Three more text notifications go off in my pocket. I want to take the phone out and hurl it through the fucking living room window. It spurs me into an angry tirade I didn’t know was brewing inside me. “I don’t believe the bullshit I’m hearin’. Why the hell would you do this? It’s an invasion of my fuckin’ privacy!”
“New Guy, I said chill. We thought this whole thing through—we have a plan! First, in addition to the text messages, we’re going to create a SnapChat account for you. Then, we’re going to—”
“Stop fuckin’ calling me New Guy!” I snatch the paper out of Rex’s hand and thrust it back at him, flapping it in his face. “This has my fuckin’ face on it, dickhead! And you didn’t even spell my name right. What the actual fuck?”
“Whoa. Calm your tits. If I’d have known you were going to get so upset about this, I would have gone with our earlier idea to place a Facebook status on the Campus Love Connection page.”
I can’t decide which is worse: having my cell phone number plastered around campus for anyone who wants to text me or having these two morons trying to find me hookups by trolling every social media platform.
Thousands of students creep the CLC page looking for missed connections and hookups, relationships and meaningless sex, crushes and shitty dates with other students at Iowa.
“This is such bullshit—I cannot believe you did this.” I ball up the green sheet of paper and throw it onto the floor. “Where are they hung? Y’all are coming with me to take them down.”
My roommates glance at each other.
“He said hung,” Johnson whispers into the uncomfortable silence.
They both laugh.
“It’s fifteen posters; why are you pissed? You need to meet people. You need to get laid, and you’re not going to do it sitting around the house.” He pulls his phone out from under his blanket, sliding the screen open, and clicks on a familiar app icon. “You really should check your messages. I bet you have shit tons.”
“Just tell me where they are so I can go rip them down.”
I should have listened when our team captain, Sebastian “Oz” Osborne, tried steering me away from living with these two: “Rabideaux, do yourself a favor and find someone else to live with. These two are going to drive you fucking crazy.”
Everyone warned me, but I didn’t know anyone before transferring—not a soul—and had a short amount of time to find a place if I didn’t want to live in the dorms, figured I could stick it out.
I knew they would be annoying, I just didn’t think they would be complete douchebags.
I was wrong.
My phone rattles twice before I hit the front door, letting it slam behind me. I check my rapidly growing list of messages.
I’m going to suck your dick [attachment: shot of random girl’s small tits]
Hi there, I don’t normally do thing like this, but you look cute…
Dude, I’m not a chick but you’re a fucking god. Wanna be my wingman? You take all the new numbers from your phone and pass them on to me…
Rett COME GET LAID. Room 314, Wimbly Hall
Laurel
“Laurel, please, please, please tell me you saw that poster hanging in the quad today.”
My cousin Alexandra leans forward with both arms on the table, food on the tray in front of her, sly smile stretched across her dark, gothic lips. Though it’s Monday and we’ve both just come from classes, my cousin’s lips are painted crimson red, as if she’s just come from a night of clubbing. Black hair flat-ironed. Brown eyes lined with black kohl. Brows defined.
We look nothing alike, she and I—not even close. So different in appearance, even though our mothers are twins. In fact, if you stood us side by side in a lineup, you’d never put us together as related.
Alexandra is tan; I am pale. Alex is short and curvy; I’m tall and willowy. She has black hair while mine is red—and not just any shade of red; my hair is dark and flaming like a brushfire, wavy and wild.
The fact that we’re attending the same university and have three more semesters of these little weekly lunch dates she insists on is not lost on me. Alex takes everything I say and reports back to her mother, who then calls my mother, who then calls me.
It’s so annoying, and it never fails.
I have to watch everything I say, or it gets repeated. Partying too hard, drunken nights out, guys I hook up with? Repeated.
Absentmindedly, I dig a spoon into my blueberry yogurt. Stare down into the white cream to hunt down fruit before glancing back up. Lick my spoon. “What poster?”
I may or may not have seen it.
Alex rolls her eyes; it drives me insane that she’s so condescending, but arguing with her is futile.
“The green ones with some guy’s picture on it. It’s hill-ari-ous.”
I shrug, uninterested. “No idea what you’re talking about.”
“Are you living under a rock? Let me show you, I ripped one down.” She leans at the waist, unzips her backpack, and produces a single sheet of wrinkled green printer paper. “It’s some kind of ad to get a guy laid. Get Rett laid, see here? Is that not hysterical?”
“So hysterical,” I deadpan with a neutral expression.
Alex swipes back a lock of her jet-black hair. “The guy is so not cute he has to put an ad up around campus for sex.”
“Just because there’s a flyer up in the quad doesn’t mean he can’t get laid. Maybe it’s a fraternity prank—has that thought occurred to you?”
“It’s not rush season. Why would anyone do that?”
Oh my God, is she serious? Because guys are morons, that’s why.
She drones on, staring at the paper in her hands. Gives her head a shake. “Not this guy, look at him—he’s a real barker. You’d have to put a bag over his head to get me to fuck him.”
“Jesus Alex.” I shush her even though it’s kind of funny. “Keep your voice down.”
“Well look at him, Laurel! I wouldn’t fuck him, would you?” She tilts her head and studies the sheet of paper, biting down on her lower lip. Slides it across the table, bumping the sheet into my water bottle. “Tell me I’m wrong.”
My cousin’s smug voice drifts across the table along with the mint green flyer.
My nimble fingers pluck it from the tabletop, smooth out the wrinkles. Blue eyes study the poorly photocopied image that was obviously fingered too soon after printing—ink is smudged in three places.
Even so, the grainy copy doesn’t detract from the eyes staring back at me. My stomach flutters.
Holy crap, I know this guy.
My eyes fly over the words someone has sloppily written with black Sharpie marker: Are you the lucky lady who is going to break our roommate’s cherry? Him: socially awkward man with average-sized penis looking for willing sexual partner. You: must have a pulse. He will reciprakate with oral sex.
Text him at: 555-254-5551
Holy shit—Get Rett Laid is Dine and Dash.
Before I can reread it, Alexandra impolitely snatches it out of my hand with a flick of the wrist. Flips her hair.
Smirks knowingly.
“Well?” Her question is laden with impatience only she can get away with. “Would you do him?”
No, I would not do him.
My lip curls. “Uh, hell no.”
“Yes! See what I’m saying? Wouldn’t it be funny though,” she muses, “if one of us sent him a text and made him think we were going to screw him?”
I point my spoon in her direction, pointing out the obvious. “Do you know how many texts that guy has probably gotten? Tons. He’s probably changed his number by now.”
I know I would if my friends did that shit to me.
One of her black brows rises. “Only one way to find out.”
“Alex, the last thing I want is some pissed off wrestler masturbating to my selfies.”
Alex perks up—she’s a total jock chaser and a sucker for athletes of any variety, cute or not. “How do you know he’s a wrestler?”
I give a diminutive shrug. “I think I recognize him. I saw him this weekend, getting a prank pulled on him by his friends. They were all wearing wrestling shirts and stuff so I just assumed.”