Prologue
I kind of hate my roommate.
Ok, not really. She's sweet and considerate and never borrows stuff without asking, and she never flirted with my boyfriends. (They did flirt with her, but that's not actually the problem. Ok it is a teensy part of the problem, but not... ok, it's Definitely Related to the Problem but to be honest I don't even fucking blame them.)
The problem – well, the original problem - is she's gorgeous. Head to toe slathered in hotness. I'm pretty, she's ravishing. All the damn time, and it's not because she goes out of her way; she just wakes up looking radiant, spends about two minutes on makeup and less on her hair, and sails into her day, basking in the glances of the guys. Guys look at me and smile. Guys look at her and stop dead, staring.
She barely notices. Well of course she notices, guys freezing in their tracks left and right I mean how do you not notice, but she just keeps sailing right on by. Seriously I want to gouge her eyes out some mornings.
Or at least I did. Now it's... kind of complicated.
And I know what you're thinking. There are perks to the hot roommate. She'll bring in eligible guys and you'll get to meet them, and she can't keep them all, and leftovers can make a tasty snack... nope. Not Syeira. (Not her real name, and you'll see why). She has – wait for it – a guy back home. Several thousand miles away. They email and skype. It's kind of nauseating.
And I get it. He's nobility or royalty of some kind – of course he is, what else would he be – and he does fly out here several times a semester. She vanishes for the weekend when he does, which means I get a chance to look in a mirror and remember I'm pretty again. Oh, and did I mention she's second cousin to a recent Miss Romania? No, she never admitted that, but we all had to produce genealogies for a six degrees class project and there was the name right there on her tree, and some of the guys recognized it. Of course. (Some of the guys pointed out she actually looked more like a young, bustier Catherine Zeta Jones, which prompted a long discussion about her various attributes that made me literally ill to listen to. I never want to hear the word boobalicious again.)
Oh, and what is she studying? Psychology. This girl who isn't going to have to work a day in her life has a completely legit major and does ok at it. Girls like that are supposed to be failing Art History majors and then get a job modeling. (Her mother won't let her model. Of course.)
And – ok, no. I could go on for pages, but damn it, she's not a horrible person. She just wakes up sweet and lovely and flawless and I end up feeling like I'm the horrible person, for hating so much. At least she wasn't born rich; she's actually a child of poverty and has a job to supplement her scholarship.
The interesting thing – the thing I want to write about – is... she's not an angel. You'd think with the one long-distance boyfriend and no one on campus and all the rest she'd be that nauseatingly good girl that makes you feel tawdry. But she's... not. And she's not in a very specific way that haunts my dreams.
She doesn't talk about it, except that one time. She was drunk. She'd just had a fight with her boyfriend on skype because he wanted to visit that weekend but she had to study, and he bitched her out for it. She took it hard – seriously, tears all afternoon, she's sensitive – and then got into some vodka and lemon punch. She's not a drinker and had no idea what the hell she was mixing and by the time I got back to the room, more than a third of the liter bottle of Smirnoff was gone. She was a serious mess and, well, even a jealous roomie can't hate that much. I held her hair as she threw up, fed water and juice into her, and stayed with her to make sure she didn't get worse. Part of that meant keeping her talking.
And fucking hell, the story she told...
