Something About Sam

Chapter 19

It was the first Friday night of college. My roommate had dragged me to a party with free booze (he was on the football team, so I guess that means alcohol is always free) and all I was doing was texting Sam.

I miss you! I wrote out, my finger hovering over the send button. A few seconds and a deleted examination point later, I sent it. He was probably on stage and wouldn't be replying to me anytime soon, so I shoved my phone in my back pocket and took a swig out of the bud light can I was holding. Yes, I had started drinking again.

"Dude," my roommate Boone was standing next to me watching the game of beer pong happening on the folding table in front of us. He slapped my arm to get my attention. I looked over at him, and couldn't help but smile at the huge grin already plastered on his face. "That girl in the corner with the pretty hair, yeah she's staring at you. Totally staring."

Boone was the kind of guy who could get you to smile just by looking at you. He was goofy and awkward and huge. He must have been pushing 280-300 pounds. Even though he was a linebacker, he wasn't all muscle. He was a little chubby and quite frankly, adorable. He always had a smile on his face. His blue eyes were always wide and curious. He got excited about practically everything. He was the most genuine and real person I had ever met. Since I knew him, he hadn't said a mean word about anyone.

I chuckled. "No, she's not, Boone."

He gaped at me in response, then took my shoulders and started shaking me. "Dude! She is! And she's in my bio lab, she's so nice! Go talk to her!"

Once he released me from his grip and the beer he had spilled on me had been shaken off, I shook my head. "I, uh, I'm kinda seeing someone. From home."

Sam and I still hadn't finished our previous talk about us being in a relationship. For some reason, the prospect of being Sam's boyfriend scared me absolutely shitless. It shouldn't. We're together. We are together. But being his boyfriend? Was I ready for that?

I let out an involuntary shudder and turned back to Boone.
He let out a wolf whistle and made his eyebrows do some sort of dance that had me laughing. "Dang, TJ! What a lucky lady! Or fella. You know, however you like it."

I laughed. "So maybe you should go talk to her."

Boone's eyes widened ever so slightly. Then he snorted. "Dude. No. She's like, so out of my league, she's not even on the same planet as me. She's in the Milky Way galaxy and I'm, like, stuck in one of those black hole vacuums where time goes backward."

Despite his comment, and his apparent lack of confidence, Boone ended up talking to the girl for essentially the whole night. Later, when we had both stumbled back to the dorm around 1, I asked him about it as we were getting into bed.

"She's cool," he said. "We mostly talked about bio. We're both pre-med. I think we'll be good friends."

"Nothing else?" I asked him. "Just friends?"

I watched him shake his head no as he flicked off the lights. "Didn't get that feeling."

"What feeling?" I tucked my hands behind my head, settling back into the pillows on my bed.

"You know. The feeling. The constricting in your chest when you try to say something to them but you're so overcome with their beauty and their absolute perfection that you literally can not utter one single syllable."

"Wow, Boone."

"I know, it's stupid, but I'm waiting for one of those moments. I'm waiting for that girl. I can't help it. I'm a romantic."