julian grabbed your sheets and my laundry card. Then he came back and scrubbed the floor and the bed frame clean," she answered, her voice grating. "He decided to be a fucking house maid instead of finishing me off."
I grimaced as I hung my towel and put away my toiletries. "What is it with you and this constant itch that needs scratching twenty-four-seven?"
"Prudes shouldn't ask when they don't have any way to relate to the answer," she shot back.
I grabbed my wide-toothed comb and ran it through my long, wet hair. "I'm sorry about the whole puking mess. My stomach has been tormenting me all day and the sight of you two... Let's just say I was angry but I didn't mean to shower you with regurgitated salsa."
"You think I'm ticked about that?" Kendra was looking at me like I somehow grew snakes on my head. "I don't care if you puked enough to cause the Great Flood. I care that you interrupted what might've been my one and only chance of getting down and dirty with the guy I've been waiting to have my entire life!"
I couldn't help the pity as I stared at Kendra. "It's funny how we all aspire for very different things in life. The most momentous event of my existence isn't going to be some clumsy quickie in a dorm room, on someone else's bed, with a guy who isn't even looking at me while he's trying to screw me into the core of the earth."
Kendra gave me a dirty look. "You don't understand because you have no idea just how epic even one time with him is. He's not called Wild Ride Julian for nothing."
"I don't care if he's the monster-fuck roller coaster," I said with a roll of my eyes. "I don't care if he's the main feature of the carnal carnival-as long he doesn't do his exhibitions on my bed."
Kendra blinked at me a few times before bursting into giggles. "The monster-fuck roller coaster? The carnal carnival? I have to say, for a prude, you have a filthy mouth, Star."
I bit back the retort that almost came flying out of me.
Kendra was right.
She'd heard her fair share of my very strong opinions—mostly, because she roused them—but I haven't exactly been the most diplomatic in expressing them. I've been getting aggressive, even as I was suppressing my temper, but I was yet to swear-until I walked in on her and Mossy Green Eyes.
At the thought of that guy—Julian, whatever-his-name-is—crouching down to clean up my puke and rushing downstairs to wash my sheets, I felt a pang of guilt but I quickly quelled it away. I wouldn't have thrown up if I hadn't found him and Kendra going at it like crazy one would think they were trying to swap souls. It was mere justice that he had to clean up the mess he caused.
At least he has some sense of responsibility. Not like Kendra here who loses no sleep over inflicting her sex life on her roommate over and over again.
"Listen, Kendra," I started, skipping over the subject I didn't like to one that needed serious discussion. "Obviously, our set up isn't working. I come home with a sock on the door most days of the week. Even on days when it's not there, I still walk in on things I would rather be spared from seeing. Tonight's the worst of them all. Excessive sex aside, you borrow my stuff without permission, you bring people over and they trash my side of my room. I've asked you, over and over again, to work with me here and compromise, but clearly, you're not interested in that."
She just gave me an expectant stare, not saying a word.
I had no choice but to keep going. "So I'm thinking, we probably need different roommates."
Actually, you need a lair of your own, possibly a cell in hell, to spare the rest of the world this traumatic experience of having to put up with you.
"Deal," she said instantly, sliding down under her covers. "Make sure to leave those clear bins behind. I like those for sorting my bracelets."
Then she turned her back on me, reaching over to turn off her lamp.
I stood there, still in my robe with my hair scraggly and damp, and stared at the shadows that engulfed Kendra's side of the room.
I wanted to walk up to her, shake her awake, tell her that we should probably draw straws on this to show some semblance of equal chance, and that the clear bins were mine and would be staying or coming with me.
But I didn't. I knew how futile that conversation was going to be—same way I knew that my conversation with her about ground rules the first week we'd moved into the dorm was futile. I'd complained to the RA but Glenn had just given me distracted nods and monosyllables. Three weeks later, I spied his frizzy blond head peeking from under Kendra's duvet. I was tempted to ask him if he was just conducting a 'deeper investigation' but the pun was too obvious and I was fed up.
I sighed and sat down on my bed, pulling out an old and threadbare gray Hard Rock Cafe shirt from my chest drawer and slipping it on along with a pair of boxer shorts. I spent the next ten minutes braiding my long, waist-length hair and wondering how to fix this new problem in my supposedly problem-free life.
I have to get out of here.
I've had my share of living with difficult people and I thought going to college, that skill and experience would serve me well. I could probably put up with this a little more, like I did back home, but I wasn't here just waiting to escape at the first chance I get. I was here to build something meaningful and significant in my life and that required focus. Being Kendra's tally-marker as she slept her way through Prescott's entire male population was more than a little distracting. If I stayed, it would become the highlight of my college life. Thanks, but no thanks.
She wasn't going to volunteer to leave.
Clearly, Kendra wasn't the type to look inside one's self and ask what her possible part in the problem was. In her mind, there was no problem except for an annoying roommate who kept getting in her way.
I could force things to go my way but I had a lot riding on this and I couldn't afford to make mistakes.
Besides, I made a promise—no more of my old tricks.
Finally, I slid under my covers and turned off my own lamp.
I was tired—my stomach still queasy and my knees still a little shaky. My mind though was still reeling from tonight's events.
I hated it when things and people didn't stick to the plan.
But it happens. If you can't fix the current plan, change it.
It was up to me to do something. It always was.
And something had to change about my current living arrangements.
I didn't do everything I did to get here to simply throw in the towel because Kendra was going for top honors in the science of being the roommate from hell.
I tried to think of a plan but at the tangy yet soothing smell of my lemon-scented laundry soap on soft clean sheets, my mind slowed down.
My hand slipped under my pillow and encountered the crisp texture of a note.
I reached for my cellphone and turned the screen on, shining the light on the small yellow Post-It.
Don't let the awful memories keep you up. Feel better. Sweet dreams. -J
So the guy didn't just know how to go domestic. He penned love notes too.
Ridiculous.
Guilt wheedled into my conscience but I mentally cursed it away.
Damn that Wild Ride Julian with his sweaty skin and shit-eating grin.
And if I had any energy left, I would've sat up and analyzed the bizarre realization that even with my eyes shut, I could still see his mossy green gaze smiling at me and that I almost smiled back.
***
So, what do you think? It's kind of a humiliating first meeting but you know what, there's going to be all kinds of things that will make us squirm in this story. LOL. Okay, not in a gross way but you know what I mean-I hope.
Oh, and before someone grumbles again why I tend to have virgin heroines, I just want to put it out there that I just default to it. Trust me, I do have story lines where the heroines don't have their V-cards but does it really matter that much? It's nothing against people who aren't. It's just the kind of stories I formulate and I feel that as long as it makes sense in the story, I don't see it as an issue. Anyways...
I wasn't listening to The Cab too much but I know that this song is a favorite of one of my first friends here in Wattpad years ago, when I was just starting out. You know who you are.
♪♪♪ Chapter Soundtrack: Angel With A Shotgun by The Cab ♪♪♪
(I'm an angel with a shotgun, shotgun, shotgun,
An angel with a shotgun, shotgun, shotgun.)
Get out your guns, battle's begun.
Are you a saint or a sinner?
If love's a fight then I shall die
With my heart on a trigger.
They say before you start a war,
You better know what you're fighting for.
Well, baby, you are all that I adore.
If love is what you need, a soldier I will be.
I'm an angel with a shotgun,
Fighting 'til the war's won,
I don't care if heaven won't take me back.
I'll throw away my faith, babe, just to keep you safe.
Don't you know you're everything I have?
And I wanna live, not just survive tonight.
P.S. Have you read the short story I wrote for Lays Wavy at their page? It's called Pitching Happy. I freaking adore Emily and Callum in it so I hope you go and check it out too! Thanks!