Read More: A Q&A with Even Morgan Williams
The girl on Jordan’s bed rustled and stirred. I watched over her. I found a place to sit beside her on the bed, and her hand found mine, an accidental touch, and if I didn’t move, her hand would stay with mine. The girl whimpered in her sleep. Maybe she was having a bad dream, but I didn’t know. What scared a sleeping girl?
She opened her eyes. She blinked. She took in Jordan’s blanket tucked beneath her cheek, took in Jordan’s rug and all the things she’d scattered there, his LPs, his weed, his tequila. She looked at Jordan’s framed photo next to the bed. Who the hell kept a framed photo of himself? Jordan did. The fucker. The girl saw me beside her, whoever I was, and she saw her hand on mine, and she settled her gaze beyond me, maybe on the window, maybe beyond the window, where the wind and snow were laying a feast. The girl closed her eyes and shed a tear. What had she seen that was so painful? She pulled her hand from mine.
I stroked her hair. I thought she would like that. Her hair shone in the dark, shone in the light from the window, the lamps along the pathway, the pathway smothered under snow. I stroked her golden hair.
The girl said, “God damn it.”
I leaned down and kissed her cheek.
The girl opened her eyes, but she wasn’t looking at me. She buried her face and muttered into the pillow, “You’re not Jordan.”
I said, “I’m his roommate. Jordan’s gone. What’s your name?”
“Shush.”
“You want some water?”
“No.”
I said, “My name is Ri—”
“Shush.” She rolled onto her back, reached her arms up, and wrapped them around my neck. I felt my weight pulled onto her. Her sweater was soft. She kissed me. Her eyes were closed, a fact I knew because mine were open wide.
I said, “We don’t have to do this.”
She said, “Yes, we do.” She kissed me again.
I stroked her hair from her face. I called her “baby.” I breathed the word into her shiny, silky, marvelous hair.
She said, “Dude, did your dick freeze off or something?”
“What?”
“Perhaps we can get on with it.”
I didn’t know what to do. She pushed me aside and took off her jeans and underwear. I took off mine. We kissed. She took off her sweater and her turtleneck and her bra. I took off my flannel shirt. We got under the blanket. Jordan’s blanket. When our bodies slid together, they were cold. We didn’t say anything about that. A gust of wind roared, then went silent. The lack of talking made me nervous enough to say something, say anything. I said, “It’s Jordan’s bed.” It was a stupid thing to say, so I said, “He’s out with Caitlin Michaels.” That didn’t sound right either, so I added, “This time.”
The girl whispered, “Jordan’s a fairy. That’s why he gets all those dates.”
She pulled me tighter. Hard to miss the scent of flowers, my face buried in her hair.
I said, “My sister’s a junior. Maybe you know her. She—”
“Shut up already.” The girl kissed me hard, like a punch to the lips. We pressed against each other. This was how you did it? I didn’t know. She wrapped her legs around my hips, reached down, helped me stick it in. We did the clumsiest thing. In and out. I heard voices beyond the door—the guys were picking up bottles in the suite before the RA came around. They cursed each other. They cursed Jordan. The girl and I pressed against each other, again and again. Then I felt a rush of heat, and I slipped out, and I shot my wad onto Jordan’s blanket. I wondered if this still counted as having done it. Jordan could tell me. But he would not find out about this, because I would clean his blanket before he got back. Fucker. The girl slid away from me and turned her face.
The deed was done, but I would not look at it. I gazed out the window. Cold air dripped down the glass. My reflection gazed back at me, but I saw through it to the snow that smothered everything, the quad, the buildings, the trees. Everything was soft round lumps, silent, nameless from the snow. Not a single footprint down a single path.
Jordan was out there. Caitlin Michaels was out there. She and Jordan were at the hotel for the Theta winter ball. Caitlin had no idea what she was in for. Maybe she did. Jordan was probably getting them a room for the night. Jordan and me, the two studs.
Get you some?
Yep, you?
I got mine.
Sweet!
Long veins of frost spread across the inside of the window. It was our own sweat, our own breath, condensed and frozen to the glass. Guess that’s what happens when you get hot-and-heavy on a cold night. We could have scratched our names into the frost with our fingernails. But I didn’t know her name. Jordan would have known her name. I turned to the girl. Her hair shone in the light from the pathway lamps outside. Her hair covered her face. I said, “What’s your name?”
The girl rustled. She ran her hand over her face. Her hair slid over her face again. She didn’t bother with it. She mumbled, “Don’t worry about my name.”
I got up. My legs looked pale in the naked cold. I crossed the room to the stereo and dropped the needle on an LP in the dark. It turned out to be Aja by Steely Dan. Jordan called them platters. Called his weed Mary Jane. He had a name for everything. I dug out his Mary Jane and his pipe, stashed behind the platters. I knew where the fuck my roomie hid the Mary Jane.
The girl had fallen asleep again. She was pretty. Blond hair and clear pale skin. She had found her sweater and was holding it to her face, cuddling it like a stuffed animal. The sweater was soft pink wool. I could tell pink in the dark. My sister had a pink sweater too.
I sat on the bed and lit up a victory bowl. Let the girl sleep without a name. I had done the deed. The one motherfucking deed. The hot smoke warmed me, and I believed I would never want again. I exhaled. Surely goodness and mercy would follow me all of my days. I anointed the sleeping girl’s cheek with a kiss.
The girl was not asleep. She sat up, and the sweater fell away, and we sat naked in the cold and smoked the weed. We skillfully passed the pipe and lighter back and forth. I watched the girl. She was pretty, but she was no Theta girl, that’s for sure. She was no Caitlin Michaels. But I didn’t need a reflection in the window to tell me I was no Jordan.
I said, “Wait a minute. If Jordan’s a fairy—”
She glared at me, hard enough to shut me up. I could see her eyes shining in the dark. I didn’t understand. If a girl snuck into Jordan’s room to cop his Mary Jane and his tequila and spin some platters, was she giving Jordan something in return? A blowjob? Platters and tequila and weed: were they worth Jordan’s semen in the back of her mouth?
As the girl put down the pipe, a medical bracelet flashed on her wrist. I had not seen it before. I reached out to flip it over and read it in the snowy light. She pulled her hand back. […]
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Evan Morgan Williams is the recipient of a 2024 Oregon Literary Fellowship. He is the author of four collections of stories: Thorn (BkMk Press, 2014), Canyons (2018), Stories of the New West (Main Street Rag, 2021), and The Divide (Cornerstone Press, 2026). He has published over 75 stories in journals including Kenyon Review, Witness, and Zyzzyva. He holds an MFA from the University of Montana (1991). A member of the Deaf/HOH community, he is retired after 29 years of teaching in a public school.
Read More: A Q&A with Even Morgan Williams