'Jake!'

Jake looked up to see Gina waving at him from across the dining hall, and shot her a relieved grin as he carried his tray over to where she was sitting.

'Thank god,' she said, putting her phone down on the table. 'The only company I've had since I got here is my roommate and she is a nightmare.'

'Mine isn't moving in until today,' said Jake, 'but he already added me on Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat, and sent me fourteen pictures of his dog.'

'Sounds like a loser,' said Gina. 'Looks like we're gonna be stuck with each other until I find someone decent around here.'

Jake laughed; there was something comforting about Gina's familiar irritability amid the chaos and general new-ness of the first day of college. His mum had dropped him off yesterday and he had spent the evening decorating the breeze-block wall on his dorm room with posters and meeting some other people from his corridor. They had all been fine – Jake considered himself to be pretty good with new people – but he hadn't really clicked with anyone yet. Jake had been looking forward to college for months but, now that he was here, he was finding it to be more nerve-wracking and overwhelming than he had expected.

But here was Gina, with her disparaging comments and her auburn hair and her sweater with a wolf on it. He had known her since he could remember, although they hadn't seen each other as much as he would have liked over the past few years.

'There's Rosa as well.' He said.

'Who's Rosa?' Gina was looking at her phone again, eating salad with the other hand. Jake didn't know why anyone would voluntarily eat salad; he was currently delighted by the fact that he could eat nothing but french fries without his mom there to reprimand him.

'I went to high school with her.' He reminded Gina.

'Hi, is this seat free?'

Jake looked up to see a tall black guy with ludicrously well-defined muscles standing beside their table.

'For those biceps?' said Gina. 'Absolutely.'

He took the seat beside Gina, and Jake forced himself not to stare at the guy's arms. Or his pecs.

'I'm Terry,' the guy said, before setting to work on his gigantic plateful of food.

'I am… delighted to meet you,' Gina directed the comment to Terry's muscles.

Terry gave her a questioning look.

'She's also Gina,' Jake supplied. 'And I'm Jake. I'm majoring in criminology.'

'Criminology.' Terry nodded thoughtfully. 'How come?'

'Because… I love Die Hard?' Saying it out loud, Jake realised that he should have come up with a more impressive reason – people at college were bound to ask him.

'Okay!' said Terry with what seemed like a forced smile. 'I'm majoring in animation. Terry loves animation.'

'Cool,' said Jake. 'So you're gonna, like, make Pixar movies?'

'Something like that, yeah.' Said Terry.

'Cool!' said Jake again.

'What about you?' Terry said to Gina.

'Huh? Oh – psychology.' She said.

They chatted their way through lunch as Jake ate his plateful of just french fries, which turned out not to be as exciting as he had thought. He was going to have to branch out if he was going to make it through four years of college – maybe branch out into pizza. Plus pizza had tomato sauce, which was a vegetable, so his mom could suck it! (Jake mentally apologised for mentally telling his mom to suck it)

It turned out that Terry was a sophomore, and lived in a house off-campus. Within minutes of learning this, Gina had talked him into hosting a party there. After they had eaten, Terry showed Jake and Gina around campus for a while, until Jake got a series of excited texts from his roommate who had apparently arrived.

'I'm gonna go meet this guy,' he said, 'but I'll see you guys later.'

He walked back to his dorm, where he got slightly lost and ended up in the wrong corridor before retracing his steps and eventually finding his room.

'Hello!' Jake's roommate dropped an armful of blankets and stumbled on a cardboard box in his eagerness to cross the room. 'I'm Charles! Nice to meet you!'

'Hey!' said Jake.

Charles was a head shorter than Jake, dressed in a brown sweater and pants in an only-slightly-different shade of brown, and he was giving Jake a delighted grin.

'I'm so excited to finally meet you,' said Charles. 'I bet we're gonna be best buds – maybe we can braid each other's hair and talk about the boys we like!'

'Okay?' said Jake, slightly bemused.

'Or, you know, whatever,' said Charles.

Jake's phone vibrated – he had a message from Rosa.

Rosa: Going to a bar later where no one gets carded wanna come?

'Hey,' said Jake, 'do you want to come to a bar with me and some of my friends tonight?'

'Sounds brilliant!' Charles beamed.

.x.

Jake could see the irony of going out underage drinking on his first weekend of studying criminology, but he figured it couldn't hurt. When he and Charles arrived at the bar they met up with Gina, who had changed out of her wolf sweater into a bomber jacket which also had a wolf on – embroidered on the back.

'This is my night look,' she explained.

The bar – 'Shaw's', according to the neon sign outside - was just starting to get busy, a mix of students and adults filling tables and barstools. Bare lightbulbs hung from the ceiling, casting a warm glow across the room. Gina went up to the bar and ordered a cocktail like she'd done it a hundred times, and Jake bought himself a beer, trying not to look nervous.

'Hey.'

Jake turned around to see Rosa, dressed in her usual all-black outfit, with a cute Latina girl that Jake didn't know.

'Hey Rosa!' he said. He held out his arms in case she wanted to hug him; she didn't.

'This is Amy,' she said, tipping her head to the girl beside her. 'She's my roommate.'

'Hi,' said Amy, holding out her hand. Jake shook it. 'Amy Santiago.'

'Noice,' said Jake, and then he realised that he should introduce himself too, so he added, 'Jake Peralta.'

So I had this idea last week and then I couldn't get it out of my head. And then I wrote five thousand words in four days, and decided to share it with the internet XD I'm not used to uploading things that aren't finished, but at the moment I am brimming with motivation for this story. Hope you liked this and will stick around for more!
Izzy