The Mix Up (A College Romance)

[DeeperWater]

Jeremiah Templeton was hanging out the open window of his dorm, waving at returning friends. His mass of slicked back brown hair flopped around and his thick glasses threatened to fall off in the process. He was wearing a faded blue Hawthorne College t-shirt and did not have the tan which most of the returning sophomore class boasted. While they had been enjoying their summers at the beach, or taking road trips, he had been studying in the library, while he wasn't delivering pizzas for Mama Devito's Pizza. He had a lean build, but surprised people with his strength. Every morning he ran for forty five minutes and did a series of basic calisthenics.

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His choice of summer activities had been motivated by a complete lack of monetary means, beyond student loans, which would haunt him later, and by the fact that he was a an avid reader and an English literature major, and would have haunted a library, no matter when he had spent his summer vacation.

His friend Ron, a tall, athletic black guy with a short afro, shouted up at him. "Campaign starts tonight Jerry! Better dig out your character sheets! We're meeting in the smoking lounge of Hudson." The smoking lounge of Hudson was seldom used, because it was actually the old, ratty smoking lounge. A better facility had been put in when the dorm extension had been built. The campus did not tolerate smoking in dorm rooms or social areas, but they did allow small rooms, where smokers could go to stew in their own fumes.

Jerry had always hated meeting down there, with its cement walls with peeling white paint and ratty old posters of bikini clad women, circa the 1990s, but at least they had the place to themselves. Besides, almost everyone in the group, except for him, smoked, and they always said they needed their smokes to game.

McNair House, the location of Jerry's dorm room, was an older brick building, some three stories high. It was built in the 1923 and was spectacularly boring. A lot of architecture of that era was studied and admired, but not McNair. The inside was as utilitarian and ugly as the outside. Blinking track lighting illuminated long, draft hallways with tile floors and walls which made any sound echo down their lengths.

Jerry's room wasn't so bad though. He had plastered the walls with movie posters from his favorite science fiction movies, found a fluffy, rusty orange area rug at a rummage sale and got himself some IKEA furniture. It wasn't a fashion plate, by any means, but it made him happy. There were milk crate bookshelves set up with hundreds of books, crammed in on top of each other. His narrow dorm bed a handmade quilt on it, from his mother. Hanging from the ceiling was a model of Serenity and playing on his crappy stereo was the soundtrack to Fellowship of the Ring.

Half of the walls were blank, because he had a new roommate coming. He didn't know much about him, but apparently his name was Marley. He had carefully removed his posters, knowing that dorm regulations stated that he had to leave his roommates half undecorated. The area rug was still in the middle, but he hoped that the new guy wouldn't mind. With his luck, he would get a heavy metal freak, or a jock.

OCC: Marley is a female and due to a clerical error, they were placed together. The college allows mixed gender rooms, but this was not meant to be one. I am not looking for any particular character to write with, but I do not want a super hot blond, who is a cheerleader, and models and whose father is a state senator. Those type of characters bore me. Also, I would like this to be a real story, rather than an excuse to write sex scenes. If you are willing to write other NPCs (as I will) that is a plus, but it is not strictly necessary.

 

[cumaholic21]

Marley got out of the cab outside the street entrance of McNair house, where she would be living this year. She had recieved a letter explaining that this year's freshman class was so large that some students were being assigned rooms in the upperclass dorms, and so here she was. She and her backpack and the two gigantic suitcases that held everything she was supposed to need to get through a year of school. It was her father's little way of punishing her for going to college back east, instead of staying in Montana, but she figured he'd give up by Christmas, and let her take the truck back for the 2nd semester.

In the meantime, she just had to lug everything up to her room. She looked up at the building, that seemed squat and grim, and she ran her fingers through her thick black hair. She was short, barely 5'1" and just a little thick. She rode a lot and hiked a lot, so her legs were strong and thick, but she had a bit of a tummy that wouldn't go away no matter what she did. The up side was that she also had great breasts, especially for a small girl. She had inherited her coloring from an Indian grandmother, dark skin, dark eyes and long black hair that was by far the sexiest thing about her. If only she'd gotten the long lean body to go with it, she thought.

She dragged everything in and up to the room, getting looks from some of the other students. Apparently jeans and boots and a cowboy hat were not the standard uniform in this part of the world, and from the way the other girls dressed, she knew she had a lot of changes to make. At least her tanktop seemed ok. She found the room and pushed the door open, dragging her things in and sitting down on the unmade bed that was obviously hers. The other side of teh room was decorated strangely, as if this Jerry girl was kind of boyish. Maybe she was even a lesbian, Marley thought. Dad would really fraeak about that.

It seemed like she was at least friends with guys, because there was one hanging out the window. He was lean and a little shaggy, and was shouting at someone in the quad below. As he pulled himself in hte window, she cleared her throat and said in a small voice.

"Do you know when Jerry's coming back?"

 

[DeeperWater]

Jerry bumped his head against the window frame, when someone came up behind him talking. He rubbed his head, and uttered a curse, while turning around. "What? Ah, Hello." For a moment he found himself tongued tied as he stared down at a short, cute girl with long black hair. He couldn't help it if he took one quick glanced down lower than her face, but after that he looked steadily at her face, pretending that she wasn't a girl.

Her eyes are dark and expressive and right now they expressed slight apprehension, or possibly confusion. Reading people's signals and body language had never been Jerry's strong point, but with an Italian mother no one in his family had ever failed to just come out and tell each other exactly what was on their minds. His father was Scottish and German, neither of which lent themselves to self expression, but this mother had always done enough expressing for the both of them.

"As it turns out, you won't have to wait! I am, in fact, Jerry, or at least a Jerry. Was there a particular one of us you wanted, or will I do?" As he talked, he did notice the suitcases on the other bed for a moment, but suddenly they caught the edge of his eye. Turning slightly, he rubbed the back of his head again, wondering if he had hit it a little harder than he though.

 

[cumaholic21]

He talked fast, and she sat on the bed and watched him as he spoke. He seemed to be full of nervous energy, and his glasses slowly crept down his nose, until he pushed them back up for them to start again. She looked again at the stuff on the walls and then at the guy in front of her. They guy and the decor seemed like a pretty fair match, and she held back a laugh at the idea that Jerry had picked this guy because he would look at home in the room. He was obviously close to her, so she knew she should be nice. No need to alienate the roommate's boyfriend before meeting her, Marley thought. She let out a soft sigh, but gave him a smile, to let him know that she got the joke.

"I'm looking for the Jerry that lives here," she said. "Sorry I'm not more fun, I just had a long day getting here and I need to settle in. So are you her boyfriend or something?"

 

[DeeperWater]

Jerry stared at the girl strangely, and then over at her suitcases, and then back at the girl. "Here's the thing, Marley. It is Marley right?" He wasn't sure how to read her expression, but the nodding head he caught. "My name is unisex, and so is yours. That is just a weird word isn't it? Unisex." He sat down on his bed and nervously ran his fingers through his hair.

"Anyway, It kind of sucks sometimes. The thing is, there as been some sort of mix up. Call it a bureaucratic brain freeze. I hate to tell you this, but I am the singular Jerry you seem to be looking for and this is my dorm room." He knew he was talking a lot, but found it hard to stop. When he was nervous Jerry tented to chatter, especially if he was nervous because of an attractive girl.

"Now.... I am thinking we need to take a walk down to the registration office, if you don't mind, and see if we can't work this out."

 

[cumaholic21]

She frowned at him as he talked, not sure if he was serious or not. She knew this was the kind of place where there was bound to be a certain amount of messing with the new people. Jerry certainly didn't strike her as being the kind of guy who would be above it, but his surprise seemed genuine. She was trying to decide if he was that good of a bullshitter, and the answer she was coming up with was no. He could talk, for sure, but he didn't seem like he'd be able to fake surprise as well as this.

On the other hand, she was exhausted and she had no idea where the registration office was. She looked at him, and at the posters on the wall. She sighed. It wasn't just that the stuff seemed masculine, it was that it seemed to fit this guy like a glove. It was easier to believe that this was a bureaucratic fuck up, than that there was a girl version of this guy wandering around plotting weird pranks on her new roommate.

"OK," she said, standing up and straightening her top. "Let's go down to the registration office."

She let him lead her across campus to the administration building, making small talk. She gave him the hyper condensed biography, and did the whole "who let me off the reservation?" bit, and found out they actually liked a few of the same movies and books. When they reached the admin building, though, the line for the office went halfway down the hall.

"You'd think it was the first day of the semester," she deadpanned and leaned against the wall. "Ten bucks says you can't recite the Odyssey before we get to the front."

 

[DeeperWater]

Jerry grinned and leaned against the wall, beside her. "Odyseuss goes through a bunch of crap, slaughters the assholes after his wife, and gets the girl. I can summarize it in one breath, but I am not going to try to recite it. We probably could read the whole thing though, with the way this line looks."

He found himself relaxing around Marley. He was not one of those social outcasts, like some of his friends, who were still virgins and had never even asked a girl out. Still, he always felt nervous around girls, especially if they were cute, until he wasn't. He was never sure when that invisable barrier had been crossed, until he crossed it.

They stood for another ten minutes or so, chatting back and forth about nothing in particular. He didn't ask much about his family, or ask about hers. After all, they might see each other around, but he doubted that she would want to join his gaming group. Still, she had a cute grin and a good sense of humor.

The longer they stood, the more Jerry started to shift his weight and drum his fingers against the wall. One of the curses of ADHD was his inability to stand still quietly, waiting for something to happen. in high school track training had given him an outlet for all of his energy, but in college he was to busy for more than his morning run. He always had extra energy to burn.

In that ten minutes, the line moved another ten feet. At this rate, it would take another couple of hours before they got to speak to anyone. It was almost dinner timer time as well and Jerry could feel his stomach rumbling. He leaned forward. "Marley, this really sucks. It's four thirty and my belly is empty. How 'bout we leave these lemmings here and head to the cafeteria? We can come back in the morning anyway. I'm sure the lines won't be so horrible by then." He almost blushed, but managed to kept his composure. "That's not a come on or anything. I can totally sleep in the lounge tonight. I'm just not really good at standing around very long.