We sat on a couch in a third-floor common area, getting to know each other. We were pretty much alone: everyone else was either downstairs at the welcome event, or hiding in their rooms. My hoodie was stretched out on the sofa arm next to me. We had tried to dry it off with paper towels, but it was still a little damp.

I was feeling a lot better now, with less people around. And the one person around seemed very nice. Her name was Olivia, but she said everyone just called her Liv. I introduced myself as Sam (whenever anyone called me my full name I just cringed.)

“Are you feeling any better now?” she asked. “I know big social events like that can be a lot.”

I took a deep breath and said, “Yeah, I’m doing ok now. Thank you for being so nice, I don’t really deserve it.”

She looked at me and said, “What makes you say you don’t deserve it? I think pretty much everyone deserves some nice-ness sometimes. Unless you’re like secretly super evil and murder-y.”

I said, “Well, I promise I haven’t murdered anyone. I’m only a little bit evil.”

She laughed and said, “Aren’t we all.”

I was still kind of surprised Liv wanted to talk to me at all. She was buff and hot and super nice, and I was basically some kind of sad androgynous blob. It’s not like anyone forced her to though, so I guess it was of her own accord. Maybe she just felt sorry for me.

We ended up talking for a while. I learned a lot of stuff about her. She was also a freshman. She was from New Jersey. She didn’t know what she wanted to study yet. She lived in one of the other dorms. She was really cute (well ok, I knew that already). I guess she must have learned a lot about me too. I was feeling a lot more relaxed now, so I was capable of normal human conversation for once. We even  xchanged phone numbers too, which had to be a good sign.

We also ended up talking about my favorite animated show. I guess she was into it too, which surprised me a little. I had thought she was too cool to like the nerd stuff I was into. Usually the only person I could talk to about it was Dino on Discord. I had tried to get Kate to watch but she always said she was too busy.

“I really loved the episode where Ella and Sarah finally got together,” she said excitedly.

“Oh me too!” I said, “That’s definitely an S-tier episode, for sure.” She nodded enthusiastically.

Continuing on without really stopping to think, I said, “I love that gay shit.” Fuck, was she gonna think I was some weird dude that was too into lesbians? I didn’t want to make anyone uncomfortable, let alone Liv. What if she thought I was some kind of creep?

Everything was fine, though. She just smiled at me and said, “Me too.”

---

    As soon as I got back to my room, I unlocked my phone and texted Kate, “I made a friend!” Then I tossed my still slightly damp hoodie into the collapsible laundry hamper thing my mom got for me, and plopped down onto the bed.

    Kate responded, “Hooray! See, I told u to go to that welcome thing. Glad u did.” It felt a little like she was saying “told ya so,” but I wasn’t gonna complain too much right now. I lay there for a moment, gazing up at the ceiling and just feeling happy.

After a few minutes passed, I got up, opened my laptop, and messaged my Discord friend Dino, “I talked to someone and she’s into a lot of the same stuff as me!” She replied with an excited emoji face.

A few moments later, I had an incoming call from her. I clicked the button to accept the call and said, “Hey!”

She exclaimed, “Hi! How did you meet her? Is she cute? I have so many questions!”

I said, “Ok, don’t get too excited, Dino. She’s just another freshman at my college. I walked into her like an idiot and spilled my root beer, but she was cool about it and we ended up talking for a while.”

She said, “That totally sounds like a ‘meet cute’, y’know. Also, you still didn’t mention if she was hot,” and laughed.

“Dino, life is not a romantic comedy, all right? I doubt she would even be interested in me. She was like way out of my league, anyway.”

“Ooh, someone has a cruuuush. This is important information! New question: did she seem gay?”

“Um, I don’t know. She did seem to like lesbian ships, so I guess maybe. It’s possible.”

She said, “Nice. I strongly approve of your new friend.”

I said, “Yeah, she seems really cool. Hopefully I’ll see her around.”

Dino just replied, “Gaaaaaaaaaaaay!” and ended the call. I was pretty used to her antics, so this wasn’t really anything out of the ordinary.

Despite what Dino was saying, there wasn’t much chance of this one conversation leading to anything. People had conversations all the time! She did give me her phone number, but I’m sure she wouldn’t really want some rando she met one time texting. Realistically, I might see her around campus a few times, and then she’d never talk to me again. She was probably only nice to me in the first place because she felt sorry for me.

Having successfully bummed myself out, I flopped back onto my bed and buried my face in a pillow. It’s not like anyone would actually want to date me. I looked weird and I was depressed all the time and I couldn’t even talk to people.

I just lay there, not moving at all. I thought about getting up to brush my teeth or take my meds, but I couldn’t summon the motivation. My body just felt so heavy and leaden. Eventually, I slipped away into sleep.