university stud follow up pt. 1
Rose lies when she tells Luisa that she will fall asleep soon enough, and the other girl brushes their noses together, gives her one last kiss, and then falls asleep curled up just against her chest. She waits long enough to be certain that Luisa is unconscious – which she doesn’t know yet is not an issue because Luisa sleeps like the dead – and then begins the process of untangling herself. She wraps Luisa’s arms around a pillow instead, and although Luisa’s face scrunches up unhappily for a few moments and she murmurs something that sounds almost like you don’t feel quite like marshmallows; they’re too sweet, she doesn’t wake up.
She breathes a sigh of relief and starts to look for her clothes.
It isn’t quite a failsafe procedure, but Rose had learned sometime in her sophomore year that when she was having trouble with her homework the best way to break the mind block was sex. Masturbation didn’t quite cut it anymore. And college gave her a lot of ample opportunities to try out new people without having to worry about running into exes – she didn’t date anyone here, didn’t have a reason to do so, other than the potential boost that having a consistent sexual partner might bring, but she liked to prey on a new person each time. It kept her from getting bored.
Luisa, of course, was an easy enough mark. It hadn’t been hard to notice her suddenly being around a lot more than she had been before, even though they had no classes together – basically going from never around to always around – and that, of course, was prompted by asking to use her pencil. Rose likes to play the long set up. Luisa isn’t the only one she’s asked about pencils, and she won’t be the last, as far as Rose is concerned.
Already, Rose knows how the next problem goes – the one she’d been stuck on, the numbers and equations lining just up. She doesn’t need to sleep now. She’ll crash tomorrow, once it’s done, once she’s made sure everything is done. She brushes a hand through her frazzled red hair and allows herself a few minutes to look around Luisa’s dorm room.
Her fingers run along the edge of a wooden photo frame. Inside, it looks like a very, very young Luisa with her smiling father and mother. In the next picture, it’s Luisa and her father and a little boy – a younger brother, maybe – and they all seem really solemn. Luisa isn’t even looking at the camera, she’s looking at her brother, and her father’s hand is clenched on his shoulder as though to hold him in place. Kids. They like to run around. She knows that full well. She’d been that kind of child, once.
The frame next to it is empty.
Rose slowly zips up her dress while she stares at it. Who keeps an empty picture frame? She doesn’t. Of course, she doesn’t. She doesn’t have any pictures at all. But normal people don’t keep empty picture frames. Not that she would know much about that because she’s refused to have a roommate and made enough to get a shabby little off campus apartment within a few blocks of campus so that she doesn’t have to worry about a potential roommate situation – but she knows normal people and how normal people act and they don’t have empty picture frames. They have picture frames with pictures in them. Those pictures might not always be theirs. It might even be the picture that came with the frame – which is also weird but slightly more acceptable – but an entirely empty frame with no picture at all?
Curious.
Rose takes the frame and opens the back of it, expecting there to be something inside, but there’s not. She presses her lips together and puts the frame back. She thinks better of it. She second guesses herself. Then, after slipping her heels back on, she takes one of the pens scattered about Luisa’s desk – or what the dorm rooms call a desk but is really just an excuse to not get a better one – and pops the frame back open, writes a little note with nothing but her cell number on it, and then puts the frame back where it was.
Her number is hidden beneath the cardboard backing. You can’t even tell it’s there without opening up the frame. Luisa will likely never see it at all.
Well. She’d given her good conversation, after all. That should count for something.
Hopefully she didn’t turn out to be one of those weird, clingy girls who thinks that just because they slept together and had a nice conversation she wants to spend more time with her.
She does want to spend more time with her – Rose is surprised to find that that’s true – but not like that. Not in public. Not where everyone can see them. That isn’t her style. And she certainly doesn’t want a girlfriend. There are too many rules to relationships, and she doesn’t want to navigate those waters with someone who was intended to be a one-night-stand. Even if she was a good conversationalist. And a good kisser.
Maybe she’ll let Luisa buy her a drink next time.
If there is a next time.
If she ever decides to put a picture in the frame and finds the number.
Yeah, well, that’ll never happen. The picture frame’s blank for a reason. It’s not like Rose is holding out hope. She doesn’t like leaving her number anyway.
She thinks better of it, again, once she’s left Luisa’s dorm room, but by then it’s too late. Its door has closed and she’s locked out and no matter what she thinks, she won’t be able to get back in unless she pounds on the door and wakes Luisa up, which would defeat the whole purpose because she doesn’t want Luisa to know she’s gone until after she’s long gone.
Rose brushes a hand through her hair again and takes a deep breath.
She’ll never find it.
She’s not sure if that makes her feel better or not.