“What the hell, Brandon?” Liv shrieked.

   “It’s the middle of the day, Liv. And the door is unlocked.” I tried to sound surprised or shocked, but it was difficult, seeing as how this wasn’t shocking or surprising coming from Liv.

   She turned her head sharply to see me, my hands on my hips, obviously irritated.

   “Oh, hey, Evie. You’ve met Brandon, right?” she asked, as if nothing in the world was the matter. As if she were standing on the street, totally clothed, not mid-coitus. He was quickly finding his clothes and putting them on even quicker. “I think I introduced you at the Beta house last weekend.”

   “Well, now that he’s wearing clothes, you’re right, he does look familiar,” I said, not trying one bit to hide my sarcasm.

   He threw the blanket over Liv to cover her, and then slipped his shoes on his feet. “I’m gonna go. This is really awkward.” He leaned down and kissed Liv quickly on the lips, then walked right past me and didn’t even say goodbye.

   “Liv,” I sighed, putting my purse down on my desk and sitting on the edge of my bed, facing her. “What are you doing? You don’t even know that guy.”

   She shrugged. “I have my lit class with him. I’ve sat next to him every day for two months. Plus, he’s a Beta. I’ve seen him at all the parties and last weekend we hung out quite a bit.”

   I tilted my head to the side and raised my eyebrows. “Oh, well then, obviously, sex is the next step.”

   She shrugged again and then stood up and walked to her closet. “You don’t have to be in love with everyone you have sex with, Evie.”

   This is where I was realizing, recently, that Liv and I differed on our opinions about sex. I wasn’t a virgin, hadn’t been for over a year, so it wasn’t that I thought everyone should save themselves for marriage, but I couldn’t imagine having sex with a guy I wasn’t in a committed, loving relationship with. Liv was more of the free love variety of girl, and usually, that was fine. Until I saw some random dude’s sex face.

   “Your antiquated views of a healthy sexual relationship are setting the women’s movement back at least thirty years,” she said from behind the door of her closet.

   “Antiquated? My views aren’t antiquated. They’re emotionally safe and your sexual relationships aren’t even relationships. They’re like, encounters, at best.”

   I saw her head lean just around the door, her captivating and gorgeous smile beaming. “Conquests,” she said excitedly, her eyebrows moving up and down suggestively. I couldn’t help but laugh. Liv had been my best friend since we were fourteen and she had always been boy crazy. Living on our own during our first year of college, she seemed to take the bull by the horns and took her liberated stance on sex very seriously. In fact, she’d slept with more guys during our first term of college than I had hoped to sleep with in my entire life. The thing was, you couldn’t hate her for it. Sometimes, I was even envious. She had this confidence about her. She knew guys wanted her and that gave her some sort of power over them. And to be fair, it wasn’t as if she slept with just anyone. She was picky and usually chose guys who were respectful and nice. And some of them, I’m sure, would have loved to date her – like, for real – but she was never interested, always claiming she was too young to be tied down.

   She also had rules. Rules she was perfectly up front and open about with her partners. 1) No cheating, as in no sleeping with a guy who was in a relationship. She didn’t invite, participate in, or tolerate “girl drama.” 2) No communication drama; she didn’t expect them to call her, and she didn’t plan to call them. If they called, they called, but no expectations. 3) Safe sex – always. This was one of the rules she had that I fully supported. 4) The minute it wasn’t fun anymore, it was over. 5) No one stayed the night, not at our dorm or wherever he lived. And I swear, the minute the guys got even remotely territorial, she bailed.

   Even I could recognize she had a view of sexual relationships beyond her years. I thought maybe she’d watched too many episodes of Sex and the City while we were in high school.

   I let out a sigh because I knew there was nothing I could say to make her change her ways, and if she did, she wouldn’t be the Liv I loved. I walked to my closet, which was just across from hers, and started peeling off my sticky-wet clothes.

   “What in the world happened to you?” Liv asked, noticing my predicament.

   “Some jerk ran into me at the café and my soda spilled all down my front.” I took off the borrowed shirt to show her the damage, tossing the handsome stranger’s plaid button up into my laundry basket.

   “Oh,” Liv said, staring at my shirt. “I love that bra.”

   I laughed, because, of course she did. “Yeah, well, so did everyone else who saw it through my drenched shirt.” I pulled the linen tank over my head, not enjoying the feeling of the wet fabric peeling away from my skin at all. “Luckily, some nice guy literally gave me the shirt off his back.”

   “How gentlemanly of him. At least he didn’t just stare at your boobs,” she said as she pulled on some shorts.

   “Well,” I said, taking off the rest of my clothes and wrapping a towel around my body. “I think he got an eyeful before he offered his shirt. But he was a gentleman. He let me keep the shirt.” I grabbed my shower caddy and turned to her just as she pulled her top over her head. “I’m gonna grab a shower. Are we still doing dinner tonight?”

   “Sure thing. I’ll meet you here right after my last class.”

   “Okay. Try not to be in the middle of a sex act next time I come home.”

   “How about I just lock the door?”

   “I’ll settle for that,” I said with a laugh, then paused before heading to the shower. “See you later. Are you headed to your lit class?”

   She smiled wickedly. “Yeah. And it should be a lot more exciting now that Brandon’s, um, unsatisfied.” She continued to smile as she adjusted her hair in the mirror. Hair that looked like sex hair but also fantastic. I rolled my eyes and left the room, shaking my head all the way to the shower.

   It had been three weeks since the soda incident and I would have been lying to myself if I didn’t admit to looking at every guy I passed on campus for the first two weeks trying to find Devon. I wasn’t sure what I would have said to him had I seen him on the sidewalk or as I walked to class, or in line at the bookstore, or even back at the café where we had met. And I couldn’t help that my eyes roamed to every face, searched the back of every guy I saw for those wide shoulders and too-long blondish hair.

  So, I struggled with both surprise and relief when I finally laid my eyes on him, as he approached me, Liv’s arm threaded through the crook of his elbow.

   “Evie,” she said, her words slurred, most likely from the copious amounts of vodka she’d consumed. “This is Devon.” She motioned toward him then swung her arm toward me. “Devon, this is my best friend and roommate, Evie.”

   I should have said hello, should have reached out to shake his hand, but all I could manage to do was stare at her hand on his forearm.

   “Oh yeah, hey, Evie. Nice to see you again.” His deep voice accosted me just like it had three weeks before.

   “You know Evie?” Liv asked with a little too much drunken enthusiasm.

   “We met a few weeks ago when some douchebag spilled her soda.”

   My eyes managed to tear themselves away from where her hand rested on his arm, which was causing me to feel things I wasn’t used to, only to see Devon’s eyes dart back to my breasts, obviously remembering what I looked like in a wet white shirt.

   “You’re the guy who gave her his shirt?” she squealed. If the music hadn’t been so loud, it surely would have been deafening. “She sleeps in that shirt sometimes,” Liv offered, much to my complete embarrassment.