For some reason, when I drove around UCLA's campus on the final stretch of my and Dad's seven-hour drive from home in Santa Cruz, the topic of relationships popped into my head. The view out my window of students that unloaded their cars and equally proud but bittersweet sad Mom and Dad physical exchanges like hugs, shoulder squeezes, and back pats twisted a sense of discomfort into my stomach. My eyes took in the sight of obvious boyfriends and girlfriends that also unpacked together.

Couldn't possibly have anything to do with how I just had a roadside quickie with a cop who obviously wanted to, at the minimum, do that again.

And before any non-love story enthusiasts flipped into Judgey-McJudger mode on my ass, I was not a slut or a whore and, my roadside assistance from Officer Davis aside, a solicitor. I was just a healthy, young girl with an insanely high sex drive and a weakness for making sure it was satisfied.

No chance for a relationship with the poor sap. But I bet he'll never view the MIRANDA rights the same again.

Relationships never crossed my brain and once my radio flipped onto a love song that crooned out the musical equivalent of auditory sandpaper, the extended amount of mental solitude time this drive traveled me through memory shitlane inside my own headspace again. My unusually reflective moment could have also possibly been inspired by how 99.9999999999 percent of all songs I'd heard on the radio dealt with love - finding love, obsessing about love, dying love, losing love, etc. - until my ears bled.

Those songs must've percolated into my brain like stale coffee.

I learned a long time ago that relationships, as evidenced by my failed attempts with Ryan and whatever the fuck Jake was or wasn't, really weren't for me. Putting aside any psycho-babble, I fully acknowledged that I was shit with feelings from how Mom walked out on us. I wasn't angry at her for that, I couldn't blame her. Dad's attorney position left him in the office for long hours and some nights he even slept at the office.

Shocked was an understatement when Dad actually took a few days off work, drove down here, and made sure "I got to" UCLA like I wasn't almost twenty-two years old. I was beyond grateful for his action. While I knew I handled myself in any situation, since this was the first time I'd lived anywhere but with him, the unfamiliarity and solitude parts still made me a little nervous.

A million dollars says Dad's going to throw a party once he's back home though.

What I resented towards my mother was her choice to be a stay at home mom and the shitty job she did at it. She had nothing, no hobbies, no interests, no self worth, and I certainly wasn't the gifted child that deserved constant attention as I developed into the next freaking Einstein. Her world evolved around Dad, my basic care, cooking, and cleaning the house.

I had no idea why they'd even got married by the brief, cold exchanges I remembered but Mom had the right idea when she left. She could've done it a bit more discreetly, but then that wouldn't have been Mom.

Even now, despite how I associated feelings with attachment and attachment with disappointment, I admired how she left. She built up an affair with a man named Rhett over two years. Dad was never home and had no clue. I wasn't the most observant seven year old but Mom and David never hid their affection around me.

In hindsight, I fully grasped how fucked up a situation was where a mother literally fucked a man who wasn't her child's father while her elementary school daughter was in the next room over. I'd heard everything and wished there was a volume high enough on the television that drowned out the sounds of loud moans and slapped skin against skin.

Based on Mom's sloppiness, although eventually I wouldn't have kept her affair secret, she wanted to get caught. In the end, she lined up her financial and logistical ducks in a row, confronted Dad, basically told me nothing personal, took her shit, and left. She still sent cards for my birthday and Christmas and I burned each and every one of them without a single envelope opened. This gesture was kind of an odd ritual of detachment, more therapeutic than if I'd laid on a two-hundred dollar an hour sofa and confessed, "I miss my Mommy."

What? That no girl should have to go through puberty without their mother and I might possibly not be as fucked in the head as I am if she hadn't abandoned us.

Won't change anything if I admit it.

So, given that upbringing and how my first love interest and V-card holder broke my heart, my view on relationships was a bit fucked up.

Okay, fine. It's beyond fucked up.

My own emotional detachment, combined with my extremely high sex drive, made the perfect recipe for dating disasters. After my ski weekend tryst with Jake nine months ago, I contently cycled through strings of one night stands more frequently than loads of dishes or laundry as I fucked Jake out of my mind. Most recently, Officer Davis provided the public service when he left me temporarily sated.

Most girls probably weren't on my wavelength but I reveled in sexual experiences and education. In this particular 'once and done,' 'fuck and chuck,' 'hit it and quit it,' 'nut it and shut' - I can go all day with euphanisms - application, a loophole existed that I capitalized on my perfected one night stand escapism.

Mother Nature was a bitch and she was on my side in this aspect. Or perhaps there just existed a biophysical flaw in men, but either way there was an out I leapt through every time as I ended my one night stands.

During a man's orgasm, physical exertion from bumping and grinding aside, climaxing depleted energy-producing glycogen in his muscles. In other words, the chumps collapsed after sex and felt drowsy. Some hid this feeling with an emotional attachment for spooning and snuggling, which most girls lapped up like thirsty Labradors.

Not this girl, obviously.

Once a guy's head flopped back in satisfaction and his eyes closed lazily as his lungs and thoughts recovered, I bolted. After I ignored and pretended I hadn't heard their groggy voices as they questioned my motives or actions, nine times out of ten I was out the door at Usain-Bolt speed before their brains registered that I'd even left the bed.

So, in summary, after a few fucked up relationships in high school, I was done with relationships. Instead, I craved the initial attraction stage and all the hot and horny excitement of riled up and crashed down orgasms, but couldn't handle the attachment factor.

The neediness, hand-holding, snuggling, no, no, fuck no.

For the occasional man that cracked through my one night stand approach, I modified my four simple rules for additional self-protection subclauses:

1. Date one person at a time.
  1a. No wedding rings.

2. Date someone who's a notch lower on the attractiveness scale. Never pursue anyone higher on the scale. Never.

3. Take what I want from the relationship.
 3a. Move one step ahead of the guy physically.
   3a-1. Don't have sex at my place.

  4. End it.

My revised rules, whose subclasses arose from my recently forced internship experience, summarized my sad state of current existence and past experiences. Unfortunately, the rule modifications arose out of a few bad calls when I first exercised them in practice, after which strict adherence to those rules helped me maintain a calmer perspective.

My rules regulated some control over who hurt my heart because I was damned if I ended up like Mom, pathetically alone, desperate, and cheated on my dad. In my fucked up brain, I was better off not entering a false solid relationship in the first place.

All cards on the table, I'd been burned too much in the past. An unexpected memory montage later from my drive down to Los Angeles, my first crush, kiss, V-card, and broken heart all belonged to our school's biggest asshole. So I set up these rules the senior year of high school for my own protection, then modified them after years of experience.

Like the married clause, that came from when one of his Dad's partner's clients hit on me.

The only fallout from my rules was the guys I slept with. They always fell for me first, which was the idea behind the rules. I hadn't aimed to hurt them but my sense of self-preservation argued it was better than continuously hurting myself.

Fortunately for my incurable, insatiable crush, my hatred of Jake seemed mutual until after Ellie and Logan's relationship crumbled at the end of our senior year. I broke down and told Ellie everything about me and Jake.

After Ellie understandably dissolved during the shitstorm that became her life, Jake and I called a truce, stayed amicably respectful for the sake of Ellie, and steered clear of each other privately. That approach worked magnificently through what little was left of high school and, except for one naughty slipup last Christmas break, the first three years of college.

My first two and a half years of college were amazingly easy because I completed all my general credits at Cabrillo Community College, then took a semester off for the internship. Once I realized I made a decent paralegal, I never saw any Harrison except Ellie during the winter and summer breaks.

During my off-year, I worked as a paralegal assistant. The internship wasn't my dad's actual office, but he'd definitely exercised some pull. Instead of the sleek, glossy office building he worked in, I was buried in 1960's furniture and aged, peeling paint most likely laced with lead in the Santa Cruz County's public defender's office. The actual work was thankless and tiring paper-pushing but I liked the content within the paperwork.

As much as I liked sleeping with the intern across the hall in between the filing units.

After I worked six months in that position, I realized that I wasn't in the place I thought I'd be. The public defender's office offered me a permanent position, which I considered albeit shitty pay because I had nothing else. The hall intern with the fast lips became an awkward friend zone but at least he went back to his last year at his university. I hoped he hadn't expected anything if we both ended up back there, but I decided to get UCLA's paralegal certification so it hopefully opened more doors for myself in the future.

Right as a few of UCLA's brick buildings passed outside my passenger's side window, Ellie texted me again.

Ellie: You're probably there and unpacking now but FYI, UW is at USC in week 5.

me: Sorry not sorry, nothing in that sentence interests me.

I hesitated since my bullshit detector sensed her attempts that Jake and I reconnected were involved. While Jake proposed the idea we never told her about our involvements, I actually understood from the angle that, had she known, then she would've shipped us. Under the context of my more than fucked up emotional detachment, despite my and Ellie's temporarily fractured relationship, I told her that relationships weren't for me and she seemed to understand.

She surprised me though with her next message.

Ellie: Any chance I could stay with you, catch up that weekend?

me: As long as my roommate is ok with it.

One of my apprehensions about UCLA was the roommate situation. I'd read some real horror stories online, and despite the obvious strings Dad pulled that gave me an on campus dorm room this late into college, I still moved in with a stranger.

Senior year, who knows how many previous roommate dead bodies the girl has piled up somewhere.

While I only vaguely knew a couple UCLA attendees from high school, Jake, however, had no issues with popularity at USC. Being a star quarterback, I assumed that he plowed through girls like a Canadian snow plow in winter. Every phase of our post-highschool lives, we drifted further apart but kept being annoyingly tethered together through Ellie. And with that connection came updates on his personal life.

While I stayed at home and worked through community college, college opened a new level of panty-dropping worship for Jake. He'd left Santa Cruz for USC, during which he railed his dick path through sorority girls, won the Heisman award for the best player in the entire fucking country last year, and put himself every NFL team's radar going into his fourth year.

Currently at the end of summer prior to the start of our fourth year, Ellie told me how recruiters had dangled promises of ten-plus million dollar signing bonuses before Jake had played a single game. Before his senior year was completed, before he was even drafted, before a single NFL-level ass slap, the guy attracted future potential notoriety. All Jake had to do was exactly what he'd done last year this year and the next, lead his USC Trojans to another national championship, and everyone in the football-concerned world creamed in their pants.

It's hilarious that USC is the Trojans, since I'm positive that Jake is their biggest customer.

Personally, how Jake Fucking Harrison had become literally the best college football player in the country only fueled my hatred of that walking cesspool of STDs.

Stupid, stupid, stupid...

I was well aware that I was a bit judgmental and possibly slightly hypocritical, which were my two biggest flaws given that my emotional detachment was a lost cause. My V-card was tossed away like a crumpled up term paper draft, I just fucked a willing-to-participate cop on my drive down here, a stash of condoms was hidden in my glove box, I favored a dildo named Huge-N-Veiny for a reason, and had an IUD placed as a necessity.

But even I have standards. Rock-bottom standards but still... standards.

Rules are rules, Harper.

"Here we go..." I took a deep breath in and hugged a small box of school supplies to my chest. I walked down the main residence hallway and looked for room number 304, my new home away from home.

"Finally." Dad's sigh echoed the tiredness I felt, not just from the drive down but the ordeal once we'd arrived here.

Dad and I parked, most likely illegally, in front of Rieber Hall, a pink brick, glass, and cement nine-story building that enclosed my new home away from home. We hadn't gotten out of our cars before a very pissed off lady in a blue uniform redirected us a few streets over to a parking lot, where we checked into housing at a tent filled with overly friendly greeters, loaded my boxes into two small carts that were loaded on a transport truck, then Dad and I took a van back to Rieber Hall.

Once back at the dorm, we waited in line until we checked in, got my keys for Room 304, and my two carts of crap, then took the elevator up to the third floor. My shoulder slumped while we pushed the carts down the hallway like some kind of 'housekeeping of Harper's shit' service.

Fuck, I'm exhausted even before we've moved a single item into my room.

I'd left my housing arrangements up to Dad, not just because he paid for them but so he had peace of mind in where I stayed. His uptight personality definitely reflected in the fact I had one roommate and our room had a shared bathroom with the room next door.

We stopped the carts right outside the 'closed for maintenance' sign on room 303 before I flashed a look at Dad. "Did you know about that?"

"No, but this isn't so bad," Dad remarked and looked behind him down the long hallway with white walls and overhead triangular-shaped sconces. "No communal showers, but the boys' hallway is a bit close."

"It's one floor down." I smirked to myself. Dad no doubt had his suspicions already raised about my escapades with boys.

I doubt in his mind I'm his innocent little princess though.

Safe for Dad's sanity but not my new roommate's and thanks to Officer Davis, my 'tampons' box that I currently clutched tightly to my chest contained the only action that I planned on getting here at UCLA.

This semester at least. Trying to be better, one at a time.

Just to be safe, once I unlocked the door and propped it open with my foot, I grabbed that very box in my hands and carried it inside. Dad grabbed one himself, towels thankfully, and stepped in behind me.

Once the door slammed shut behind Dad, I stopped just two steps into the room. My feet stumbled a few inches forwards as the corner of the box in Dad's hands plowed right in between my shoulder blades.

"Holy shit," were the first words that escaped my mouth.

The room was small, very small, very very small, but a pink cotton candy factory had exploded inside it. The ceiling was covered with pink flower-shaped fairy lights and three-quarters of the room wasn't covered in pink-something - a pink fluffy comforter on the already taken bed on my right, shag rugs on the floor, clothes in the closet, and full wall-length curtains. The only respite from the pink infection was the top bunk on the left bed that apparently was mine.

"You have a nice view." Dad's box nudged me further into the realm of baby pink.

Past an initial wall of shallow cabinets and two beds that were each lofted over a small dresser and desk sat a wall nearly entirely of windows. Past the partially blocked view of a few tree tops and UCLA campus buildings, the tops of a few high rise buildings and even further away sat a grayish-blue line that blurred no matter how hard I squinted.

"Is that -" I started to ask if that was the ocean past Los Angeles when a chirpy, sugary-sweet voice piped up at me..

"Oh my gosh!!"

I jumped back at the sound and my eyes widened as a short girl with black hair cut into a sharp bob and dark, almond-shaped eyes stepped out of the bathroom door across from the closet... hallway area.

"Harper? Harper!?" she gasped like I was the fucking Publisher's Clearinghouse host with a giant ass check for her. She stepped closer to me, where I noticed not only was her frame small but her chin came to pretty much my shoulder.

She might actually be shorter than Ellie.

I shifted my weight from one foot to the other, clutched my, well dildo box, tightly to my chest, and wiggled one finger free. "Umm, yeah. Hey."

Her bright smile was almost contagious. "I'm Li, your roommate. Li Wei."

"Leeway?" I cocked my head sideways at the awkwardness that flowed out of my mouth.

"No, Li Wei." I couldn't tell any difference from what I'd said, so thankfully she added, "My first name is Li, last name Wei."

"Oh," I replied flatly and mentally facepalmed myself. "Nice to meet you, Li."

"So excited to meet you!" Li's black, shiny hair bobbed around her cheeks as she hopped back and forth like meeting me was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to her.

Well, apparently other than the color pink.

This should look interesting with my black comforter set.

"Well, Li..." I repositioned my box onto one forearm, then awkwardly shook her hand. "I'm -"

"Harper! Harper Reynolds, paralegal program," she finished for me and squeezed my hand tightly. "Sorry, they taped up something to do the door this morning. I'm in the Biophys program, Pre-Med."

"So... nothing in common." I frowned at this sparkly ball of sunshine that probably got annoying thirty seconds ago. I turned towards the polite grin that was behind me then said to Li, "This is my dad."

"Hi Dad!" She reached out like a child who wanted a bear hug and squeezed her arms around Dad, who released the box of my bedding stuff from his grasp onto the floor. My eyebrows raised as he stumbled a step back on his feet, then just awkwardly patted her on the top of her head when she giggled. "Sorry, I'm so excited to have my new roommate here!"

My internal red flags raised as I bent down, set my box down on the desk surface, then promptly smacked my head underneath the bed when I stood up.

New? As in... not the first one?

"Well, that's good. Otherwise I might ask why you're here." My lips twitched slightly as I pushed my box back against the wall, farthest away from Dad's eyes.

"I hope you like pink," she noted as my eyes traveled around and flipped open in horror when I saw not one, not two, but an entire fucking collection of the most hideous wall posters I'd ever seen.

How the fuck did I not see those right away!?

"You've gotta be fucking kidding me." If my eyes were any wider, then they would've fallen into Li's pink shag rug that looked like some horrible furry monster prepped itself before it ate me alive.

Which, for the record, would be preferable than stare at what I'm now staring at.

Right above the fluffy, carnation pink explosion of her comforter, on the wall, hung a set of seven large wall posters. My gut clenched tightly when I noticed how they all shared the same subject matter...

Of a football player...

...A USC Trojan player.

A strangled sound, halfway between a wheeze and a gag, choked itself in the back of my throat and my jaw probably dropped down to the floor beneath us. The temperature in the room shifted a few degrees warmer and my eyes glazed over.

"Harper." Dad's hand warmly patted my shoulder. "That's -"

"Yes." I glowered at the nearest picture as if mentally I incinerated it off the wall.

Number seven in your program folks, Jake Harrison.

In an almost cruel twist of irony, not a single one of Li's posters was an action shot with a helmet that covered his stupid head. With a slight scratch of my nails over the stray hairs at the nape of my neck, I asked Li, "How... uhh, attached are you to those posters, Li?"

"Jake Harrison? Oh, he is my favorite," she gushed, sighed quietly, and palmed her hand into the center of the closest poster-Jake's chest. "He's so good at football, so adorable... I just love him."

At this point, my normally sarcastic brain would've fired off a few snarky insults towards Li's intelligence level. However, the large stack of biology and physiology books on her desk suggested otherwise and frankly her reaction to Jake had short-circuited every neuron in my brain so my only reaction was I gaped at her like a kid who walked in on their parents having sex for the first time.

Once the room's walls squeezed in tighter around me at that gut check, I gave the girl credit, Li had beautiful eyes. They stared up at me with such wonder and awe at... dickhead. On the other end of the spectrum, I assumed I looked nauseous at best since that's how I felt inside.

"He seems like..." Dad's voice trailed off as he studied the posters and absently rubbed one of his thumbs over his chin.

Honestly, I'd never gotten Dad's full opinion on Jake, whom Dad had probably seen at the worst point in Jake's life. I had too, right after Jake potentially lost his USC scholarship because of his hotheaded temper, but under the circumstances I felt Jake's actions were justified.

Any of his recent actions though... highly questionable.

"Wait, you're from Santa Cruz too, right?" Li's face broke into a huge smile. "Do you... know him!?"

Mentally, I scratched my brain for an appropriate response, given Dad stood inches behind me.

Probably not the best moment to mention I've stuck my finger -

Stop, Harper. Censorship. Bad first impression.

My mind flashed back to Jake's nude picture, which I had no doubt would've been more appreciated by my new roommate. I wasn't about to flash his joystick-pic in front of Dad though and honestly other than my tomato-tossing tantrum, I'd ignored his subsequent texts.

Not yet sure how to proceed on that delusional front.

Try a sarcastic joke, Harper.

"Unfortunately," was my grunted response as I fought an urge that I pinched my nose. "I was hoping that we could use them as dartboards."

"Oh no!" Li covered both hands over her pale lips and gasped loudly behind them. "But... maybe you could get him to autograph something? Or a picture?"

To add further insult, Dad crossed his arms and grinned at me. "Not a problem, right Harper?"

Thirty fucking thousand students on campus and my roommate is a Jake Harrison fangirl.

Who writes this shit?