My new roommate was a drag. The pint size blonde named Emma Greene just transferred in from freakin’ Yale and had a stick up her butt so big that it was amazing that she could comfortably sit down. I’d told her I was trying to stop smoking, but still stole outside for a cigarette now and then. Emma had said it was fine, but her housewarming gift to me was a bunch of Nicorette patches and a passive-aggressive hallmark card reminding me to clean up any cigarette butts since they were bad for the environment.

Emma seemed so unbelievably uptight that I worried she’d shatter into a million pieces if I cursed in front of her. Every interaction with her left me walking on egg shells. I got the feeling that she thought she was better than me with her girly-girl style and super-organized everything. Her room was spotless and everything in it looked expensive. In our bathroom, all her meticulously organized stuff smelled like flowers. Even her books were alphabetically organized. She was unlike anyone I’d ever met before, and not necessarily in a good way.

“Hey, Emma?” I knocked on her door carefully. “Can I come in?” I needed to talk to her about the utilities at our apartment. I’d been putting it off, but I was afraid the city was going to cut our power.

“Sure,” she responded. Her voice sounded weirdly high and thick. “Come on in.” I cracked open the door to her room and was surprised to see her blotting away tears. She stuffed the crumpled-up tissues into her trashcan as soon as she saw me. “What’s up?” She asked, putting on a thin, fake-looking smile.

My overall irritation with her faded when I saw how upset she was. “Emma are you ok?” The utilities could wait. “Do you need anything?” I didn’t like seeing anyone cry, not even her.

Emma’s doll-like face, so delicate and pretty, was visibly torn. She looked like she wanted to talk, but she didn’t know me well. We’d only been living together for two tense weeks and were still learning one another’s personalities. So far, it seemed like we were pretty incompatible. She pushed her long, shiny blonde hair out of her eyes. I saw the second when she decided to trust me.

“My boyfriend and I broke up right before I moved here,” she told me after a moment, “and I just really miss him. He was a complete raging fuckwad, but I miss his dumb ass.”

The fact that Emma had just called anyone a ‘raging fuckwad’, even if it was her ex-boyfriend, made me start to reevaluate her in a more positive way. “That sucks,” I told her. “Why’d you break up?”

Her porcelain white cheeks turned a bright pink. “He was my professor and he dumped me to marry somebody else. He was cheating on me the whole time we were together. And he was my first. What do I do? I feel so lonely.” She looked at me with wide, green eyes, as if expecting dismissiveness, judgement, or laughter.

It turned out Emma was human after all and came complete with a past and everything. All I could do was gape at her. I never expected Emma to open up to me like this. I honestly thought she looked down on me. Although she didn’t know I came from a trailer park, I figured my manners gave it away. But there she was looking for my advice? Did it really look like I had my life together enough to advise anybody?

Oh shit. Emma’s ex was way worse than my sob story.

“I’m really sorry,” I told her, sinking down on her desk chair before remembering what I had in the fridge. “He sounds like an ass. Hold on, I know what you need. I’m gonna’ go grab us the sparkling rose and chocolate cake I have in the fridge. This might take a while.”

And from that first night bonding over bad relationships and a shared love of cake, our friendship was born.

Emma and I started hanging out more, and over time I cut ties with most of the so-called friends I met during my freshman year. I realized that they were more interested in seeing me fail than succeed, whereas Emma actually cared about my wellbeing and happiness. Unlike some of the people I’d thought were my friends, Emma wasn’t looking for someone to validate her own poor life choices and share in her bad decisions. She challenged me to be a better version of myself and wanted me to do the same for her. My health improved, I gained back the weight I’d lost, and I started doing better in my classes.

But it was still months before I told her about Cole. We were putting away groceries one evening when I slipped up started telling her about it as we were talking about losing our virginities.

“Yeah,” I was saying, “my first time was actually really amazing. It wasn’t painful at all. The funny thing is, the situation itself was completely messed up. So, the fact that the sex was good is sort-of shocking. See, it wasn’t with a professor, but it was almost as bad. I ended up losing my virginity on the middle of a golf course, to a guy that took me on a date to an Applebee’s and a strip club.”

Emma paused from where she was lining up the boxes of macaroni and cheese in our cupboards. “I’m sorry, what?” She turned to look at me with huge eyes. I couldn’t imagine Emma in either an Applebee’s or a strip club. She’d probably spontaneously combust with rage if a guy brought her to either.

I winced. It really didn’t seem so great when I said it like that. “It’s not quite as bad as it sounds.”

“Considering that it sounds tremendously bad, I should very much hope not.” Emma was the only person I knew who could say something like that and not sound like a conceited asshole. That was just how she talked.

“Well, it turns out that the whole date had been planned to make me hate him. He’s my brother’s friend, and he didn’t want to get involved with me.”

Emma tilted her head to the side like a confused cocker spaniel. “So, why’d he ask you out in the first place?”

“He didn’t. I asked him.” That day had marked the pinnacle of my self-confidence. It would never be that good again.

“But if he didn’t like you, he could have just said no.”

“I think he wanted to make sure I didn’t continue to hold out hope. I’d had a thing for him for a long time. Since high school, actually. He isn’t a bad guy at all. He was just trying to discourage me.”

Emma’s face was skeptical. “So, he took you on the world’s shittiest date on purpose to make you hate him?”

“Yeah, basically.” Now that it was more than a year in the past, I was able to laugh about it. But it had taken a full twelve months to get there.

“That sounds like a load of bullshit.”

“It does,” I admitted, “but it’s true.”

“And then you still slept with him?” Her question was direct, but her face was nonjudgmental. Emma was a surprisingly openminded person when it came to sex. She didn’t sleep around, but if other people wanted to do it, she didn’t care one bit. In fact, Emma was the person you could rely on to high-five you the next morning after you got some.

“Not right then, no,” I told her. “I was pretty unhappy, obviously. We hooked up almost six months later when we ran into each other at a party.”

“Hmm. He sounds like kind of a jerk.” Emma looked angry at Cole on my behalf.

“He’s not, I swear. He’s really, really nice.” Even I could hear the longing in my voice. I crumbled up the paper bag I’d just emptied with a bit more force than necessary.

“And he’s one of Ward’s friends?” Emma asked carefully. She rarely mentioned my brother. It was more than a bit of a sore subject for her.

“Yeah. His name is Cole Rylander. He graduated last year with Ward. He’s playing professional football now.” I tried my best not to spend my free time cyber stalking him and was mostly successful at it. Not seeing him regularly had helped me move past my feelings for him, at least a little bit.

“Do you think you’ll ever see him again?”

I shrugged and pretended to be casual. “Probably not.” I cracked open a can of diet Dr. Pepper and looked anywhere but at Emma.

“If you did see him, would you sleep with him again?” Emma seemed skeptical of my entire story. I got the feeling that she was fishing for some kind of detail that would help her make sense of it. I couldn’t really help her with that. The situation was what it was. I’d come to terms with it eventually, even though I still had a lot of unresolved feelings for Cole.

“Probably,” I told her. “I really like him. Even after everything.”

Emma shook her head at me. “I’m sorry things didn’t turn out like you wanted with him. You never know though, maybe someday you’ll see him again.”

“I don’t know if I could take it,” I admitted. “It was because of him that I started the whole smoking and drinking and running with the wrong crowd thing that I was doing when you met me.”

“Oh.” Her response was little, but her reaction was big. I’d told her a bit about the risky, not-so-smart stuff I’d done during my freshman year, and I think it had blown her pure, squeaky clean little mind. I hadn’t even told her the worst of it yet.

In reality, I was very lucky that none of my antics had resulted in anything worse than a few bad hangovers and a fairly expensive coverup tattoo on my hip (what had I been thinking when I got that stupid rainbow taco?). Considering all the sketchy parties I went to and the drugs I experimented with, I could have ended up in a shallow grave somewhere.

I was proud to have put that chapter of my life behind me. I never wanted to feel that low again. “I’m working on learning to protect myself,” I told Emma. “Don’t worry about me. The next time I see Cole, if I ever see him again, I might sleep with him but I’m not going to let him turn my life inside out. Nobody deserves to have that kind of power over me.”