“No, I’m not turned on by it. I just want to know in what context he wanted to be called daddy,” Charleigh says, her thick British accent heavier with sleep.

“I don’t know. I was sleeping and woke up to heavy breathing and ‘Call me daddy.’” I’ve woken up to my roommate having sex in our closet of an apartment more nights than I haven’t since we moved in together a few weeks ago. The first time it happened, I froze. I had no idea what to do. Our beds face each other, but thankfully I was rolled toward the wall when the noises woke me up, so I dipped below the covers and tried to discreetly move so I was covering my ears and started trying to remember the lyrics to every Backstreet Boys song I used to dance around to in my room.

We hardly knew one another other than the awkward pauses and extended invites we each doled out, our schedules only burdened with work and social engagements with it being summer. The guy thankfully left after he found what he came for, and Kenzie fell asleep soon after the door shut. I stayed awake all night, trying to determine what had happened. I expected her to be mortified about what had transpired the next morning, or suffering an extreme hangover, because really, who would do that sober? I was shocked to find her glowing, happier and even more chipper than she normally was.

It was two days later that I was awoken by similar sounds. There was no way I was going to remain in there and pretend I didn’t hear what was going on.

I rolled over with the initial intent of telling them to go somewhere else, but they had turned on the desk lamp, and when I turned, I got a view of my roommate fully exposed on her hands and knees, with a guy I didn’t know behind her. He heard my sharp intake of breath and for a split second, I saw a look of panic cross his face. His expression quickly turned lazy and then for several long, awkward seconds, he moved into her while staring at me. I had never felt so inferior in my twenty-two years. It took thirty seconds for me to grab a sweatshirt, my pillow, and book bag, and get the hell out of there.

It was still late June, and although there was a slight breeze, the night air was still warm as I made my way down the stairs of the apartment building. My eyes scanned over the parking lot in an attempt to go unseen, because I was wearing a pair of blue fleece pajama pants covered in moose and polar bears on skis that I’d received from my grandma at least five years prior. They were hideous and too short, but they were also soft and comfortable, and I was suffering a slight case of homesickness.

As I made it to the ground level, a car pulled into the space in front of me. The dome light lit up the interior as female voices filled the silence.

“Are you lost?”

My eyes widened as I looked between the girls, holding my pillow a little lower so I didn’t look like a lost ten-year-old. “Sorry?”

“Are you lost?” she repeated, a heavy British accent joining each of her syllables into a song.

“No,” I replied, shaking my head. “I was just taking a walk.”

“At midnight? In your pajamas? With your pillow?” With each question, the lilt in her voice diminished, making each sound more like a statement rather than a question. “Are you hurt?”

Shaking my head, I gripped my pillow a little tighter, wishing she would stop staring at me. “No. I’m okay, really.”

“Do you want something to drink? Some tea maybe?” she continued, taking a step closer.

“Thanks, but I’m good,” I replied.

“Clearly you’re not. You’re creeping around after midnight in your pajamas. You aren’t a mugger, are you?”

“A what?” I asked.

She looked across the hood of the car as her friend began to giggle. “She asked if you’re a burglar,” her friend said, a light southern drawl accompanying her words.

“No!” The word popped out of my mouth with enough force to reach the opposite side of the apartment building. “No,” I said again, softening my tone. “I’m not a burglar.”

“Then what are you really doing?” the British girl asked.

“My roommate has a male friend over.”

“These flats are studios. There’s no privacy!” I noted the lack of the “a” as she spoke the word with emphasis, making me mentally repeat it a few times myself, privicy. “That’s awful.”

I lifted a shoulder and moved my pillow to my side, dipping my free hand into the pocket of my hoodie.

“We have a couch you can sleep on,” the friend said, her accent lost.

Normally I would have declined the offer and sought out a place to sit where I could watch for my roommate’s guest to leave, but something about her kindness, or possibly her persistence, had me nodding in agreement and taking my hand back out of my pocket as I took a couple of steps closer to them.

“I’m Charleigh, and this is Allison,” the British girl said as I got within a couple of feet.

“Allie,” the dark-haired woman corrected her instantly, her tone agitated, like this was something she repeated often.

“What’s your name?” Charleigh asked, ignoring Allie’s correction.

“I’m Lauren. It’s nice to meet you both.”

“It’s nice to meet you too, Lauren. Come on, then.”

I followed them back up a flight of stairs to the studio apartment below mine where I was met with fabrics of all shades filling nearly every surface of the small space. My eyes tracked several of them, a new one beginning before the last ended.

“We’re going to school for fashion and design,” Allie explained from my side. I turned to look at her and nodded a couple of times before my attention was caught by something that resembled the fur of a long-haired cat, only fuchsia pink. Eyebrows slightly raised, I moved my focus back to Allie and Charleigh.

“You’d make for a great model.” My eyebrows lifted even higher as I looked to Charleigh. “You have that willowy look to you. But we need to work on your posture.” With that as her warning, she pressed her right hand to my breastbone and her left to the center of my shoulder blades, pushing down, making me stand taller.

“There you are. That’s perfect. Right, Allison?”

“You would be pretty great. How tall are you, anyway?”

“Nearly five-eleven.”

Allie blew a low whistle between her bottom lip and her two front teeth. “You can sleep here anytime if you’re willing to model my final project.”

“Yeah, I sort of need a hazard sign on my back when I wear heels.”

“That’s okay. We have months to get this right. We’ll have you walking the runway like you own it.” Allie turned toward the small inlet of a kitchen and quietly began singing “On the Catwalk.”

My gaze moved to Charleigh seeing her give me an assuring smile. “You’ll get used to it. Besides, she’ll be on to her next thought in like five seconds. She’s totally ADHD.”

“I can hear you,” Allie sang as she turned off the tap from filling a tea kettle.

“I intended for you to,” Charleigh returned in the same sing-song tone.

“What’s your poison, Lauren? Coffee or tea?”

“Coffee, please,” I replied as my eyes started following another bolt of fabric. “You guys have so much stuff. School hasn’t even begun.”

“What are you studying?”

“Art restoration and composite drawing,” I replied.

“And you don’t have any supplies upstairs in your apartment so you can work whenever you please?”

I looked at Charleigh, noticing her eyes were a beautiful grayish blue, almost the same color of the skies before they turn dark with a storm. “Touché,” I said with a smile, turning my attention to where she was staring at my hand with the charcoal stains that never fully washed away, regardless of using a hand brush or special soaps.

“We’re artists. We’ve been living and breathing fashion and designing our own clothes since long before we enrolled here.” Charleigh’s words made perfect sense to me. I never went anywhere without my messenger bag, which always contained at least one sketchpad, multiple pencils, and random pieces of charcoal rolling around the bottom.