the common room
Sometimes I feel his gaze on me and sometimes this is confirmed, when I look up and it is. I wonder what he wants to know about me and why. Last night a group of us sat in the common room and he came and sat down next to me on one of the sofas and asked whether I was ‘into’ one of the other guys. I felt a pit of dread in my stomach. No, I said. Were you ever, he said. I shook my head. No, why do you think that? I don’t know, he said, I just thought. I needed something to do, so I sipped water from my bottle and fiddled with the ring on my middle finger and tried to think of something to say that would fix things but nothing came to me and after a few minutes he got up and wordlessly sat down on the other sofa across the room. He left soon after that and I left a bit after that, because the fun was dying down and everyone was drunk except for me because I barely drank. I sat in my room and combed my fingers through my hair and tried to figure out what the fuck was going on and why things had to be that way. I didn’t want a boyfriend, I’d never had one, and why were people always returning to this story about who they thought I was dating.