Lee almost hissed at Lisa, then added sort of quellingly, “Me either, girl!” They kind of shared a fraught look for a moment. Then, damned if they didn’t both turn their gaze on me! And it wasn’t the friendliest look I’d ever seen from either of them.
“Hey,” I defended myself, against what, I didn’t know. But I apparently needed defending. “I’m date-free these days, too! My social life isn’t any better than yours. Hell, my social life is your social life,” I added, looking to blunt from their weirdly angry vibe with mutual camaraderie.
They traded looks. Then Lisa seemed to assume the role as spokesperson and almost shouted, “Oh, fuck off, George,” she said, almost acidly.
“Yeah,” agreed Lee. “Fuck off. Like, fuck right off out of our room. We don’t need your sympathy.”
And just like that, for the first time ever, I got kicked out of their room. And they even slammed the door behind me!
To say I was non-plussed would be an understatement. I wandered back to my own room, a little dazed. What the fuck was that?
Were they mad at some guy or guys, and I, as the closest member of the species, was taking the hit for him/them?
I resolved to give the girls a wide berth for a week to let the heat blow over. I went to visit some friends in another dorm and had dinner there so I wouldn’t see them in our dining hall that Saturday. The next morning, I made myself get up earlier than usual for my morning run, so I would be long past the place where they did Sunday yoga before that activity began. My usual MO, of course, was to time my passing by to coincide with the middle of that workout. The way I could get an eyeful of them (and others) doing some pose like Downward Dog. God bless yoga pants and Downward Dog! That afternoon, I stayed in my room, with my door actually closed for once, forced myself to be a student, and did some homework.
While I was puzzling how to avoid doing any more work than absolutely necessary on a paper for History, I suddenly threw down my pen in disgust. Why the fuck was I hiding out from Lisa and Lee? There was a video game tournament going on just one flight of stairs away from me in the common room, but here I was, in my room, alone, working on a paper for a gut course… and it was not even due for two more weeks. I sighed and picked up my pen. My resolve to stay away crumbled a little and I decided that, while I would stick with hiding out for the rest of the day, I’d go drop in on them Monday afternoon, acting like nothing happened. Hopefully they would act that way too.
After another half an hour, I had good news and bad news for myself. The good news was that I had figured out a subject that was actually interesting to me. The bad news was that that meant I was actually going to put in some work on this paper, and that meant ten perfectly good hours would eventually go down the crapper.
Suddenly, there was a knock on my door. That was unusual. A closed door meant that either you weren’t in, or were working. (Or masturbating, but that part usually went unsaid.) If they encountered a closed door, people usually just moved on, or maybe sent you a text instead. I shrugged and called out, “It’s unlocked.”
The door opened and Lisa and Lee entered my room, closing the door behind them.
Just fucking fabulous. A man could not even hide around here.
I was still a little ticked at being told to fuck off, so I didn’t stand, simply swiveling my desk chair around in the space where it sat between my two beds. “Hey guys. Sit down,” I invited. Upon hearing how desultory my own tone was, I regretted my surliness instantly. I waved at my old roommate’s bed, which I had done up like a couch for visitors. The girls usually never visited me–it always seemed like I was the one visiting them.
Instead of both sitting on the couch as I had indicated, only Lee sat down there, while Lisa instead went and sat on the edge of my barely made bed. That meant that I couldn’t look at both of them at the same time, which bothered me. The same basic orientation, me in the middle with them to either side, held true all the time when I hung out on their beanbag chair in their room, but this was different, and since I was feeling a bit like a mama wolf who suddenly found two coyotes hanging around to either side of her den, I felt a little vulnerable. Although… it seemed almost like they separated because they had some problem with each other, rather than trying to outflank me. I dismissed the thought. The two of them having a spat would be unusual, and highly unlikely. I was being flanked.
To cover my discomfort, I leaned back in my chair and looked back and forth as they settled down. On top of everything else, did they really need to look so damned good today? “What’s up guys?” I asked mildly, in what was probably a failed attempt to look casual.
“Sorry about the ‘fuck off’, yesterday,” they both blurted out, almost in unison. They both chuckled with some confused, suddenly good humor, and looked sheepishly at each other.
Instinctively, I immediately replied, “Oh, don’t worry about it.” But given the way that they both looked so guilty, I thought I had the opportunity to let my honest feelings out a little past my instinctive politeness. “But the fact is, I was a little hurt,” I went on, seizing the moment. “Do you want to tell me what the Hell was going on?” I looked back and forth between them, since I could not look at them both at the same time.
Neither replied. They both just sat there, looking uncomfortable. At first, I thought they looked contrite, but that wasn’t really the right word. My head and eyes got tired of swiveling back and forth between them like I was at a tennis match, and I let my gaze stay on Lee. She was usually the more talkative. If I stared at her long enough, I could probably make her uncomfortable enough to start babbling.
Lee just back looked at me. I was sure now that the look on her face wasn’t contrition like it should have been. It was hesitancy–like she wanted to speak, but also didn’t want to.
In the end, it was Lisa who broke the silence. “The thing is,” she began, and my eyes swiftly swung to meet hers. They had the same reluctance as Lee’s, though with a growing resolve. “The thing is,” she went on with nervous energy, “we have been wondering: Why haven’t you ever asked either one of us out?”