Good Girl Complex(Avalon Bay #1)(5)

A mother stops me on the stairs to ask if I’m the dorm’s resident advisor. Awesome. I feel ancient. A fresh wave of temptation to turn on my heels and split simmers in my gut, but I force myself to ignore it.

I slog up to the fourth floor where the rooms are a little bigger, a little nicer, for those parents willing to leverage the GDP of a small island nation. According to the email on my phone, I’m in room 402.

Inside, a small living room and kitchenette divide the two bedrooms on either side. The room on the left contains an empty bed with a matching wooden desk and dresser. To the right, through the wide-open door, a blonde in a pair of cutoffs and no shirt bounces and sways while putting clothes on hangers.

“Hello?” I say, trying to get her attention. I drop my bags on the floor. “Hi?”

Still she doesn’t hear me. Tentative, I walk up and tap her on the shoulder. She jumps out of her sandals and slaps a hand over her mouth to muffle a yelp.

“Ooh, girl, you got me!” she says in a thick Southern accent. Breathing hard, she pulls the wireless earbuds from her ears and shoves them in her pocket. “’Bout peed my pants.”

Her boobs are right there in all their bare glory, and she’s making no effort to shield herself. I try to look her in the eyes but that proves awkward, so I divert my attention toward the windows.

“Sorry to barge in. I didn’t expect …” to find my roommate engaged in the first act of an amateur porno.

She shrugs, smiling. “Don’t sweat it.”

“I can, uh, come back in a few minutes, if … ?”

“Naw, you’re fine,” she assures me.

I can’t help but glance at her standing with her hands on her hips, pointing the high-beams at me. “Was there a nudist box on the housing form I checked by accident?”

She laughs, then finally reaches for a tank top. “I like to cleanse the energy of a place. A house ain’t a home till you spent time in it naked, right?”

“The blinds are open,” I point out.

“No tan lines,” she answers with a wink. “I’m Bonnie May Beauchamp. Guess we’re roomies.”

“Mackenzie Cabot.”

She smooshes me in a tight hug. Ordinarily I’d consider this a grievous assault on my personal boundaries. But, for some reason, I can’t find it in me to be put off by this girl. Maybe she’s a witch. Hypnotizing me with her witch tits. Still, I get a good vibe from her.

She has soft, round features and big, brown eyes. A bright white grin that’s equally non-threatening to women and approachable to men. Everyone’s little sister. But with boobs.

“Where’s all your stuff?” she asks upon releasing me.

“My boyfriend’s coming by later with most of it. I have a few things in the car downstairs. The driver’s waiting on me.”

“I’ll help you bring it up.”

There isn’t much, only a couple boxes, but I appreciate the offer and the company. We grab the boxes and toss them in the room, then wander the halls for a bit, checking out the neighborhood.

“You from South Carolina?” Bonnie asks.

“Charleston. You?”

“I’m from Georgia. Daddy wanted me to go to Georgia State, but my momma went to Garnet, so they made a bet on the outcome of a football game and here I am.”

Down on the third floor, there’s a dude walking around with a backpack cooler of frosé who tries to offer us each a cup in exchange for our phone numbers. His arms, chest, and back are covered in scribbled black permanent marker, with most of the numbers missing a digit or two. Certainly all of them fake.

We pass on the offer and grin to ourselves, leaving him in our wake.

“Did you transfer from somewhere?” Bonnie says as we continue our way through the bazaar of micro communities. “I mean, don’t take this the wrong way or nothin’, but you don’t look like a freshman.”

I knew this would happen. I feel like the camp counselor. Two years older than my peers, on account of my gap year and the fact that I started kindergarten a year late, when my parents decided to extend a Mediterranean sailing trip rather than get me home in time for school.

“I took a gap year. Made a deal with my parents that I’d go to whatever school they chose if they let me work on my business first.” Though if it were up to me, I’d have skipped this chapter of the coming-of-age story completely.

“You got your own business already?” Bonnie demands, wide-eyed. “I spent all summer watchin’ Vanderpump reruns and partyin’ at the lake.”

“I built a website and an app,” I admit. “I mean, it’s nothing major. Not like I founded Tesla or anything.”

“What kind of app?”

“It’s a site where people post funny or embarrassing boyfriend stories. It started as a joke for some of my friends from high school, but then it sort of blew up. Last year, I launched another site for people to post about their girlfriends.”

What began as me and a blog had ballooned in the past year to include hiring an ad manager, site moderators, and a marketing team. I have payroll and taxes and seven figures in my business checking account. And somewhere on top of all that, I’m supposed to worry about essays and midterms? A deal’s a deal, and I’m as good as my word, but this whole college thing seems pointless.