I turn for home, and I force myself to up the pace as I go: faster and faster even though I want nothing more than to go slow. The most important part of a race is the last hundred meters: the rest is just pace-setting to get you there. You need to reserve just enough in the tank to be able to sprint to the finish line. I practically barrel into my apartment door, bouncing back just in time to avoid collision. I gasp for breath up the three flights of steps, and go right for the kitchen the second I get in. Protein shakes are fine but right now I need water.
Lucas is already up and around. He’s microwaving egg whites, and it smells fucking disgusting.
“That smells like ass,” I inform him, turning the faucet on and jamming my head under to drink from it. Lucas glares at me.
“Have you tried drinking out of a glass?” I don’t reply, as I’m drinking, and Lucas’ mouth twitches. “Or maybe a sippy cup?”
Sated, I remove myself from under the faucet. I gesture around the kitchen.
“Find me one not full of swamp water, Lukie, I’ll use it right now. It’s been a week and a half and this place is already gross as shit. I’m not cleaning up for you two.”
Lucas rolls his eyes and takes out his egg whites from the microwave. He douses it in hot sauce, like that’ll do anything to make it taste better, and carries it over to the couch, flipping on the TV. I drop down beside him, looking up at the TV, which I notice something about at the same time he does.
“You put your fucking kayak against the TV again.”
Lucas shrugs unrepentantly. “You hate it so much, you move it.”
“I just ran a fucking 5K and then some, you move it.”
“Asshole.”
“Asshole.”
The mop’s under the couch, so I pull it out. An empty beer bottle, dislodged, clinks across the tile. I hold out the mop and knock it against the kayak until the kayak tips over, crashing on top of Hunter’s DVD pile. He never watches them anyway, so it’s his fault really. Lucas hasn’t brought any cutlery with him to the couch: he rolls up the egg white-and-hot sauce omelet like a burrito and eats it with his fingers. I make a retching sound and he ignores me. We watch ESPN in silence for a couple minutes before I say anything.
“You go to the hazing?”
Lucas grunts an affirmative around his egg whites before speaking with his mouth full. “Mm-hm. Hunter bailed ‘cause that girl texted him.”
“Which girl?”
“The one you banged yesterday.”
“O-oh, that girl.” I grimace, trying to remember her name. “…Mitzi.”
“Millie.”
“Dumb name either way. Great ass, though. Gymnast.”
“Flexible, I know, I got the text.” Lucas takes a last bite of the omelet: stretched-out giant freak that he is, he’s already finished the whole thing.
“So you went to the hazing?”
Lucas shrugs. “It was dull. They got all the new guys drunk, stripped them, and handcuffed them to each other. Left them in the park.”
I snort. That’s pretty funny. Lucas lost his sense of humor in the womb, so he doesn’t look so stoked, but it’s his fault for bothering to go even after Hunter bailed. Lucas does rowing: why does he even care about going to Hunter’s football hazing?
There’s a click from the corridor. I crane my head forward, and Lucas follows suit. It’s the new girl. Her hair’s different from yesterday: it’s down instead of up. She’s already halfway out the front door when she spots us: her eyes widen, and she slams the front door so hard it shudders in the jamb.
“Swear to god,” Lucas says, “I’ve seen her before.”
“Hunter didn’t tell you? You have,” I say. “She’s the ditz that knocked into him.”
“No kidding.” Lucas frowns after her. “So that’s the gymnast? She fell over like a sack of bricks.”
“She’s not the gymnast,” I say. “She’s the psycho roommate. I told you this, asshole. You know, dumb bitch who can’t follow directions and tries to walk her keys into my neck? That one.”
“Too late to get rid of her?” Lucas asks. I bang the handle of the mop into his head.
“No, dipshit, you could have tried helping with the fucking roommate search, though.” I’m pissed he’s complaining about this: I busted my balls advertising the empty room and I only got one response. Lucas and Hunter didn’t even try to help. “That way we wouldn’t have ended up with some frigid bitch next door to my room.”
Lucas’ expression sours. “I really thought Matt would come back.”
I sigh. “Yeah, me too.”
Matt used to have the new girl’s bedroom. He was one of the team: Hunter, Matt, Seth, Lucas. Basically the dream team. He’d ended up getting feelings for one of the girls we were passing around: he’d fucked us all over with the rent for this place, and more importantly fucked over the bro code for the house.
When we all moved in, all sports guys, we’d ended up fighting a lot over the same girls. Matt had come up with a bro code for the house: every
