Chelsea Cameron - My Favourite Mistake

“This,” I said, pointing to Hunter, “is our new roommate, according to housing.”

“No way.” Renee’s eyes got wide in her tiny face. Renee looked like a blond-haired, blue-eyed china doll you plucked off a shelf and put in a Victoria’s Secret tank top. “Are you shitting me?”

“What a reception,” Hunter said.

“Shut up,” I said. He just smiled again. God, I wanted to smack that smile right off his face.

“I should probably get my junk out of the hall,” he said, going and picking up the footlocker as if it weighed nothing more than a shoebox. Show-off.

Hunter had to navigate boxes and random pillows and crap that littered the rooms, which he did with grace. He found a spot and set the footlocker down, looking at us.

“So, who am I sleeping with?” he said, leaning against the door to my bedroom.

The agreement had been that since Darah and Renee had already been roommates last year, and I was joining their little group, that the new girl would live with me. But that was so not happening now that the new girl wasn’t a girl.

“Did you seriously just say that?” I said.

At the same time Darah said, “The only free bed is in Taylor’s room.”

“There is no way he’s staying with me,” I snapped, readjusting my arms so they covered my boobs better. He’d been staring at my chest since he’d made the sleeping with comment. Not that I had much of one to speak of, but that didn’t stop his eyes from traveling there.

“No, we’re calling housing right now and straightening this out,” I said, pulling out my cell phone.

“Tay, they’re not open on Monday,” Renee said.

“I don’t care. There must be someone there. It’s move-in day.”

I grabbed the campus phone book that had been on the doormat when we’d gotten there that morning and thumbed through it until I found the number for housing.

“Aw, c’mon, Missy, you don’t want to live with me?” Who did this guy think he was? I’d known him all of ten minutes and he’d already given me a nickname and propositioned me.

“Call me that one more time…” I didn’t finish as I furiously typed in the number. Darah and Renee whispered to Hunter, but not quiet enough so I couldn’t hear them.

“It’s best to let her go when she gets like this,” Renee hissed.

“I wouldn’t mess with her,” he said as I listened to another ring.

Finally, a message picked up, telling me what the hours were and giving me some extensions I could try. I punched in the first one. No answer, but a message machine picked up. I left a short message, explaining the situation in the most urgent of terms, and then called back the original number. I didn’t stop until I’d left messages for all five of the contacts on the housing voice mail list. I slammed my phone down on the counter.

“Feel better?” Hunter said.

“No.” I chucked the phone book on the couch. Darah and Renee were looking at me like they were worried I was going to explode. I was on the verge. “If you were a gentleman, you’d offer to sleep on the couch,” I snapped.

“Well, Missy, you’ll come to find out that I’m not a gentleman. I plan to take full advantage of this situation.” My mouth dropped open in shock. No guy had ever talked to me that way.

“Is it hot in here? I think I’ll open the window,” Renee said, scurrying over to our one window, located at one end of the couch.

Darah looked at me and then Hunter and back. “Well, there’s nothing we can do right now. Let’s get his stuff in, and then maybe we can go down and see if anyone is at housing,” she said. Darah was always the peacemaker.

“Sounds good to me,” Hunter said, walking right into my bedroom as if he owned the place.

“I can’t believe this is happening,” I said, closing my eyes. I heard “Back in Black” by AC/DC coming from my room. Hunter’s ringtone.

“Hey, man. No, I just got here. Room 203. Yeah, that would be great…” He nudged the door shut, and I glanced at Renee and Darah.

“I didn’t think we were going to have to do this so early, but I think we need a roommate meeting,” I said. We’d agreed that we would have weekly roommate meetings to air our grievances. I was all for getting that shit out in the open so we didn’t end up hating each other. I’d had a horrible roommate last year, and I didn’t want to deal with that again.

I listened, but it sounded like Hunter was still on the phone. I could hear him rummaging and prayed he wouldn’t break anything. Then I would kill him.

“I don’t see what the big deal is,” Renee said. “I mean, it would be the same if one of us had a boyfriend staying over. Paul stayed over all the time when Darah and I lived here last year.”

“But that was because you were sleeping with him,” I said.

“Maybe I’ll sleep with Hunter,” she shot back. Renee had broken up with Paul extremely recently and was on the prowl for a rebound. We all knew she and Paul were meant to be and that they would eventually realize that, but Renee was still in the anger stage.

“Are you uncomfortable with staying with him, Taylor? It’s okay if you are,” Darah said.

“I can’t imagine why I would be uncomfortable about sharing an extremely small room with a guy I’ve known all of a half hour who keeps making creepy comments. Can’t imagine why I’d have a problem with that.”

“If you want, Renee and I can switch. I’ll stay with him, and Renee can stay with you,” Darah said.

“Why can’t he stay with me?” Renee whined.

“Because you’ll rape him in his sleep,” I said.

“You can’t rape the willing, Tay,” she said, winking.

“You’re disgusting.”

“How about we draw straws?” Darah said.

“Do we even have straws?” Renee said. “How about we do numbers or something? Here,” she said, grabbing a UMaine notepad that someone had left on the kitchen counter, along with a pen. “I’ll write our names down and we’ll put it in…” She grabbed the baseball cap I’d discarded earlier. “And Hunter will pick. There you go. Problem solved.”

My door opened and Hunter emerged, another grin on his face.

“You weren’t talking about me, were you?”

Like he didn’t know. I rolled my eyes as Renee wrote each of our names on little bits of paper and tossed them in my hat. She put her hand over the top and shook it up.

“Pick one,” she said, shoving the hat in his face.

“Okay,” he said, sticking his hand in and pulling out a folded slip of paper. Renee slowly unfolded it. We all waited as she paused dramatically.

“Taylor,” she said, turning it around so we could all read my name in black-and-white.

“Shit,” I said.

“What’s with all the peacock stuff?”

It was an hour later, and I was just as stuck with Hunter as I was when he’d walked in the door. I’d even gone down to housing, which was right down the hill from our dorm, but no one was there. Too busy making sure the freshmen didn’t collapse under the weight of their massive electronics when they carried them down the hall, no doubt.

I was doing my best to ignore Hunter, but he wouldn’t shut up. Clearly, he was one of those guys who liked to chat.

“Don’t you know peacock feathers are bad luck?” Out of the corner of my eye, his biceps with the seven tattoo flexed as he pulled a couple of shirts out of his footlocker.

Yes, I did know they were bad luck for most people. It was none of his business why I had them everywhere, including on my comforter, hung in frames on the wall and strung on a dream catcher my sister had given me. It was none of his goddamn business.

I wished Tawny was here. My sister would have known exactly what to say to Hunter to get him to leave. She couldn’t get out of her work as a paralegal, and Mom couldn’t get off work, either. I guess they figured since I was a sophomore, moving wasn’t such a big deal. Still, I missed Tawny.