Chapter Five

      I didn’t like Naveen the first time I met him. He was charming and full of himself, a shameless flirt. I guess you could say his sin was that he came on to my roommate before he hit on me, even though I had a boyfriend at the time. That relationship wasn’t working out so well, but even so I wasn’t supposed to care if other boys tried to make me laugh or not.

      I’d just met my roommate, Wendi, that day. We’d spoken on the phone once or twice and exchanged a letter, our conversations limited to what we’d each be bringing to the dorm room. Wendi had a fridge. I had a small TV with rabbit ears. We both liked Little Debbie Swiss Cake Rolls and the color purple, though she was way more interested in coordinating our bedding than I was. We’d already agreed to bunk our beds and switch off who got the top bunk by semester. Wendi was a big girl, buxom and curvy, with lots of red hair and black eyeliner. So far I liked her, even though all the guys at this freshman mixer kept checking her out and ignoring me.

      “Hey, ladies. I’m Naveen.” He leaned over the registration table, both hands flat on it. Instead of the T-shirt and jeans most of the other guys were wearing, he wore a pale pink dress shirt, open so far at the throat I could glimpse a hint of his nipples. “Have you signed up yet?”

      “For what?” Wendi tossed her hair and put a hand on her hip. Bada-bing, bada-boom.

      Naveen’s eyes tracked her cleavage. “If you sign up for this mailing list, you can get one of these welcome bags.”

      “What’s in it?” Wendi gave the overstuffed plastic bags, adorned with pictures of deodorant and laundry detergent, a suspicious look.

      “I’ll take one.” I scrawled my name and mailbox number on the sheet and took a bag. “It’s free stuff.”

      “Laundry soap, mouthwash, stuff like that. Samples.” Naveen looked at what I’d written, then gave me a more assessing look than he’d given Wendi. “Did you put your phone number down?”

      “No.” I paused. “Why would they need my number?”

      “They don’t,” he said. “But maybe I want it.”

      In those days before cell phones, each dorm room had a landline with both long distance and cross-campus service, so you could dial a prefix for the building and then the room number to connect. All he had to do was look at the mailbox number I’d put down on the paper, and he could figure it out. That’s why I discounted his flirting, why it annoyed me. Because I didn’t believe he meant it.

      “And maybe I don’t want you to have it,” I told him with a lift of my chin, toss of my hair.

      Wendi hadn’t moved, but she was no longer there. Nobody else was, either. Naveen leaned a little closer across the table, his smile never fading, his eyes not leaving mine.

      “If you say so.”

      “I’ll take a bag.” Wendi wiggled in front of me, distracting him for a second as she bent over to show him her tits—that is, to fill out the form.

      The moment had passed, but it had made an impression. The common room filled with new students mingling and taking advantage of the free food the residence staff had put out. Some kids danced in one corner, others played pool or Ping-Pong, a few gathered at the even-for-then ancient Pacman and Donkey Kong video games. Naveen and I didn’t speak, but our eyes met a dozen times over the course of the night. When Wendi left me to go after a guy with spiky blond hair and a pair of round glasses, I went upstairs to finish unpacking.

      She stumbled home around two in the morning, turning on the overhead light and knocking into the stack of plastic milk crates we’d set up near the wall mirror to hold our hair dryers and curling irons. I sat straight up in my bottom bunk and whacked my head so hard I saw stars. She wasn’t alone. The blond guy was with her, apologizing to me while my new roommate rifled through her suitcase for condoms. With blood trickling down my eyebrow, I assured him I’d be fine, I just needed a Band-Aid. I told Wendi I’d be gone at least an hour. I took a book, the knitted afghan my grandma had given me as a graduation gift, my room key, and tried to find a place to hang out.

      The study lounge was no good. The lights were out, but I could still see the shadows of a couple on the couch inside, their slow coupling reflected in the windows. Disgruntled, exhausted and my head aching, I took the elevator to the ground floor and sought the social lounge. It was locked.

      I muttered a string of obscenities under my breath—creative ones; my younger brother, Davis, was a marine. I didn’t notice the figure sitting behind the front desk in the lobby, and he wasn’t yet familiar enough that I should’ve immediately recognized his voice...but I did. The scent of it gave him away. Cotton candy and sawdust. Naveen sounds to me like a carnival smells. I hadn’t noticed upon first meeting him, because of the rest of the noise around us, but in the quiet of 2:00 a.m. it was as if I’d stepped right onto the midway.

      “What happened to your head?” He twirled a little on an office chair, his feet propped on the battered desk.

      “I hit it.”

      He made a face. “No shit.”

      I touched the wound with gentle fingers, wincing at the tenderness. It had stopped bleeding but still oozed a little. “My roommate came home with a friend I wasn’t expecting.”

      “Ah.” Naveen nodded as if this made sense. He dropped his feet off the desk with a thump and opened a drawer. “Come around the side, through that door. Come in here.”

      I hesitated. He looked at me. Gone were the charming smile, assessing stare. He looked me over, all right, but this time it didn’t make me feel creepy or annoyed.

      He held up a bottle of hydrogen peroxide and a box of adhesive bandages. “Come on. Let me take care of that for you.”

      I went through the door and settled into the opposite chair with my afghan wrapped around me. I wasn’t cold, exactly, but felt on the verge of shivering. I wasn’t homesick, but the sudden longing for my own bed, my own room, swept over me.

      “Chin up. This isn’t pretty.” Naveen soaked a cotton ball in peroxide and dabbed at my wound.

      Stoic, I didn’t wince, not wanting to give him the satisfaction. “Gee. Thanks.”

      “I didn’t say you’re not pretty,” he said in a low voice after a second. “You sure are prickly, Elisabeth Manning.”

      I was surprised that he knew my name, only for a second before remembering he’d seen it on the form I filled out. I gritted my teeth as he poked and swiped at the cut on my forehead. When he smoothed the bandage over it, his fingers lingered along my scalp line and traced my cheeks and jaw before he withdrew.

      We stared at each other without speaking for some long moments before Naveen broke the silence with a laugh and pushed back in his chair to prop his feet up again. Hands behind his head, charming smile pasted firmly back on his face, he winked at me. I frowned.

      “Oh, come on. Throw a guy a bone.”

      “Are you a dog?” I asked him smartly, refusing to smile.

      Naveen blinked, his smile fading. “Are you a bitch?”

      That was how we became friends.