Chapter Five

On Saturday mornings at nine, we have breakfast. This has been a standing roommate tradition since our first week together. Haley regales me with tales of parties and boys-and girls-and people she’s met and I sit and listen and catch her up on what she may have missed in class. 9 comes and goes and by 9:30, I’m starving. She hasn’t texted or anything and I decide she must have forgotten and head to the dining hall in case she went there first. There’s no sign of her but waiting this long meant the dining hall was full. I groaned as I saw the taken tables and prayed for an opening, just one, where I could sit in peace. I was famished and grabbed a waffle, a large side of eggs, some coffee and some juice. I made my way to the continuously growing line when I realized I forgot my dining card. “Oh I am so sorry.” I said as I reached into my bag to see if it had fallen out. I could feel the impatience of people behind me, “So sorry!” I said again when I felt an arm brush against me. “Here, use mine.” And a hand gave a dining card to the very fed-up and very lackluster clerk. “Oh, hey.” I said, “Thank you so much.” I was mortified that it was Kyle who came to the rescue. “No problem.” He said and smiled at the clerk who beamed back at him, then looked at me with a straight-lipped grin. “Sorry about that, really.” “Hey, it’s happened to me before.” “Well, I won’t bother you anymore.” I said, starting to walk the other way. “Hey, Danielle, wait a second, will you have breakfast with me? As a thank you for me getting you out of a jam?” He looked at me, sincerely. He was wearing glasses today, I had never seen him in those before and it made him look even more handsome but also more gentle than usual. “Ok, sure.” “Don’t you usually have breakfast with your roommate?” He questioned as we sat down at a table with some of his other friends. “I do but she wasn’t anywhere to be found this morning.” I shrugged. “What about your roommate? Were you friends before college?” “Oh, Eric?” he laughed, “No, but we got put together and just clicked. He’s a good guy. His mom came to visit last week and brought us so many homemade cookies. Ridiculous.” “His mom?” It was the first time I had thought of either of them as real, something other than party animals. “How about your mom?” I asked. “My mom is wonderful, but she is a doctor and doing that whole doctors without borders thing so I won’t see her until next summer, but she sends me mail and things and my dad has been down a few times.” I nodded. “What are you going to school for?” “Is this an interview?” he laughed but then winked. “Sports Medicine” I think. “You?” “Psychology.” I said, “I love the mind.” “I can see that.” He said, though I wasn’t really sure what he meant. We continued to talk about school, what high-school was like for us, where we grew up and I began to see a nicer, better side to him. Before I knew it, it was almost lunch time and most of the dining hall had cleared out. “I better get back and see if Haley is home yet.” I said, “Thanks again for breakfast.” He smiled, “The pleasure was mine.” And he took my tray for me and we parted ways.

“There you are!” I said when I entered the room and I saw Haley laying on her bed, phone in her hand. “So sorry! I just got back.” She said, “I had sex with a guy down the hall last night.” She grinned. “What? I was so worried-wait, who?” I jumped on her bed and sat next to her. “Sam, he’s so handsome, not usually my type but we hit it off.” “Had you talked before?” “Not before last night. He’s in my Bio class and we got to talking about that and boom-it happened! He took me to breakfast this morning at this little diner off-campus, it was really cute.” I tried to hide the shocked look on my face but Haley spotted it before I could compose myself. “Danielle, are you a virgin?” she asked without judgement, just out of sheer curiosity. I nodded, putting my head in my hands. “Oh, it’s ok, it’s fine, really!” she said, putting her arm around me. “I know, I just, I don’t know about anything!” I said. “You will, you’ll meet someone and it will feel right and it will just happen.” I nodded again, unsure of what to say. “Have you met anyone you might want to….?” And she made a gesture with her hands that made me laugh. I smiled and said, “Well, I ended up having a little breakfast date of my own this morning!” I told her what happened and how Kyle came to the rescue. “See, I told you he wasn’t a bad guy!” “I know, I know.” I said, sheepishly. “It was really very sweet.” “So, do you want to bang him?” she said bluntly, making us both laugh out loud. “I don’t know, I mean he is very attractive!” She nudged me with her elbow. I looked at her and felt a surge of courage surge through me and blurted out, “So what’s it like being with a woman?” she laughed a lot at that one and said, “Better than being with a man in so many ways, but I think I better explain to you about what it’s like being with a guy first.” I laughed, “Ok, ok, go for it.” And we sat in our room and laughed and talked and for the first time I really felt like everything might be ok.