Roommate Agreement || Styles

Chapter One

The dining hall is crowded beyond comfort. Just as the situation with the dorms, the college hasn't provided enough dining space for the inhabitants.

Slapping a slice of pizza and some various fruits on my plate, I call it good. After grabbing a drink, I face the dining hall before me. Most of the seats have been taken by countless different cliques. Odd, I hadn't thought that they'd have cliques here. I thought it would be drastically different here in college, but it seems not.

A lone seat calls to me from across the cafeteria. It's nestled in between a petite brunette and a guy who's sporting a scarf. I approach the table without a second thought. The students seated here seem nice enough.

"Hey, may I sit here?" I place a hand on the blue back of the chair and start to pull it out. The petite girl turns her head to me, her eyes furrowed in confusion.

"Oh, yeah, sure." She moved her bag from the chair to let me sit down.

"Thank you," I say as I dig into my grapes. All this frustration has gotten me very hungry. I still can't wrap my mind around the fact that I'm finally at the college that I strived for all of those years, yet I'm stuck without a place to live. Of all the complications I could have come across, this one never crossed my mind. I thought having a dorm was implied and pretty much there if anyone needed one, but I guess I was wrong.

"Hello?" A hand comes into my vision, knocking me out of my thoughts. I follow the arm connected to the hand and then follow up to the face to see it was the guy who'd been wearing the scarf. 

I realize now that the scarf (well, what I thought was a scarf) is actually a snake.

When I flinch away from him, he chuckles. "Don't be frightened. This is Tom, he's very friendly." The snake, Tom's, beady eyes stare at me from his rest against the man's neck. "Moving on, I'm Myles, as I was saying while you were completely zoned out."

"Lia. I'm Lia." Once I'm able to get past the snake, I realize that Myles is quite attractive. He's got brown hair styled closely to his head and warm brown eyes that scream kindness out at me.

"Nice to meet you, Lia. By the way, that's Holly. She's a bit quiet because she's just been dumped by a high schooler." Myles laughs as soon as he says it, which strikes me as a friendly action.

"That's bullshit, Myles, and you know it!" Holly reaches in front of me to punch him in the arm. "I broke up with him because he was immature and I'm in college. There's plenty of fish in the sea."

"Anyway, have you been settling well? I remember my first year. Quite a nightmare if I do say so myself. Two months in though, I met Myles and things got better. He was a year older and knew the college already by heart." Holly rambles on. "Who's your roommate? I assume you have a dorm, being a freshman and all."

My stomach drops as I am reminded that I don't have a home. "Actually, I got here two hours late. There were no dorms available." My insides twist as I admit the embarrassing situation to my newly found peers.

"Ugh, I told Mr. Springer to discuss that on the school board meetings last freaking year! It was even a problem then." Holly explains, clearly frustrated with the school's lack of development.

"Holly, isn't your roommate on a vacation for two weeks?" Myles points out from my other side. Honestly, I had forgotten he was there for a minute. "Maybe Lia could stay with you while she finds a place."

"Oh, that's okay. I wouldn't want to intrude," I say the nice response that is not at all what I want, but the only kind thing to say. Of course I would love to stay with Holly. It's basically my only option at the moment and would be saving me money because the other roommate is already paying for her half of the room.