I Never Expected to Find a Relationship at College Orientation

Hannah Orenstein

Updated October 1, 2016 at 11:13 AM

In every installment of Crush Diaries, one anonymous girl gets real about flirting, dating, and hooking up.

This week: Julia, 18, is in her first month of college at the University of Texas. She wasn't looking for a relationship, but then she literally bumped into Kendall, a beautiful blonde bio major, at orientation. Their chemistry was impossible to ignore - and now they're practically inseparable. But they've never talked about what exactly that means.

9:30 p.m.

Kendall and I are at a rooftop party. This guy starts dancing with Kendall and she looks kind of uncomfortable. I'm standing off to the side, annoyed at him for dancing with her, but also annoyed with myself. I can't dance, so I'm too self-conscious to go over there.

Instead, this other guy comes up to me. He's old - he graduated last year, he tells me - and flies planes for the Army now. After talking for awhile, he says, "Would you want to hang out sometime?" I can't tell if he wants to be friends or something more, so I awkwardly throw in a reference to Kendall. "Um, we're dating," I tell him.

I spend the rest of the party with Kendall. Honestly, it feels couple-y. Neither of us are really big on PDA, but we end up making out in front of everyone. No one acted weird about two girls kissing, which was cool.

5:00 p.m.

Kendall and I go bowling with friends. The subject of what exactly we "are" comes up at the bowling alley, but obviously, we aren't going to have that conversation in front of everyone. Mental note: talk about it later.

9:00 p.m.

I take Kendall to this creek I discovered awhile back when I made a wrong turn while walking to my piano lesson. It's kind of a secluded, romantic spot - rocks, rushing water, a bridge. A student was found dead here a few months ago, which is actually really terrifying.

But in that moment, it didn't feel like a terrifying place at all. Kendall and I sit on the rocks and just talk. I throw it out there first. "So, what are we?"

She says she thinks of me as "this girl I'm casually dating." But we both agree that this doesn't feel casual at all. So… I guess we're… dating? There's no label, but we both know what it is.

I like the way she laughs when she finds something really funny: she laughs, then stops, then keeps laughing, and it's like you can see her replaying the moment in her head. I like the way she makes a messy bun look actually cute. I just like being with her - and I don't want this to end.

9:00 a.m.

On the way to the dining hall, I completely space out. And you know how when you space out, you're not smiling or making any effort to look normal? That. So of course that's when Eliot passes by me. Eliot is the asshole I hooked up with at summer orientation. He's a year older, a science nerd just like me, and really tall with these bright blue eyes. After we hooked up, he ignored all my texts and completely stopped speaking to me.

He gives me this awkward smile and runs his fingers through his hair, but he doesn't say hi. My heart pounds against my chest, but I try to recover and look chill. I don't even like him anymore, but I can't help feeling freaked out. It really hurt when he ignored me.

4:00 p.m.

I'm hanging out at the library with all my friends I met in the GroupMe for LGBTQ freshmen before school started. Kendall's there with me, too, even though she's not really close friends with them. We don't hold hands often, but do now - I guess this is new, holding hands in public and being really obvious about the fact that we're a couple.

At one point, we splinter off. "Is it weird that we have a physiological reaction to people we're attracted to?" she says.

It's SUCH a nerdy thing to say. But it's adorable. I blush. We're both science nerds, but she studies bio and I study physics, so neither of us know what the other is talking about basically ever. It doesn't matter. We just like to hear each other talk.

12:00 p.m.

After class, I go back to my dorm to collapse in front of Bojack Horseman on Netflix. Two back-to-back science classes are exhausting. I wanted to zonk out, but then Kendall texts me to come to the library.

I mean, I could do nothing in the dorm by myself. Or I could go hang out with a beautiful girl. You guess what I do.

12:15 p.m.

I find Kendall in the STEM section of the library, which has these group study areas with two-person couches. I'm still tired, so I lie down on the couch with my head in her lap and watch TV while she studies. It's getting the point now where I'm not nervous about planning the next time we'll hang out, because I just know that we will. I'm going to see her again. I'm probably going to see her every day. It's kind of perfect.