Private Suite

One Tuesday night during the week of mid-terms, my girlfriend, Rena, and I were taking advantage of my roommate being stuck in a long evening lab session to enjoy a nice, leisurely fuck. Rena was on her hands and knees on my bed, her head down in my pillow, while I moved in and out of her from behind in a slow doggy-style. I was getting close to coming, and had just started to pick up my pace, when someone knocked on my door. I froze for a moment, but Rena reached back for me and moaned into the pillow, "Tom, don't stop. Fuck me, baby." I held still for another moment, but then went back to paying attention to her pussy. Just as I started pushing my cock deeper into her again, the knock at the door came again, a little louder and faster this time.

Through the door, I heard Sandra's voice, almost sobbing. "Tom," she half-cried, half-moaned, "are you in there? I really need to talk!"

Even through the door, I could tell that something was wrong, and I pulled my cock out of Rena and turned toward the door. I started grabbing for my sweats and called out, "Yeah, Sandra, hang on just a sec!"

Rena sat up and spun around on the bed, suddenly furious. "Who's Sandra?!?" she shouted. "Doesn't matter. Tell the bitch to go away!" I was a little shocked at how suddenly she had changed moods again, but as I pulled on my sweats and tucked my still-hard cock inside, she changed her tone yet again. "You know, it doesn't matter. You go to your little bitch if she's so important. I'm done!" And before I knew it, Rena had pulled on her pants and a sweatshirt, stormed to the door, and pushed past Sandra. I stood there in the middle of the room, wearing nothing but a loose fitting pair of sweat pants and a shocked expression, with my friend crying in my doorway, and pretty sure that I'd just lost my girlfriend.

As the sound of Rena's footsteps faded down the hallway, I became aware again of Sandra's now somewhat subdued crying. I turned to her, still a little stunned by Rena's blow-up, and said, "Sandra, I'm sorry, I—"

"No, I'm sorry, Tom," she cut me off. "I didn't know what I was interrupting."

"Nah, it's okay," I lied, badly, "we were just studying."

Then Sandra's crying turned to a half-laugh, half-giggle. She pointed at my still-persistent hard-on tenting my sweats and said, "Yeah, I can see that." That pretty much killed the hard-on, and my cock quickly deflated.

"Okay," I said, "yeah, we were, um, busy. But it's okay. Come on in, what's wrong?"

That snapped Sandra back to the reality that had brought her, crying, to my door in the first place. "Tom," she said as she walked in, "I'm screwed. I'm flunking two of my classes, and I blew my first three midterms this week, and if I can't get my grades up they're gonna kick me out and I have to go home!"

I wasn't sure what to say beyond a trite "it'll be okay," so I just put a hand on her shoulder and listened.

She explained that she'd been falling behind in her linguistics and literature classes, and both those and her algebra midterm exams had gone rather poorly. On top of that, she had also been called into her academic advisor's office the week before for a "pre-probationary" chat, and she'd let the whole thing slip to her sister, who of course passed the information along to their parents. So all in all, Sandra was in a bit of a jam. It was pretty obvious she needed some tutoring help along with a shoulder to cry on, too.

I took advantage of a pause in her unloading to jump in. "You know, I get it. And I want to help. But not here." Sandra looked back at me, not sure what I was suggesting. Then I asked, "Would you let me buy you a cup of coffee over at the coffee shop over on G street?"

She started to object, but I stopped her. "I know we need to take care of your classes, but right now I think you just need to get away from here. When was the last time you got off campus?"

"About three weeks," she answered.

"Then why don't I get dressed, and we'll walk over to the coffee shop. It's a warm night, perfect for a walk. And I think you need a little break."

"Okay," she said, a little hesitantly.

"Okay, great. But, um, I need you to turn around." I grinned at her with my thumbs hooked in the waist band of my sweats.

"Oh, sure," she said, and quickly turned her back.

I grabbed some jeans and a shirt, slipped them on quickly, then stuffed my wallet into my back pocket and said, "Okay, let's go." I opened the door again and took Sandra by the hand, leading her out into the hallway.

When we got to the coffee shop, we sat down at a table and just started talking. Sandra told me more about the trouble's she'd been having with her classes. I told her that I'd been having a bit of a hard time this semester too, but that it was probably self-inflicted due to my being more preoccupied with my relationship with Rena. I admitted that when she'd come knocking on my door, she had interrupted us "in the act," but said it was okay, because it was probably only a matter of time before Rena found another reason to break things off with me anyway. Sandra told me about some problems her mom and dad had been having for a couple years, and that her sister probably told them about her academic troubles to deflect some of the anger away from her. The coffee kept coming, but was really secondary to the conversation. We just sat and talked until almost midnight, when even the coffee wasn't working too well to keep our eyes open. Finally, I paid our small check and left a decent tip for taking up a table for so long, and we started walking back to campus.

Just like we'd done at the beginning of the semester, I walked Sandra back to her room. I didn't think much of it at the time, but we held hands the whole way back. I told Sandra I had a midterm in the morning, but that I'd stop by before lunch to start helping her with some catch-up studying. I turned to go, but Sandra stopped me, and before releasing my hand, she reached up and gave me a little kiss on the cheek.

"Thanks for tonight, Tom," she said. "You were really sweet to me tonight. I'll see you tomorrow."

---

The next day I finished up my test as quick as I could, then hurried over to Sandra's dorm room. Her roommate was still out at one of her midterms, so we sat down on the floor and started looking over the course work she was having the most trouble with. Like the previous night, I didn't do too much talking, but mostly just listened to what Sandra was saying. I wanted to hear what was frustrating her the most, so I might have a clue about where to start working with her. From what I could tell, she was having trouble with the same part of her linguistics course that I stumbled over the year before, and literature was just a matter of having fallen behind in the massive amounts of assigned reading.

We talked about study habits, the distractions of a roommate, and started scribbling down a plan for how to get her caught up in her classes. And before we realized the time had passed, her roommate, Naomi came home. Suddenly, we realized it was nearly four o'clock, and I knew I'd missed my afternoon exam. I didn't say anything about that to Sandra as we traded introductions with Naomi. Then I headed back over to my own room.

Sandra and I started spending more and more time together over the next few weeks. My grades continued to slip a little while my attention was on helping her, but I managed to keep things in the "B" and "C" range for the most part. I got to know Naomi a little better and found out that she wasn't quite so horrible and weird as Sandra had let on; she was more of an 80's throwback to the hippie days of our parents, who obviously had an appreciation for The Beatles, Eastern religion, and the pharmaceuticals that had nearly kept me out of college in the first place. But all in all, she wasn't horrible, just not the best match for Sandra.

Slowly, we started getting Sandra caught up in her classes and on a little better footing academically.

---

After a few more weeks, the week of Thanksgiving rolled around. The campus shut down for the week, and the place pretty much became a ghost town. I was all set to fly home Tuesday morning to spend the week with my parents, until I called home Monday afternoon to double-check all the arrangements. As soon as my dad picked up the phone, I could tell something was wrong. His voice sounded tense, and I was pretty sure I could hear my mom crying in the background.

My dad explained that just a couple hours before, they'd received a call from my grandmother. She had just heard back from her doctor with a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer. They were on their way to the airport to fly out to Nebraska to be with my grandmother for Thanksgiving, and they'd tried to work out a different flight arrangement for me with the airline, but because of the rinky-dink little airport near the college, there wasn't any way for me to meet up with them. So, it looked like I was going to get to spend Thanksgiving stranded in my dorm room. My dad apologized, and said that he would call the bank as soon as they opened up Tuesday morning to have them transfer some extra money into my account to cover food for the week, and that they'd try to call me as soon as they knew anything more specific about my grandmother.

And then we hung up the phone, and I walked back to my room to figure out what I was going to do for a week in a ghost town.

I read a little bit to catch up on my own studies, but that seemed rather pointless on a Sunday afternoon with no classes for a week, so I threw on a light jacket and started walking to the coffee shop. I figured I'd at least get a hot cup of coffee and a sandwich, and then figure things out from there.

---

I was sitting alone at a table in the café, with my back to the door, eating a small sandwich, when I heard the jingle of the bell as someone opened the door. Not thinking any more of it than that, I took a big bit of the sandwich when I heard Sandra's familiar voice exclaim, "No way! Tom, what are you doing here?"

I spun around, and sure enough, it was Sandra. She was supposed to have flown out earlier that morning to go back home with her own family for Thanksgiving. I was confused, but thrilled to see her at the same time. Then I saw the red rims around her eyes, and knew that she'd been crying again. "My folks had to leave for a family emergency, so I'm stuck here for the week."

"Oh, no! What happened?" Sandra asked.

"My grandma's pretty sick, I guess, so they're flying out to be with her, and they couldn't work my flight to get me there."

"Oh, Tom," she said, "I'm so sorry."

I offered her a chair, and when she sat down, said, "Okay, my turn now. What about you? Why are you here instead of on a plane?"

Sandra just sat there, quietly, for a few minutes. I could see that she was fighting back tears, but there was something else in her eyes this time. Something that looked almost like anger. For a long few minutes, she continued just sitting there, not saying anything. Eventually, I figured maybe she needed a reminder that we were sharing a table. I reached under the table with my foot and kicked her chair.

"Hey! Remember me?"

"Oh, sorry, Tom," she said, still somewhat distracted. "It's just, my dad called this morning and told me not to come home this week because he and my mom are getting a divorce."

"Wow, that sucks."

"Yeah," she agreed.

After that our conversation went back to stalled. I tried eating a little more of my sandwich, but I'd lost my appetite. After a while I wrapped up what was left and paid. Then I looked across the table at Sandra and said, "Well, looks like we've got a week. Wanna go for a walk?"