College Roommate Chaos: Finding the Perfect Off-Campus Housing Solution

Note: As per my other stories, the character names are all changed on the off-chance that there is someone who recognizes any of the descriptions of living arrangements or furniture. If this is the first story of mine that you are reading, I have stories before this - while the other stories are not necessary to read, they do help to build up some backstory to where I was in my life at the time. Once again, while the verbal interaction may not be accurate, the physical interaction is to the best of my recollection.

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A lot had happened since I had gone to visit Alexa. In the last couple months, we had our spring break, written midterms, she had come to visit once more, and we had decided on what our future plans were. Because her school simply didn’t have a program that met what I was currently enrolled in, she had agreed to transfer to my school, and had already filled out and had the paperwork approved. With finals only a few weeks away, Bill and I had realized we were late to the idea of securing housing for the next year. We had started to look for houses, but fortunately Alexa was down for the weekend, so we could really start looking seriously. We had narrowed it down to a few possible choices, but none of them were incredibly ideal. The first was a two-bedroom apartment. This normally wouldn’t be a problem, but Alexa and Ashley both wanted to live with me, and I was pretty adamant about living with Bill. One bathroom split between four people, and maybe a fifth if Erin stayed over a lot, did not sound very appealing to any of us. The other choices were all rental houses, and had too many rooms.

The first house we went to see had seven bedrooms. We had no idea how we were going to manage to come up with that kind of rent, and it seemed somewhat wasteful since three of us would probably be sharing one room the vast majority of the time. The second house had six bedrooms and three bathrooms, and was going to be expensive. The really nice thing about this house, though, was that the upstairs was one big bedroom with its own bathroom. The last house we saw had three bedrooms, but just like the apartment, it only had one bathroom.

We went back to the dorm, trying to figure out how we could make the second house fit for our budget and ourselves. We figured that each person living there would have to pay about $700 a month including utilities if we lived there only from August to April. If we lived there year round, it would only be $600 a month. These prices hinged on the fact that we would also need to have probably three or four other people living with us. We started to ask around, showed people pictures of the house that the owner had e-mailed us, and had finally come to a pretty decent group of people that might actually work. Other than Bill, Ashley, Alexa and myself, who would probably only need two bedrooms, we had talked to Trent and Andy, as well as Judy and Roxanne. We explained that the big upstairs bedroom would be taken, but everyone else would be able to figure out which room belonged to whom in a reasonable manner.

The owner was gracious enough to show us all through the house again, and was actually a little concerned since nine people met her at the door.

“This is my girlfriend,” Bill said, holding up Erin’s hand. “And that’s Rob’s girlfriend,” he continued, pointing at Alexa.

“You girls won’t be staying over all the time, right?” Mrs. Cekman asked.

“Of course not,” Alexa laughed. “What would our parents think?”

Mrs. Cekman seemed skeptical at best, but allowed us all inside. We looked around, and everyone seemed to like it. The house was newer, in good condition, and perhaps most importantly, was not too far from campus or the strip of bars that this town called ‘downtown’. Trent and Andy convinced everyone that they should get the two basement bedrooms on account of their being generally messier than everyone else. That left Bill to take the room isolated on one side of the house, so Roxanne and Judy could take the rooms that shared a wall. All in all, we thought we had a pretty good deal on our hands. With eight people living in this house, we could probably get away with everyone paying just over $550 a month if we rented year-round. We signed a preliminary agreement that was conditional on an inspection of the house by Judy’s dad, who fortunately worked in real estate.

We decided to go out for dinner to celebrate our good fortune, and then headed back to the dorm to celebrate with alcohol – while we had no problem getting enough booze to get way too drunk on a nightly basis, only a handful of us were legal age at this point. We had just returned to the dorm when I got a phone call from Mrs. Cekman.

“Rob?”

“Ya, who is this?”

“This is Jessica. Mrs. Cekman,” the voice answered.

“Oh, hey. Is everything ok?”

“Everything is fine – I just forgot to mention something when you kids were over at the house. Pending the inspection by Judy’s father, I am going to need first and last by

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THE END