Page 70 of Tell Me I'm Enough

She makes a fake gagging sound. “Y’all are disgusting.”

“You’re the one hanging out in a frat house on a Saturday morning, babe,” I tell her. “Bad decisions all around.”

She just rolls her eyes, immune to me.

“I didn’t volunteer to be here. Madison sentenced us,” she says. “This is like…Greek jail.”

“Yeah, well, welcome to hell.” I gesture around. “Population: us.”

She starts wiping down the coffee table with disinfectant wipes that someone finally found under the sink. “I don’t get how you can live like this.”

“Easily,” I say. “I normally just stay up in my room where it’s actually clean and only come down here for the booze, parties, or pool table.”

She squints at me. “You have a weird relationship with that pool table.”

I just shrug, smiling at her. “So what’s it like at Gamma then?” I ask. “You guys have chore charts or something?”

“Yeah, actually,” she tells me. “We have house duties. Rotating schedule. Kitchen, bathrooms, living room, yard, etc. We have…standards.”

“Wow.” I toss another cup into the bag. “Imagine having those.”

“You should try it sometime,” she says. “Could change your life.”

“I think it’s too late for me.”

We move around each other easily, bumping shoulders here and there, trading off trash bags when one gets full, and talking shit about the state of this place.

“So, you like it?” I eventually ask. “Gamma?”

She nods, pushing her hair out of her face with her wrist since her hands are full. “Yeah. It’s…a lot. But I’m glad I rushed. I like having a lot of people around. It feels like a huge built-in family.”

I watch for a moment as she keeps messing with the loose curls from her bun that are falling into her face and obviously irritating her.

Eventually, I stop what I’m doing and walk over to her, stepping behind her and stopping her from moving by putting my hands on her shoulders.

“Here,” I say, pulling the strands up and tucking them back into her hair tie, “watching you struggle was bothering me.”

She turns and glares at me, inches from my face.

“Thank you.”

“That sounded hard to get out,” I tease.

She laughs and then moves around the couch, leaning over to grab some cups from behind it. Her phone starts ringing in her back pocket, and she straightens up, pulling it out.

I point at her. “No phones during punishment. House rules.”

“Relax,” she says, squinting at the screen. Her whole face brightens in an instant. “This employee needs a break.”

I shake my head, smiling, and wave her off.

She answers and turns slightly away, but she’s close enough that I can still hear.

“Hey, you,” she says into the phone, all soft now. “Yeah, I’m at the Sig house. They destroyed the house last night, so Madison dragged us over to help them fix it.”

She glances at me like she’s amused. Then, on the phone, says, “No, it’s just Mason and me right now. The Sig guy I told you about. Everyone got paired up like a buddy system to get bossed around.”

The Sig guy I told you about.