My heart pounds as I near the dorm building beside mine, waiting for someone to either come in or leave from the locked doors. While I wait, I check my phone for a message and braid my damp hair back, shivering despite the heat. Smiling at the girl who exits the building and stops to hold the door for me, I enter and head straight for the elevator, because there is no way that I'm taking five flights of stairs after the grueling practice that my team captain just put us through.

Tapping my feet as I ascend, I'm thankful that no one else joins me when I step off on the fifth-floor seconds later. I walk down one hallway, and knock once on the last door to the left, trying the handle soon after to find it unlocked. Rolling my eyes, I shake my head as I enter the room.

"Please be decent!" I call out with a hand in front of my eyes as I jokingly feel my way around the room. Taking my hand off my face, my eyes light up when I spot Xander on the couch with a controller in his hand, his attention on me instead of his paused video game.

"Hey, Rat." He tugs on the end of my braid when I sit down beside him, leaning into him hard enough to push him into the armrest on his other side.

"Sup Xan. Still spending your evening smacking balls?" I grin cheekily and he scoffs, unpausing his video game and resetting it so that I can play as well.

"Still taking them in the face?" He raises an eyebrow but doesn't look at me. I nudge him again.

"Of course, the one time that happens you had to be there to witness," I grumble, accepting the remote that he hands to me, setting up for a hard-core, 1v1 shooting match for us.

"Where's the roommate?" I ask, standing up to get a drink before the match starts. "Coke or Beer?" I ask, grabbing a Coke for myself.

"Water, please!" He calls out and I roll my eyes, already walking over with a bottle in my hands. Xander is the healthiest person I know. No cheat days for this guy. "And Annie's in her room." He says and I choke on a mouthful of the carbonated drink, covering my mouth with my hand as some drips down onto the wood floor.

"Cute." I hear from beside the tv, my eyes darting up to see "Annie" appearing from within his room. I swallow, wipe my mouth with the back of my hand, and then wipe my hand on my short black athletic shorts. Getting a look at Farris's red curls, I snort a laugh again, leaning over towards Xander with my fist held out; he bumps it with his own and I sit down, reclaiming my spot.

"Start it up," I tell Xander and pat the seat beside me, leaning my head onto Farris's shoulder as soon as he sits down on my other side.

"How was practice?" He asks and I answer, eyes fixed on the screen.

"Awful. Charlie's a dictator on the field, and she makes it all look easy which makes it so much worse. Ha!" I get up in Xander's face after killing his character, smiling at the replay of my quick-scope headshot. He mumbles something under his breath that is probably best that I don't hear. "Had me in an ice bath for twelve minutes." I shiver, still recovering from the cold. Farris gets up without a word and returns from his room with a hoodie, pulling it on over my head when I continue to look at the screen instead of accepting it. Wordlessly, he helps me slide my arms through so that I can still play and I give him a quick smile after he pulls it down so that it's covering the hem of my shorts at the top of my thighs.

"Short." He murmurs and I scoff, aiming for Xander again but his character manages to dart away just in time.

"I'm four inches shorter than you. You're lucky I can't wear heels." I mumble and cry out in victory once again when Xander goes down. He tosses his controller at Farris and I stick my tongue out at him. "Don't be a sore loser."

"Don't be a poor winner." He mimics me, sticking his own tongue out.

"Dude, your tongue is so long," I say, turning his chin to the side so that I can see his side profile.

"You know what's at the top of the list of things I don't want to talk about? The length of Xander's tongue." Farris drawls and I shrug.

"Fair enough. Yours is no competi—" I'm cut off before I can finish my sentence with Farris's arms wrapping around me, dragging me towards him, pinning me down so that my upper body is in his lap with my legs knocking into Xander's, and his hands digging into my ticklish sides all in one smooth motion.

I cackle and squirm, thrashing to get him to stop but too breathless to speak the words. "My sides...hurt...so bad." Tears escape my eyes and I manage to glare at him, still giggling and squirming to get away. Finally, I manage to buck enough to slide myself onto the ground, not at all gracefully and landing hard enough on my tailbone that the noise echoes in the room.

"Fuck. Reed. You okay?" Farris asks, serious enough to call me by my name, sliding onto his knees behind my back so that I can lean against him. My hands push into the floor to take some of the weight off and I groan.

"Help me stand up, this position sucks." I reach a hand behind me and use his strength to pull me up; Xander's already standing and facing me with his arms out. "I'm fine. Just wishing I did more squats." I huff out a laugh, sending appreciative glances to them both and walking around the room, the pain dulling slowly. "Yeah, I'm good. False alarm." I grimace and slowly reclaim my seat on the couch with nothing but a slight twinge of pain.

The guys are hesitant to let it go, but eventually, they sit and do their best to distract me. "Got any plans tonight?" Xander asks, handing me back my controller after I'd dropped it but I wave him off.

"The usual. A frat party." I say and he purses his lips.

"With Charlotte?"

"No, with Soap MacTavish." I give him a look, rolling my eyes. Xander likes to pretend that Charlie's fascination with him is one-sided, but he brings her into conversation almost as much as I do, and she's my closest girl friend.

"You sure you're okay?" Farris asks, obviously still concerned.

"Thank you for your concern with my ass, but it will live. Promise." I laugh, biting my lips and he just rolls his eyes.

"Thank god, or we wouldn't have any reason to have you over anymore." He drawls and I smack his controller out of his hand. Xander kills him with a slide shot and I cringe at the replay.

"Cheekiness gets you killed," I say matter of factly, nodding. 

Slowly, my eyes start to droop from the excitement and I lay across Farris's lap, stretching my legs out across Xander's and curling up on my side, back to the tv. "I'm gonna nap."

"Yeah, we got that." Xander laughs, resting his hands on my calves. "Shit, you're still freezing." He says and reaches over with his monkey arms to grab a blanket and drape it over me. I blink up at Farris and smile with my eyes closed, my hand resting on his thigh and using him as a pillow.

"Night, Fare," I say as a hand removes my glasses and brushes my still-damp hair off my face, and tucks it behind my ear, the soft touch making me hum contentedly.

"Night, Buttercup."

"I'm not wearing that," I say firmly, sending Charlie an unamused glance. She's entirely unaffected by my look and continues to push her selection at me, used to getting her way.

"Sure you aren't." She says nonchalantly, but her mischievous green eyes say otherwise; rolling my own, I snatch the hanger from her grasp and throw it on the bed, stripping down to my underwear to put it on and wincing at the pain in my tailbone. I remember when we were first assigned as roommates and the idea of getting undressed in front of anyone, especially Charlotte Alexander the British soccer prodigy, was terrifying. But now she's Charlie to me, and though she's no less perfect on the outside, I know that she's not the Charlotte that everyone thinks she is.

"This shirt is missing some stuff," I tell her, looking in the mirror at the black shirt with a neckline that cuts from my left shoulder to underneath my right arm, baring my collarbones and arm. Not to mention the fact that it's ridiculously tight against my larger chest and cuts off two inches beneath, baring my entire stomach.

"And that's why you have high-waisted jeans. One arm isn't scandalous, Reed." She bares a small, encouraging smile and my shoulders drop from their tensed position.

"Alright fine, but I'll wear my own."

"You're not even that much taller than me." She says, changing into her own outfit for wherever we're ending up tonight. Charlie has a habit of being invited to every imaginable party thrown on or off-campus, and dragging me along with her. "Hey! I see that face you're making. You agreed to tell me if I push too far. You know that I don't care if you show up in your teddy bear pj's right? We can stay. Let's stay." She rambles, shrugging out of the tight, short blue skirt she just slipped into, leaving her with just a loose white t-shirt.

"No. No, that's not it. We're going. Pajama party tomorrow for sure though." I grin at her and she narrows her eyes, looking for a hint of a lie. Charlie seems like a party animal because she thrives on being around more people rather than less, but if I ever need a night in, she doesn't hesitate to compromise, unlike me who puts up a fuss every time she wants to go out. "It's going to be fun. Put your clothes back on." I struggle to slip into the tight, light-wash jeans that haven't been worn since last year.

"Holy shit, your ass looks amazing in those." She says and I laugh, turning around to look in the mirror and raising my eyebrows.

"I feel like I'm going to rip the seams, they're so tight." I groan, slipping a black belt with a big silver buckle through the loops. "I'm kind of scared to see what that skirt looks like in the back." I joke and Charlie rolls her eyes, doing a slow, teasing spin for me. We both burst into a fit of giggles.

"I know, it's so short, but you know how hard it is to find anything cute that fits properly." She groans, looking at the very short hem of her skirt.

"What if we cut the front. Like a little slit on your thigh. It would make it a little looser." I suggest and her eyes light up.

"Yes. Let's do it." She grabs scissors and hesitates for a second before making the tiniest cut. Tilting her head, she lengthens it a bit and looks up at me for my opinion.

"That looks really cute," I say honestly and she sighs with a smile.

"Okay good, I think so too. Almost ready?" She asks and I nod. I'd already straightened my hair and Charlie left hers in the high ponytail that it was in earlier, pieces of blonde hair falling out but somehow managing to still look put together.

"I hate you and your hair," I grumble as we sit down to slip on our sneakers.

"You love me and my hair."