stacked high in the corner of the room like a cardboard Christmas tree. All that’s left out is my laptop, my clock, and a few things from my makeup bag. I’ll strip the bed, fold my comforter into the last empty box, and there will be no trace left hinting at the fact that I inhabited this dorm room for the past nine months. It will belong to someone else just after summer break, and it will be as though my year in room 504 in Hawthorne Hall never happened.
I’ve almost surrendered to the loose promise of sleep when I hear a faint knock on my door, so quiet that at first I think I’m imagining it. Several seconds pass and I strain to hear, squinting my eyes in the dark, which really makes no sense. Like when you turn down the radio when you’re trying to find a place while driving. But for some reason I think it helps, and when I hear the echo through the wood the second time, I leap out of bed and rush toward the sound.
“Hey Maggie.” There’s a blast of alcohol that greets me along with the voice.
“Brian,” I gawk, stepping back to avoid his staggering body that careens toward me.
He grabs me around the waist. “We made it, Mags,” he croons in my ear.
I shove him off. “Made what?”
His eyes are dilated and his lips form sloppily around his muddled words. “Made it through freshman year.”
“Just barely.” I push him onto Cora’s bed and sit down on my own. In this small room, this is about as far away as we can get from each other.
“You heading home for the summer?” He slides down and closes his eyes, tucking his legs up under him like he’s in the fetal position. Oh no. This is not going to work. Brian is not going to fall asleep here in my dorm. This is not how my year ends. Brian is not a part of it.
“I don’t know what my plans are,” I say, resigning to the fact that I’m going to have to physically touch Brian to get him out of the room. My skin crawls like I’m covered in thousands of fire ants. I wonder what made him think he’d be welcome here in the first place. “It all depends on Mikey’s results.”
“That sucks so bad that he has cancer,” Brian slurs against the sheets and it sounds like he has cotton in his mouth.
“Yeah.” I yank on his arm and cringe at the feel of it, hot and clammy against my palm. “Time for you to go, Brian.” I manage to pull him into a sitting position, but he teeters for a couple of seconds before swaying back over to the other side, crashing onto the foot of Cora’s bed.
“Sophia won’t have sex with me anymore.”
I didn’t see that coming. “What?”
Brian nuzzles his face against the crumpled duvet cover. I think he’s drooling. I’m never going to hear the end of this from Cora.
“She’s sleeping with Colby.” I don’t know who Colby is, nor do I care. All I really care about is getting Brian out of my room without him emptying the liquor-laced contents of his stomach all over the floor on his way out. “She’s sleeping with Colby, Maggie.”
“I’m sorry.” I’m not. I’m more sorry that I answered the door in the first place. I should know better than to respond to three o’clock in the morning wake-up calls.
“He’s my roommate. She slept with my roommate.” He belches a wet hiccup that sounds like it’s accompanying something else. He cannot throw up on Cora’s bed. Drool is one thing—she may forgive me for that. Vomit is a completely different story.
I tiptoe to the foot of the bed and prop my hand between his shoulder blades. It’s disgusting how sweaty he is. I find it impossibly hard to believe that at one point in time, Brian’s sweaty body on my bed would have turned me on. This is the polar opposite of being turned on. I’m actually a little worried that I might throw up, too.
“It sucks to be cheated on, Mags,” he groans, just at the same moment I managed to rally my strength to shove him off the bed. Brian tumbles to the concrete floor with a thud. “Uggghhh,” he moans, clutching his side.
“Yes, it does.” I wipe my hands across one another. “Brian.” I crouch down to his level and his pained eyes look up at me. “You