Roommates

Knock Me Down

Four 
Mid-November

As I fit my key into the keyhole in my dorm room door, I glance at Tris one last time. My mind is still reveling in the feeling of her in my arms as she hugged me a moment ago, leaving me with a heady feeling. These feelings are wrong-- I have a girlfriend who I care about, and Tris has a boyfriend whom she loves. My feelings for Tris are a constant battle; I feel more for her than I should, but I can't just stay away from her. Over the past few months she has become one of the best friends I have ever had, the only person I have ever trusted with my secrets.

I turn the handle and push the door open, holding it so Tris can enter first. I pause to resituate her bag, which is sliding off my shoulder, and see her freeze just as she reaches the living room. I'm about to ask her if something is wrong but I've barely taken the first step toward her when I hear it too. Moaning, the banging of a headboard, all sounds that it doesn't even take me a moment to identify as I have heard them coming from that room so many times before, but always when Tris was in there with Eric.

Tris seems paralyzed as she, too, realizes what is happening in that room, in her boyfriend's bedroom. A part of me wants to grab her and pull her away from here, take her somewhere else, and the rest of me wants to storm in there and beat the shit out of that bastard for treating Tris this way. The latter wins out and I find myself striding across the entryway and wrapping my fingers around Tris's forearm-- firm and certain, but not in a way that could hurt her, as I blurt out some sort of expletive.

I pull Tris toward Eric's door, ranting as we walk. "What a fucking asshole! Come on, you need to confront him." I'm not sure how long it will take Tris to snap out of it and do this on her own, and I'm sure as hell not letting her wait for him to be finished and dressed, able to claim that she misunderstood what she heard. Tris and I both know what's going on in that room. She deserves to be treated better than this. She needs to be done with this asshole once and for all.

I don't hesitate when we reach the door. But I'm not prepared for what we find behind it.

I expected to see Eric fucking some whore, so that part isn't any surprise. But I didn't expect, on all fours on the bed, taking it from Eric behind her, him gripping her hips as she moans in pleasure, to see my own girlfriend.

I release Tris's arm, standing and staring in horror for only a moment before my body begins to respond to the rage that immediately courses through my veins. My fists clench and I actually see red at the corners of my vision. This all must take only a second because they are just now turning their heads, Eric mid-thrust, in response to the sound of the door opening.

"What the fuck?!" I hear my own voice roar out as they break apart. Christina gasps loudly and actually falls off the bed in her mad scramble away from Eric as I begin to advance toward them. As I cross toward Eric, he's hurriedly pulling on his boxers. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Chris grab Eric's t-shirt off the floor and pull it over her head.

It's a t-shirt I've seen Tris wear as she stumbles sleepily to the bathroom in the mornings. The realization spurs on my rage.

The room isn't that large, so although Eric pulls his boxers on at record speed, I am upon him by the time they make it up to his waist, and my fist is already flying toward his face, colliding with his nose.

Eric swipes at the blood that has begun to stream from his nose before throwing a punch at my stomach, and I quickly sidestep to avoid it before throwing another at Eric's jaw, which he ducks. The fight would have surely continued until we had nearly destroyed one another and Eric's room-- I'm better trained, but this is clearly not Eric's first fight, either, and while he and I are about the same height, he's got a lot more bulk to him-- but I register the girls' frantic yelling. Chris's hands are on my arm, pulling me in one direction, as Tris pulls Eric in the other. Neither girl could have separated us if we were unwilling to let them, but we both allow ourselves to be pulled away.