The One That Got Away

Chapter 4

College was not what Oliver had expected. He’d thought college would be late-night cramming for tests, parties Tim would drag him to, and friends to hang out with in between classes. He’d imagined sitting at some café or diner with a group of friends as they counted change to pay for their coffees, student finances being what they were and all. He’d imagined sharing a room with Tim, the two of them playing Wii and bi*ching to each other about their respective annoying habits.

Instead, it was just Oliver, in a single dorm room, playing World of Warcraft with his best friend, who somehow, inexplicably, had moved to fu*king California right before college. It felt like everybody left him.

Tim was not the only person Oliver talked to–not at all. There was Sandra who was somewhere in California–she never specified exactly where, but kept saying “far enough away from Tim that I’m counting my blessings every day” when they asked her—or Sirius from Boston, who said he’d rather die than reveal his actual name. There was Skywalker from Philadelphia or Klaven from New Jersey, and between them, Oliver had a solid little group of friends. And sure, he didn’t know everybody’s real names, but he didn’t have to. They were good people, and that was what mattered, right?

Oliver sometimes felt like there were two of him; the Oliver that actually was, and the Oliver that everyone else thought they saw. His parents had always assumed he was an outgoing person. He had great friends in high school and had always been the kind of person who smiled a lot. What nobody had seemed to realize however, was that most of the time Oliver was really just tagging along with whatever Tim did. All of Oliver’s friends were Oliver’s friends because they were Tim’s friends, and where Tim went, Oliver went.

Tim who had been there for Oliver when Monique disappeared; who had helped him look for her when everyone else said to forget about her. Tim had warned him about Felicity, that she was after more than Oliver was ready to give. Provided a buffer between them so that he could still interact with Bobbi without putting himself in a compromising situation. It was Tim who suggested going away for college; somewhere far away from everything. He hadn’t wanted to, but he knew it was probably the best thing for him. It was difficult though; picking up the pieces of his life and starting again. Sometimes he felt like he was always starting anew.

When Tim had moved with his family to California after the last year of high school, nobody realized that Oliver’s social life moved with him. Not even Oliver saw that coming. So what if he didn’t make any new friends after Tim left? It was after high school after all, and making new acquaintances had seemed pointless when they were all scattering everywhere for college, anyway. And if he didn’t hang out with anyone else from school as much as what with him being a married man and all, his parents either didn’t seem to notice, or didn’t comment. Oliver had wanted a completely new start with college; where no one knew him or his tragic back story. It was an opportunity to start again, maybe get over Monique at last.

“Don’t worry, I’ll be fine,” he’d told his family. “I’ll make plenty of friends.”

And he’d meant it, too. Meant it right up until his dorm buddy–Keith or Carl or something, Oliver couldn’t recall–decided to move out and into his girlfriend’s single. He hadn’t even been worried at all, until that first day of classes when he found a startling inability to engage his new classmates in any meaningful or even friendly conversations at all, beyond the required in-class interactions.

It’s not like Oliver didn’t try–not like he didn’t still try. He still smiled as often as he could, and tried to make conversation with people when the opportunity arose. It was just that most of the time, he didn’t really know what to say. Most of his stories revolved around Tim or Bobbi, and there were only so many times he could bring them up without making it sound like Tim was the only friend he’d ever had, or that Bobbi was his kid and that Oliver was some kind of antisocial loser freak. Which, now that Oliver really thought about it, probably wasn’t entirely inaccurate.

He sat next to Gwen in Spanish and was frequently partnered up with her for in-class assignments, but at the start of the semester all his attempts at talking to her ended in awkward silence. Nowadays she just turned away first chance she got to talk to Joey one row over; they apparently knew each other in high school. That first time she turned her back on Oliver, while his mouth was still hanging open as he desperately tried to come up with something to talk to her about, was the first time Oliver really regretted going to college alone, instead of choosing somewhere closer to home; somewhere he at least knew another living soul.

Sometimes Oliver tried to think of topics for conversation beforehand; his favorite music, the movies he liked and didn’t like, parties he’d gone to where something weird or funny happened–but somehow, those topics never seemed appropriate to bring up.

He envied Tim’s easygoing nature, and wished things were still as easy as they were in high school, when football was a natural bonding experience for them all and he was one of the popular kids simply by virtue of wearing the jacket. Wishing things were different.

Wishing he wasn’t so lonely.

At least he still talked to Tim on a regular basis.

“What you need,” Tim said one night on their voice chat program, and Oliver could hear the keyboard clicking furiously in the background, “is a roommate.”

“A roommate?”

Oliver wasn’t entirely convinced. On the one hand, it would be a nice way to meet someone instead of sitting by himself all day, but on the other he liked his privacy.

“He’s right,” Sandra piped in. “You’re too lost in your own head. You need someone to get you out of it…it’s that or dating.”

Oliver fiddled with his headset and stared blankly at the screen.

“I just don’t know if it’s a good idea,” he said, using his pen to hold down his talk button. “I know I said I wanted more contact with other people, but don’t you think a roommate would be too much contact? These dorms are tiny.”

“So move off campus,” Tim said in an annoyed tone, keyboard still clicking furiously in the background, before adding, “Dude, could we deal with your emo outbreak a little bit later? Some jackass Orc rogue keeps trying to kill me.”