The RA

Chapter One: Training

My name is Spencer Lawrence. I’m the RA for Higgins 3. RA – that’s resident assistant, commonly misunderstood to mean resident advisor. We aren’t advisors. I don’t have much by way of advice. If there was one piece I could give, it’s this: stick to the four-year plan. Meanwhile here I am in year six, sixteen credit hours and one graduation ceremony away from a lifetime of crippling debt. Switching majors twice hadn’t seemed like a big deal when Dad promised to pay off my loans if I graduated. His way of holding me accountable, I guess, threatening to sick the student loan police on me if I bailed. Then he listened to the wrong tweets from Elon Musk and lost everything. So now I’m graduating just so I’ll have something to show for my ruined 20’s, 30’s and 40’s.

Yeah, I’m bitter, and no, it’s not a good look. I know that. This is my third year as an RA though, and the two endless mind-numbing weeks of training are diminishing my capacity to take the new hall manager’s advice and “choose my attitude.” They do love their platitudes in student affairs, all right.

It could be worse. This year, I got bumped from my old gig over at Rowland Hall after two gritty years in the trenches. 98% freshman, more than 80% pledging a Greek house. I say that to my old friends, from before this job swallowed my life and my social calendar, the ones who had the good sense to graduate on time and get the hell out of here and start making bank, and they just look at me. Say that to a comrade at arms, though, and they know what it means right off. It means residents who know they’re not sticking around. Whose community will dissolve the first day of pledging. Who have to prove they can hack it as an entitled pack of hooligans by drinking themselves into comas four nights a week and trashing the place in the process.

Brace yourself: I’m about to say something actually positive. Higgins Hall? It’s actually pretty OK. It’s the first hall on campus to go fully coed, not just by floor, but room to room. Gender-inclusive, they call it. That’s not me being all “yay, chicks on my floor” like some fucking creep. It’s just that having chicks around means the guys actually behave themselves, tidy up occasionally, keep some of that toxic testosterone they passed around on move-in day at Rowland in check. Meanwhile the guys keep the girls from being such petty bitches, keeping the drama down and redirecting that energy into mothering the motherless apes they live with. I can’t say the phrase “bring out the best in each other” with a straight face, but the genders do seem to suppress the worst of the opposition. Win/win.

Higgins isn’t a big hall, just five floors. Hence, five RAs. I somehow wound up the only guy among them, so our staff meetings have been Ramona, our hall manager, Alison with one L, assistant to the hall manager, and four chicks, all of them new to the position. Ramona pressures me to be a mentor, but those four formed a clique on day one, and I’ve barely seen them outside of the training sessions. They train returning staff as rigorously as the newbies, so while they’re sitting there rapt at attention learning the ropes, I’m brainstorming something other than trying to look up their shorts to keep me awake.

Yeah, yeah, there is a policy against staff members hooking up, and I respect it. Still, the girls range from Vickie, pretty cute, to Savannah, who’s so hot that the other girls teased her about whether or not someone else would have to check the smoke detectors in the rooms on her floor because she’d keep setting them off. As for me, five separate sessions on diversity and tolerance, the same exact lines I heard at Rowland the last two Augusts, is taxing on not only your wokeness, but your wakeness.

Residents were due to show up tomorrow, and my colleagues and I had the evening to put finishing touches on decorations, bulletin boards, and preparing for move-in day and orientation. My door tags should have been up days ago, but better late than never. So there I was, crawling down the hallway, writing down the residents’ names, one to a tag, sticking them on with some transparent contact paper, and then onto the next. Each one needed a marker and scissors, so in the absence of a mobile desk, crawling was the only way.

I started next door to my room. Casey and Nick. Across the hall, Payton and Sid. Then Terry and Tony – fun alliteration – and their across-the-hallmates Jack and Chris. And so on. I was shit with names until I had faces to go with them, but I expected to know my guys first and last by the time classes started next Monday. Girls, too, if I wound up with any. Some of these names, it was hard to say. Felt like there was bound to be some, though. The campus Director of Housing and Residence Life, Bob (he insisted, “Bob”) had been hyping the new rooming situation all last year at training events. He was billing it as a big new diversity initiative, and if there’s one buzzword these HRL folks never seem to tire of, it’s diversity.

With nobody but me living there, the sound of the stairwell door opening and footsteps entering the hallway were impossible to miss. Not too surprising. Most floors had some early arrivals showing up. International students, athletes reporting early for practice, folks finishing up summer programs and moving from the summer school dorms to their fall housing assignment. This wasn’t my first rodeo, though; it was easy to get eager to meet my residents and rush up to greet them, but people moving in had a funny way of carrying heavy stuff. Staying out of their way was a courtesy – plus, it kept me from repeating my mistake my rookie year where I offered a hand, and wound up roped into moving hundreds of pounds of some doucher’s crap up the stairs while his dad sat in the car, basking in the AC. Fool me once, and all that.

My focus stayed on the door tags. Move-in day was going to be its usual exhausting marathon, and the sooner I got this done, the sooner I could hit the hay and start resting up. I was bent over on my hands and knees with my ass in the air, shearing off the next scrap of contact paper for Morgan and Tyler’s door tags, when behind me…

Someone wolf-whistled.

Honestly? I smiled. I took care of myself, had inherited my dad’s chiseled jawline, but I didn’t get harassed so often that it didn’t remain largely flattering when they did. Still, the smile had to be squelched by the time I turned to confront my whistler. It was hardly the way to make a good impression on someone, and while “authority figure” was rather heavy-handed for my role, I did  have to be able to be taken seriously. I wiped the grin off my face, ready to deliver a greeting and a very mild rebuke.

The woman standing before me was… hot. Tall, and leggy even for her height, blonde hair fluffed high from the August humidity, and absolutely rocking the shit out of an orange floral summer dress that, from my vantage point, posed more temptation to my eyes than they’d trained me to withstand. That alone wasn’t all that weird. Colleges are known to enroll the occasional hot blonde. Only… this chick wasn’t a college student – or if she was, was nontraditional to the point that they’d never let her live in the dorms. Her hotness was probably shaving off a few years, but objectively she was easily 30.

The flirty smirk on her face was at least as aggressive as that whistle.

“Um, hi…” That was what came of three years of RA training in conflict intervention, diversity appreciation, and de-escalation.

“Hey yourself,” the woman answered. I was already pondering my options for how to respond to this woman’s presence. Gently ask her if she got lost, or what her business was? Tell her this was a private residence hall and ask her to leave? Invite her down to my room and try to talk that dress off of her? Before I could decide, however, a voice accompanied a figure rounding the corner behind her.

“Mom! Oh my god, that’s so  gross!” Joining my harasser was the answer to the riddle, a woman I’d peg as a few years younger than myself, a little blonder, a little shorter, but no less attractive. She was carrying two boxes, but look to be on the verge of throwing them at her mom in mortification.

I stood up, brushing off my knees, and put my smile back on. “Hi, there. I’m Spencer, the RA. What room are you looking for?”

“318,” the girl answered. “And I’m Dana.”

“Nice to meet you, Dana. C’mon, it’s this way. Are you a freshman?” Against my better judgment, I grabbed one of her boxes. She smiled gratefully, ample reward.

“Um, yeah. Is it that obvious?”

I kept my attention on her. This was a classic technique, one I’d used to solid results in years past. Ignore the parents, focus on the student. Most freshmen were pretty excited to be escaping parental clutches, or at least a little giddy to be entering a domain in which their parents were secondary, themselves alphas. Dana’s mom sauntered along behind us; if she was irritated to be written off so quickly, she didn’t give evidence of it aloud.

“Not at all, Dana. Just that most of the folks on the floor are, so it was a good guess.”

“Oh yeah? Cool. I was sorta worried I might be the only one.”

“Nonsense. In fact, you’re the first person moving in, so that actually gives you seniority. Ah, and here we are. You can hand me that – then just swipe your student ID right in the slot there, and… voila!”

I followed Dana into the room, her mother right on my heels. I set the boxes down on one of the desks. “Welcome to Higgins 3.”

She looked around the tiny room in wonder. To be fair, the furniture was brand new, and while it was nothing fancy, it lent the room an air like the photos they put on Lakeview’s housing website. I’d been in a lot of dorm rooms over the years, and most of them split the difference between the bedroom of a slob who’d never dusted or vacuumed in their life, and a medieval dungeon. These were bright, clean, freshly painted. If the floor tiles were scuffed and chipped in places and the ceiling bore evidence of where past occupants had burned their illicit candles, it was still going to be head and shoulders a nicer-looking pad than would be occupied by the friends she’d be making from other residence halls in the coming weeks.

“This looks so nice!”

“It sure does, honey,” said Mrs. Dana. Was that more  flirtation in her tone? Dana was distracted, that iconic “which bunk do I claim” battle playing out in her eyes, so at least she didn’t have to be embarrassed again.

“So, early move-in?” I opened, taking a space by closets. Dana’s mom was inhabiting the doorway.

“Hmm? Oh, yeah. I’m in the marching band. They had us all living in Ballard, right by the School of Music, but they said we could move into our permanent dorms tonight instead of doing it with everybody else tomorrow.”

“Band, huh? What do you play?” I thought to myself that I’d have pegged her as a cheerleader, but then I had to think even harder not to think the words “peg her” going forward.

“Piccolo, mostly, but I also play the flute and some clarinet. I’m not very good or anything, though.”

“Nonsense, sweetheart.” Dana’s mom eyed her daughter with pride bordering on reverence, then delivered her correction to me. “My baby was in the all state marching and concert band for the piccolo. She’s been taking private lessons since she was in fourth grade. She could barely get her hands around the piccolo then. Do you remember?”

“ Mom!  Don’t call me a baby!” Dana groaned, blushing.

“She was so cute, trying to learn her fingering, going around the house holding her breath so she could work on her lung capacity, and… what do they call that thing you did, honey, where you have to blow and blow really fast?” Mrs. Dana’s lips formed an “O” and I lost the specifics of Dana’s cry of agony at her mother’s embarrassing behavior in the display of violently heaving cleavage as she sucked air in and out in rapid bursts.

“ Anyway ,” Dana said, “I’m gonna go get another load from the car. Feel free to not  follow me, Mother. Spencer, it’s been really nice to meet you. I guess if there’s anything else to know, you’ll tell me? Our summer RA just kind of knocked on doors whenever we had to know something.”

“I’ll make sure you know what you need to know. For now, I’d say there’s not much more than we have our first floor meeting tomorrow at 7, so we can all meet everybody, details on orientation, all that jizz. Err, jazz.” Holy fuckballs, Spencer. “Oh my gosh, sorry! I think I was trying to say business and jizz – jazz! jazz! – and… You know, why don’t you go get your next load and I’ll crawl back down the hall and bury my head in the floor.”

Dana giggled sweetly, but the awkwardness had hit her, and she slipped past her mother without another word. After giving her a moment’s head start, I made to do the same – only to be stopped with a gentle yet implacable hand on my chest.

“Hold up, Spencer.”

I held up. “Um, sure. I’m really sorry, about, um… you know. The, ah…”

“The jizz?” She smiled without showing her teeth. “Forgiven. A boy your age… well, such things are known to happen.”

I grimaced. What did you say to that?

“You’re going to keep a close eye on my daughter, aren’t you, Spencer?”

God, I loved the way my name sounded from those lips. “Oh, of course. Not too  close, that is. But, you know, close. It’s my job, after all. Hehe.” Did I just say  “hehe?” What was even happening?

“Good. My baby girl needs it. Dana’s a very, very sweet girl. So innocent. You know, she never even had a boyfriend in high school?”

“Oh. That’s, um… no.” What in the name of every single fuck did that factoid have to do with anything?

Her fingers teased at my pecs. “I’ll feel so much better knowing she has someone here to keep watch on her for me.”

I tried to inch past her, but it only brought me closer. Unless I wanted to just push past the glorious balcony of MILF tits blocking the way, that door may as well be another cinder block wall. “Well, you don’t have a thing to worry about.”

Her head twisted to one side, poising her lips perfectly for kissing. Why had I gotten so close? What the hell was even happening?! “That’s a load off, Spencer. I’m so grateful. You know, Dana thinks I’m such an embarrassment – she’s always thought of me as more of a bratty big sister than her stepmother. But I promised my hubbins I’d see to it she was put in good hands. Are you good hands, Spencer?”

When had she grabbed my hands? Great googly fucks, was she going to put them on her…?!

She stopped short. Shit. I mean, thank god. Shit.

“I, um, think I should be getting back to work, ma’am.”

Her smile broke wider as she snickered. “‘Ma’am,’ he calls me. Such a gentleman. Go on and get back to work, Spencer. It was just an absolute pleasure meeting you.”

I squeezed past her, our chests barely grazing.

She grabbed my ass. Not a pinch. Not a pat. A full-on open-palmed grope .

I managed not to run back to where I’d left my supplies. Dana returned with her second load as I sunk back down to finish up those door tags. I gave her a wave, a smile. She gave me a smile, a wave. That was that.

I had three more early arrivals that evening. One of them actually was  a cheerleader. I couldn’t have remembered any of their names if I’d been poised over the brink of a volcano, threatened with a hard shove. Come to think of it, I’d never gotten Mrs. Dana’s name, either. And think of it I did, for hours after.

I couldn’t let myself use the incident for… that. It wouldn’t be right.

About half past midnight, I had to head down the hall to take a cold shower. On my way past Dana’s room, I saw the door was open. And that she was in there, in a pair of pink PJs with some kind of tiny cartoon figures all over them. PJs that looked like they would be way the hell too tight for me to fall asleep in them. PJs that outlined each ass cheek perfectly as she bent down in front of her closet, arranging her shoes on a rack.

I didn’t know Dana, but her ass was her stepmother’s stepass, all right.

That shower was as cold as it could get, and I barely kept my attention on getting clean.

Chapter Two: Move-In Day

For the most part, freshman move-in day at Higgins Hall was no different from Rowland. It was hot, and humid, and for ten hours I was baked alive on the black asphalt, directing parents and students and being the warm, welcoming face of Lakeview. They’d gotten us staff t-shirts, these ungodly itchy things that stank like a urinal cake when you sweated in them, which the other RAs and I all were by nine. Between the usual headaches of moving and the added drama of saying fare-thee-well to parents and offspring, people were not at their best. Experience helped some, but there was only so patient I could be with the dad raging at me about the insufficient parking.

“I didn’t design the parking lot, sir. And I’m pretty sure whoever did, they designed it for the number of residents parking here, not the number of cars and trucks flooding in one day out of the year.”

“You some kind of wise-ass, kid?”

Ramona swooped in to save me in the nick of time, taking the man aside and giving him the chance to vent his frustrations and “file a formal complaint” about my attitude. I knew as well as she did that the official process for such complaints was for her to listen to them, then promptly disregard their ever having been uttered. I flashed her a grateful smile over the father’s shoulder, then turned back in time to notify a young woman whose bong was visibly protruding from one of her boxes that, while the state had legalized it, campus housing hadn’t, and she didn’t look twenty-one besides.

She thanked me, then went back to her car to find another way to smuggle it in. C’est la vie.

While parking lot duty was arguably the worst assignment on that, the worst day, I was fortunate to be assigned to a team with Savannah and Janis. Janis gave me headaches, most times. During the past two weeks of RA training, she’d struck me as the sort of RA who both followed and enforced rules, equally blindly. Her fastidiousness came in handy that day, however, keeping traffic flowing up and down the appropriate stairwells, sweating dudes and dads filtering in and out smoothly. Savannah was a ray of sunshine on any occasion, a girl so hot that people were basically always nice to her, which had in turn made her basically always nice. She kept our water bottles full and disarmed most of the surliest sorts with her thousand-watt smile.

One of the frustrations of move-in day, however, was that while my whole floor was moving in while I was stuck outside directing traffic. Not my whole floor, technically; the upperclassmen were cleared to move in a few days later, once the freshman had settled and gone through the bulk of orientation. Like I said, Higgins was pretty heavily slanted to freshmen, though. My kids were up there forming first impressions, and I wasn’t allowed to be a part of them. It stung.

A little after four, things had slowed down enough that we were dismissed from our duties. After sweating off a couple thousand calories, I joined Savannah and Vickie  for an early dinner across the street at the Penderdast food court. Then, finally, it was back to Higgins 3 to meet and greet my people.

And about half an hour later, I was on the phone in my room with Ramona.

“There’s something seriously wrong here.”

“Huh? Who is this? Spencer?”

“Yeah, it’s Spencer.”

“You said something’s wrong? Is it an emergency? Everyone safe?”

“Everyone’s fine. But everyone’s also… Look. There’s a problem. I have thirty-two of my thirty-eight residents accounted for, but nobody said… I mean, they’re… Everybody’s…!”

“Slow your roll, Spencer. It’s OK. Deep breaths. You were in the sun an awful lot. Get some water, all right? Do you have any?”

“I don’t need water. I need… I need men !”

There was a pause. A longer pause. Then a gently teasing laugh. “I’m not sure I can help you there, buddy, but there are apps where you can–”

“Har har.” I really did like her. Ordinarily, her easy sense of humor was endearing. Not today, though. “I’m serious, though. My roster didn’t have much more than names on it. So far, every last resident on my floor is female!”

“Every… what? No, that’s not right. What do you mean? Literally, every?”

“Every,” I repeated gravely. “All female. No exceptions.”

I could hear her tapping keys. In her office, no doubt. Hopefully looking for an answer for me. “I suppose I should remind you they’re all women . We don’t check their genitals to find out whether they’re all female.”

I grit my teeth. I wasn’t a transphobe, but I was also not in the mood to spar with her over the verbiage. “All women, then. Did you know about this? Is it a mistake?”

“I definitely didn’t know about it. You’re sure…? No, of course you’re sure. But that’s just… Your floor is coed, Spencer. Bob was emphatic about it.”

“Well I’m  here, so technically it still is. But this is pretty messed up right now.”

More typing. Then, “I’m looking into it Spencer. When I know something, I’ll pass it along. For now, just go with it, act like this was the plan. If your women have concerns, reassure them that the university is looking into it and we’ll be in touch soon.” Ramona let out a sigh so heavy that even on speaker phone, it blasted my ears with static. “Thank goodness this is your floor and not one of the newbies. I’m counting on you Spencer. Take a deep breath, get that drink, and then get back out there and work your magic. Can you do that for me?”

If her ignorance was disappointing, my manager’s faith was the slap in the face I needed to snap me out of my funk. “Yeah. Don’t worry about a thing.” I sounded a great deal more confident than I was. Projecting confidence you didn’t feel was a core RA skill. I was a skilled RA.

I took that deep breath she’d prescribed, chasing it with a bottle of water from my mini-fridge. Act like this was normal. It ought to be simple enough. Girls weren’t scary or anything. I’d dated a girl sophomore year who’d tried to choke me during sex, completely unasked. With gusto. Women didn’t frighten me. What I hadn’t told Ramona, however, was that not only were my residents exclusively female, but they were also only somewhat less exclusively… hot .

That’s not to say they were all perfect 10’s. Individually, some of them would turn heads, and a few would even stick in your mind for a time after. And yes, there were a comforting handful who were in that average to uggo range. Still, from what I’d seen, the newly arrived ladies of Higgins 3 were sporting at least a 7 average. It was an anomaly.

There was nothing to do about it right this minute, though. For the time being, I wended between the rooms, making introductions and trying to put names to faces. It seemed pointless; surely the university would either correct their mistake and replace half of them with the intended roster, or else turn Higgins 3 into a women’s floor and assign me elsewhere. Tonight, however, I would do my best to make them feel welcome and excited to start their college journeys. This job was full of cliché fuzzy wuzzies, but I believed in it anyway. Until I was relieved, I was going to take care of these women like they were mine for the year.

Then it was time for our first floor meeting. I looked forward to it every year. I enjoyed an audience, and a group of freshmen all eager to make friends and learn the ropes was about the most receptive audience a man could hope for. I’d put up signs and reminded every girl – woman, sorry; Ramona was death on calling my women “girls” – about it. I bellowed an invitation that was really a summons down both sides of the hall, then made my way to our floor lounge and waited for them to filter in.

In they came. Some came in pairs, new roommates presenting a united front. Most entered alone. The couches filled quickly, then the arm chairs, then the desk chairs. Soon, there was nowhere left but the floor. The late-comers in dresses and skirts bashfully asked those already seated if they could swap, glancing at the sole male occupant of the lounge meaningfully.

It didn’t do much to diminish what was for me a dizzying array of womanly forms. Diversity, our guiding star, was nevertheless in it. We had sweet faces, sexy faces; big tits, perky tits; tight asses, huge asses; short hair and long; fair-skinned and dark; elegant and casual; tattooed and pierced and ringed and unadorned altogether.

I’d retained a few names. Dana, of course, sitting with the cheerleader across the hall from her. Sydney, a petite girl with a healthy tan and sparkling blue eyes. Katrina, who humbly introduced herself as saludatorian of her high school class of over 800 students. Andy – Andi? – who had fighting down tears of homesickness. Casey, exploring the extreme end of the spectrum of waist to breast size ratio, and her roommate Amy, whose boobs were practically nonexistent, but it somehow suited her shy, tremulous smile. Bailey, one of our normal-looking girls, who’d greeted me with a handshake. Quinn, who had added me on facebook, instagram, tiktok and snapchat within the first two minutes of meeting her in what I professionally deemed an impressive display of trust in her RA.

The room remained pretty quiet. After all, for the time being this was a gathering of strangers, even if that would hopefully change by the time the meeting was over. There was an added sense of unease in the room, however. It built with the addition of each fetching face. They’d picked up on the same thing I’d picked up on, I sensed. About five after, I unpropped the lounge door and began by addressing that elephant in our room.

“Good evening, ladies and–” Oops. I’d been rehearsing this speech for days now. “Ladies of Higgins 3! Many of you I’ve met, but if I haven’t, my name is Spencer Lawrence. I’m your resident assistant, or RA. Now, before we get into introductions and what are we doing and where do we go from here, let’s start with what I can see some of you are already wondering.”

“Where are the boys?” called one resident perched on the armrest of one sofa, herself a tomboy-looking blonde.

“You know, I was wondering that myself. Short version: I don’t have an answer for you. Don’t worry, though. I’ve notified our hall director, and she’s looking into what happened. We’ll have information soon. Probably not tonight,” I speculated, “since we didn’t really find out about this until I was making the rounds a little bit ago. As soon as I know something, you’ll know something.”

“Are we going to have to move again?” asked another girl I didn’t recognize, a round-faced doll with enormous, pillowy tits. I swear, I don’t normally even notice things like this, at least not to fixate on it. I was on hottie overload or something.

“I hope not. I don’t get to make that call. I’ve been doing this for a few years now, though, and it’s honestly much more likely they’ll move me and leave you all where you are. That’s pure guesswork, though. I’d say if you’re nervous about it, maybe go light on the unpacking, but you’ve seen your rooms, now. They’re not that big. Doesn’t take long to re-pack and move.”

Another girl spoke up, a snotty-looking brunette whose good looks almost justified her entitled sneer. “How could something like this happen? My letter said I was on a coed floor. I requested it. I’m paying good money for this. It isn’t right.”

“Yeah, I have three sisters at home. I was kinda looking forward to trading some estrogen in for testosterone,” added Quinn.

The room quickly became a cacophony of opinions. Some of them shared this dissatisfaction; others were of the opinion that an absence of a bunch of brutish apes in their midst was a positive. (One of those, an impressively top-heavy Asian girl – woman – with pink stripes dyed into her hair, had the grace to exempt present company from that diagnosis.) After allowing a few moments to vent, I raised my hand and asked for their attention again. There had been voices in the din expressing outrage at the circumstance of a group of women being supervised in their own homes by a strange man, so I was trying to be sensitive to that sentiment. Frankly, I empathized.

Before long, they let me have the floor again. “Look, I know this is weird. I don’t know what other word to use for it. I wasn’t expecting it either. But here we are, right? For now, my number one concern is you guys – sorry, girls – sorry, women  – having a good start to your new life at Lakeview. So for now, the hell with it, OK? Maybe tomorrow you’ll have a new RA or some new neighbors, but tonight, here we are, and let’s rock out. You with me?”

There was a positive, if tepid, response, so I amped it up. “I said, are you with me?!” The few who’d made noise before made a little more. Some grins, some grim. “I can’t hear  you! Who’s with me?! Come on, who’s with me?”

It didn’t take much of that to bring things to a stony silence. Then I abandoned the act and let them in on it. “I’m kidding, everybody. See, ‘cause that’s what a dude might say to a floor of dude-bros, and you’re… get it? Come on, I’m kidding. You’re going to have a great time here. I promise.”

The levity did the trick. The room had a healthy amount of grins and giggles now. Then someone raised a hand. “Oh, I was going to take questions at the end, but if it’s about the current subject…?”

The girl nodded. Fuck, she was gorgeous. Great body, but that face… Damn. “Yeah, um, you said your roster didn’t list gender… Did it list names?”

“Did it…? Um, yeah? That’s kind of what a roster is.”

“OK, because my name is misspelled on my door. So is my roommate’s, and so are a bunch of other girls’.”

I frowned. That was a good point. It had occurred to me that we had a fair number of gender-blind names, but some of those were unambiguously male. “Oh. OK, and you are…?”

“Terri. Terri with an I. And my roommate is Toni, also with an I.”

Another girl spoke up, a curly-haired girl with a sparkling stud in her left nostril and a tattoo of an arrow up her forearm. “Mine too. Nikki, but it says ‘Nick.’”

Other murmurs followed. What the fuck was going on? The gender mishap was one thing, but misspelling their names? How the hell does that  happen? “All right. I’m going to pass around a notepad. I was going to use it for room problems anyway, so feel free to list those if you have any. You know, lights burned out, something missing, whatever. Just add the door tags to the list, and I will get them fixed. So let’s get that moving while we start getting to know each other with a little icebreaker, yeah?”

We learned a little bit about each other. Two of them, Jessie and Sam, planned to take on the same major as me. Once Peyton opened up about being a little homesick, every other girl after her echoed the sentiment until I pivoted to a little speech about how many of us missed our families, so now we needed to make sure we’re being good to each other and taking care of one another, our families away from home. I pointed to the cloth banner hanging over the door, crafted during RA training during a session in which we each developed a theme for our floor. We Are Family , it read. I got to drink in a few grateful tears. Cheesy, sure, but folks get emotional on move-in day. Whatever helps.

“Just as long as I never have to hear you ask us who is our daddy,” joked Charlotte – Charlie, on my roster – but good-naturedly.

The meeting went smoothly from there. I’m not sure where I won them over, but the ladies of Higgins 3 warmed to me as much as my all-dude floors had in years past. More so, maybe. We covered the boring stuff. Orientation, scheduling roommate agreements and RCR checks, and yes, behavioral expectations and my role in them. Nobody likes a lecture about the rules, but like in years past, it did make people feel better, knowing the do’s and don’t’s. I’d seen coworkers skimp on it in the past so they didn’t seem draconian, but it only led to miserable residents taking things into their own hands when they didn’t know or trust the system.

“All right, that’s more than enough listening to male voices on our inexplicably female floor, right?” A few whoops from the more ardent feminists went up. “The rest of the night is yours. If you need anything, my door is always open, OK? Literally. If it’s three in the morning and you’re locked out of your room, I’m your guy. So hang out, meet people, make some new friends–”

“Sisters!” cried the room’s only chubby girl, whose name I was suddenly embarrassed to have forgotten. She pointed at my banner.

“Amen. I’ll be leading a campus tour with the Higgins Ground RA, Savannah, leaving after we all head over to get lunch at eleven. Join us – we’ll make it fun. For now, I’m so glad to meet all of you, I’m so glad you’re here with us at Lakeview and in Higgins Hall, and most importantly, I’m finally really shutting up.” There were a few more cheers, but more than a few girls flashed me a smile on their way out of the lounge.

For a while, I burned what little energy I had left roaming the floor, looking for folks who looked like they could use some help meeting people and getting them out of their rooms. It’s always a rough moment for introverts, move-in day. I’m a bit of one myself, but hanging out in your room was all well and fine once one handled the urgent business of making a friend or two. These were a good group of women, too. Doors were open, people milling about complimenting each other’s décor , hair, or whatever other pretext they could find to start a conversation. Content that I’d greased the wheels and done my job for what would likely be the brief window in which I ran Higgins 3, I made my way to my room, kicked off my clothes, and collapsed into bed.

My eyes were just closing when the door opened. There was no knock. It simply opened. Before I could so much as squawk, there was a young woman in my room. It was Quinn, the chick who’d social-mediaed the hell out of me earlier. By now I had friend requests from half the girls on Higgins 3, but she’d been the first.

“Heya, Spencer,” she said as she strode right in, shutting the door behind her. That I was clearly shirtless didn’t impede her at all. Thank goodness I’d had the sheets on over my lower half. “I was trying to find some stuff on this campus map they gave us, and I’m getting super dizzy.”

“Oh. Sure. How can I help?” I sat up against my headboard, careful to keep my sheets in place.

Uninvited, unashamed, unaware, Quinn kicked the door shut behind her and came around to the open side of my bed, which sat against the wall by the door. She plopped right down like I’d offered her a seat. Suddenly I was living in slow motion, a mouth-wateringly rounded ass sinking down right toward me, a tramp stamp of angel wings on display in the wide gap between her crop top and jean shorts. It settled in right next to me – and I mean right  next to me, her butt nestled up against my hip.

Quinn produced her map, leaning around so we could both see it. Twisted and leaning like that, I had an amazing view down her shirt. Her black bra had been obvious under that white top, but not there it was, a foot and a half from my face, unobstructed. She ought to be able to feel my breath on them from this close.

I tried to listen as she chatted me up about her geographical issues. It was a common problem; the School of Engineering was this nifty little subterranean bunker of a thing, and another academic building was situated on top of the hill it was built into. I clarified the markings for her, trying not to think about the warmth, the softness, against my leg.

Only then, she scampered directly over my body and seated herself on the far side of my bed, leaning against the wall, legs folded. This was a twin bed, mind. All it meant was that now her shins were against my left hip instead of her ass on my right. What was even happening? And how many times had I asked myself that in the past twenty-four hours?

“So be straight with me. Is Lakeview actually cool, or is it all study study study all the time?”

“Um, it’s pretty cool, most of the time. And hey, could you not wear those in my bed?” I pointed.

Quinn’s eyes widened in offense. “What? Did you just ask me to take my shorts off? That’s really inappropriate!”

“Your… what?! No! No, the shoes! The shoes, holy shit, not your… The shoes!”

Then she burst into giggles and went right to work on the laces, kicking them off the end of the bed. “I was teasing. You should have seen your face! I’m not making you uncomfortable, am I? I don’t know the protocol and all that shit yet. You just said your door was always open, so.”

I had said that, hadn’t I. Fuck, even my guy residents had at least knocked first, though! “Don’t sweat it. I just had a long day. Hot out, especially on the asphalt, you know? Hit the hay early. You’re fine.”

“Oh, I’m ‘fine,’ am I? That’s how you talk to one of your female floormates?”

“What? No, I meant, you’re cool, like–” I stopped myself as her grin widened. “And I’ve fallen for it twice, now.”

“Sorry, I’ll stop. Unless you want me to keep going.” She winked, but again with the giggles immediately after. In fact, Quinn laughed hard enough at her own joke that she rolled to her side, lying down next to me.

Did I mention my room has a twin bed? Because my room has a twin bed. Fewer than six inches separated our bodies, and no more than three layers of thin fabric.

“So you’re a super senior, huh?”

“Super duper, actually. Sixth year.”

“Holy… How old are  you?”

“Twenty-four.”

“Damn, son! Surprised they still let a silver fox like you live in the dorms.”

I rolled my eyes at her teasing, and tried hard to not acknowledge the flirting at all. This girl, this freshman girl with her kissable little beauty mark on her cheek, with shorts riding up higher and higher the more she rubbed her thighs together, was in my bed. With me in it. With me in it naked. What the fuck.

“What can I say, I seduced the hall manager. Who could say no to this mug, right?” I made sure my smile was the least charming I could manage.

Quinn grinned. “You know, I think you might actually be pretty cool. Katie, my older sister, she told me RA’s were basically just amateur narcs. Guess she never got into bed with hers, huh?”

“Yeah… You know, speaking of, if someone else stops in here, this could look, ah…”

“Oh! Yeah, totes.” Quinn shimmied toward the foot of the bed, but to my dismay, stopped well short of standing. Instead, her now bare foot reached out and tapped the lock with an extended toe. “There we go. If that’s OK. Is that weird? You didn’t cover RA hangout protocol in your little rules talk.”

“It’s, I mean, a little,” I relented. Her sliding down the bed had hiked her shorts up, baring every inch of her thighs, and her top as well. The bottom of her bra wasn’t quite visible, but that I even had to check for that spoke to how high she’d let it ride.

“Man, I’m sorry. I have boundary issues. Get up, get a shirt on. I didn’t mean to weird you out or anything.”

“Yeah, well, suffice to say that if I get up, it’s gonna get a whole lot weirder in here.”

Her head cocked back. “Oh fuck, homie, are you in your underwear under there?”

“Um…”

And back further. “Oh. OH. Dayum, Spencer, why didn’t you say something? Or lock the friggin’ door when you’re lounging around in your nothings!”

“When I said ‘my door is always open,’ I didn’t count on y’all taking it quite so literally. Bad judgment on my part, and I’m sorry if I’m making you uncomfortable.” I was not sorry, in point of fact. I hoped she blushed so hard it rocketed her back to her room.

“Who, me? Nah, I don’t get uncomfortable. My mom’s a sex therapist, so I grew up with healthy ideas about all that.”

I wouldn’t have minded if she had fewer healthy ideas. “Oh, cool.” There. Fewer words. Make her lose interest.

“So, asking for a friend, but… what’s the policy on RAs and residents, you know, hooking up?”

So much for terseness. “It’s a hard no, I’m afraid. In fact, I could get in a lot of trouble for your even being in here like this, so…”

“Hey, mum’s the word. No worries, friend.”

Had I gotten so much better looking over the summer that suddenly women were unable to take hints around me, or what? As I pondered how to hint harder (Quinn being three steps too hot to simply tell her to piss off), she tossed her hair back over her shoulder and softened her smile. “You’re kind of shy, for an authority figure. You know that, Spencer?”

“I’m not sure ‘shy’ is the term for being a little fidgety under these circumstances.”

“What, you mean being naked and having a cute stranger girl climb into bed with you?”

“Yeah. Those circumstances.”

“So you agree I’m cute.”

“I think we can safely say it’s an imperical fact. Yeah.”

She gave her bottom lip a little chew, clearly pleased. “Yeah? You like what you see, huh?”

I certainly did, especially given how much she was letting me see. “Look, like I said, I can’t get involved with a resident. I could get fired.”

“Who’s asking you to ‘get involved?’ I was just stoking my ego, fishing for compliments. I didn’t even ask you to kiss me or anything.”

That certainly painted a picture in my head. “Right. Sorry.”

“Besides, I can keep a secret. Like, in sophomore year – of high school, obviously – I hooked up with this drummer from another school when I was at this concert to cheer on this guy I was seeing, who played the cornet? Never told a soul.”

“You just  told someone.”

With a little wriggle of her belly, she squirmed closer. “Someone trustworthy, though. Discretion, see?”

“Hey, look, I’m flattered. Really. But… Yeah, I think it might be better for you to leave. For now. Then come back tomorrow, or any other day, and I’ll have clothes on, and we can hang.”

Except instead, she squirmed again, and this time it left her body gently pressing against my side. “Can I see it, at least?”

“Can you–!” I straightened so fast, I gave myself a splinter from the headboard. I yelped in pain and surprise, reflexively throwing myself forward. A moment later I thrashed myself back under the sheets, but not before I gave her an eyeful of my backside sprawled out on the tiny bed.

“Oh! Oh shit! I didn’t mean to freak you out that  hard! Holy… is that a splinter? Damn, Spencer, that’s a small log lodged in there! Hold still, let me…”

“What? No! No, I’ll… I’ll get…” Who? Who would I get? Somebody from my all-female staff? Somebody else from my all-female floor? This thing hurt too bad to wait to go to the student health center tomorrow. “OK. Fine. But be gentle, OK? This thing hurts like hell.”

“Poor thing. All right. Just let me…”

For a moment, I thought she meant to straddle me, but thank god she didn’t push things that far. I held absolutely still as Quinn rose to her knees beside me, gently probing where I could feel the sting in the middle of my back.

Then I felt another hand, this one much lower. I’d managed to get the sheets over my butt, though only barely. Quinn was only barely above that line.

“Um, your hand…?”

“I’m just supporting myself,” she lied. There was barely any pressure there. Whatever. Let her finish, and be done with this.

Her errant fingertips quested around my lower back, an immensely pleasurable caress that I might have even believe was meant to soothe me from my current and impending pain had she not just made up a story about it. Then suddenly, before I knew she was at it, there was a sharp tug, a little pinch, and I was informed it was done.

“Not so bad. Not even bleeding, hardly. See?” She set the splinter on my nightstand, one of only two pieces of furniture I owned.

“Thanks, Quinn. Now can I… can… can I…”

That was as far as I got. There was a wisp of cool air as the sheets flew down off my body. I flinched, but there wasn’t much I could do. On my back was a good deal more modest than my front. Then there were hands again. This time, right on my ass.

“You’ve got a nice little booty here, Spencer. I thought you might at the meeting, but… yeah. This is… Yeah.”

She was kneading me. Fondling me. It felt incredible, too incredible to find the words to tell her to stop. At the end of a long day, the end of two long weeks of RA training trying not to notice Carmen’s thong creeping out of her shorts or Vickie’s lips habitually sucking her index finger or Savannah’s anything, it felt almost deserved. After a few hours to process, it seemed obvious I’d be booted from Higgins 3 in a hot minute anyway. Displace forty students, or one staff member? She was my resident for one night. Victimless crime.

Then Quinn sunk her teeth into my buttock. I arched my back in surprise, but a kiss that became a lick that reverted to a kiss soon followed. “Sorry, always wanted to try that, and here you were, looking like a lil’ snack.”

Then she went back to it. Nips at intervals, but mostly just licking and sucking and literally kissing my ass. I’d never fantasized about it before, but now I couldn’t imagine why. Thank the good lord I’d taken a shower before bed; it had been a sweaty day. For the time being, I actually had one of the two bathrooms on the floor entirely to myself.

Her body descended atop mine, her lips right beside my ear. “Can I put a finger in you?” she whispered throatily.

One of my job responsibilities was a little sex ed – not the anatomy so much as promoting those healthy ideas Quinn harbored. To that end, I was proud of her, coming to school already briefed on consent. More than that, though… This sexy little forbidden fruit was whispering throatily in my ear. Of course I was going to consent.

While I gazed back and watched, she gave her left index finger a long, sensuous lick. I’d never had anything shoved in there before, but I tried to relax the best I knew how, parting my thighs. It felt… strange. Stranger still when she began to wiggle it ever so gently inside me. Not bad strange. I sure as hell didn’t ask her to stop.

“Roll over. Nice and slow. Bend your knees, so I don’t lose my ring in there.”

“You have a–!”

She patted my behind patronizingly. “You really are an easy mark, Spencer. Now come on. I want that cock. Don’t make me puppet you.”

I did not make her “puppet me,” whatever that was. (I had an idea, but it was too terrifying to think about.) I’d been hard since a few seconds after she’d sat down next to me, but now it was more than that. My cock was so hard it ached. It was redder than I’d ever seen it, throbbing almost menacingly in the air. Quinn, kneeling between my knees, stared in rapt attention.

“How were you hiding all that under these tiny little sheets?” she murmured as she took it in her free hand. She must have licked her palm or something when I wasn’t looking, because it was already cool, wet and smooth.

The female girl-woman on my bed jacked me off while she probed my ass. Even in the moment, it was hard to believe it was really happening. I’d made out with a girl from another floor in Rowland two years ago. It was all right, don’t get me wrong, but it ended with me climbing the stairs back to my floor to beat off in the solitude of my own room.

This? This was next level. Like, literally, I should have been floating through the ceiling into Janis’s room on Higgins 4. Hey Janis, don’t mind me, just getting ready to bust an anal nut all over this barely legal freshman, go back to sleep.  I almost chuckled to myself. Would have, if not for past lessons in not laughing at stray thoughts during sex.

Though oddly, it was that stray thought – Janis, lying in bed, as naked as I’d been. Janis, her tightly wound horribly naïve incredibly judgmental flawless blonde-haired high and tight Momon body – that pushed me across the line.

As a rule, I abstained from masturbating to thoughts of friends, coworkers, people I’d interact with on the regular. It was a practice that lent itself to shallow thoughts and shallow motives. I’d broken the rule a few times with Savannah these past weeks, and once with a fantasy of Savannah and Vickie tag-teaming me after our tag-team training sessions on teamwork. Janis’s personality was so far away from something I could imagine in a partner that it actually made her unattractive to me.

Or so I’d thought as I sprayed cum like a fountain into the air. I stared, stupefied, as a single dangly strand hit that popcorn ceiling and hung, as if tethered to the bitch living through that ceiling and floor.

“Damn, you were really backed up, huh?” she laughed, exhilarated. “I think you mostly missed me, but… I got any cummies anywhere?” She twisted this way and that.

Somehow, I seemed to have missed her except for a couple droplets on her shoulder. She wiped it off with my sheets. “That was… wild. Incredible. Did your mom teach you that?”

She snorted. “Your dad teach you to jizz all over your ceiling?”

I almost retorted that it had hardly been all over, but then I remembered I’d just cum on my CEILING , and shut up. When was the last time I’d erupted anywhere close to that? “Sorry. Just focus on the complimentary part. That’s the part I actually meant.”

Quinn grinned, then leaned down and kissed my cheek. “This is gonna be a crazy next four years, isn’t it? Six, I guess, if I employ the Spencer method.”

“Well they’re probably going to be reassigning me soon, so don’t get too used to seeing me around here. I guess it means what we just did would be cool. Cool to do again, if we wanted.” Then I remembered I was sitting here, satisfied as could be, while she’d not had so much as a finger lain on her. “Oh geez, speaking of, how about I…?”

But her hand planted itself on my chest in restraint. “No, I’m good. I do myself better anyway, you know? Plus, don’t you think it’d be kinda weird? You being my RA and all?”

For once, I considered that she might be teasing, but she never hinted at it in her visage. With that, she at last scooted out of my bed and let herself out the door, even as I flailed to throw sheets over myself in case anyone was walking by. Nobody was at that moment, except then Quinn remembered she’d left her map in my room. I was on my hands and knees, wiping up my cum stains with a sock. She darted in and out (once more without knocking), leaving me not even sufficient time to dive for cover. A moment after the door closed, I heard a woman’s voice in the hallway. They hadn’t yet learned that these doors did jack squat to cover noise.

“Was that our RA? Was he  naked ?”

He was. He very much was. So much for keeping things under wraps.