and they were roommates

One night at around 7 PM, I was sitting alone in my dorm room, the only light in the room shining from my laptop. It was open to a homework assignment that I had been staring at, but hadn’t started, for a solid half hour. I wasn’t expecting to see either of my roommates, Randy or Bob, for a while; they were both usually off eating dinner around that time. Which is why when I heard the sound of someone’s Bruincard slide into the card reader on the door, I was super startled and rushed to close my tabs even though there was nothing incriminating in them aside from my unfinished homework.

After some fumbling with the door handle, in walked Bob along with the guy he had been seeing for a couple weeks at that point. After a round of hellos, Bob asked if they could have the room for a “private conversation.” I had heard a lot about this guy, Ross, but had never actually seen him in person. Apparently, they started hanging out at the beginning of Spring quarter after meeting through mutual friends. Not long after meeting him, Bob learned that Ross had never seen any of the movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, an injustice Bob believed to be so great that he was obligated to correct it. They started with Iron Man, which they worked through in a night, and the next day watched Iron Man 2. There’s a scene in Iron Man 2 where Tony Stark and Pepper Potts kiss after a near death experience, and Bob decided this was the best time to pause the movie, turn to Ross, and ask him if he wanted to go out some time. On a date. Yeah.

Ross, who I’m assuming was caught a bit off guard, said yes. This was Bob’s first date ever, so he was simultaneously super excited and super nervous. Randy and I gave him a bunch of advice about where to go, what to wear, how to act, and just in general what he should expect. We were both genuinely happy for him in that moment.

Not even three days later, Bob comes into the room looking pretty down, and tells us that he had a conversation with Ross. To boil it all down, Ross said that he was worried they were moving too fast and wanted to postpone their date to focus on their friendship. Bob was devastated. He was convinced that this meant that Ross didn’t want to see him anymore and he was stuck wondering what he had done wrong. Randy and I tried to tell him that this didn’t necessarily mean he didn’t have a chance with Ross. Despite our efforts, Bob was still pretty down. We decided to go out for a roommate dinner (which sadly has become fairly rare nowadays) to cheer him up. We headed to Bplate, UCLA’s most consistently mediocre dining hall. Unfortunately, about 15 seconds after we walked in while we were waiting for Randy to fill out his Symptom Monitoring Survey, the last person Bob wanted to see walked through the door: Ross. Before I even realized what was happening, Bob ran away from Randy and me, only narrowly avoiding Ross seeing him.

A couple days later, they were together again. I’m fuzzy on the details, but I know it involved edibles in the dorm room of a guy I very much dislike, a lot of PDA, and going back and forth between the dorm room and another room to have a “private conversation.”

So you can imagine why I was a bit uncertain about what exactly a “private conversation” entailed. Despite my concerns, I gathered my stuff and headed down to the lounge. I sat there for about 20 minutes, most of which I spent continuing to stare at my homework while not progressing at all. The menace of my floor, Matt, was on what seemed like an important call with some people at Wells Fargo, reading off a script about how much he wanted to work there and how he would be a great fit. The Wells Fargo employees didn’t seem overly interested.

It wasn’t long before I got a text from Bob saying it was safe to go back into the room. Once again, I gathered my stuff and headed down the hall. There was nobody in the room when I got there. There was almost no evidence that they had been there at all. Except for one thing: they left behind one of the most rank smells I have ever smelled in my life. If you’ve ever smelled an old retainer, it was similar to that, only it was permeating throughout the room. It was borderline unbearable. Naturally, my mind tried to find an explanation, but I could only think of one thing.

Despite the smell, I stayed at my desk and attempted to focus on anything but the obvious fact about what had just occurred in my room. It wasn’t long before Bob walked in looking a bit down again, much to my surprise. He told me that, once again, he and Ross were done. This was completely unexpected to me, but I did my best to cheer him up yet again (although I’ll admit it probably wasn’t very effective). To this day, I still wonder about what happened in my room that night. There must have been SOMETHING. Smells like that don’t just appear out of nowhere. Did they have sex and it was so bad that Ross broke up with Bob on the spot? Or did they break up and have hate sex after? I guess I will never know. And maybe it’s better that way.

Bob and Ross did end up getting back together again a couple days later, and they have somehow managed to stay together ever since. I wouldn’t be surprised if they have broken up a couple times, but have just kept it quiet. Either way, it doesn’t matter because they always seem to find their way back to each other. Which is honestly really special. They’re both fairly new to relationships, so they haven’t mastered the etiquette completely yet (specifically in regards to PDA; every time they kiss when it’s just us three in the room I kind of want to jump out the window), but I’m happy for Bob. Even though things started off shaky, they seemed to work out in the end. At least for now.