The guys were all in the living room. No lights except from the glow of the TV. The noises coming from the room told me they were virtually killing a bunch of other gamers in another room that probably looked a lot like this one. Dark, noisy with smack talk, and fueled by most of a case of beer.

I wasn’t in the mood for any of it. And frankly, I didn’t want them to see me like this. Tears dried in tracks down my cheeks, eyes red and puffy. Even with my big sunglasses on, I was sure it was obvious that I was a hot mess. And I had every right to be. This was the kind of distress that called for sympathy from my girls.

Don’t get me wrong, my guy roommates had their advantages. Sometime it was way easier to take the beer they offered, flop down on the couch and cheer along with them to whatever University sport they’d managed to find on TV. Distracting, escapist fun. That had its time and place.

Now was not that time.

So I didn’t even say hello as I headed up the stairs to take refuge in the room I shared with Ashley. She wasn’t in there, though. And my other female roommate, Mary, wasn’t in her room down the hall.

Where were my girls in my time of need? Didn’t they know I was having literally the worst day of my life?

Frustrated tears sprung to my eyes afresh and I forgot I was still wearing my sunglasses when I tried to wipe them away, instead shoving the frames further into my face. Which was totally in keeping with the rest of my day. I yanked the glasses off angrily and tossed them on my bed.

Footsteps came up the stairs and I hurried to the doorway, hoping it was Ashley or Mary. But the tread was too heavy, I realized. It had to be one of the guys.

I tried to duck back into my room and close the door, but I was spotted.

“Em?” It was Beckett, looking surprised to see me. “Didn’t hear you come in.”

I gave an over-exaggerated shrug. “I’m home.”

“Yeah.” He didn’t seem himself. His posture was heavy and his voice didn’t have its usually upbeat inflection. Beckett had surfer looks, with his light brown hair and blue eyes, and a buoyant, laid back personality to match. The Beckett I was seeing before me was not the Beckett I was used to.

“Do you—” I paused for a breath, trying to prevent any telltale squeaks from giving away my mental state. “Do you know where the girls are?”

Beckett looked around almost surprised. “No. I just came up to use the bathroom…”

“Don’t let me stop you.” I gestured toward one of the two bathrooms on this floor. Our townhouse-style apartment was a narrow tower of rooms, with two bedrooms on each of the second and third floors, but the bathrooms were weirdly both on the middle floor, right next to each other. The girls had staked out one as a group, while the guys were left to their own devices in the other. As a rule, I avoided theirs. The cleanliness level was considerably lower and you never knew if you were going to step on a wet towel or just some unidentifiable puddle.

Beckett started toward his bathroom, but paused to give me another look. “You all right?”

My lips twitched, as if they were trying to tell him the whole story without my brain’s permission. But I managed to contain myself and gave him a nod. “Sure.”

He seemed uncertain, but trudged to the bathroom without further comment.

From the living room below, I heard the sound of a group shout from Brady and Jake. They were apparently playing on without Beckett. Which was kind of weird. Usually any bathroom breaks were accompanied by continuing impatient cries from the other players while they suffered through the horrors of Pause.

I went back into my room and sank down on the bed, just missing crushing my abandoned sunglasses. Sitting was pretty much the only thing I could think of to do.

I was utterly and completely tapped out. Reserve tanks empty.

Which is how Beckett found me staring into space when he emerged from the bathroom. He paused in the door to my dark room.

“You sure you’re okay?”

I had to tell someone. “I have had the worst day. Ever.”

“Not worse than mine,” he said softly.

“You have no idea.”

“No, you have no idea.”

“Trust me, there is no way yours was worse.” My voice cracked on the last word.

He reached into his pocket and emerged with a five-dollar bill, which he held out to me. “Five bucks says it was.” Beckett and the other guys were always willing to make a wager with whatever happened to be in their pockets.

“Yeah, see, I don’t even have five bucks to make that bet with.”

Now his face creased with concern. “Emmy, what happened?”

“I don’t even know where to begin.” I pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes for a second, before ticking off the points on my fingers. “Basically I’m completely screwed for the fall.”

In less than a week, our lease was up on this quirky townhouse. In fact, my lease was up on life as I knew it. The six of us were college grads now. Real life was supposed to be on the horizon.

But not for me. Not anymore.

“What do you mean?” Beckett asked.

“You remember I found that roommate on Craigslist?”

“Yeah. What’s-her-name…uh, Bonnie something?”

“Yeah, well…” I gave another exaggerated shrug. “Maybe the name should have been a clue. Like Bonnie and Clyde.” At this point, a hiccuping sob burst out of me, and Beckett sank onto my bed beside me.

The sickening crunch of failing plastic told me he’d sat right on my sunglasses.

He jumped up in surprise, revealing the completely destroyed frames and the lenses both popped out.

“Oh shit!” he said. “I’m sorry, I didn’t—“

I cut him off with a wave of my hand. “It’s fine. It doesn’t even matter.”

“I’ll replace them.”

“Forget it.”

“Em, what is going on?”

I did finger-quotes around her name, “Bonnie kited a bunch of checks from my account. Then, she disappeared. Oh, but that wasn’t enough, oh no. She completely overdrafted my account, and she never even paid the security deposit. I’m not even sure there was a lease.” My chin quivered violently for a moment and my face threatened to crumple, but I seized control of myself. “I don’t even have what I need for my tuition payment next month. I’m broke. I’m homeless and I don’t know where I’m going to go! I don’t even—” The last word disappeared in a high pitched wail as my last shred of self-control faded.

Beck didn’t speak, just came to the other side of me, half-sitting on my pillow and put an arm around my shoulders. Now my angry bravado disappeared completely and I gave in to helpless, broken crying. One, two, and half of a third sob, before I pressed the fingertips of one hand between my eyebrows. Was it supposed to be some kind of off switch? I wasn’t sure, but it didn’t seem to work.

“What am I going to do?” I squeaked.

“We’ll figure it out,” he said soothingly. “Did you call the police?”

I nodded, sniffling. “Yeah, but they didn’t sound real confident they’d catch her.”

Beckett inhaled like he was going to say something, but he either didn’t have anything to say after all, or thought better of it. Instead, he just tightened his arm around me reassuringly.

“Damn it.” Now my fingertips moved to the hollows below my eyes. Was there a chakra for not crying? Some kind of acupressure thing I should learn?

We sat together in the quiet room for a few minutes, not talking. The only sound was my occasional sniffles as I faded from the immediacy of my personal disaster to a state more like numbness. It wasn’t any more helpful as emotional states went, but at least it didn’t involve so much snot.

When the well was dry, I asked, “So, do I even need to ask if I won the bet?”

“That really was a shitty day.”

“The worst.”

“Pretty bad.”

“Oh please. What could possibly be any worse than getting all your money stolen and being homeless?”

“Emily left me.”

“Wait, what?” I demanded.

“Yep,” he sighed.

“Emily? Your fiancée, Emily?”

“That’s the one.”

“But—you’re getting married, like, next week!”

Beckett shook his head. “Not anymore.”

“Why?!” My own problems forgotten, I looked at him with wide eyes. “How did—what? Why?”

Beckett didn’t answer, instead leaning away from me to pull out his phone. He tapped into his email and held it out for me to read.

“Holy—” the word came out of me in a gasp.

“Yeah.”

“Oh my god, Beckett.” I threw my arms around his waist, squeezing him in a tight hug. “I’m so sorry!”

“Yeah,” he said flatly.

“How can she—what about—isn’t she—” I couldn’t even get my thoughts straight enough to figure out where to start with my questions.

“You know what I know.” Beckett shrugged.

“Did you reply? Call her? What did she say?”

“I called,” he said softly. “But her sister answered. Emily wouldn’t come to the phone.”

“What did her sister say?”

“Mostly just repeated what was in the email. A lot about rushing things.”

“But you guys have been together since high school!” Beckett and Emily were an institution as far as I was concerned. Sure, Emily went to school in Arizona, but she was practically an invisible 7^th roommate in our house. She was the ghost in every conversation. The constant in Beckett's plans for the future.

“I know.”

I felt like I was suddenly in a foreign country where I didn’t speak the language. A world without my stalwart friend and roommate getting married next week was a world I did not recognize.

See, Beckett and Emily had a plan. Emily was transferring schools to spend the last year of her undergrad career at the same school where Beckett—and I—were going to grad school. They were going to live in the same city for the first time since high school. They were going to live in the same apartment for the first time ever.

The only wrench in the system? Emily’s conservative parents didn’t want her living with her boyfriend before marriage. Never mind the fact that they’d been together for more than five years at this point. Never mind that they were already talking about forever.

But Beckett was even willing to concede on that front. He’d asked Emily to marry him over winter break, and when even that wasn’t enough to get her parents to ease up on their concerns, they’d agreed to a simple ceremony before moving in together. Emily still wanted a big white wedding, but they figured that could wait until she graduated. In the meantime, they’d have a quick, quiet wedding and live together as husband and wife.

Maybe it wasn’t a fairytale come true, but it seemed like a good compromise for them. And it didn’t surprise any of us who knew Beckett. He was the kind of guy you could count on. And we all knew he’d do anything for Emily. As far as I was concerned, they’d been married since the day they met, and it wasn’t my business when they tied the knot.

Now this? I couldn’t make sense of it. Emily thought they were rushing things?

“But it’s her parents’ dumb rules that’s the reason you guys were getting married in the first place.”

“I know,” he said, still talking in that flat tone. He was clearly in shock.

“So why doesn’t she just tell them to stuff it, and you guys can live together anyway? Who cares what they think?”

“Emily cares. And they pay her bills.”

“They’ll get over it. There’s no way they’d want her to rush into getting married if she’s not ready. They’ll understand.”

“She doesn’t want to live with me. She doesn’t want any of it.”

“You don’t know that—”

“Her sister made it pretty clear.”

“Oh god, Beck.” I hugged him again. “I’m so sorry.”

“Thanks.” He gave me a half-hearted squeeze in return.

“Is it too early to say that she’s a bitch?”

He winced. “Yeah.”

“Okay, then I won’t.” Even though I was thinking it so hard I’m sure Emily could feel it all the way in her parents’ house in Arizona. “Let me know if you change your mind.”

“You’ll be the first.”

“So, I guess you might get to keep your five dollars after all.”

“Actually, you’d have to give me five dollars. That’s how a bet works.”

“Do you want to see the balance of my bank account? I have literally negative dollars right now. I would have to borrow money to have zero dollars.”

“Fuckin’ A, Emmy.” Beckett sighed.

“But if it helps, you win.”

“I don’t know. I might have gotten stood up at the fucking altar, but at least she didn’t clean me out.”

“Jesus.”

Beckett patted me on the thigh. “Wanna get drunk?”

“I can’t afford to go out anywhere. I can’t afford to think about going out.”

“I got a bottle of vodka in the freezer with our names on it.”

“What are we drinking it with?”

“Who cares? We’ll find something. We gotta empty the fridge before Friday, anyway, right?”

I gave him a little smile. “This feels like a bad decision I can get behind.”