I lucked out when I started uni and managed to share a room with my childhood best friend, Carl. We were neighbours when we were kids and although I moved house and we went to different colleges, we managed to stay fast friends.
Throughout college, obviously, we made other friends and got to know new people. But our friendship stayed strong, and we managed to see each other most weeks.
We talked about university, and although we wanted entirely different things; he was a nerd that knew about politics, philosophy and all that book stuff, while I was more into using my hands and making tangible things in the real world, we found somewhere down south that did courses we both liked, and seemed to do them well. Our good fortune seemed to hold, because we both got the grades we needed and managed to get in.
Carl had picked up a girlfriend in college, the previous year: Jess. I had met her a few times, but he tended to keep his "friend friends" and his "school friends" separate. Seeing as he met Jess at school, then she had fallen into the "school friends" box, although, as a girlfriend, she got to mix with his "friend friends" from time to time.
I was surprised they had stayed together so long, really. She was traditionally "out of his league" from what I could tell. He was tall and not unfit, but he wasn't really the type to visit a gym ever, and I didn't think he had the charisma to chat up a girl. He had shaggy black hair that he never styled and brown eyes flecked with gold. His interests were definitely of the stereotypically nerdy male variety -- videogames, comics, etc. but like, the kind that you don't see played on Twitch or getting made into movies by Disney.
Jess was a bit shorter than Carl; her eyes were level with his mouth, so I'd guess she was about 165cm (5ft 4ish). She was fit - I think Carl told me she'd been going to the gym since starting college as she was originally going to do an NVQ in sports, or something, but switched to A-levels instead at the last minute. She had bleach blonde hair with dark roots that hung to around halfway down her back when loose.
I had thought that me and Carl moving down south together would have marked the end of their relationship: we would be just far enough away from our hometown for the journey to be a pain in the arse,
and costly
. However, Carl didn't seem to be disheartened by the distance.
"Are you going to be a little bitch when I bring girls over?" I asked Carl a few weeks before we prepared to move.
"Course not, mate. But in exchange, you've got to go out when I have Jess over," he replied, a cheeky smile on his face.
"Jess?" I asked in surprise.
"Yeah, my girlfriend," he laughed. "You're Sam: my best friend. She is Jess: my girlfriend."
His mocking voice had a tinge of irritation to it.
"So, you're giving it the long-distance thing, then? Isn't she going to be jealous that you're out playing all the time with me?" I joked.
"Err, no, mate. I'm sure we spoke about this before," He began. "She's going to the same uni, so she'll be just round the corner from us."
I was stunned for a moment at that revelation. I had absolutely no memory of such a conversation occurring and surely it would be something I'd remember.
"You're pulling my leg," was the only thing I could think to respond with.
"No, dickhead. I told you she got into the same uni as us when I told you I got in! We talked about you hooking up with her friend with the big arse?" He mock chided me.
"Oh yeah. Amy? Anna? Abby? Yeah, I remember you said she'd be living close and she's up for having a good time."
"Abby. Oh, so you remember that part?"
"Wait, you tried to set me up with one of her other friends before because, and these are your words: 'she's a bit of a slut'," I smirked at him. "If all Jess' friends are like this, then... Well, you know."
"Yeah, she knows her way around a bed. Or a chair. Or a table," Carl laughed. "She is insatiable, mate."
***
A couple of weeks later, we spent the whole weekend carting our stuff down the motorway to the coast. Carl, being a lazy fucker, never bothered learning to drive and both sets of our parents didn't want to have to make the journey a whole bunch of times, leaving me to hire a van for all our stuff.
"Thank you, Sam," Jess said as she climbed into the van between Carl and me. "My Mum already took me down once and didn't want to make the journey again just so I could bring a few extra things."
"It's alright babe. Sam doesn't mind," Carl cut in before I could say anything. "We're making the same journey, so it makes sense!"
I bit my tongue. Yes, it was the same journey, but I'd already made it once yesterday and once again already today and wanted to get it out of the way, instead of wasting daylight waiting for Jess to get ready. On top of all that, I was pretty sure she could drive herself.
"Yeah, no problem," I said grudgingly, trying to smile. "We probably don't have to worry too much about traffic at this time."
"You alright driving this big thing down the motorway at night?" Jess asked, actual incredulity visible on her face.
"Yeah, of course. This journey's burned into my brain now," I replied.
Jess looked like she had 'got ready' just for this journey. Her makeup seemed to be done to perfection, from what I could tell as a lad who didn't tend to wear makeup. Her clothes looked fresh and clean, and her blonde hair was tied back into twin braids. She even smelt fresh.
Compared to Carl, who was wearing sweat-stained clothes fit for moving furniture around, like it felt like we had been doing for the last eternity, she looked like a princess with her manservant.
"What's so funny?" Carl asked me.
"Hey, Jess. You going out somewhere?" I said gesturing at her as if to say 'all this' to Carl.
"What? When we're down?" She smiled. "Yeah, Abby... do you know Abby? Anyway, my friend Abby knows a good pub that she wants to show me, where drinks don't cost an arm and a leg."
"How? Don't you need to finish moving all your stuff in? Ours is basically shoved into the entrance hallway. It's going to take hours to get it all sorted." Carl complained.
"Abby got someone to help out. All I need to do is organise my stuff," Jess said, looking at her phone. "Should we go? It's getting a bit late."
The drive down was easy. It was getting dark by the time we hit the motorway and dark by the time we could see signs to our destination. Carl and Jess were talking together for most of the beginning of the journey. I was happy to zone out and focus on the drive.
Eventually, I noticed that they were silent. Or, mostly silent. I could hear Carl breathing heavily, but I could only see him from my periphery. Jess was tapping away on her phone. I glanced over to see Carl sleeping, his head tilted back and against the corner where the window met the headrest to his seat.
As I looked over, the brightness from Jess's phone caught my attention and my gaze passed over it on the way back to the road. It was only a quick glance, but there was a lot of the colour of bare flesh glowing out of the screen. She must have noticed me moving my head, as she quickly flipped her phone over and beamed up at me.
"Carl tells me you've been friends forever," she smiled sweetly. "Why?"
"Why?" I repeated, trying to work out what she was asking. "Why are we friends?"
"Yeah. You don't look like the type to hang around him."
"I could say the same about you!"
The words spilled out before my brain could process them.
"What does that mean?" She snapped, although it didn't seem to be aggressive.
"I mean..." I began, trying to phrase it non-offensively. "You're hot. He's, not exactly a model, is he? As lovely as he is."
