style="font-size:15px;"> Maybe I was bi or pan, since I didn’t even seem to have a preference at this point.
The next couple of hours were spent talking, snacking, and occasionally glancing at my laptop screen to watch the movie. Pip rambled at length about how interesting her introductory chemistry lab class had been, while Jason and I both mourned how dull our first lectures had been. We all shared our thoughts about the people we’d met in college – how many posh private-school kids there were, how bad the drinking culture already seemed to be, and how there really should be more cereal options at breakfast. At one point, Pip decided to water Roderick the house plant, because, in her words, ‘He’s looking a bit thirsty.’
But soon it was eleven o’clock, and Pip decided it was time to make some hot chocolate, which she insisted on doing on the stove rather than using the kettle in my bedroom. We all headed out of the room towards the tiny kitchen on my corridor, which was shared between eight people but had been empty the few times I’d been in there thus far.
Tonight, it was not empty.
I knew this from the moment Pip glanced through the door window and made a face like she’d been given a mild electric shock.
‘Oh shit,’ she hissed, and as Jason and I joined her, we finally saw what was going on.
Rooney was in the kitchen.
She was with a guy.
She was sitting on the kitchen counter. He was standing between her legs, his tongue in her mouth, and his hand up her shirt.
To put it lightly: they were both very much enjoying themselves.
‘Oh,’ I said.
Jason immediately stepped away from the situation, like any normal person would, but Pip and I just stood there for a moment, watching this go down.
It became clear to me in that moment that the only way I was going to make any progress in my finding love mission was if I asked Rooney for help.
I was not going to be able to do it on my own, ever.
I’d tried. I promise I’d tried. I’d tried to kiss Tommy when he went in for one, but the Kill Bill sirens started going off in my mind and I just couldn’t. I just couldn’t.
I’d tried to talk to people at the Freshers’ Barbecue, and when we were huddling outside the lecture halls, and at lunch and dinner when I sat with Rooney and all the people she had befriended. I’d tried, and I wasn’t terrible at it, I was polite, and nice, and people didn’t seem to hate me.
But I would never be like Rooney. Not naturally, anyway. I would never be able to kiss some guy just because it was fun, because it made me feel good, because I could do what I wanted. I would never be able to manufacture that spark that she seemed to have with almost everyone she met.
Unless she told me how.
Pip finally tore her eyes away from the window. ‘That’s got to be unhygienic,’ she said, making a disgusted face. ‘That’s where people make their tea, for God’s sake.’
I murmured my agreement before moving away from the door, our hot chocolate plans abandoned.
Pip had this look on her face like she’d seen this coming.
‘I’m so dumb,’ she muttered.
I knew almost everything about romance. I knew the theory. I knew when people were flirting, I knew when they wanted to kiss. I knew when people’s boyfriends were being shitty to them, even when they couldn’t tell it themselves. I’d read infinite stories of people meeting and flirting and awkwardly pining, hating before liking, lusting before loving, kissing and sex and love and marriage and partners for life, till death us do part.
I was a master of the theory. But Rooney was a master of the practice.
Maybe fate had brought her to me. Or maybe that was just romantic thinking.
In the middle of the night, between Tuesday and Wednesday, I woke up to hear someone having sex in the room above ours.
It was a sort of rhythmic thumping. Like a headboard hitting a wall. And a creaking, like the bend of an old bedframe.
I sat up, wondering if I was just imagining it. But I wasn’t. It was real. People were having sex in the room above us. What else would that sound be? There were only bedrooms up there, so unless someone had decided to do some 3 a.m. DIY, there was only one thing that sound could be.
Rooney was fast asleep, curled up on her side, her dark hair splayed around her on the pillow. Utterly oblivious.
I knew this sort of thing would happen at university. In fact, I knew this sort of thing happened at school – well, not physically at school, hopefully, but among my schoolfriends and classmates.
But hearing it happen, in the flesh, not just knowing and imagining, chilled me to the core. Even more than when I saw that person getting fingered at Hattie’s party.
It was a jarring sort of oh, God, this thing is actually real, it’s not just in fanfics and movies. And I’m supposed to be doing that too.
‘College families’ were a new concept to me. At Durham, students in their second and third years paired up to act as a mentor team, or ‘college parents’ for a small group of incoming freshers, who were their ‘college children’.
I kind of loved it. It made a romance out of something absolutely mundane, which was something that I was incredibly experienced at.
Rooney and I, plus four other students who I only knew from their Facebook profiles, had arranged to gather with our college parents at Starbucks. This had all been organised in a group chat on Facebook last week in which I’d been too scared to say anything other than ‘Sounds great! I’ll be there
But when we got there, only one of our parents was there – Sunil Jha.
‘So,’ said Sunil, crossing one leg over the other in his chair. ‘I’m your college parent.’
Sunil Jha had a warm smile and kind eyes, and although he was only two years older than us he seemed infinitely more mature. He was also dressed incredibly well – slim trousers with Converse, a T-shirt tucked in and a bomber jacket with a subtle grey tartan pattern.
‘Please don’t refer to me as your college mother or father,’ he continued, ‘not just because I’m non-binary, but also because that feels like a scary amount of commitment.’
This earned
