"Uh, yeah, sure. I'm okay with that if you are."

"I mean, someone has to do it. And we can always move later on if we're not happy with the arrangement," I added.

Allie smiled. "Good! Do you need a hand? My boyfriend's still here if you need another pair of hands."

"Your boyfriend? How does he feel about this? You know, the room situation?"

"He wasn't happy at first, but he trusts me. It's okay."

As okay as he might be with the situation, I opted not to accept his help. I thought it was probably best I stayed out of his way, since I was going to be living in such close quarters with his girlfriend.

My parents took me for a meal at a nearby pub while Allie unpacked, and when we returned I found exactly half of the room taken up by her stuff: Clothes, lots of pictures of her and her boyfriend (who looked a bit like Elvis: The Later Years, except he hadn't had a haircut for a few months), and stationery neatly laid out around her laptop on one of the two desks. I was pleased to see that she seemed neat but not neurotically so, so she probably wouldn't be too annoying either way. She had since retreated to the shared communal area onto which all three rooms faced (Allie and I had the central room, with Jack and Tim to our left and Emily and Laura to our right), which contained a battered old sofa, a table and six chairs, and a kitchenette that would soon prove to be irritatingly small. This left me plenty of space to unpack.

While I was unpacking, I caught my first glimpse of the girl in the window. The building was an example of that infuriatingly modern architecture that was designed to look stylish more than to be functional, and the design included a couple of chunks that jutted out just a little way into the quad, like watchtowers along a wall except with no additional height. Looking over to the left from my room, I could see into the small window on the side of one of these protuberances, where a cute blonde girl in white was unpacking. It wasn't the clearest view, but she caught my eye and, as I watched, pulled her white t-shirt off over her head, unclasped her black bra, and let it fall to the ground as she stepped out of view, presumably into the bathroom. My glimpse of her skin was brief, but I felt a rush of adrenaline. This was going to be a good year.