best of friends || m.c.

02

Calum and Luke's room is on the complete opposite end of the hall, and it's twice the size of ours. Posters of bands cover their walls, and Christmas lights are strung along the ceiling. I have to say, it's a lot more aesthetically appealing than any room I've ever had.

I'm sitting on Calum's plain black bedspread while we wait for my brother and Jace to return to campus with the alcohol. The overhead light is turned off, and Calum is head banging and playing air-guitar to a Green Day song in the middle of the room.

Natalie and Luke are on Luke's side of the room, sitting at his computer. He's showing her a 'hilarious' video he found earlier in the day, and they're both laughing together.

Before I know it, there's a rhythmic knock at the door that anyone who knows him would recognize as Ashton's.

"It's open!" Calum stops what he's doing to call out, and the two boys burst into the room. They shut and lock the door behind them.

I see Jace immediately look over at Luke and Nat, who are actually sharing a seat at Luke's desk and pressed up next to one another in the process. He doesn't say anything, but I watch as he clenches his jaw and tries not to look mad.

"Okay," Ashton takes his backpack off and drops it next to me on the bed. Even though he's 21, alcohol is never allowed in the dorms and has to be brought in this way. I'm sure everyone knows that a student carrying a backpack around on a Saturday night isn't carrying books around, but no one says anything. "I have a bottle of jäger for Calum. I don't know how you drink it without a mixer but to each his own."

He hands Calum the bottle and Calum shrugs, uncapping it.

"I chase it with root beer," he says, moving over to his and Luke's fridge to gesture toward his pack of root beer sitting on top. He takes a swig of the jägermeister, but doesn't end up chasing it.

"Not nearly enough root beer," my brother chuckles. He grabs a bottle and a plastic bag from his backpack and slides them over to me with a grin, "Our tequila, salt, and lime."

Giddily, I grab them and get up to go over to Calum's desk, where he's standing. He now has a can of root beer open and is alternating quickly between that and the alcohol. Understandably; I can't wait to get plastered either.

"Nat, come get your wine coolers," Jace says, and I watch as my roommate bounces up from her seat next to Luke. He looks distraught just to not have her next to him, and I wonder if that's how I look whenever Calum leaves my side.

"I didn't even notice you were here, babe," she says to him, and I hear the bottles clink in their holder as she takes them from him. Jace doesn't reply, at least not as far as I can hear.

Turning my attention back to Calum where it belongs, I poke him in the side. He giggles and puts his can of root beer back down on his desk.

"Do you have any shot glasses?" I ask him.

"Who do you think I am?" he says, pulling open the top drawer of his desk to reveal several of them. He takes the glasses out and lines them up for me before reaching into the plastic bag. "I'll cut up the lime."

As I distractedly pour the tequila in each of the glasses, I watch as Calum reaches into another drawer to grab a plastic knife. He struggles to slice through it, of course, and it takes him a lot longer than it should.

Just as I spill some tequila on his desk, some of the lime juice squirts into his eye and he shrieks in pain.

His hand flies to his face and I can't help but laugh. I reach into one of his drawers to get a napkin, still giggling.