Unavoidable

Samantha:

Playing attendance roulette is my new thing lately. I need to get a better handle on my morning routine. I’ve already had three tardies in my 9 a.m. Cultural Anthropology class, and four counts as an absence. We’re barely halfway through the semester, and I’m already just one absence shy of an automatic failure, per Dr. Peterson’s three-strikes-and-you’re-a-failure policy. I just need to make it through the next four weeks with perfect attendance.

I’m doomed.

“Take Anthropology, they said. It will be an easy A, they said,” I mutter to myself as I leave my car parked crooked in the closest space to Archer Hall and race across the quad toward my class. True to form, I step into Dr. Peterson’s class two minutes late. Maybe if I keep my head low, he won’t see me. Hunching my shoulders and trying my best to become as small as possible, I make for the nearest empty desk and slide into the seat.

When no gravelly voice barks the usual, “Tardy, Miss Martel,” I finally dare to look over at Dr. Peterson’s desk. Maybe he didn’t notice me coming in—or just didn’t care.

But Dr. Peterson isn’t behind his desk. Instead, a much younger guy is in the old man’s ratty, brown, rolling chair. And he’s crazy gorgeous. Dark hair, heavy-lidded bedroom eyes, sketch-me bone structure, and soft dimples framing pale pink lips. A flurry of nervous energy sends my stomach spiraling—a combination of attraction to him and embarrassment at being caught with my punctuality pants down. Warmth heats my cheeks—and somewhere decidedly lower—but I don’t look away, can’t look away.

“Good morning, class,” he says in a velvety-smooth voice as he stands to write on the board behind him. Mr. Moore. “I’ll be filling in for a while.” Teacher? He barely looks old enough to not be a student.

Cynda Smith’s dainty hand shoots into the air and flutters, drawing Mr. Moore’s attention to her. He gives her a head tilt and a raised brow.

“Are you our teacher now? What happened to Dr. Peterson?” she asks and flips a long lock of platinum hair over her shoulder.

“Dr. Peterson’s dealing with a family illness. I’m his TA, and I’ll be finishing out the rest of the semester with you guys. With his oversight, of course,” he tells the class more than Cynda even though she asked the question.

I’m going to get to start every Monday and Wednesday morning staring at this gorgeous man? I suddenly foresee myself becoming a much more diligent student. Too bad I can’t have Anthropology every day. I’ll just have to make the most of my class time. Luckily, this is the one environment where it’s expected for me to stare at him.

Maybe he won’t notice the drool.

He sets his hands on his hips all casual like, and his gray polo stretches taut over his biceps and chest, revealing the contours of well-defined muscles. He’s speaking, addressing the whole class, but his words aren’t registering in my brain. I’m pretty sure the language centers of my brain have completely stopped functioning. I hear that deep, raspy voice, and watch his perfect lips moving, but he might as well be speaking an alien language for all I comprehend.

My phone vibrates in my back pocket, snapping me out of this weird, hypnotized state. I sneak the phone out of my pocket and under my desk. I have not one, not two, but three new messages from my friend Abby. I raise my head and scan the room, looking for her since she’s in this class with me. I find her on the far side of the room, near the windows, and she’s looking at me expectantly. I can tell by the look on her face that I better check my messages before she does something to get us both in trouble. Abby isn’t exactly known for her subtlety.

Abby: OMG the new teacher! Beautiful!

Abby: Can I keep him, Mommy?

Abby: Oh, and that voice! Swoon!

Another message comes through almost immediately.

Abby: Girl, I am so all over this. I think I need to earn some extra credit!

I waste no time responding.

Me: Dibs!

She ends the conversation with a sad face. I slide my phone back into my pocket and settle in to watch the Greek god at the front of the room talk about cultural universals. When class ends—way too soon for my liking—I meet Abby in the hall, and we walk together to the sociology building. Her Feminist Perspective class is across the hall from my National Government class. Okay, we might have mapped out our schedules this semester so that, even though we aren’t taking all of the same classes, we can still take classes in the same building at the same time.

“So, the new teacher…” she says suggestively.

“TA,” I correct. I’m not sure why the distinction matters to me, but it does. Somehow, him being a TA and not an actual professor makes him feel more… attainable. Like I might actually have a chance with him. Which is silly because he is still teaching the class.

“TA… as in Total Adonis.” She fluffs her hair like she’s primping to impress, even though none of the other students traveling the hallway are paying us any attention.

“You know he was killed by a boar right?” I ask as I push open the glass door leading out to the quad.

“Who, the TA?”

I snicker. “Adonis. Plus, if I’m remember my mythology right, he was his own uncle.”

“Like incest?” Abby’s tone is both curious and concerned.

“Yep. His dad was his grandpa. His mom totally got it on with her own father,” I answer, only half paying attention to our conversation and our trek across the quad as I pull out my phone to read an incoming text from my roommate, Maggie.

Maggie: Are you coming home after class? There’s something Michael and I want to talk to you about.

Weird. Why would Maggie’s boyfriend want to talk to me?

“So, he’s got a sister-mom,” Abby says, and a moment passes before I realize she’s talking about Adonis and not Maggie’s boyfriend, Michael.

“Yep,” I answer Abby as I type my response to Maggie.

Me: Is this about me supergluing the toilet seat down so he’ll stop leaving it up in the middle of the night?

Even if that is what he wants to talk to me about, I’m not sorry I did it. That was completely justified. A girl can only fall bare assed into the toilet so many times before extreme measures are called for. I will 100 percent die on that hill.

Maggie: No, nothing like that. Will you come home after class, though?

Maggie: Please?

Whatever it is must be serious. She typed out the actual word please instead of the letters P–L–Z.

Me: OK sure.

I don’t have time to muse over what this might be about because Abby and I arrive in the hall outside our respective classes with only a few minutes to spare. “I guess Maggie and I aren’t doing lunch today,” I tell Abby. Most days, the three of us meet for lunch in the cafeteria. It’s a holdover from our freshman year when we all lived on campus and none of us had a car. Maybe one day, we’ll graduate to big girl lunches off campus, but for now, the cafeteria lunch dates are comfortable, like my favorite pair of old pajamas.

“How come?”

I slip my phone into my back pocket and balance my books on my arm, preparing to open the door to my class. “Maggie wants me to come to the apartment so she and Michael can talk to me about something.”

“I bet it’s that they want to install a sex swing in the living room,” Abby responds with a snort.

I laugh. “Yeah, right. And my Nana moonlights as a dominatrix.” I find the idea of Maggie’s boyfriend even knowing what a sex swing is highly amusing. He’s as straightlaced as I’ve ever seen. “I’m pretty sure he was a virgin when they met.”

“Probably has something to do with the fact that he’s been dressing like a middle-aged lawyer since he was five.” Abby mimes putting on a suit coat and straightening an invisible tie.

“Abby!” I admonish. “That’s not nice to say behind his back.”

She shakes her head. “I’ve said it to his face. Makes no difference. I’m pretty sure the guy chafes at the idea of wearing a pair of jeans. I bet his junk is so sensitive he has to wear silk boxers.”

“And on that note…” I reach for the door handle and tug the door to my classroom open. “I’m going to class. But thanks for the weird imagery of my roommate’s boyfriend’s underwear choices.”

Abby winks at me and retreats to her own classroom. Hopefully, I can get the image of Michael in silk boxers out of my head before I have to face him and Maggie later.

Samantha:

Engaged. En-gaged. En-ga-ged. I repeat the word over and over in my head, hoping that repetition will make it make sense. But the more I echo it, the more like gibberish it sounds. And the bottom line is it doesn’t matter if I get it or not. What matters is Maggie, my life-long best friend and roommate for the entire three and half years we’ve been in college, is engaged, and he’s moving in.

And they’ve asked me to move out.

I should have just stayed in the dorms. Moving off campus with Maggie last year is proving to have been a horrible mistake.

I’m happy for her, I tell myself as I dump the contents of my bottom dresser drawer into a box without bothering to sort or fold any of it and move to grab everything in the next drawer. And I mean it; I am happy for her.

But… I’m also sad for me. This is the end of an era. “The Dynamic Duo is dead,” I mutter to myself as I empty the last of my dresser drawers into the box and continue to the nightstand. She’s moving on, building a life with someone new, and the closest thing I have to a significant other is Poofie, my twelve-year-old cat. And I’m pretty sure he hates me most of the time.

I’m being dramatic, but I don’t care. Maggie and I have been best friends since kindergarten, and she just springs it on me that Michael is in and I’m out. Okay, so they did give me “as long as you need to find a decent place, Sammy.” I recall Maggie’s gentle tone, but it does little to lessen the sting.

I close up the now-full box and open another, then head into the bathroom for my toiletries and products. That’s going to be a whole box in itself. I don’t bother organizing the contents of this box either. I’m a woman on a mission, and that mission is to get out of here as quickly as possible. And fueled by emotion as I am right now, I’m making short work of packing. But where am I going to go?

Mom and Dean just sold the house and moved into a one-bedroom condo on the beach. While the idea of ocean views is appealing, I can’t bear the thought of sleeping on their couch indefinitely. Dean likes to stroll around in his tighty-whities. I found this out the hard way when I stayed with them last year while the apartment was being fumigated. It’s not an experience I have any desire to repeat.

My little sister, Anne-Marie, just moved into a tiny home with her Great Dane, Pete. Pete’s almost bigger than the whole house. There’s barely enough room for Anne-Marie to move around, let alone two people.

I mentally run through my list of friends—a list that is, apparently, a lot shorter than I thought it was. Everyone is either living in already cramped quarters or has a live-in partner.

Except Robby. My favorite cousin. He’s living the bachelor life in his loft downtown. Okay, so up until this moment, Genevieve was my favorite cousin, but now it’s Robby.

And that’s exactly who I will appeal to. My cousin has never been able to resist helping me when I come to him. Now won’t be any different; I’m sure of it.

I’m so certain of Robby’s familial affection for me that I don’t even bother to call before loading up my little car with everything it will hold and driving over to his place. Finding parking downtown takes a million years, and I end up a block and a half away from his building, which is going to make unloading a pain. But I would trek ten blocks each way if it meant not having to face my roommate and her beau right now.

I probably should have at least called to see if Robby is home, I realize as I heft Poofie in his plastic carrier under one arm and balance it against my hip so I can knock. When no one answers, I knock again and am rewarded with an annoyed, “Yeah, yeah, I’m coming,” from somewhere inside the apartment. Good. He’s home.

When Robby answers the door, I paste on my best sheepish smile and pray he takes pity on me.

“Sam?” His dark brows draw together in confusion as he stares down at me and the pet carrier tucked under my arm. “What are you doing here?” His voice suggests he already suspects but is trying to give me the benefit of the doubt.

“I need a place to stay.” Cue the puppy-dog eyes he’s never once said no to.

Robby sighs and scrubs a hand down his face before scratching at the day-old stubble on his chin. “Sam…”

“Please, Robby. Just until I find a new place.”

“Did you and Maggie have a fight or something?”

“Something like that.” I would prefer to not have this discussion in the hall outside his front door, but the way he’s filling the doorframe and making no moves to let me through tells me I’m going to need to make my case. “She kicked me out.”

“You guys have been friends forever. Just apologize for whatever you did and ask her to let you stay.”

A pinch of hurt skitters into the pit of my stomach, and I can’t keep it out of my voice when I answer him. “What makes you think I did anything? For your information, she and Michael are moving in together and they want the place to themselves.”

His expression softens, but he still doesn’t let me in. The elevator dings, and the doors open. An older couple steps off and eyes us on their way to their own apartment down the hall.

“Can we have this conversation inside?” I ask quietly. Having to beg him to take me in is bad enough. I don’t want to do it in front of an audience.

He steps back and opens the door wider for me to enter. I walk on soft feet into the living room and set Poofie on the coffee table, careful to avoid the handful of car and sports magazines fanned out across the dark wood surface. I want to prove I’ll be a good roommate. Disrespecting my cousin’s stuff as my first official move inside his apartment isn’t going to help my case any.

“Please, Robby. You’re the only person I know who has room for me.” I beg and then correct myself. “For us.” I indicate Poofie’s carrier with a nod. “We have nowhere else to go. Just let me crash in your spare room for a bit. You won’t even know I’m here.”

“I don’t have a spare room anymore.”

“I will totally stay out of your way, and I’ll pay r—” I stop when his words sink in. “Wait, what?”

“I have a roommate.”

“Since when?” I challenge as I sink down onto the plush navy blue couch that is definitely not the plaid hand-me-down monstrosity my aunt and uncle gave him when he moved in here in college.

“I don’t know. A month, maybe?” Robby leaves me in the living room, skirts the kitchen island, and heads for the refrigerator. He pulls out a bottle of water and holds it up in offering to me. I nod, and he reaches back into the fridge to grab a second bottle for himself.

“Okay, then…” I look around, scrambling for a new plan. I can’t go crawling back to Maggie and Michael with my tail between my legs. I wasn’t exactly warm and friendly on my way out. My gaze lands on the alcove at the far end of the living room. It’s empty except for Robby’s bass guitar and an electric I don’t recognize. “What about the nook? It’s big enough for a bed. I could just sleep there.”

He hands me one of the bottles and sits down on the couch next to me while eying the space at the other end of the room with uncertainty.

Before he can say no, I continue, “Robby, seriously, I have no place to go. And I’m super easy to live with.” He opens his mouth to say something, but I cut him off, “At the very least, I won’t be bringing a bunch of people over and leaving my crap everywhere. I don’t even have that much stuff.” Maggie and I have been living together for so long that most of the stuff in our apartment is shared belongings. And my current mood is “cut off my nose to spite my face” so I definitely don’t want any of it.

Robby still looks unconvinced, so I close with a sing-songy, “I make the best brownies.”

He sighs and runs a hand through his hair before pulling his phone out of his pocket. “I need to ask Gavin if he’s cool with it.”

Robby dials his roomie’s number and gets an answer on the first ring.

“Hey, man, my cousin, Sam, needs a place to stay for a bit. Is that cool with you?”

I lean in close to hear the response, and Robby doesn’t even bother trying to move away. He knows me well enough to know I’ll just follow. I’ve always been unapologetically nosy; that’s never going to change.

The voice on the other end of the line is low and gravelly. “For how long?”

Robby raises his eyebrows at me in question, and I mouth, “A couple weeks?”

“A week or two, maybe,” he tells Gavin.

Gavin’s answer is muffled, and he sounds distracted. “Sure, no problem.”

My answering smile is as wide as my face as Robby thanks him and hangs up the phone. I throw my arms around his neck and tell him, “Thanks, Cuz. You won’t regret this. Now, come help me move my stuff up.”

Robby exhales heavily but doesn’t argue. Twenty-one years of being related to me has taught him it’s easier just to play along. Tonight, I’ll worry about the boxes in my car. I’ll wait until tomorrow to convince Robby to help me move my bed over from my—er Maggie and Michael’s place. I can grab an air mattress or something from the nearest store to get me through the night. Honestly, the relief of having found a place to stay has left me feeling so light, I probably won’t even feel the temporary bed underneath me.