Rekindling an Old Flame

It is a Saturday night. You and your girlfriend just broke up. Your best friend’s birthday party is in half an hour, and you have decided some special supplements are in order. The pregame hit you hard, so you don’t have the capacity to be creative about who you ask. You fumble for your phone and text the first person who comes to mind, confident she will have what you need. Obviously, it is your ex-situationship that you told your girlfriend not to worry about.

Whatever. You told yourself and all your friends that you would never hook up with this ex again. You were not good for each other. You believe in your own strength and send a little prayer to the Big Guy Upstairs. Always the practical one, you tell your friends to call you in exactly 15 minutes to snap you out of whatever hypnotic trance she might leave you in and head to her dorm.

In her room, you giggle and flirt. It is intimate, but forbidden. She wipes your nose, and you can’t help but stare at her lips as she slowly rubs a finger along her gums. God gives his toughest battles to his strongest soldiers. Your friends call you, and you hustle out of her room, promising to catch her later. She nods knowingly. The trap’s set, and you are just a fly circling the web.

The party goes as parties do. Open bar. Strobe lights and dancing. Then friends together in the bathroom. Then more dancing. A yak. Gum. Cig. Dance. Uber. Closed Bar. DoorDash? Noch’s. Uber. As the night winds down, your phone turns red-hot in your hand. You get bold on text.

Your ex asks you to come over to help her edit her Instagram post (which, by the way, never gets posted). You both know exactly what she is really asking. You agree and start walking to Adams House, hoping she will text you the room number before you get there. You think you can probably find her room. After all, weren’t you there just a couple of hours ago? Her typing bubble shows up for two minutes, then disappears.

The beat allows you to look up from your phone as you notice a growing crowd in front of the Lampoon. Weird, you think; the Lampoon party was yesterday, and the theme definitely was not pajamas. You start to recognize a few people in the crowd. They wave to you. Giddy with excitement over the illicit ex-sex you are soon to engage in, you barely pay attention to the fire truck flashing nearby and holler a “hey!” back.

Slowly, your drunk gaze slides to the sky, and you notice smoke billowing out of a window. The pieces start to click together. You text your ex, giggling, “oh wait, why is Randolph literally on fire?” It takes you a minute longer to have the next important thought: That is odd—that window looks familiar. You count the windows … 1 … 2 … 3 … fuck. A glance at a friend quickly confirms your suspicions. You fire off another text. “WAIT IT’S LITERALLY UR ROOM—R U SERIOUS.”

She texts back immediately. “yeah.” You wait a beat, begging your brain to catch up and start processing all this information. Another ping comes quicker than you would like. “can u come pls.” You dash through the crowd, willing the cold air to kill your buzz before you have to engage in anything that requires a responsible adult. After a couple of minutes that feel like ages, you find her barefoot on the corner outside and bring her to your room—the rest of the night blurs. You are not great with crying, especially not from someone you are actively trying to disengage from emotionally. You feel dead sober and very turned off. Nothing about this clandestine meet-up feels sexy anymore. It is terrifyingly raw. Damn it, you think. How the fuck did I get cockblocked by a fire??

You call your EMT friend to ask if she heard anything about the fire on comms. She says no one is hurt and they have no idea what started the fire. You briefly wonder whether they will be able to catch your fingerprints in the white residue left on the now very crispy desk. You relay the information back to your ex. She tells you that her sister is downstairs waiting to pick her up. Great, you think, what a way to meet the family.

The interaction is awkward as fuck. It is clear her sister knows who you are, and not in a flattering way. Overwhelmed, you leave them in your room and sprint to your best friends down the hall. Unfortunately, they didn’t suffer the same buzzkill you did. Both of them are belligerently drunk, and they yell at you to “kick her out and block her!” You leave them to enjoy their Taco Bell in peace. When you get back to your room, it is empty. Your favorite pajama pants and Birkenstocks are missing. Awesome.

In the morning, you check SideChat. It is bad. You immediately contact your ex to inquire about the source of the flame that displaced all of Randolph. She sends you photos of the destruction and zooms in on the alleged culprit. It is worse than you could have imagined. In preparation for your arrival, she made a couple of important aesthetic choices, including lighting a candle.

Oh, you would like a better description of the flammable offender that sent all of Randolph into a mad hysteria? I bet you fucking would. The text you receive forms a sentence never spoken before in modern history. “A Heated Rivalry Shane Hollander Scented Candle from Etsy burned down Randolph 407.”

A sign from the universe has perhaps never been more explicit—do not fuck your ex. Lest you want to set our world ablaze.

This anonymous author wants legal authorities to know that they should probably consider this story as entirely fictional.