Jake met Holly at the end of his second year at college, through an ad she’d placed in the school newspaper looking for a roommate. She had a two-story, single-family home off-campus, but couldn’t manage the rent by herself. There were three bedrooms, and one of her roommates graduated that year. The other had no plans to return to school. Jake, tired of dorm life, was looking for something close by because he had no source of transportation. Holly wasn’t exactly down the street, really, but she was on the bus route, and her ad said she was willing to carpool.
But when Jake called the number in the ad and introduced himself, the first thing Holly said to him was, “Sorry, no guys.”
Yeah, he’d read that in the ad, too. “No, wait, listen,” he told her.
He didn’t say anything else, and for
