quickly. ‘Befriend her.’
‘I mean, we’re roommates. So hopefully we will be friends.’
‘That’s good,’ Jason repeated. ‘Especially since we won’t get to hang out all the time any more.’
This made me pause. ‘Won’t we?’
‘Well – no? I mean, at least this week. We’re at different colleges.’
I genuinely hadn’t thought about that. I’d had this idea that we’d meet up every day, hang out, explore Durham, begin our university journeys together. But all our freshers’ events were at our own colleges. We were all on different courses – I was doing English, Jason was doing history, and Pip was studying natural sciences. So he was right. I probably wouldn’t see much of Pip and Jason at all this week.
‘I guess,’ I said.
Maybe this could be OK. Maybe this would be the kick I needed to branch out and find new people and have experiences.
Maybe this could all be part of the plan. The romance plan.
‘Right,’ said Pip, slapping her thighs and bouncing to her feet. ‘We should head. I still haven’t finished unpacking all my shirts.’
I let Pip bundle me into a hug before she trotted out of the room, leaving just me and Jason. I didn’t want Jason and Pip to go. I hadn’t wanted my parents to go. I didn’t want to be left here alone.
‘I wish I was at Castle too,’ I said. I sounded like a five-year-old.
‘You’ll be OK,’ said Jason, in his usual calming tone. Nothing fazed Jason. He had whatever the opposite of anxiety was. Absolute, unerring peace of mind.
I swallowed. I really, really did want to cry. Maybe I could have a quick cry before Rooney got back.
‘Can I have a hug?’ I asked.
Jason paused. Something unreadable crossed his face.
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Yeah. C’mere.’
I crossed the room and let him envelop me in a warm hug.
‘You’ll be OK,’ he said again, rubbing his hands gently over my back, and I don’t know if I believed him, but it felt nice to hear anyway. And Jason always gave the warmest, cosiest hugs.
‘OK,’ I mumbled into his jacket.
When he stepped back, his eyes darted away.
He might even have blushed a little bit.
‘I’ll see you soon?’ he said, not looking at me.
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Message me.’
My friendships with Pip and Jason wouldn’t change. We’d made it through seven years of secondary school, for God’s sake. Whether we hung out all the time or not – we would always be friends. Nothing could ruin what we had.
And getting to focus on a new friendship with Rooney Bach – a fellow Shakespeare enthusiast who was significantly more sociable than me – could only be a good thing.
At the St John’s College Freshers’ Barbecue, Rooney moved around the courtyard like an ambitious businesswoman at an important networking event. She befriended people in a quick, easy way that left me in awe and, to be honest, very jealous.
I had no option but to trail her like a shadow. I didn’t know how to mingle solo.
University was where most people made friendships that actually lasted. My parents still met up with their uni friends every year. My brother’s best man had been one of his uni friends. I knew I had Pip and Jason, so it wasn’t like I was going in friendless in the first place, but I still figured that I might meet some more people I got along with.
And at the barbecue, people were on the hunt for friendships. Everyone was being extra loud, extra friendly and asking way more questions than is normally socially acceptable. I tried my best, but I wasn’t great at it. I’d forget people’s names as soon as they said them. I didn’t ask enough questions. All the posh private-school boys in zip-neck jumpers blended in with each other.
I thought about trying to make progress with my finding love situation, but no particular romantic feelings arose for anyone I met, and I was too anxious to try and force myself to feel them.
Rooney, on the other hand, flirted.
At first, I thought I was just seeing things. But the more I watched, the more I could see her doing it. The way she’d touch guys on the arm and smile up at them – or smile down, because she was tall. The way she’d listen when they spoke and laugh at their jokes. The way she’d give the guy direct, piercing eye contact, the sort of eye contact that made you feel like she knew you.
It was absolutely masterful.
What I found interesting was that she did this to several guys. I wondered what her goal was. What was she looking for? A potential boyfriend? Hook-up options? Or was she just doing it for fun?
Either way, I thought about it a lot while I was trying to fall asleep later that night in a new room and a new bed, with a person already asleep a few metres away from me.
Rooney seemed to know exactly what to do. I’d watched her master the set-up. The romance pre-game. She did it the same way she befriended people – with the precise expertise of someone who’d had a lot of practice and a lot of success. Could I do that? Could I copy her?
Would she teach me how to do it?
It seemed to take Rooney a monumental amount of effort to wake up on Monday morning. I thought I was bad at waking up in the mornings, but Rooney had to hit snooze at least five times before she managed to drag herself out of bed. All of the alarms were ‘Spice Up Your Life’ by the Spice Girls. I woke up at the first one.
‘I didn’t know you wore glasses,’ was the first thing she said to me after she’d finally arisen.
‘I wear contacts most of the time,’ I explained, and it reminded me of how surprised Pip had been, aged eleven, to find out that I was short-sighted after six whole months of being friends. I’d started wearing contact lenses the summer before secondary school.
When I awkwardly asked her if she wanted to head down to the cafeteria for breakfast, she looked almost like I’d suggested throwing ourselves out of the window, before replacing the expression with a broad smile and saying, ‘Yeah, that sounds good!’ And then she changed into sportswear and became the bubbly, extroverted Rooney I’d met the day before.
I stuck close to Rooney throughout our first official day of Freshers’ Week, through our introductory English lecture to our afternoon off. In the lecture, she effortlessly befriended the person sitting next to her, and in the afternoon, we went out for coffee with a few people who also did
