The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

Roommate agreements. Eighteen questions to try to fend off all the pettiest fights before they happen. Hygiene, visitation, noise levels, communication, all that jazz. Ninety percent of them are pointless. Ninety-five, even. Most people can tolerate the stresses that sharing a res hall room imposes, and where they can’t, most find a way to handle it without the pot boiling over. That other five percent, though…

Last year, I had a resident on my floor, Kaiden, who made my recent brushes with success with the ladies look like a parlor trick. He was a player, very good-looking and charming as hell. He was also slutty enough I felt obligated to warn my female coworkers to keep an eye out for him on their floors before the walking chlamydia outbreak swept up their people.

Kaiden’s poor roommate George spent every third night sleeping in the lounge or in one of his friends’ rooms on the floor because if he didn’t, Kaiden would simply go ahead and fuck his catch of the day right there with him in the room. After months of trying to weather Kaiden’s inconsiderate man-whoring, George finally confronted him and said he simply wasn’t going to be evicted from his own room any more.

That weekend, Kaiden came through with a high mark for his low character and brought not one but two girls home from a party. He fucked the pair on his space on the top bunk. George grit his teeth and turned up the volume on his ear buds until he eventually fell asleep. When he woke up, he hopped out of bed to land, barefoot, on a freshly used condom Kaiden had discarded on the floor. Evidently the thing was like a banana peel in a cartoon, and the poor guy slipped and landed smack dab in a pile of the things. I heard his primal shout from down the hall; it’s probably echoing around Rowland to this day. His move-out was processed in the system two days later, but he was packed and gone before Kaiden and his floozies had breakfast.

No roommate agreement was going to stop Kaiden unless it included an enforceable castration clause. It was a lesson for me, that some people were assholes, and some people didn’t know how to deal with assholes. Hence, the roommate agreements.

My first year, it took me until October to corner everybody and get them done, my supervisor riding me every week in our one-on-ones the whole while. My second, I didn’t want a repeat, and I hounded those guys and had them done by homecoming.

On Higgins 3, I made it a goal to finish them by the end of opening weekend.

In a way, credit was owed to Savannah. I was working with Jacqui and Sammi the morning after our brief but torrid kissathon and subsequent brutal rejection when I saw her pass by in the hallway.

“No boys overnight,” Jacqui was responding to question sixteen. “You can have a friend over if you want, and it’s quiet, but no boys.”

“Agreed. Iron curtain that shit,” agreed Sammi. It was the first item they’d immediately agreed on. They were one of those sets of roomies who were hilariously mismatched even if you could see how it had made sense to someone in the housing assignments office. Non-smokers, good academics, similar socioeconomic backgrounds as near as I could tell. Put them in a room together, and you had in one bunk Jacqui, starting setter for the Lakeview volleyball team. A jock’s jock, up at 6 for workouts, in bed by 9 to be up by 6. Intense, driven, competitive. Then across from her you had Sammi, who even during our meeting couldn’t be bothered to stop texting the two guys she’d met at parties last night and the night before respectively. She smiled by reflex, ingratiating and sweet in a way that anyone would immediately recognize as a façade as long as they didn’t hope for something out of it.

“Except for you, Spencer,” she added with a wink and a giggle. Jacqui laughed, and wrote in the exception.

Speaking of fake lying girls who were leading on every guy they spoke to, Savannah knocked at the open door. “Hey, Spencer. Hi, ladies. When you’re done in here, do you have a minute? I need to talk to you.”

“When I’m done here, I have another appointment next door, then the triplets. Then lunch, and I was hoping to hit the rec center, then the orientation thing at the stadium, then back here for more meetings.”

The girls looked between Savannah and I with naked curiosity. She was hot. I was… well, I was their RA, and the guy whose weiner seemed to have made quite the impression since that fight. Typical female community, gossip and drama behind every door. Savannah’s smile was forced. I didn’t care. I was having a hell of a week so far. Finding out the seemingly sweet girl I’d bonded with in RA training and had thought myself lucky to make out with had been cheating on her boyfriend to do so… It was more than I was in the mood to process. I had enough on my plate without girls who couldn’t make up their mind.

“Oh.” Savannah’s forced smile was forced wider. “Sounds like a busy day! Cool for you. Yeah, I’m, um, still trying to schedule mine. Been, you know, tricky.”

“Mhm.” I returned my attention to the survey and read off question seventeen. Not that I needed the paper to rattle it off at this point. These questions were seared into my brain. “If I feel my roommate is not adhering to the conditions of this agreement, how would I prefer to address it? Option one, talk to them myself. Option two, talk to my RA and have them help me talk to them. Option three, I prefer not to talk about it.”

I glanced up. Savannah was still there. It was awkward now. “All right, well, um, if you have some time later, stop by? Or text, or you know, whatever. But I want to talk to you.”

“Yeah, as soon as I get some free time,” I said noncommittally. Mark me down for option three where cheaters were concerned.

I’d never been cheated on. Officially. That “officially” came with a lot of baggage. My most recent ex, Marisa, had told me on our second date that if she were ever going to cheat on me, she would tell me first so I could dump her before she did. I never got that call, but what I did get was a relationship where, when we’d ask one another how each other’s days went, I’d have an anecdote about something I saw on campus or a milestone at the gym, and she’d tell me about the interview she’d had that day with one of her subjects, and her feelings on how big of an object she felt like she could handle in her asshole. Her 9 to 5 was better understanding human sexuality, which meant she was constantly thinking and talking about sex. She was constantly being hit on, overshared to me and about me, and watched more porn than a fourteen-year-old boy. To my knowledge, she never cheated on me, officially, but when she asked me if she could cast a dildo out of my cock for use in her research, I told her that was too far for me. She said she understood, and we broke up, simple as that.

She asked again once we were broken up, and I took a $200 paycheck from the Institute for my contribution to the sciences. It was more than my RA gig paid in a month. How many people had seen and used that dildo since then, I couldn’t guess, but at least we’d been separated.

As for Savannah, I did not get any free time that day. If some of that was taking a little mental health time for myself, I wasn’t about to apologize for it. In the past week, I’d been faced with eviction from my job and home, harrassed by a resident’s mom, had half my floor see me naked, been manipulated into a sexual encounter not once, not twice, but three times, and finally had a pretty girl kiss me a bunch and then blow me off for a boyfriend I didn’t know existed. On top of that, it was the busiest work week of the year and a lot of that was happening outdoors in an August heat wave.

I wasn’t about to waste what little sweat I had left on the likes of a girl who could do what Savannah had done. She was damn hot all right, but I wasn’t fifteen any more. Damn hot didn’t cut it for me.

At least, so long as damn hot didn’t come into my room uninvited and shove a finger up my ass while it jerked me off. Which was pretty high up on my list of reasons for sealing myself in my room, too.

Not that it helped. That open door policy was something. Kyu-Ri was waiting outside my door with her roommate Dawn (not “Don,” as the dimwit who’d messed up the roster had labeled her) to squeeze in their appointment. I was getting signatures on RCRs while I was at it. That’s Room Condition Report Forms to the layperson. Why the F wasn’t in the acronym was anybody’s guess, sort of the opposite of the ATM machine phenomenon. A formality to make sure the condition of the room was agreed to upon check-in so we could charge for damages at check-out, and the product of dozens of hours of work by yours truly over the past couple weeks before move-in to get the basics done, so residents could add anything they caught that I missed and be quick about it.

Kyu-Ri wanted to look in her drawers, her overhead bins, crawling around to inspect the underside of the bed while I tried not to notice how her shirt hung down and gave a potentially amazing view of some definitely amazing boobs. I couldn’t catch any letters on the tags on her bras when she checked for scratches inside her underwear drawer—minutiae which no one in the history of Lakeview had ever been charged for in the history of the college—but she had some nice gear, I’d grant her that. Dawn approached the RCR like she approached the roommate agreement, with an attitude of completely not giving half a shit and wishing she had a roomie who felt the same so she could get on with her afternoon. Though if I didn’t miss my read on her, she had as much of a hard time keeping her eyes of Kyu-Ri’s boobs as I did. At one point we caught one another trying not to notice when the thickly accented Korean girl bent over ass up, boobs swinging like udders through a window between her thighs. Dawn and I shared a grimace, then a grin, and then resumed humoring the paranoid international student.

Savannah tried to get me alone on the march from Higgins to the stadium, but I stayed close to my freshmen. If she wanted to explain herself, let her explain to the entire Higgins 3 community why she duped me. (She did not.) She tried again on the walk back while our respective throngs of freshmen commiserated over that spectacularly boring speech about the power of their dreams, but I busied myself letting my girls bombard me with music recommendations. Once I took one, the whole rest of the walk was one big non-stop bombardment. They were my shield from whatever excuses Savannah wanted to offer.

Whenever I had a spare moment that afternoon, I was in another room. Hey, got a minute? Cool, let’s do some boring paperwork! Haha, but seriously. I was learning names—real names, no more screw-ups from Bob’s housing people—and putting them to faces. Getting to know my ladies, at least broad strokes.

I learned that Destiny in 311 was a nationally ranked PUBG player. (Or ranked on the North American server? Which sounded like nationally ranked, but she made it sound like more than that. I dunno. Either way, badass.)

I learned that Peyton and Sydney were girlfriends (as opposed to girl friends), and that they found it hilarious that for once being gay was working to their advantage, letting them live with their significant other while the straight kids had be home in bed by lights out. Mixed gender floors had made their way to Lakeview, but not mixed gender rooms. Time and again they giggled not-so-secretively. On bed placement, usually a clarification of who got top and bottom bunk, they laughed themselves silly, lying as they were, side by side in their pushed-together bed. I made a mental note to keep an eye on them; friends from high school often made for the worst college roommates. I didn’t know if that extended to girlfriends from high school, but better safe than having things implode mid-September, as such things often did.

I learned that Tori’s dad owned his own business, and that her mother was a state representative. She approached her roommate agreement like a contract negotiation, pressing poor hapless Ellie for superior terms to the point where I had to step in on her behalf.

I learned that Lex… Well…

“She doesn’t wear a shirt in the room,” Jocelyn—Jo—accused, cheeks flushing.

“Buh…” I answered. We’d made it two questions in, this statement shared in response to, In regards to smoking, I prefer… “Is… is that true, Lex?”

“Why do I have to get dressed up in my own home?” the lithe brunette asked, folding her arms across a pair of pert breasts I was now unable to not notice.

Jo shot me a pleading look; clearly this had been weighing on her. Small wonder she’d been one of the first to sign up for an appointment. “You see though, Lex, that it’s not only your home. You’ve got a roommate now, and you’ve only got the one room to split between you.”

“So? Not like I got anything she don’t got, and I don’t care if she looks so long as she don’t stare.”

“You see? I asked her, politely, to please keep a shirt on. Or even a sports bra. Anything. But she just ignored me. Isn’t that against the rules or something?”

Lex cut back in. “You think there’s a rule that lets your uptight roommate tell you how to dress?”

“A rule that says you have to dress at all!” Jo looked at me pleadingly. “There has to be something you can do. I can’t have people over because she’s…” She shuddered. Shuddering seemed a bit much, I thought, but to each their own. “And I can’t even be comfortable in the room because unless I stay at my desk and don’t turn around, there’s a half-naked woman in my field of vision all the time!”

“And there’s a controlling prude in mine!”

“At least I’m not some whackjob nudist!”

“At least I’m proud of my own body!”

“I’m proud! I’m just not a slut!”

“Better a slut than some uptight bitch!”

Oh, that five percent.

I took to my feat; sometimes, when voices raised, a little height advantage for the mediator went a long way to suppressing shouts. It paid to loom a little, sometimes. “All right, looks like it’s a good thing we’re here to talk this through, and that we’re doing it early. So obviously we have a difference of opinion here.”

“A difference of lifestyle,” insisted Jo.

“Got dat right, yo.” Lex shook her head. “You’re the RA. You gonna seriously stand there and tell me I gots to wear something over my titties in my own room?”

“That’s not what I’m saying. You—”

“See! Told you!”

I could hear thunder rumbling from Jo’s expression. “You didn’t let him finish!”

“Oh come on! If we were boys, you think there’d be a rule about wearing shirts in the room? This is some patriarchal boo sheet if there’s a separate rule for girls than boys!”

“Huh. That’s a good point actually,” I said before I realized I was saying it.

“Ha! See?! Suck on deez titties, Jojo!”

“I think you have to have at least one curve in the letter of your cup size before you can call them ‘titties,’” her more buxom roomie snarked. A low blow.

“Oh whatever. I think he likes ’em. What you say, Spencey? You like what you see?”

“That’s sexual harassment, Lex! He could sue you for that!”

“Only if he don’t like ’em. I think he do.”

“Do you even hear yourself? Your dad dropped you off in a Jaguar. You. Are not. Ghetto!”

“Dayum, gurrl, that’s some vicious-ass racist-ass shit right there, ain’t it, Mr. RA Man?”

“We’re both white! How can it be racist if we’re both white?!”

“Oh come on, you can’t even look at me. How you know I’m white, you can’t look at me? Here, why don’t you…”

Oh shit. Oh shit had this gotten out of hand fast. “Lex, no!”

“... take a look at deez!”

Her shirt hit the floor as Jo and I were powerless to do more than stare in horror. I looked away—after a second—a few seconds, anyway—but it was too late. There was no unseeing it. Jesus, was this what it was like RAing for a girls floor?! Were the other Higgins RA’s constantly seeing their residents naked, being seen naked in turn?!

I tried not to think of Savannah in that moment. Or Quinn. Or Leigh. Or Angel.

No dice. At least I didn’t picture all of them at the same—

Shit.

“See? Not too flat, are they? My daddy said he’d spring for a tit job, but I don’t think I need one. How ’bouchu?” Lex grinned. I think. I wasn’t looking. Glancing a little at most. They were pretty cute.

“LEX!” Her roommate’s shriek pierced the air. Frankly, it was far more offensive than any amount of boobage.

What the hell. Three days acting like I was made out of stone, I was out of fucks to give. I looked squarely at her. At them. I shrugged. “I mean, you are kinda flat, yeah, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing…”

“Spencer, look me in the eye and tell me why I should go to bat for you when Bob hears about this.”

Ramona had begun the meeting seated at her desk. She had a Keurig in her office; she’d even offered me a cup. As I explained—the both of us trying not to hear Lex shouting corrections from the hallway—she forgot about her coffee. Then she stood up and perched on the counter, classic looming. Now she was pacing back and forth like she was building momentum to throw me out the window. At least Lex and Jo weren’t sitting right outside anymore, relocated so Ramona could hear me out. It allowed me to speak freely. Though speaking freely was sort of the problem.

“I didn’t mean anything by it, I swear,” I insisted once more. “She was just so… smug about it, and she was pushing Jo around and all, so I thought, or well, I didn’t think, but my reflex was to, you know, maybe rein her in a little…”

“She was too proud of her body, so you opted to take her down a peg. Is that what you’re saying?” The disappointment was plain on her face. “Plus, while it was less an error in judgment and more an error in strategy, you also sided with the little tart and told her we couldn’t force her to wear a shirt in her room!”

“I mean… can we…?”

“Of course we can’t! How do you plan on enforcing… You know what? Don’t answer that. Regardless, you don’t lead with your impotence in a mediation! Not that… Damn it! Now I have to figure out how to support Jocelyn continuing to live in that room. How would you like having to share a room with someone who refused to wear any pants, just let their ‘junk’ hang out for you?”

At about the same moment, our eyes shifted towards Ramona’s pants as we applied her broadly worded rhetoric to our present moment. “Not like that!” she yelped. “Come on, Spencer. Pardon the expression, but you’ve been a cock in the hen house for less than seventy-two hours, and in that time we’ve had an accusation of harassment, a naked shower fight, and an allegation of your having been intimate with a resident!”

Uh, what? I blinked. Then I remembered: oh yeah, Quinn. The girl who’d made my cum spatter the ceiling. My reaction played, though; she took it as a sign of genuine innocence. “I’m not saying I find it credible, but I’m saying it’s going to be a hell of a meeting with Bob, and it’s putting me in a hell of a place defending you. This is my first year as a full hall director, you know. Multiple threats of lawsuits for a staff member I personally vouched for, before classes are even in session? You’re not making my job easier here!”

Well, fuck. I’d been so caught up feeling sorry for myself about everything, I hadn’t even considered how it could affect her. I would have felt bad for any boss in that predicament, but worse, I liked Ramona. She was a good supervisor, and a kind person. “I’m sorry. If you think it’s for the best, I can resign.” After the week I’d had, I was at my wits’ end.

“Spencer…”

“No, I’m serious. This has been… a lot. For me, and I guess for you, too. Maybe it’s best if we let someone better suited to those ladies take the helm. I’ve made some pretty stupid errors. Big ones. It’s not your fault. I don’t want you looking bad because I let my mouth get away from me.” And my cum, for that matter, but I wasn’t about to cop to that aloud. It was fair, though. I had fucked up, bad.

“You got me into this mess, and I’m not letting you squirm out of it that easily. Still, I’m going to take that as a sign that you’re sincere in acknowledging your mistakes. That’s a good start, but I do need you to do better than that. ”

I smiled. Ramona was the sort of woman it felt good to be trusted by. “Name it.”

Savannah was sitting on the floor outside my dorm room when I opened the door. She hopped to her feet gracefully the moment she saw me. “Spencer. Hi.”

“Savannah? It’s ten o’clock at night. How long have you been out here?”

“Since you heard me knocking earlier,” she said simply.

“Knocking…? I didn’t hear anyone knocking…”

She shook her head. “I saw you look at me through the peephole, Spencer. If you want to pretend you’re not home, you need to do a better job than that. I may be a first year, but even I know to watch for that one.”

Well, shit. “OK, fine. Either way, I have a meeting. Already have my first roommate conflict to mediate.” That, and a pair of apologies to make. Lex and Jo had spoken with Ramona after I’d left, and she’d texted to say she’d calmed things down some. I wasn’t looking forward to this, but at least they’d agreed to meet me tonight, however late. Time to fester wouldn’t help the situation any.

I mean, you’re a little flat. Damnit, Spencer. Damnit, boobs.

“Exciting. But… I really do need to talk to you. I can wait in your room if you want. Or here in the hall. But I’m not leaving until I do.”

I sighed. “Fine. But they’re waiting for me, and we already got off on the wrong foot, so… you can wait inside, if you want.”

She smiled, a slight smile that was nevertheless radiant. It really wasn’t fair that anyone should have lips that kissable. “Thank you. And good luck.” It took effort not to shrug off her pat on the shoulder. She’d hurt my feelings, but if I had to talk it out with her, there was no sense being petty.

The door to 316 was a crack open, but mindful that there was a nudist (a half-nudist?) inside, I knocked and waited to be invited. To my relief, all boobs were tidily covered up. Lex and Jo had set up their chairs opposite one another in a rather adversarial fashion. There was another chair set up for me, a neat little triangle.

“Well, if it isn’t Bugsy Boob Critic,” Lex said with a cold look. Jo said nothing.

“You got this chair from the lounge?” I asked as I sat down. They nodded. “Well, I’m grateful for the effort. I’ll take it back down after. Try not to borrow community furniture in the future, all right?”

Jo folded her arms coldly. “Really? That’s where you want to start things off?”

I grimaced. “You’re right. I’m sorry.” I grimaced deeper. “Ugh. That’s not the actual apology. Let me try again.”

“Please do.”

I took a deep breath. “I’m sorry. Jo, I’m sorry I didn’t take your feelings seriously. I’ll do better this time, I promise.” I turned to Lex. “Lex, I’m very sorry I said that. At the risk of screwing up all over again, and meaning nothing underneath it, you’re a very pretty young woman, and I was out of my mind to say what I did.”

The girls looked hard at me, then at one another. To my surprise, Lex softened first. “OK. Forgiven.”

Jo rode the tension for a moment, I think to punish me, but finally echoed the sentiment. “All right. Now can we figure this out? Because I’m about ready to request a new room.”

“And maybe it comes to that,” I said, shifting from apologizer to conflict mediator. “But first, let’s see if we can’t figure out how to live together, yeah?”

“I’m not covering up when I don’t feel like it,” Lex stated firmly.

“And I’m not going to sit around with your flat boobs hanging out all day.”

“He said they’re pretty!”

I raised a hand. “Whoa, there. I said you were pretty. I have no opinions more specific than that, and I think I’m already regretting expressing even that much.”

“So you think I should get them done?” Lex asked.

“What? No! I mean, sure, if you want! Do whatever you want with them.”

Her eyes sparkled. “Whatever I want, you say?”

“Spencer!”

Desperation time. I raised both hands. Take that. “You two obviously disagree about this. So let’s see where we can find some middle ground.”

“What, you wanna stuff them in a sports bra, like she wants? I like to let ’em breathe!”

Speaking of breathing, I took a few deep breaths myself. Thankfully, I’d had a few hours to think this over. Great Higgins Ghost, how had I come to a place in my job where I had hours to sit around planning out how to contain a freshman girl’s tits?

“Look. Let’s start here. Jo, does Lex have a copy of your class schedule?”

“Yeah. It’s posted by my desk. Why?”

“All right. So would you agree that while you’re away at class, when Lex can be sure you won’t be in the room, it’s fine for her to dress however she wants?”

Lex brightened. Jo didn’t, not quite, but her resistance looked a little less stony. “I guess not. As long as she’s not—”

“Hold that thought—let’s neither of us get ahead of ourselves. So what I’ll do then, is I’ll start writing down a schedule of times when everybody can agree that… ah, the dress expectations… are relaxed.”

I busted out my pen and notepad and split it into two columns. On the right, I wrote, While Jocelyn is in class. I used her full name, so it would feel more official. People were more likely to honor an arrangement if it felt like a contract.

“What’s that? What are you writing?” Lex asked, craning her neck.

“So on the left, we’ll slate times when you’re, let’s say, in timeout. And on the right…”

“Tits out!” Lex laughed and pumped a fist. It was only in that moment that I realized she’d expected to be shot down altogether. This was a celebration of a girl who’d expected to lose.

Well, welcome to Higgins 3, Lex. We suck at enforcing nudity rules around here.

We spent a good while detailing when it was all right for Lex to take her top off, operating as though the default was a no. After 11 PM, when Jo said she’d be asleep. When Jo was at the rec center. Jo agreed to communicate if she anticipated being gone overnight or for the weekend, and that became a Tits Out time. As the girls gradually relaxed at seeing they were each having their boundaries respected, Jo even laughed and relented to Lex’s request for a final addendum.

Whenever Jo decides she wants to lay around topless too, I wrote.

This floor, I tell ya.

We did the rest of the roommate agreement. It ran smoothly. They signed off on their RCRs, and I snatched up the purloined lounge chair and made for the door. Over an hour. Aside from those initial, awkward apologies, that whole time I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about the absolute vision—the lying, cheating vision—waiting for me in my room.

To my surprise, Lex bolted over to me before I could excuse myself and threw her arms around me. Stranger still, Jo joined in, the three of us in a warm, smiley group hug.

“You’re good at your job, when you actually try to do it,” Jo murmured into my shoulder.

“You think I should get ’em done?” Lex whispered in my ear.

“Good night, ladies,” I said, and bolted. God love ’em, but my girls were goddamn crazy.

I stowed the chair in the lounge and made my way back to my room, stopping at every open door to say hi, make chitchat, community build, dawdle, delay. Someone was singing in the shower. Was that Up the Wolves? The echo made it hard to tell. It was a little late at night for that, but whoever she was, she was a bona fide songbird.

At last, I made it back to my room, 310. The door was a crack open. By instinct, I knocked before letting myself in.

Savannah was asleep in my bed. She’d made herself damn comfortable, too, curled up with one pillow sandwiched between her cheek and her bicep and the other between her thighs. Bare thighs. I didn’t love the heat, but it was hard not to concede that girls in shorts made it worth it.

I took a seat in my chair, dragging it noisily a few feet across the tile floor. It had the desired effect. Savannah jolted upright, a tiny line of drool snaking across her cheek. She wiped it off hastily on a sleeve, then squeaked in embarrassment as she jerked her thigh pillow out from between her legs.

“Oh my gosh, sorry! It’s just been such a long day, and I barely slept last night, and…” She seemed to realize the implication of the tail end of her excuse, and trailed off.

“It’s fine. Honestly, that’s the same thing I used it for, so it’s used to it.” I gave her a moment to collect herself. She scooted to the edge of the bed, legs folded beneath her. “So. You ‘needed’ to talk.”

“I wanted to say I’m sorry.” Would that that conversation-starter wasn’t so fresh in my mind.

Unlike Jo and Lex, however, I didn’t live with this woman. “It’s fine. You don’t owe me anything.”

“Don’t be like that, Spencer. Please.”

“Be like what? You said you’re sorry, I forgave you. What more do you want?”

“You didn’t forgive me. You said ‘it’s fine.’” She lowered her voice in a parody of mine. “You don’t even know what you would be forgiving yet.”

I sighed, lowering my head into my hand to rub my eyebrows. There was real strain behind those eyelids. “You kissed me, then your boyfriend showed up and you decided to go kiss him. What more is there to know?”

“A lot, actually,” Savannah said with surprising heat in her voice for a woman who’d forced me into a confrontation about her using me to do the PG-13 equivalent of cheating on her boyfriend. “Yes, I have a boyfriend. Yes, I kissed you and I shouldn’t have. Yes, I stood you up last night.”

“Answering a lot of your own easy questions there,” I grumbled.

“But not for the reason you think!” she continued. “Price and I went to high school together. We dated some, years ago, and this summer we reconnected. Then it was time for me to go back to school. I told him I thought we should call it quits, but he wanted to try to make long distance work.”

Rookie, I thought. Long distance relationships were always a horrible idea. I didn’t interrupt, though.

“We’ve been talking all through RA training, him trying to convince me to give him a shot, keep going while I’m here and he’s there, and me… Well, not being strong enough to give a firm no, apparently.” She shook her head at herself reproachfully. “Last night, he decided to give it one last try to come up here and surprise me.”

“And they say romance is dead.” My hard front was becoming softer by the second. Damnit if I’m not a sucker for mitigating circumstances. My Achilles heel professionally and romantically.

“It’s a three hour drive, Spencer. What was I supposed to do? Tell him sorry, I made out with a guy a couple hours ago so you have to turn around and go home? I didn’t know what to do, and I still don’t know what the right thing would have been. I was afraid he’d get jealous and try to come up here and start something—over what was practically nothing!”

“Yeah, I…” Well shit. I’d been about to make a snarky comment, but then I remembered Quinn. And Leigh, almost. And the way I’d let myself run my mouth at Lex. Savannah looked like she had more to say, so I kept my mouth shut this time.

“So yeah. He and I talked, and we decided to keep trying. He doesn’t mind the drive, he said, and really if I were in a relationship with someone here at Lakeview we’d only be going out on weekends anyway.” She leaned forward, lowering her feet to the floor. “He’s not a bad guy, Spencer. I think you’d like him, actually. And I didn’t do any of this to hurt you.”

“You didn’t hurt me, Savannah. You just disappointed me.” Which was half true. I continued, however, with some truth that was a little harder to get out. “But yeah, I’m less disappointed now. And not about you. Just bad timing, I guess. I’m sorry I was a dick today.”

“Hey. You had good reason to be.” Savannah crossed the room and squatted by my feet, taking my hands. Why did she always have to be holding my hands? And why were hers so damn soft? “Then again, you wouldn’t have had good reason if you’d let me talk to you sooner.”

I smiled. “Lesson learned.”

“Is that how you got so wise, venerable fifth-year RA? I don’t know many guys who own their mistakes so quickly.”

“Oh, that’s just loads and loads of practice in mistake-making. You get good at it, after a while. If that’s wisdom, then call me sensei.”

“You better get good fast, from what I hear, ‘sensei.’” She laughed. “The whole staff is losing their crap, gossipping about you and the Higgins Hotties.”

Things were returning to a normal dynamic, so we let one another go, and she moved back to the bed. That was my new normal, random beautiful women coming and going from my bed at all hours. “Higgins Hotties? Oh good lord, tell me that’s not sticking.”

“Oh it’s sticking. Trust me, your chicas are doing everything in their power to make it stick. You’re doing your part, too. You made quite the, erm, impression during that fight.”

I shook my head. “Oh no. Get in one little naked shower fight and suddenly everybody’s got an opinion.”

“You wish it stopped there. That, yeah, but now with this whole topless girl situation…” This time I got the reproachful head shake. “You got your hands full up here, sounds like. Or rather, it sounds like you better not get your hands full.”

Savannah’s cheeks flushed; she wasn’t normally one for off color jokes. Probably heard too many involving her. “Oh, that. Speaking of stupid mistakes, right? That was a hot mess. While you were in here napping, I just did the weirdest roommate agreement ever.”

She arched her brow. “Roommate agreement? What do you mean?”

“Oh man. It was this whole thing. We actually had to hammer out acceptable times for this girl Lex to lounge around half-naked. Jo was keeping notes, typing up a schedule on her tablet for ‘Tits Out’ vs. ‘Time Out.’ Pardon my French—or their French.”

Savannah looked more and more incredulous, but giddily so, by the word. “Wait, what? But… holy crud, Spencer! These chicks are going to eat you alive! I didn’t even know about that one!”

I blinked. “Wait, then… what were you talking about?”

“Last night? Vickie came by to deliver my message, that I couldn’t come up?”

I tried to remember. Last night was so many days ago now. “Yeah…?”

“And that girl from the fight was in here taking another crack at you? I saw you coming out of Ramona’s office earlier when I was checking my mailbox. She must’ve been pretty yikesed out, huh?”

“Everybody was talking…?!” Well shit.

“No, it’s totally normal for residents to strip in their RA’s rooms.” She rolled her eyes. “But relax. Vickie was chill enough to include that you seemed to be in the process of sending her packing. I hope not on my account…?”

Had that really been how it looked to Vickie? I suppose at the time I’d still thought Savannah was coming back, so maybe. Lord knew part of me had been regretting not taking up Leigh on her extortion all day. That morning, we’d crossed paths in the hallway and she’d simply blushed and scurried away. “Of course not. I mean, she’s a resident. Don’t need any more excuse than that.”

Savannah looked relieved; some folks simply didn’t concern themselves that much with the ethics of that particular edict. “Well good. So, you and I… we’re cool? I really want us to be cool.”

“Yeah, of course we’re cool.”

We talked for a little while after that, and she gave me a big hug before she left. Fearful of another misunderstanding of my open door policy, I locked the door behind her, collapsed on the bed, and masturbated myself to sleep. By the time my consciousness faded, I didn’t even know whose imaginary tits I was sucking on. It struck me when I woke up, naked and a little soggy, that I really ought to care more about that.

“Is that chili?”

“Yeah, wife made it. Nowhere near spicy enough, but she’s from Maine. Don’t think they have spice tech up in Maine yet.”

“I wasn’t asking about the spice. I was asking if you think it’s a good idea to have a bowl of fucking chili in here with all the equipment.”

“I’ll do my best not to spit take. Oh come on, relax. I won’t spill.”

“Better fucking not. Haven’t gone a hundred hours yet and already almost had to pull the fucking plug.”

“So we didn’t pull it, huh? Wasn’t sure what he’d decided after how fubar things went last night.”

“No shit. But no, we just recalibrated, taking things down a notch. Then some more notches after the Asian chick, 5905? She practically went into heat.”

“Notches, huh.”

“Yep. Tempted to start a pool to see if we make it through the first week of classes.”

“Always with the pools. I’ll take that action.”

“I said tempted, not actually doing it.”

“You know, this stuff isn’t half bad. Wife might’ve found the spice rack after all. Want a bite?”

“I hate spicy food.”

“Your loss, lady. Me, I can’t get enough of the hot stuff.”