The microwave looks like its seen better days, like maybe Vietnam, but the oven looks weirdly clean as if it hasn’t been used. Behind the protein powder-infused breakfast bar, there’s an expensive-looking couch with some worrying stains on it, and a giant television on the wall that, like the oven, looks beautifully and suspiciously clean. Leaning against the television on the wall is some kind of kayak. I try not to think about the kayak and the damage it could do, and may already be doing, to a TV that expensive. Beyond that, there’s the balcony, where Seth had yelled at me to welcome me home.
The sink has some sort of grey matter in it. I decide I’d rather die of dehydration.
As I walk back down the corridor, tripping over shoes as I go, Seth’s opening bedroom door sends me darting for my own, closing it behind me just in time. I can hear a woman laughing, Seth hushing her, and a whispered discussion that’s slightly too quiet to make out. I hear the front door open, then close. Then I hear Seth’s door close.
I take out my phone and scroll my texts until two minutes pass, and then I quietly open my door, step out into the corridor, and lock the bedroom door behind me. My keys jangle in my hand and I quickly close them into a fist to silence them, but the damage is done. Seth’s bedroom door opens and I straighten up while forcing on a neutral smile.
“Gymnastics team,” Seth says proudly, jerking his thumb behind him to the front door. His sneer is making me nauseous. “Rea-a-a-lly flexible.”
In this moment, two parts of me have a fight in my head. One part of me, the bit I got from mom, wants to drag him by the ear to the kitchen and make him clean the floor with his tongue until he learns how to talk to and about women. The other part, the peacemaker part, wants to laugh awkwardly and pelt it for the door, just like my dad at all social functions that last longer than an hour.
Unfortunately, the me part, that traitorous Rachel part, doesn’t make a decision between them, and so I stand there staring at him until he blinks, rolls his eyes theatrically, and goes back in his room. I realize after the fact that, in the twenty minutes since I entered the apartment, Seth had once again taken his shirt off.
I can’t leave the place fast enough.
Shopping for bed sheets and pillows isn’t what I wanted to be doing just an hour after I got to Aurora, but I’m getting the feeling that the apartment isn’t going to feel like home anytime soon. I’ll need to find ways of avoiding these guys. Even if the other two roommates aren’t as asshole-ish as Seth, they’re still contributing to a kitchen that’s growing new life forms.
My phone rings and I tuck it between my ear and my shoulder while I sort through various pillows at the store for the cheapest option.
“Rachey, you promised to call when you got there.”
“Hey Mom. I got here, by the way.”
“How was the taxi from the airport? You checked on GPS that they weren’t taking you the long way round and ripping you off?”
The taxi from the airport had been an hour and a half, and I had only had 15% battery left that I wasn’t going to waste fact-checking a nice old man in a Buick. Come to think of it, what am I on? I put a random pillow in my cart and check the screen. 4%. At least this’ll be a quick conversation.
“He didn’t, Mom, its fine.”
“And your new friends, are they okay?”
“New friends?”
“The girls you’re living with!”
Okay, so. Mom would have flipped if she had heard her little girl would be living in an apartment with three men. If she knew, I would have to barricade the door to prevent her dragging me home.
“They’re fine, Mom,” I lie. “They’re not friends with me yet, it’s only been a few hours.”
“Give them time, Rachey.”
“Rachel, Mom, Rachel, I’m not five.”
“No, you’re not,” Mom muses sadly. “All grown up, eighteen years old.”
“Nineteen in a month.”
“No fishing for presents, Rachel Aubrey Miller.”
“Not even a little?”
“Anyway, you can’t expect handouts all your life. You need to get a job.”
That one smarts. I screw up my nose a little as I throw the first bed sheets I see into the cart. “I’m getting one, Mom, again, only been here a few hours, remember?”
“Don’t take that t-“
The phone dies. That’s the worst possible time for it to die. I have a momentary thrill of fear that I’m going to have to go home and explain myself to her, but then I realize: I don’t have to go home. I live on my own now. I’m an adult.
An adult who’s living in a place that the health department would probably burn down, with at least one and potentially three asshole jock roommates, but an adult nonetheless. In celebration, I add a very unnecessary and very vanilla-scented candle to the cart, and smile. Nobody can tell me what to do. I could add six hundred candles to the cart if I wanted. I’m an adult.
The enthusiasm wanes a little as I grimace at the receipt a few minutes later. I will need a job for six hundred candles. How
