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“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’mgettingone, 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 anadult.
An adult who’s living in a place that the health department would probably burn down, with atleastone and potentiallythreeasshole 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 anadult.
The enthusiasm wanes a little as I grimace at the receipt a few minutes later. Iwillneed a job for six hundred candles.How can one three-wick vanilla-pod-and-sandalwood candle cost this much? Why did I buy it? Why did I contemplate buying two?
The sheets, the pillows, and the way too expensive candles are weighing down my backpack horribly as I walk back. I didn’t buy food; I can’t find the energy to go anywhere else with this heavy a bag, this tired a body, and this empty a bank account. I have a few granola bars that mom packed in my suitcase despite my insistence I wouldn’t need them, and I’m never going to tell her exactly how much I now regret complaining about them. With each step I take up the stairs to the apartment, I hunger for granola.
At the front door, I tiredly contemplate the keys in my hand. One of them definitely opens the apartment door; the others presumably lead to my room, the balcony, and, judging by the number of extra keys, four secret balconies I haven’t discovered yet. I don’t want to get it wrong on the first try; Seth’s room is right by the front door, and ending the day by once again having a jock call me a dipshit would be altogether too much. As I look at each key in turn, comparing them to the lock thoughtfully, I hear a voice that’swaytoo close behind me.
“You’re here early.”
I yelp and wheel around, keys held in my hand ready to poke in someone’s eye. I’m not sure I could reach his eyes, now that I look at him. They’re way above my head. They’re also attached to a tall man with blonde Thor hair brushing his impossibly wide shoulders, and unless he has an equally muscular twin, this is unmistakably the asshole who whacked me with his kayak paddle.
“Oh shit,” he says, blinking down at me, “You’rethe gym girl?”
“Thewhat?”I sputter. Does he think I fell over earlier because I was going for a cartwheel?
At this point, the door opens. Seth still does not have a shirt on. I’m starting to get a negative Pavlovian reaction to toned abs. Seth has to look up at Thor guy as well; Seth’s taller than me, and his hair kind of defies gravity in places so it makes him taller still, but he’s got at least four inches between him and Thor dude, who’s probably 6’2”.
“Hey, Hunter,” he says affably to Thor guy. “I thought you were at practice tonight.”
“Got your text,” blond asshole (Hunter) says. “’Besides, tonight’s more of a hazing thing than a practice thing, I’ll be back in time for drinks. Is this the girl? You said she had bigger tits.”
I interject before either of them can continue to ruin my evening.
“I’m coming through,” I say, and walk through with my keys at the perfect height to key Seth’s nipples like a car if he doesn’t move. He has the common sense to move. It takes me an awkward few seconds to find the right key for my bedroom door, and I can feel their eyes on me from across the corridor as I fumble into my room and lock the door behind me, before immediately pressing my head against the jamb to listen in. They talk a damn sight louder than Seth and his mystery woman did earlier as they wander upstairs. My room is right next to the stairs; I can hear each creaking step up.
“If ithadbeen the girl,” Seth says, his voice clipped and sardonic, “What about ‘you said her tits would be bigger’ was going to fly?”
“We’d already met, it wasn’t gonna fly anyway.”
“What?”
Hunter makes a grunting noise. “She was the girl I told you about, got in the way of my kayak paddle.”
Got in the way? I got in the way of your precious paddle, asshole?
Seth laughs. They’re starting to get quieter now that I’m having to listen in from overhead and not from the doorway.
“Sounds like it,” he says. “This bitch can’t go in a straight line without getting lost.”
Hunter says something back, but they’re now too quiet to hear. Ithunkmy head against the door, breathing heavily, and the hollow plywood reverberates with the force. My head hurts, but it’s a welcome distraction from how upset I am. I close my eyes. My cheeks are warm and my eyes are fizzing with the effort not to cry.
Two out of three roommates, and they’re already discussing my tits and arguing about their what, sexual conquests? I’ve never been around guys like this; I’m an art girl, I hung around the arty guys at high school. They could be self-obsessed, but they were usually okay. I’ve never been within earshot of this many jock sports guys, and it’s gone exactly as I would have feared. The University of Aurora isn’t a place for arty guys, it’s a place for jocks, and I’m stuck in a house with them. I breathe deep and my breath hitches with a sob. I cover my mouth to keep it quiet. Bet they wouldn’t be assholes to me if I was whatever big-boobed gym girl Hunter was talking about trying to score with-
Wait.
