The Middle | ✔️

Prologue

Noah

I haul my last duffel bag out of the trunk and sling it over my shoulder. Slamming the trunk closed, I look up at my dorm building. This is it. College.

"Honey, let me take the bags. You carry the boxes, I'll never get them up the stairs."

"Sure, mom."

I hand the duffel bag to my mom and pick up the first box. The place is crawling with Freshman and their parents. I take one last look around the parking lot and note a lot of guitars in cases, sound amplifiers, drum kits, and such like. They weren't kidding when they said North Bridge University had an attractive music programme. Feels like every aspiring teenage musician in the country has came here. That's not me, but whatever.

I follow my mom up to the third floor of my building, suite 304. Second door on the right. I already got my keys from the punky looking fourth year volunteer downstairs in the reception building. He had a lot of tattoos,an eyebrow piercing, and his long hair was tied up in a bun. My mom was very taken with him, but whatever, he was helpful enough.

I unlock the door to my suite and my mom lets out a sigh of relief. I can see why; the place is nice. Very fucking nice, for student accommodation. The main hallway door opens directly into the spacious kitchen/sitting area (there's no TV, but I'll get one) which leads onto another smaller hallway. I dump my box down onto the kitchen counter and walk through to the hallway. Four doors. The first opens into a bathroom (complete with both a bath and a stand alone shower, thank god; I hate shower curtains and bathtubs), and the second door is locked. I try the third, and I relax when I find an empty bedroom. My bedroom. Thank fuck.

"Well, Noah. You were right, this place is great. You have your own space, and it's not too shabby, huh?"

"It's awesome." I grin at my mom before entering the bedroom.

One of the main reasons I was attracted to North Bridge University was the student dorms. Sounds dumb, I know. The only reason anyone should be attracted to a college is for the education you'll come away with, right? While this may be true, privacy is important to me, and I like how the NBU dorms are set-up; shared 'suites' rather than having to share an actual room. The thought of sleeping in the same room as someone for the next year makes my skin crawl. This way, I only have to share a kitchen, sitting area, and bathroom. I get a bedroom to myself, I get my own space. The only potential problem I could think of was, what if my roommate (or 'suite-mate', whichever you wanna go with) was an asshole?

"You're here! Nice to meet you guys, I'm Will. I took the first room I came to, hope that's cool. They're both exactly the same, just the opposite way around."

I turn around and take in my roommate standing in the open door frame of the bedroom across the hall from mine (the door I tried to open a minute ago, I guess he had it locked from the inside. I'd do the same thing). He's tall, maybe an inch or two shorter than me, with mid-length dirty blonde hair. He has it styled up with gel or hairspray or something (I can't tell, I never bother doing much with my own hair) in a way which tells me this guys takes pride in his appearance. He's wearing light blue jeans, navy cons, and a 'NBU' letterman jacket over his white shirt. He is literally the embodiment of 'preppy jock guy that every girl wants to take home to her parents.' I suspect he has a smoking hot girlfriend already, who he probably cheats on with cheerleaders every weekend after drinking from a keg under the bleachers at the football field with his preppy jock friends. But what am I thinking? He's a college Freshman, just like me. And I'm not here to judge.

"Nice to meet you too, I'm Noah. And this is my mom."

"Please, call me Janine. It's so nice to meet you, Will!" My mom gushes at him. I know she likes what she sees. And she's probably relieved that my roommate isn't as 'alternative' looking as the rest of the kids we've seen roaming around the dorms so far. There are no tattoos, piercings, or man-buns in sight. And from what I can see through his open bedroom door, he didn't bring a guitar.