Chapter 2 One Month
ONE MONTH.
That was all it took for me to develop the deepest and purest hatred for my new neighbor: the most talented and promising hockey player at the University of California, San Diego, Nicolas Herrera.
And yes, he would have a brilliant future in the sport… if I didn’t kill him first.
Since the fateful fire at the UCSD campus, UCLA had been kind enough to offer part of its dorms to the displaced students while their college was being renovated. By some work of Satan, since my building was one of the only two mixed dorms on campus, they placed that damn team captain in the room right across from mine, since there was no space left in the other male dorms.
So now, as my across-the-hall neighbor, I had a spoiled, high-maintenance pretty boy who, when he wasn’t inhaling dust particles from the wind, was hooking up with some poor college girl who fell for his smooth talk.
The guy was annoyingly good with words.
"Nicolas, you son of a bitch!" I shouted as I pounded on the damn door across from mine.
I really wasn’t the type to care about overcrowded bathrooms, messed-up class schedules, or even the delays at the Academic Office due to the increase in students, if it meant helping people who needed a place to stay. Not at all. It was great that UCLA had decided to help them. But out of all the people from that college, of course, of course, the most insufferable one would end up right in front of me, acting like the king of the world as if no one was above him, thinking he could do whatever he wanted just because he was the son of the neighboring college’s dean.
Was this some kind of astrological curse? Mercury retrograde? What did I do in a past life? Because I was clearly paying for something, I just didn’t know what yet.
"Nicolas!" I shouted again, and my body nearly stumbled into his room when the door suddenly swung open.
I looked up at him, furious.
Nicolas Herrera was… a menace.
His brown hair was messy over his forehead, his chest was bare, and the only thing keeping him from being completely naked was an overly white sheet covering the area below his waist, and not very well at that, because he was… well… hard.
Not that I was looking, but it was hard to miss.
I took a deep breath, stepping back so I could look him in the eyes.
He gave me a half-smile, leaning against the doorframe.
"Want to join, doll?" he asked mockingly, brushing his hair back with one of his large hands. The other gestured lazily behind him, probably toward the bed.
Oh, did I want to join? Yes, of course I did. I wanted to join by grabbing the hockey stick leaning against the wall behind him and shoving it up his ass until the tip came out of his mouth.
"Nic," a female voice dragged out his nickname, and I took a deep breath, trying to control my anger, "come back already!"
Nicolas said, "I’ll be right there, princess," then turned back to me as if expecting some comment. Of course I had several, each one more hateful than the last.
"It’s eleven at night, for fuck’s sake! I have class tomorrow and you won’t stop with that infernal moaning in my ear." I raised my finger, pointing at his face. "Send that girl away or I’m reporting you to the board!"
Nicolas laughed, his broad shoulders shaking before he leaned closer to look me in the eyes, his toned thighs exposed when the sheet slipped, since he was only holding the center to cover the basics.
"And what are you going to say? That there’s a girl in my building? They might not care much, in case you forgot, the building is mixed," he said, blinking innocently a few times. The girl he was sleeping with called him again, and this time he seemed less willing to keep her waiting. "I’ll ask you again if you want to join..."
I stared into his eyes and that stupid little smirk that, one day, I would wipe off his face with a punch.
"I’d rather die than have any kind of relationship with you, Herrera," I growled, and he rolled his eyes, that smirk still there, like he couldn’t believe anyone on the planet could resist him, since he was everyone’s type. "Send her away now! I need to sleep!"
"The more you interrupt me, the longer I take," he said, tilting his head. "Do you understand the logic?"
"Considering your track record, I know you don’t take more than three minutes," I shot back, and he placed a hand over his chest, theatrical.
"In that case, it would’ve been more effective for you to stay in your room instead of coming here to bother me. You’d already be free from the ‘infernal moaning’ by now, wouldn’t you?"
He made air quotes with his free hand, dripping with sarcasm.
"Have sex quietly," I growled through my teeth before turning back to my room, marching inside without looking back and slamming the door as hard as I could.
The son of a bitch kept the noise going for the next hour.
I was going to kill him.
Nicolas Herrera
I loved sex.
Seriously.
I liked the kisses, or when I was so turned on there wasn’t even time to kiss, the hair pulling, the scratches on my back, the delicious feeling of coming, making a girl melt in my hand, in my mouth, or on my cock, and even the recently added delight of my neighbor across the hall wearing a little heart-pattern pajama set, all five feet of her, with all the anger her tiny body could hold, pounding on my door like a chihuahua.
The part I didn’t like? When it was over and there was that awkward moment when I didn’t have enough intimacy to explain that we weren’t going to cuddle because (1) I wasn’t the kind of guy you went to for cuddling, and (2) I hated the feeling of sweat.
Not sweat itself, because it was way too good to feel skin getting hotter and hotter and hotter during sex, but when your body started cooling down and the sweat turned sticky, it was just…
Gross.
Really fucking gross.
And at that moment, Samantha, a really nice girl from Law who had some very strange kinks about quoting legal codes in my ear and pretending she was the officer in charge of me, was hugging me, and her sweat was mixing with my sweat and…
God, I needed a shower.
And to throw that condom away.
And get Samantha out of my room so I could change the sheets without making it seem like I was being rude and assuming she had never showered in her life.
I had a problem with cleanliness. Or rather, hygiene in general.
People at UCSD knew my limits well. It was kind of a running joke there, especially among the guys on the team, but here not everyone knew that San Diego’s hotshot was mildly mysophobic.
And the room I was in now was small, very small.
It limited airflow and made everything feel a little claustrophobic, perfect for bacteria to hide and multiply.
When I got there, I almost passed out. I had to wash the grimy carpet, scrub the walls to try to restore that old beige covered in marks from posters that had been ripped off in a hurry, clean the window that had something dried and whitish stuck to one of the panes, which I could swear was cum, and replace the mattress.
It was still hard for me to use the shared bathroom at the end of the hall, but I’d been told the male dorms were even worse.
I hated UCLA. I had always hated that place. The people there thought they were superior to everyone else, and that place was, definitely, dirty.
But Sam was nice, so instead of understanding what my very still body wanted, she moved closer, bringing more warm, sticky sweat to my chest and…
Dear God, the sweat in her hair was cold.
I’m not an asshole, okay?
But I have my limits.
So I just patted her on the head to show a bit of consideration, if the top of her head was dry, thank God for that.
"Hey, Sam," I called, and she purred like a cat, kissing my chest and rubbing more wet hair against me. "I don’t want to be rude, but Gabe needs to come back to the room and…"
She propped herself up on her elbows, lying on her stomach, and looked at me, letting the cascade of slightly damp black hair fall over her shoulder, raising an eyebrow as if she wasn’t very concerned about my roommate.
But besides being very good at applied microbiology and at various ways of handling a stick, hockey or otherwise, I knew how to dismiss a girl without making it seem like I was actually saying it-was-great-never-again.
So, in five minutes, Samantha peeled herself off me, I felt the sticky sweat separating and stretching between us like glue threads, got dressed with the clothes scattered across the floor, my desk, and even Gabe’s bed, and left my room.
I wasn’t an asshole. You can’t be an asshole if, from the beginning, it’s clear it’s just sex. And in my defense, she thought my name was Nathan, and I didn’t even care because the sex had been fucking great and I had zero intention of making our torrid romance last longer than it would take for her to walk out of my room.
I grabbed my phone to tell Gabe he could come back without seeing my dick, put on my boxers, and started stripping the pillowcases and removing the bedding.
Gabriel walked in a few minutes later and shut the door behind him, a very judgmental look in his blue eyes when he saw me putting clean sheets on the bed, even though I had already changed them the day before.
"You do know you had your face buried between her legs five minutes ago, right?" he asked, kicking off his sneakers and throwing himself onto the bed, lying on his back with his arms behind his head so he could judge me better.
He looked intimidating, considering he barely fit on the bed. I mean, I was tall, but the guy was basically a double-door fridge, that spends-too-much-time-at-the-gym kind of build.
The thing is, I knew him, and I knew he was only intimidating on the rink. Gabriel Donohue, or just Gabe, was the bastard I had the pleasure of calling my best friend for years.
He studied dentistry, a course he got into thanks to a hockey scholarship, which made him my teammate, a brute who had no problem breaking through defenses and beating the hell out of anyone in the most violent sport in the world. He might have that pitbull face, but he could act like a sweet little poodle when he wanted.
Especially when he was getting on my fucking nerves, which he was.
I stopped stuffing the dirty sheets into the laundry bag for a second and flipped him off with a polite smile on my face.
Gabe laughed. For someone who had been kicked out of the dorm several days a week since the move, he seemed in a great mood. Was he also getting laid or just smoking a joint the size of a log in his “free time”? Because only that would explain why he hadn’t told me to keep my dick in my pants yet, since the room was his too.
"Biosafety really brainwashed the shit out of you, Herrera," he said. "Get help."
Then he pulled a disgusting sock off his foot and threw it at me.
"Fuck you, Gabriel," I said, tossing that piece of trash into the laundry bag too.
The truth was, getting into biochemistry wasn’t what triggered my need for cleanliness and organization. It had been with me for a long time. Now I just understood better why so many things could kill you.
Like the disgusting cum stain on the window when we got there. Who in their right mind jerks off, comes, and just leaves it there? In a female dorm? Gabriel had suggested keeping it as a legacy, and it took me a while to recover from the shock.
"I’d love to, but I’m way too tired for that," Gabe said, running a hand through his Penelope Pitstop blonde hair before letting out a yawn big enough to swallow someone whole. "Thanks for the suggestion, captain."
I rolled my eyes and grabbed my pants from the chair I usually used to study, in front of the desk where my laptop sat next to one of Gabe’s old pizza boxes that he kept there just to test how many days I would last before throwing it away.
The colony of bacteria he was growing there was…
Shit.
I grabbed the box and tossed it in the trash, and he gave me a smug grin.
To make matters worse, the robot vacuum, which Gabe insisted I treated like a pet and constantly said maybe I should adopt a cat to deal with the emotional attachment I placed on that inanimate being, finished charging and disconnected from its base near the wall, starting its cleaning routine and heading straight toward Gabe’s side of the room.
My “cat” knew exactly where the dirt was. Good boy.
I tied the red string sealing the bag and placed it in the corner while Gabe propped himself up on his elbows, watching the robot move back and forth. I opened the closet to grab a change of clothes and the things I needed for a shower, preparing myself to face the punishment of going to the communal bathroom.
When I turned around, Gabe was staring in disbelief at the robot cleaning, then looked at me before stretching his leg and turning it off just as it was about to go under the bed to fight my roommate’s dirt.
"Don’t be a pain, man, we’ve got practice early tomorrow," he said, covering his mouth as he yawned.
With the rink being shared between all the ice sports of two universities, practice times were getting scarce and at terrible hours. Especially because UCLA’s hockey captain was practically marking his territory, since it was his last semester and he wanted to win the Frozen Four to get into a professional team.
The next afternoon, they had a game against Cornell and needed to win, so the rink wouldn’t be available. Except…
"So it has to be before they smooth the ice for UCLA’s game?" I asked, and Gabe nodded. I would have dramatically thrown myself onto the bed if I weren’t dirty, because that meant very early.
Sometimes being the hockey captain sucked, because I could never miss practice. I’d need a medical note, and even then, who would believe me if I said I caught something contagious, considering how much antiseptic alcohol I kept stocked?
"I need to sleep, so no vacuuming at night today. And no air purifier either, the air here is probably already sterile," Gabe added. "If you keep making noise, the neighbor is going to come here to fight you again."
Gabe said it like it was a bad thing, but annoying Bárbara Hendler was actually a lot of fun. She had been the highlight of my time at UCLA. We had a very brief interaction on that fateful day, when I dragged her by the hand out of the burning rink, but she got lost in the crowd, and not long after, she graced me with her presence by moving right across from my door.
Her patience was as small as her height, and since she complained about absolutely everything, it became my personal hobby to torment her a little. It made things less boring in that awful place.
I shrugged.
"She already came by today," I said.
Gabe closed his eyes, not surprised, but a smile played at the corner of his lips.
"In that little heart pajama set?" he asked.
"The very one," I said, and he laughed. "Seriously, that thing’s about to start walking on its own."
"I know," my friend replied. "Now shut up, because I’m not Barbie and I won’t knock on your door if you keep making noise, not when punching you sounds much more pleasant and practical."
Then he turned to the side and fell asleep, just like that, as if someone had flipped a switch.
I rolled my eyes and shook my head, heading to take a shower before I was the one who suddenly shut down.
