I Thought He Was Too Dorky to Date. Years Later, He Was the One by My Hospital Bed

It was a crisp autumn day around Halloween when I woke up beside yet another guy who wasn’t Quinn to blood streaked across the sheets. I met Quinn before this date, before any of the many men I chased in college, on my first day at University of California, Berkeley, in 2012. Mom and I had driven up the I-5 from our sleepy San Diego suburb in a nine-hour purgatory of Y2K radio and greasy fast food.

On the other side lay reinvention: a cramped dorm room, endless Bay Area fog and the freedom of adulthood. Quinn lived across the hall. I was the oldest of three, a type-A striver from a California-conservative family.

But from the moment I first ripped Fiona Apple on LimeWire, I knew I could be more laid-back, more effortless than the stale student government type people made me out to be. When I packed for college, I left the evidence of my old life behind: the historical fiction, the Ronald Reagan book Mom had gifted me. I hoped to find someone who could help me curate a more extroverted, hip image for myself.

I didn’t need a man to mold me, but anyone I dated would need to fit the vibe. So it was clear that my lanky, shy hallmate Quinn—a quiet computer science major with a Legend of Zelda screensaver, a bald spot, and a bright orange jack-o’-lantern T-shirt he wore constantly—wasn’t dateable. He’d be my kind, gentle sidekick instead.

It was Quinn I dished to after I met my first boyfriend, a wry, skinny-jean-clad hipster who folded me into his off-kilter comedy group, which I found very avant-garde. But Quinn was more interested in our shared taste in music and movies than my new romance. When we were both kicked to the hall so our roommates could have sex, we studied and talked through the night.

In that liminal, grey-carpeted space, it didn’t matter that I was still uptight and self-conscious beneath the arty mask I now wore. It didn’t matter that Quinn spoke softly and still owned Yu-Gi-Oh! cards. We could go deep into what I liked in secret, breadcrumbs to an old life: the fantasy and historical fiction novels I’d inhaled when I was younger, Stephen Sondheim, Hayao Miyazaki.