22 coffee talk
I wake up on Nola's floor with one sock missing and pure hatred in my heart.
Not toward anyone specifically.
Just generally.
Sunlight spills through the dorm window directly into my eyes while somebody moves around near the mini fridge, cabinet doors opening and closing softly, and for one blissfully peaceful second I forget where I am.
Then I remember.
Jackson.
The girl.
"Can you give us the room for a bit?"
Fantastic start to the morning honestly.
I groan quietly and drag my blanket over my face.
"Alive?" Peyton asks from somewhere near the coffee maker.
"Debatable."
"That's promising."
The smell of coffee hits me a second later and suddenly I understand why people stay alive.
Nola's still half unconscious on her bed, completely wrapped in blankets like she's preparing for winter migration while Peyton somehow looks fully functional already.
Which feels suspicious.
"You're too awake," I mumble at her.
Peyton pours coffee calmly. "Some of us are mentally resilient."
"Some of us have emotional support caffeine addictions."
"Also true."
I push myself upright slowly, hair definitely resembling psychological distress while the events of last night replay against my will again.
Jackson standing there with that girl beside him.
The way he asked me to leave like it was nothing.
The fact that I actually left.
Humiliating for me honestly.
Peyton hands me coffee without speaking first, which weirdly feels maternal enough that I almost cry.
"You'd survive an apocalypse," I tell her seriously.
"I know."
Nola's muffled voice comes from somewhere inside her blanket cocoon. "Don't encourage her superiority complex."
"Too late," Peyton says immediately.
I take my first sip of coffee and genuinely consider proposing marriage to the concept of caffeine.
The dorm feels warm in that sleepy Saturday-morning way where nobody's fully awake yet, music playing quietly from Peyton's speaker while sunlight stretches across the floor and somebody down the hallway yells about losing a shoe.
College is disgusting.
Kind of comforting sometimes though.
Nola finally emerges from the blankets looking personally victimized by consciousness. "Why does my mouth taste like drywall?"
"You drank jungle juice voluntarily," Peyton says.
"That feels victim blamey."
I snort quietly into my coffee while Nola narrows her eyes at me immediately. "There she is."
"What?"
"The face."
I freeze. "You can't keep inventing faces."
"This one's new actually."
Peyton glances over casually while stirring creamer into her coffee. "Oh yeah. She looks emotionally devastated."
"That feels dramatic."
"You slept on our floor after your football situationship evicted you," Peyton says.
"I was not evicted."
Nola blinks slowly. "Everly. He brought another girl home."
Rude of her to say it out loud actually.
I stare down into my coffee cup instead.
Because suddenly the room feels slightly too quiet.
Peyton notices immediately, exchanging one of those terrifyingly observant looks with Nola that women apparently develop biologically at birth.
Oh no.
Nola sits up straighter now, blanket wrapped around her shoulders dramatically. "Okay. Real question."
"That introduction alone scared me."
"Do you like Jackson?"
And there it is.
Direct hit.
I open my mouth automatically. "No."
Too fast.
Nola points at me immediately. "That was the fastest lie I've ever heard."
"It was not."
"Everly," Peyton says carefully, "you slept on our floor because your roommate hooked up with someone."
"I slept here because listening to them would've sent me into cardiac arrest."
"Emotionally though," Nola says.
"Physically though," I argue weakly.
Neither of them looks convinced.
Traitors.
I stare down at my coffee for another second before exhaling slowly through my nose.
"I don't know," I admit finally.
Nola gasps dramatically like I just confessed to tax fraud.
Peyton looks way too satisfied.
"I just..." I rub tiredly at my forehead. "I wait to see him now."
Both of them go quiet immediately.
Which somehow makes this worse.
"The room feels weird when he's not there," I continue before I can stop myself. "And when he's at practice too long, I notice." I pause briefly. "And girls bother me."
There.
Horrifying.
Humiliating.
Deeply unfortunate.
Nola stares at me for exactly one second before pointing aggressively.
"Yeah," she says firmly. "You like him."
I groan loudly and fall backward onto the floor again. "That feels fake."
"It's literally not fake at all," Peyton says.
"You're describing yearning."
"I am absolutely not yearning."
Nola laughs so hard she nearly spills her coffee. "Oh my God, you used the word yearning defensively."
"This is psychological warfare."
"You're in love with your roommate."
"I'm literally not."
"But you could be," Peyton says calmly.
I throw my arm dramatically over my face.
Because the worst part is that now I can't stop replaying everything differently.
Jackson accidentally calling me Everly.
Him coming back early from the party.
The late-night conversation.
The way he notices things about me constantly.
And now last night too.
The girl.
The room.
The way my stomach dropped the second I saw them together.
Nola's voice softens slightly after a minute. "Did it hurt?"
I stay quiet.
Which is answer enough apparently.
"Oh," Peyton says quietly.
Great.
Excellent.
Now everyone's emotionally processing.
I sit back up slowly, gripping the coffee cup tighter between my hands. "I hate this."
Nola immediately shakes her head. "No you don't."
"Yes I do."
"You hate that he likes you back and neither of you knows how to act normal about it."
"That sentence just shaved years off my lifespan."
Peyton snorts into her coffee while I stare at the wall trying very hard not to think too hard about any of this.
Because once you admit something out loud, it becomes real in a way that's impossible to undo afterward.
And unfortunately, sitting here on Nola's floor in borrowed sweatpants with caffeine in my system and emotional damage in my chest, I'm not sure I can fully deny it anymore.