Cramped Quarters - Love Under Lockdown

What would he do if he found out I was even talking to the son of Judas Graves? Let alone all the truly filthy thoughts swirling around in my head. It would hurt just as much as being stabbed, but I had to stay away from him. To treat him like the enemy that my dad always insisted he was.

In the distance, I heard my phone dinging. It was the campus alert system sending me a new message. Hauling myself to a standing position, I lolloped back into the bedroom and checked the message.COVID-19 UPDATE!Until further notice, new dorm regulations will be in place. Students currently in cluster housing are to be dispersed into dorm housing with a maximum of two students allowed in any given unit at any time. Actions are being taken so that coursework can be done online.Well, this sucked. I had barely started school and now everything was changing, right before my eyes.

My good luck of not having to have a roommate had only lasted for three weeks.

Who knew what kind of weirdo might be moving in?

And I was also worried that classes would be canceled completely and that I’d be sent back home to have to live with my overly harsh father, just as I thought I had managed to escape.

It was enough to take my mind off the fact that I had to stay far away from the one guy I had been attracted to for the first time in my life.

At least for the time being.Chapter Six - AugustusYou never know what you have until you lose it. I’d been appreciative of Amelia’s help in unpacking but never really knew how much of a help she had been until I had to do it again, all by myself. Less than three weeks after doing it the first time.

I always knew it might happen. That something would transpire, and I would get expelled. Though, thankfully, that wasn’t what was going on.

I was just being moved and, frankly, I wasn’t sad to go. I had no idea what was awaiting me at my new place but at least there would be someone else there. Cold as it might sound, anyone would probably be better than the six jackasses I’d been sharing with.

Keira was the only reasonable one. It could have just been my mighty male bravado, but I was fairly certain that she was sweet on me. It wouldn’t have been the first time. Though it would have been the first time a girl who was already attached had set her eye my way.

Nothing could happen. Things were made quite clear by several of the Seven Tenets of the religion I followed that another person’s partner was strictly off limits unless agreed on by all parties well in advance.

Getting my music and movie posters down was the easy part, gravity helping as much as anything. The difficult thing was stacking and moving the records, which seemed to weigh a ton— one of the solid downsides to vinyls.

Yet, I persisted, getting my three boxes and a backpack by the door in good time, incurring only a one-Advil backache. That was a new record, I was pretty sure.

Everything set just so, precision being near the top of my list of priorities, I stepped out into the gathering clouds. Autumn had finally decided to show itself, and turned in the direction of the housing office.

Happiness really is mostly a state of mind. Though there are some places, so soul-crushingly depressing, it was like they were designed to kill any happiness that might potentially take root.

Airports are one. As well as most DMV offices. Highway Motels also have a history of this. Though the one place I would never expect to find such ardently dedicated killjoys was among the university employees in charge of giving out keys.

There was more to it than that, I was sure. They certainly seemed to be typing furiously enough to give the illusion of working, but then again, so did most government employees. It must be a trick they learned during training.

Taking my place in line with the miserable wraiths, I turned up “Square Hammer” on my first-generation iPod and did my best to stay complacent. No one has control over their circumstances. The mark of maturity is how one faces them.

The process was surprisingly easy once I actually got to the desk. It was merely a matter of giving my name and trading my keys from the ones for the cluster house to the ones needed for my new apartment dwelling.

All the boneheads from the cluster were at some kind of sporting event, leaving me the lovely task of carrying the load across campus to the fancy-pants apartment units overlooking the bay. It only took three trips, with a bookbag on my back for the third.