“I never understood why you wanted her to make you over and find you a man anyway,” my best friend forever, Brooklyn, said as I told her about what had happened at the library. Brooklyn was exasperated with me. “She’s a mean little bitch that is living the best years of her life right now. In a couple of years, she’ll marry some asshole, knock out a few babies, and have a drinking problem as hubby comes home later and later.”

She was sitting on the steps of our building with me, dressed in dark blue jeans, a white turtleneck sweater that skimmed halfway down her thighs, and black boots. Her sable hair was in neat braids down her back, and she barely wore makeup, other than a maroon shade of lipstick that made her entire face become, somehow, more beautiful. I looked at her and wished I could be that beautiful without makeup on. I just looked like that nasty bit of water left in the sink after you wash dishes when I tried to go out without the bare minimum.

“I wanted a chance to lose my you-know-what,” I muttered between my teeth as her boyfriend, Stuart, came up to greet her with a hug. I didn’t really want to talk about the arrangement I’d made with Amanda all those months ago in the last semester. It had come back to bite me in the ass in more ways than one.

“Well, your you-know-what isn’t going to fall out,” Brooklyn snapped and pursed her lips at me as she stood to hug Stuart. “Not right now anyway. Give it a few years and it might, but not right now.”

Brooklyn was on her way to becoming an RN and had taken all kinds of medical classes. I wanted to know more about this notion that in a few years my you-know-what might fall out, but then decided I didn’t.

She was one of the few people that read Amanda’s blog and came up to me and asked if I was ok? Just like that. Ever since, we’d been best friends and she’d been so good to me. At times, a little too good.

“On the other hand, you might find that Miss Fucks-a-Lot’s you-know-what falls out a lot sooner. All that fucking around in libraries and science labs. Girl’s nasty.” Brooklyn’s dark brown eyes rolled, and she sat back down. “There’s plenty of guys on this campus and you still have time, Nic, don’t play into her hands like that.”

“Guys like who?” I demanded to know. “And if you tell me Trent Waters, again, I’ll disown you as my BFF.”

Trent was, how to put it nicely… a nerd. The pocket-protector having, white button-up shirt, loafer-wearing, with slick-backed hair, kind of nerd. He even had the thick-lens glasses with thick black rims to prove it. Hardcore nerd, and proud of it. He was also, 6’5” and super-slim. Tall and that’s about all.

Poor guy was not my type, in a serious way. Although at this point, I didn’t have a type. Not really. Can you have a type when you’re still a virgin?

My newly-found confidence fled with the kind of speed I’d only seen from a student on the verge of failing and late for a test as they rushed for their building. I felt it leave me as my body sank down into the stairs, my shoulders slumped, and my head tilted over to the side. Fuck, I’m a sad case.

“Girl, you better stop that right now!” Brooklyn hissed around Stuart’s head, which was now nuzzled into her neck as he tried to make out with her on the steps.

Brooklyn was my roommate, not just my BFF. We’d also met that second year of school, and we’d become fast friends. She was my rock through all of this and was probably the reason I’d developed a need for revenge that wasn’t quite on the level of Carrie but did reach somewhere around the total humiliation without all the fire, death, and mayhem level.

“I can’t help it!” I complained with my hands over my head as if to hide me from the world. “She gets to me and she knows she does!”

“That’s because you let her!” Brooklyn shot back. “Ignore that bitch, Nic, and go find a damn man!”

“Where, Brooklyn? It’s not like all of us just have a man fall into our laps the first semester of school!” I glared at her boyfriend, a rather handsome, if poetic, type of guy with longish blond hair that was always shaggy and in his hazel eyes. He was… swoon-worthy in that romantic sort of way. I could totally see him in some late twentieth-century clothes with one of those lacy cravat things at his neck.

But he was Brooklyn’s boyfriend, so to me, he was more like a brother than anything. An annoying brother, at that.

“Fuck, Stuart, can you get your head out of her neck for five minutes?” I blurted and looked away. I could tell I was frowning now but didn’t care if it gave me wrinkles. I only had a couple of weeks left before finals, and then we were free of this place.

I had to find a way to lose my v-card.

That had been my plan when I first got to the university. I didn’t have to be the dorky girl that loved reading and making realistic looking houses out of cardboard scraps. I could be the girl that had it together, knew what she wanted, and got any man she wanted. Within reason, of course. I wasn’t super-model material, after all.

“Let’s make a list.” Brooklyn pushed Stuart off her body and dug around in her book bag. She pulled out a green notepad and opened it to reveal clean white paper with blue lines. “Okay, who’s first?”

“Huh?” Stuart asked, dazed now that he was disconnected from his one true love. I wish someone would look at me like that.

“We’re making a list of men that Nic could hook up with. Who do you know that’s single and up for the job?” She smiled at him and the dazed look melted into something sappy I didn’t want to look at.

I hope by the ‘up for the job’ comment, she meant someone not so bad-looking and able to at least give me some kind of pleasure out of it.

“What about Trent…,” Stuart started, but I quickly turned my head and glared at him. “Not him. Um, Billy Taggart is available. He just broke up with Crystal.”

“Billy Taggart. Okay, he’s not so bad.” Brooklyn wrote his name on the notebook paper.

“Kurt Adams is single. But I think he likes guys.” Stuart said without judgment, just resignation over his failure to provide a good answer. I half-closed my eyelids and breathed out through my nose in frustration.

“Who else?” I asked them.

“Andy Smith is probably a good candidate. He’s been single all semester.”

“No, I think he had some girl at home pregnant with his baby.” I murmured and looked away.

This was sweet, but I didn’t think it would work.

“How about John Winslow?” Brooklyn said tentatively. He was a football player for the school, and she knew how I felt about football players. He’d displayed a brief interest in me at one point, but I’d shut him down.

I was an academic, not an athlete, and I was a bit put off that these guys got scholarships that paid for everything.

“Maybe,” I said with a sigh of resignation now. I didn’t have much choice, did I? At least he had beautiful blue eyes.

“And, oh, I forgot! Kenny Colman asked me about you the other day. I was late for class and didn’t really have time to pay attention, but he did.”

“Oh?” Kenny ran a journalism group on campus and he wrote for the school paper. He was an academic, with dark hair that came down in lovely curls around his ears, with gray eyes that could look down into your soul and see all your secrets. “Yes, please.”

I grinned at Brooklyn, and she smiled, her raven black eyebrows a stark contrast to her super-pale skin. Brook’s mom was white, while her dad was mixed with Latino and African ancestry. Somehow, she came out with almost translucent white skin that she constantly protected from the sun. She swore it was worse than being a redhead because she’d get weird freckles all over if she let the sun anywhere near her skin.

“Do we have a winner?” She asked, breathlessly.

“A winner for what exactly?” I asked.

“To get a date with. What else?” She looked at me like I’d lost my mind and wrote down Kenny’s name.

“Can you really imagine yourself panting the name, Kenny, though?” Stuart asked, his eyes somewhere on the dark heavens above. “Oh, Kenny, oh Kennnny!”

He moaned the last and then broke into laughter that I couldn’t help but join.

“I’m not sure I could,” I smiled but didn’t tell Brooklyn to take his name off the list. If he’d take my virginity, then I’d refrain from moaning his name.

“Who else?” Brooklyn looked between Stuart and me, her face now uncertain.

“Jake?” Stuart offered.

“Jake from Sub-stop?” I asked and frowned at Stuart.

“Yeah, what’s wrong with him?” He looked rather offended that I wasn’t supportive. “He’s only gotta be around long enough to hook up with you, then leave right?”

“Well, yeah. A relationship would be nice, but we do have a goal in mind. I guess. Ugh, I guess I could lose my virginity to the guy that’s worked at the sub shop we’ve visited for the last four years. If I have to.” I didn’t want to judge the guy’s life choices, but he didn’t offer much.

“You just need a penis attached to a man, right, Nic?” Stuart asked. “There’s always Cal Shawver.”

“He gave Amanda chlamydia, Stuart! Along with a few other women,” Brooklyn protested and glared at her boyfriend. “No!”

“Well, he’ll fuck anything with a…,” Stuart said, a bit miffed, but she stopped his sentence.

“Don’t say it. It’s just… crude.” Brooklyn couldn’t stand it when Stuart said anything that was unpoetic, and she often made it clear.

Stuart just shrugged and tried to think of someone else.

“I really appreciate you two trying to help. I know it’s stupid, but I just… I want to go home a real woman, you know?”

Not that I was sure I was going to go back to my hometown in Hickory, two hours away. I had applied for a job with a public relations firm down in Atlanta, Georgia, and was floored when I got a job offer. The interview took place on Skype, and I thought I’d nailed it, but wasn’t sure until I got the offer in the mail. I hadn’t told my mom yet. I’d accepted the job but wasn’t sure I’d show up. I wanted to see what else came my way before I made a final decision. I wasn’t supposed to start it until September, so I had time.

“I understand,” Stuart said with total understanding. “You believe that sex will change you, and in a way it does. To share your body with another person is magical. It should be transcendental, like nothing you’ve ever experienced before. I doubt you’ll get that with some random guy, but you might.”

Stuart wasn’t judging me. Just making an observation. It still stung a little.

“Thanks, I think,” I responded with a hint of doubt.

“You’re welcome,” Stuart said, oblivious because Brooklyn was all he could ever concentrate on. His head moved towards her neck again, but she pushed him off.

“Not now, Stuart.” She said, her index finger up in warning. “I will cut you off.”

“No!” He said, his voice full of dread. “I’ll behave. I swear.”

Now that was power, I decided, as I watched them. They were an odd couple, but beautiful together. Brooklyn was no-nonsense and logical, while Stuart was romantic and dreamy. They rubbed off on each other, in a good way, that made them work.

“So, it looks like Kenny is the main contender?” I asked and looked down at the very tiny list.

“Looks like it,” Brooklyn groused.

“Fuck, this is sad.” I put my hands over my face, scrubbed at my tired eyes, and thought of something else. “Who’s asking for the date?”

“You are, who else?” Brooklyn frowned at me with her expressive eyebrows now pulled together. “We can’t ask them for you. That would just seem creepy.”

“Maybe so.” I wasn’t sure I agreed but couldn’t really protest. She was right, I had to ask.

“Fine, do you have Kenny’s number?” We all tended to share numbers when we were in classes together, most of us anyway, and I knew Brooklyn must have his.

“Yeah, here.” She took out her phone and texted me Kenny’s phone number. “Tell me what he says.”

“I’ll do it later. I can’t face it right now.” Just the thought of asking him if he’d like to go out, much less hookup, made my stomach tighten up with dread.

“He’ll say yes, I’m sure he will.” Brooklyn gave me that smile that would light up the darkest places, and for a moment, I felt better.

Amanda had really done her best to make sure I knew I was nothing, and sometimes, I forgot she was wrong. When Brooklyn smiled at me, though, I knew I mattered to someone. There was my mom, of course, but she had to accept me and love me. Brook loved me and respected me because she wanted to.

“Thank you,” I whispered as I threaded my arm through hers and put my head on her shoulder. “You make everything better do you know that?”

“That’s my job, Nic, to make sure you know you’re loved.” She put her head down on mine and took a deep breath. “We found an apartment in Charlotte, by the way.”

“Did you?” I sat back +up before Stuart could start to protest my nearness to his woman and looked at her with surprised happiness. “That’s great.”

“It is, but if you’re taking that job in Atlanta…,” her voice trailed off and she looked out at the dark street in front of our dorm. “Maybe we should look down there. I can work at any hospital, you know?”

“Maybe so, but Charlotte has one of the best pediatric hospitals in the country. That’s your dream job. You take that, Honey, and don’t worry about me. I can always take the bus up to Charlotte on the weekends.”

“I know, but I’d really love it…,” Again, she didn’t finish. She knew the arguments for and against our separate lives after school.

“I’ve got an offer from a firm in Mooresville. It’s not as much money, but it’s a new company and I have the opportunity to grow with them. I’m thinking about taking that instead.”

“That’s great!” Brooklyn’s sadness disappeared, and her smile grew again. “We could meet for dinner, have drinks, and oh, that would be perfect, Nic!”

Her arms went around my neck and I laughed with her. That kind of made my mind up for me. The way her smile came back told me what I needed to do. I mattered to her, and she mattered to me, so I’d take less money to have her smile like that any time.

“It means I’d still be living with my mom for a while, but I can deal with it.” I wanted my own place, but rent in the area was high, whether I looked in Hickory or Mooresville. Or even Charlotte.

“Can you stop interfering with my girlfriend now?” Stuart asked, his voice droll but amused. “It’s my turn to interfere with her.”

I laughed as they drifted back together, something they did automatically. I doubted they even noticed it now. My best friend and the love of her life left after that, back to the small apartment Stuart rented a few blocks away. She’d be back in the morning, so I’d get the dorm to myself. I spent the night tossing and turning, as I tried to pluck up the courage to text Kenny. Alone in the darkness, I couldn’t pretend anymore. Kenny wouldn’t be interested in me, I thought. I’m too boring, in every way.