When I got to the library after my shift, Renata waved me over to a long wooden table where she sat with a few others from our ethics class, Swedish Fish and Hershey Kisses spilling out of plastic bags. When we left at around midnight, she offered me a ride home. On the drive she mentioned that a room was opening up in her apartment for the spring—one of her roommates was graduating early. “It’s definitely the smallest room, and the loudest,” she said, “but who knows, maybe you’ll get a boyfriend with his own place and never have to be in it!”

I told her I’d come by the next day to look, though I already knew I would take it.

I moved in the following week. On our first night as roommates, after we’d unloaded the few bags I had from the car, we opened a bottle of prosecco to celebrate. Renata told me about Thomas, a Sigma Chi she’d just started hooking up with, who wasn’t ready for a relationship. I observed her hazelnut skin, her green eyes dotted with black flecks. Though she was beautiful, I couldn’t tell if I was attracted to her. Still, I listened for any sign of dissatisfaction, any note of curiosity, any hint of an invitation. It came just after we’d poured the last of the bubbly. “I swear,” she said, “sometimes I think I’m done with men altogether.”

She shut off the living room lights and we walked toward our catty-corner bedrooms. I lingered in her doorway. She stood in front of me, then reached forth to hug me. I held her close. Her nose grazed my neck and she pecked my cheek. As she pulled away I leaned forward and kissed her, pressing my mouth to hers. She jumped back. “What are you doing?”

“I, I’m sorry, I thought …” I didn’t know what to say. I stood there, horrified. What the hell was I doing? Had I just messed everything up?

“It’s okay.” She shrugged. “We drank a lot.”

Eventually I would come to recognize her refrains of abstinence, of swearing off men, of committing to her vibrator, as wounded declarations of a boy-crazy woman with no plans to give up on her boyfriend, who chose to value herself in proportion to his estimation of her. I would always envy that: her unambiguous craving for men.

As I turned toward my bedroom feeling like I had ruined my one chance to escape isolation and loneliness, she called out, “I usually brew a pot of coffee in the morning.” I turned back toward her, keeping my eyes on the patch of floor between us. She continued, “So if I’m gone before you’re up, obviously have at it.”

“Cool,” I said, half smiling as I met her eyes. “Thanks a lot.”