Apartment 2B Or Not 2B

I'm a single guy living in an apartment down the hall from two single girls. I find one very attractive, but the one I'm not interested in is clearly interested in me. She flirts with me overtly and keeps saying she and I should go for a drink. What I'd really like is to get something going with the other roommate.

--Double Trouble

Unfortunately, dropping in on the girls down the hall isn't like visiting a frozen-yogurt shop: "I'm not crazy about the sample you offered; may I try the other flavor?" You've heard of The Bro Code -- unwritten rules for how guys are supposed to look after their buds? There's a female version; call it The Bra Code: Sistas before mistas, besties before testes. A girl will not date the guy her friend -- especially her friend she lives with -- has set her sights on. Worse yet, there's a good chance that asking you out was something the hot one helped the other one plot. You can, of course, ask the hot one out, but unless the not-so-hot one falls desperately in love with some other guy, the hot one is unlikely to join you in anything sexier than an elevator ride to the lobby. What you can take out of this is a reminder not to get too laser-focused on one particular girl. You should always be scanning the horizon for possibilities and have a few on deck so when one falls through, you can just shift over to the next. This should keep you from clinging desperately to lost causes, like by pretending you have an identical twin brother and trying to date both the hot and not-so-hot roommate at once. (No, you can't just feign a stomachache and run back in wearing a different hat.)