The boy standing in the doorway was wearing sunglasses, his shaved-on-the-sides hair dyed red. Billy's signature color. His hair matched the glittery red shoelaces in his Converse.

"What," Jacky began, "the fuck."

Billy stood there, staring at Jacky. Or he seemed to be, it was hard to tell behind the sunglasses. Mostly Billy looked like he was posing there in the doorway.

"Andrew Jennings," Billy drawled. "I knew that name sounded familiar. It's been, what, four years?"

Jacky barely suppressed a snarl. "You know it's been four years. You went to a fancy private school instead of public high school, and apparently you got a new name in the process. Liam? What the fuck is that?"

"It's half my name. William. Liam. Get it? For someone whose nickname is derived from his middle name, I think you might cut me some slack." Billy sauntered into the room, dragging a rolling suitcase. "And my mom remarried, hence the new last name." After looking at the window near Jacky's bed, and taking another gander at the room that was definitely too small, Billy added, "You want to switch sides?"

"Yeah, I'm gonna pass on that." Jacky stood up, then sat back down. He wished he had someplace else to go. This was going to suck, big time.

"Well, this isn't exactly how I imagined college going. Rooming with my boyfriend from seventh grade." Billy shivered dramatically and finally took off his sunglasses. "I wonder if I'll be able to fit everything in here."

Jacky pointedly looked at Billy's suitcase. "Is that all you brought?"

Billy barked a laugh. "Hardly! Mom and Vince are parking the Beamer. And with everything in my car... Hmm. Well." Turning to the bed, Billy leapt onto the bare mattress and struck a pose. "This could be worse. I could be foisting my scandalous lifestyle upon some unsuspecting straight."

With a grimace, Jacky turned back to his phone. The itch to text Ryan about this current debacle was strong. He shot off a text to Cody: Guess who my roommate is. Cody wouldn't respond for a while; he had taken to sleeping super late now that he worked the graveyard shift at UPS. Jacky put his phone down and made himself comfortable on the bed. "You have your side of the room, and I have mine. You can do whatever you want over there."

"Even have nasty, loud sex?" Billy waggled his eyebrows.

From the hallway, a familiar voice called out, "This way, darling!"

Billy's mother's voice rang out, reminding Jacky of all those afternoons he had spent over at the Dixons' house back in middle school. She had one of those voices that carried. There was the faint accent that had confused him, made him ask Billy if his mother was British. Billy had laughed. "No! She's from Connecticut."

Then she strode in on beige pumps, wearing a black bandage dress that showed off her blonde hair extensions and the gold bangles on her arms and her massive Louis Vuitton purse. She looked around blandly. "My, this is... quaint."

A man Jacky had to assume was Billy's stepdad pushed a rolling clothing rack with a massive trunk at the bottom. "Here," he grunted. "I'll go get the rest."

The cart took up half the room. Jacky was suddenly glad he didn't have much. There wouldn't be room for it.

"You must be Billy's roommate." Billy's mother turned and held out her hand.

"Hi, Mrs. Dixon. Or, I guess it's Dixon-Doyle now?"

Mrs. Dixon-Doyle blinked. "Oh. Do I know you?"

"Mother, this is Jacky Jennings. You remember him?" Billy languidly examined his nails, though Jacky knew he was holding back a smirk.

"Oh. Yes. Oh. Hm." Mrs. Dixon-Doyle had withdrawn her hand. "You look... different."

Jacky nearly smirked himself. Surely, she had heard about the accident. Or maybe not? It had been November, in eighth grade, long after Billy had dumped him for Tyler Gomez. And Jacky hadn't returned to school that year. Then Billy had left for Lawrence Academy.

He sat up and glanced down at his shoulder as if he had just realized it was missing. "Yeah, I was in a car accident."

Mrs. Dixon-Doyle muttered some generic condolences before busying herself with unpacking Billy's things, clearly a ploy to avoid looking at him.

The whole process of moving Billy's stuff in and unpacking kept Jacky entertained as he sat there with his headphones on and worked on connecting his laptop to the campus wi-fi. There was a lot of Mrs. Dixon-Doyle cooing, "Oh, Vince, baby, don't hurt your back," to Billy's stepdad, and Vince taking every opportunity to grab her ass. "Stop contaminating my room," Billy finally complained, to which Vince responded, "It'll be nice and quiet back home without all your drama." Billy's response was an overdramatic, "How is it possible to not be dramatic, when all you've brought are wire hangers!"

It was clearly a bit from some old movie, one that had been parodied all over the place, so it was hard to not crack up laughing when Mrs. Dixon-Doyle said, "What are you talking out? These hangers are all cedar. You know I'd never use a wire hanger."

Finally, Billy shooed his mother and stepdad out and flopped down on his unmade bed. "Oy vey, what a nightmare."

"I only wish I'd had popcorn. Your stepdad is really, uh...., handsy."

"He's an asshole. Ugh. Well, we're ready just in time for the icebreakers. Those'll be loads of fun. You want to get there early and mingle?"

Part of Jacky wanted to stew in his own misery. Plus, did he really want to spend more time with Billy/Liam than he absolutely needed to? He was going to see Billy every day. Every goddamned day.

Yet Jacky found himself standing up. "Sure. Why the hell not."

They weren't the only ones heading to the common room a little early. Steve was already there inviting everyone to join in like a carnival barker at a frat party. "Hey, you all here for icebreakers? Come on in, we have snacks! Don't leave me hanging!" he chastised those who thought they were too cool for high-fives. The leggy blonde he'd been with out in the parking lot was at his side handing out index cards and fat Crayola markers to each person.

Billy took red, of course, his signature color. Jacky selected an orange marker then sat near some other guys who looked like the college guys on the website, with their backwards baseball caps and their cargo shorts.

"What happened to your arm?" asked one, whose nametag said Brandon.

Jacky looked down at his hand clutching the index card and the marker, then turned it over, before understanding what Brandon meant. "Car accident," he muttered, as Billy sat down beside him. Sit was too normal a word for Billy: he lowered himself down with the grace of a debutante, then primly crossed his legs and assessed the room.

"Not much to work with," Billy stated.

Jacky gave a snort then tried to ignore him.

"That's rough, man," Brandon said. He elbowed the kid beside him. "Yo, Braedyn, this kid got his arm cut off in a car accident."

Braedyn, to his credit, gave Brandon a horrified look. "Christ, dude. You can't just go around asking people shit like that."

Brandon shrugged and took a swig out of a Hydroflask that smelled like it contained something stronger than water.

"Sorry, man," Braedyn said, reaching out his hand. Jacky fumbled to set down the marker and index card, then shook it. "I'm Braedyn – I think you moved in next door to me and the bonehead here."

"Yeah. I'm Jacky." His old nickname slipped out – so much for a new identity. He gestured at Billy. "This is Bill—uh, Liam. My roommate Liam."

Billy gave a little wiggle of his fingers before turning to the girl beside him and saying, "I love your shoes."

"Cool," Braedyn said. "You should come to our room tonight. Room 206." For a hot second Jacky wondered if Braedyn was hitting on him. Then Braedyn continued. "We're having a floor party. All the girls have been invited."

"Oh. Yeah?" Jacky knew he wasn't as obviously gay as Billy was, but he had walked in here with Billy. He both hoped for and hated that people might think they were a couple. He wanted people know he was gay without having to come out to them. And here I thought explaining my arm was going to be the worst part of meeting so many new people.

"Yeah, I got a girlfriend," Brandon began, "but we're keeping it open."

One of the other guys leaned in to make a joke about Brandon's girlfriend keeping her legs open, but Jacky wasn't listening. He imagined how he'd feel when Ryan met someone. Maybe he should block Ryan on Instagram and Facebook before that inevitably happened. Then he got a mental picture of Ryan and his roommate Pete cuddling up on the couch. Imagining Pete leaning over and kissing Ryan's neck, Jacky grimaced. He knew Pete wasn't gay, and yet he couldn't unsee it.

"My sentiments exactly," Billy said, sotto voce. "Typical straight nonsense."

Jacky glanced at Billy, who was already back to chatting with his new best friend about the Nordstrom semi-annual sale. He turned back to the bros and said, "Yeah, a party sounds fun."

"Rad, man!" The guy in back leaned in for a fist bump then froze, staring at Jacky's missing arm. "Oh, shit."

Showing impeccable timing, Steve bounded into the center of the room and said, "Hey everybody, listen up!"

Saved from more awkwardness, Jacky sagged back in his chair.

Steve and his fellow residential advisor Kara, the blonde, tag-teamed a spiel about how they were available if anyone ever needed to talk, and gave out magnets with important phone numbers around campus. Like security, and mental health services. Mostly Steve did the talking and Kara gushed, "Steve's right!" and "Isn't he so funny?" and Jacky was beginning to think Kara was going to let Steve run this whole thing when Kara said, "Our first icebreaker is one you guys have already done."

"Have we?" Billy muttered.

"Yes!" Kara said in a way that reminded Jacky of Monica, Ryan's ex-girlfriend/beard. A strange burble of homesickness rose up in his stomach. "We gave you all some time to chat with each other, and now we're going to go around and introduce ourselves, and tell the group one thing you learned about someone else here."

He saw where this was going. He wasn't entirely mad about it. Best to get it all out of the way. And attempt to learn everyone's names. By the time they'd gotten around to Billy, the only person Jacky remembered was a dark-skinned girl named Deja who played soccer and a girl with long red hair named Hannah who whispered some fact about her roommate Alexis that made Alexis roll her eyes and comment, "She hasn't spoken to anyone in this room yet." Hannah's face turned as red as her hair.

"I'm Liam, and this is Lilliana," said Billy, gesturing. "And she got a great deal on these cute wedges at Macy's."

"We are totally going to be shopping buddies," Lilliana said.

All eyes turned to Jacky. "Hi, I'm Jack," he said. He almost added that his friends called him Jacky, but stopped himself. "And..." He didn't want to pull a Hannah, so he turned away from Billy and carefully looked at the nametags so he didn't screw this up. "This is Brandon, and he and his girlfriend have an open relationship."

There was a moment of silence before someone slapped Brandon on the back, Billy cawed into his fist, and the others in the room started to laugh. Brandon's face went red but he held up a hand. "Hey, ladies."

"Nice," Billy choked out as Brandon did his intro. Jacky shrugged, thankful it was all over.

"Yeah, and this here's Jack," Brandon slapped Jacky on the shoulder with unnecessary force, "and he got his arm cut off in a car accident."

"Shit," said someone in the room.

"Why are you like this?" said Braedyn flatly.

"It's okay," Jacky said quickly. Everyone was looking at him and he had to force himself to breathe. "Yeah, I had to get my arm amputated after a car accident. Um." His mind went blank for a minute. "Yeah! I'm hoping to try out for the soccer team."

People nodded and a few people actually clapped, and Jacky wished he could fall through the floor. He recognized the looks people were giving him: the charitable sort of "good for you! Way to be handi-capable!" looks he hated. Even Billy was looking at him like an object of pity.

Fuck you, Jacky thought at him briefly.

Thankfully, Steve and Kara ushered the icebreaker along and soon Kara was giving instructions for their markers and index cards. "Write a fill-in-the-blank sentence on your cards. Something like, My favorite song is blank.  Or, The part of college I'm most excited for is blank."

Jacky tapped his marker. What did he most want to know about the other people in this room? He wasn't sure he wanted to know any of them. They didn't know what he'd been through. They didn't know that he'd just broken up with his boyfriend of two years.

"Do you think it's bad to say, 'If my sexuality was a flavor, it would be blank'?" Billy asked.

"That's only for asexuals," Jacky muttered. Then added, "For most of these people, it'd be vanilla."

Billy pursed his lips. "For you, it'd be lemon. Nice and sour."

Jacky rolled his eyes. Billy still didn't know that Jacky had been in a great relationship for the past year and a half. And he wasn't nearly as emo as he'd been two years ago. He'd let his dyed black hair grow out and now it was just dark brown. He was still wearing a black t-shirt though. "Let me guess, your flavor is rainbow sprinkles? No, no wait." Jacky tried to think of a candy with Billy's signature color. "Red hots."

In response, Billy shimmied his shoulders and wrote his sentence down. "I'm going to hold onto a sliver of hope that someone in this room besides you is on the gay spectrum."

People were starting to shuffle to the center of the room to put their folded-up index cards in a basket. Jacky uncapped his marker with his teeth and wrote on his card, My favorite kind of pizza is ____.

But as he dropped his card in the basket, all he could think about was how Ryan's favorite kind of pizza was pepperoni. 

---

Have you ever been in a situation where you had to do ridiculous icebreakers?  What's the worst one you remember?