Note: this story chronologically follows my other 3 stories: Halloween Fun, Halloween Fun 2, and Good-bye Banana Split. This story takes place when Rob goes to visit Marie at college.
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It has been about 6 months since I left the security of my hometown to come to the college I'm now at. I get along with my roommate, Tina, very well. She reminds me of Jessi back home. However, she is a much-easier-to-manage-Jessi and I am able to put up with her. All in all, she's a nice person. Although over the last few weeks, I haven't really been able to see much of her. You can take one wild guess why. . . Andy has taken her to Florida for Christmas break. Even my parents aren't home. For the 7th consecutive year in a row, they've gone to Cancun, Mexico, where they will spend the rest of their Christmas vacation. Me? I'm just stuck in my stuffy dorm room. . . with no one to talk to. As if you haven't guessed it, I stayed at college over Christmas break. Today is the last day of break, and classes start up tomorrow. Christmas break was fun. I only felt lonely the first week, but. . .
It's not like I was alone. There were plenty of people who had also stayed at college through the break. Everyone else was going to visit their parents, or their parents were coming to visit them. Everyone's parents, that is, except mine. My Christmas break had started on a Friday night, and my parent's flight to Cancun left the following morning at 6 a.m. They didn't have time to drive 4 hours here and 4 hours back. So I was left alone, visitor-less in my dorm. Not that I really cared, I had a TV and a stereo that I'd brought from home. I wasn't going to die of boredom. But I did want to see my friends and boyfriend. I wanted to see some of the people (who were a grade behind me) who I'd left in my hometown. And that HAD been the plan, until my parents informed me (last minute) that they were going to Cancun. They always put their plans before mine, so off they went.
I knew that I wasn't going to get to see my friends or boyfriend until spring break. That being another 4 months away, I didn't see any point in sitting there and moping about it. Before Tina (my roommate) had left, she had hung mistletoe from the ceiling fan, which hung right over my bed. I remember her joking about how it would be a miracle if the mistletoe was ever put to use.
Out of the 3 weeks we had off, I spent the first week e-mailing all my friends. None of them were actually online, because it was the holiday season, but I still sent them little updates on how my life was going. And I listened to music. With my luck, I had been put on a floor where the girls all seemed to like the same music---> soft rock and pop. Each night, we got together to listen to music. I listened to all the sappy love songs on the radio each night, hearing "I'll be home for Christmas" more than I ever had before. I was one of those people who listened to the radio so much, if a song came on, 9 out of 10 times I could have told you what it was called and who it was by.
So we'd get together and listen to music every night. On Friday night of the first week, I walked into the lounge area, to hear a Richard Marx CD being played at top volume. However, with the stereo it was playing on, it wasn't that loud; they usually used my stereo when they played music. Everyone still at the college was singing aloud to the music: "Oh can't you see it baby. . .you've got me going crazy. . .wherever you go. . .whatever you do. . .I will be right here waiting for you. . . whatever it takes or how my heart breaks I will be right here waiting for you. . . I wonder how we can survive this romance. . . but in the end, if I'm with you I'll take the chance..."
I walked in and sat down on a couch next to a girl I knew who was nicknamed B.J. She had definitely earned her nickname, as we all had found out one night in October when we walked into the lounge. That had been an interesting night.
When I sat down next to her, I noticed that she was not singing along with the rest.
"And they told me that I was pathetic when I was listening to Spin..." I said.
"The Darren Hayes' CD?"
"Yeah. . . it just happened that I was listening to that one song, "I Miss You" when they walked in. I guess they thought I was depressed, so they changed it to "Dirty," said I should cheer up, and left."
"Well, hey, we're all in the same boat here, just WAITING for someone we know to show up. I think that's why "Right Here Waiting" has been playing on repeat for the last hour."
"Is anyone coming to see you?"
"No, not even my boyfriend is coming. He went home to see his 'rents. So he won't be coming or cumming. . . either way. You know what I mean."
She had asked me, because (think about it) when that line is said, those two words sound no different. But yeah, I knew what she meant.
"What about your boyfriend?" she asked me, "Has he ever visited?"
"Not yet. . . his parents don't like the fact that I'm older than him, so I'll probably see him, at the earliest, at spring break."
"Do you guys call or e-mail each other? I guess I've never heard you talk much about him. . ."
"We started out calling each other, but I can only afford so many calling cards, and it is long distance. He has e-mail, but he rarely checks it. So we just IM each other. . . I wish he could have come down for break. . ."
"Well, you never know. . . hey, why don't I call him and invite him down for you?" I can even pay for gas or the plane ticket or whatever. . ."
B.J. was filthy rich. I had no doubts on how she came to be that way.
"No, his parents probably wouldn't let him come, anyway."
"Ok, fine. Hey, do you have Rick's number?"
"Yeah, why?" Rick was a guy who was in one of my classes. He was nice enough, but he had an everlasting desire to have sex with me. It was NOT going to happen. And I had about 3,390,639,470 slips of paper with his phone number around my room because he always managed to sneak one of them into my bag. To get him to stop giving me his number, I finally wrote it down in my little phone number book and (found and) pitched all the 3,390,639,470 other copies of it. Then he finally stopped giving me the little slips of paper. But he still bugged me.
"I told you how I had that engineering project I have to work on, right?"
"Yeah, I think you pretty much told the whole dorm. . ."
"Right, well, he's my partner, and I seem to have lost his number. And I need to work on the project over Christmas break."
I handed her the key to my room. "My phone book's on the desk."