3 #2
“Can you use a different one?”
He looks past me at the washer on my other side. “You can.”
I turn and read out of order off the panel again. “I was here first. I have two loads.”
“So do I.” He drops the pod in.
“Are you serious?” I say. “Take your stuff out.”
That gets him to actually look at me. “No.”
“I was standing right here,” I say, noticing that my voice is getting louder.
He blinks. “And I used an empty washer.”
“I was about to use it.”
“Then you should’ve used it.”
My mouth falls open. His eyes drop to it for half a second before they come back to mine.
“You are such an asshole. Take your clothes out.”
“No.” He closes the lid, presses start, picks up his empty laundry bag, and walks out while I’m still deciding whether getting kicked out of Corvin for assault with Tide would be worth it.
“Dick,” I mutter after him.
Every machine is running, so I find the one with the least time left, ten minutes, and hoist myself up onto my washer to wait.
It takes fifteen. A girl in a brown knit sweater finally comes in, sees me sitting there with my basket, says, “Oh my God, sorry, sorry,” and scoops her clothes into her arms and into an open dryer.
I load machine six, measure to the line, and start it.
Upstairs, Tessa is on her bed with a textbook, exactly where I left her.
“Some guy stole my washer,” I say, dropping my empty basket by the door.
She turns a page. “Did you use the liquid?”
“Obviously I used the liquid.”
She reaches over without looking up, opens her desk drawer, and holds out a small zip bag with six detergent pods in it.
I stare at it. “You travel with pods and a combat kit.”
“I don’t travel, Kylie.”
I take them. I set an alarm, flop onto my bed, and stare at the ceiling with my heel throbbing under the moleskin.
When the alarm goes off, it takes me a second to remember why I set it.
I grab my basket and go back down to the basement, which is somehow even hotter.
My first machine says one minute. I drop my basket on top and lean against the side while it changes to thirty-eight seconds and then, for no reason at all, back to one minute.
“Oh my God.”
Footsteps come in behind me. I don’t look, and two seconds later, the asshole goes past me with his empty bag and stops in front of the machine that was supposed to be mine. There are hundreds of people in this building, and he is doing laundry at the same exact time I am.
He pulls his clothes out, and I watch the number on my machine instead of him. Twenty-four seconds. A black T-shirt goes into his bag, then sweatpants, a tangle of socks. Fourteen. Then he takes one step sideways and plants himself directly in front of the only two open dryers in the room.
I hadn’t noticed how huge he is. Outside the dorm I was busy screaming at him, in the dining hall he was sitting down, and an hour ago, I was too angry to see anything but the side of his face.
In a basement with a low ceiling, three feet away, it’s impossible to miss.
He takes up about the space of two normal people.
His shoulders block the dryer on the left and his elbow blocks the one on the right, and when he bends toward the washer, the whole row of machines behind him disappears.
My washer clicks and unlocks, and I yank the door open at the same moment he opens the dryer on the left, the one directly in front of me.
“Seriously?” I point at it. “I need that.”
“So do I.” He looks at me for one more second, completely unbothered, then turns back around and starts loading his wet clothes into it.
I have several things available to say. I think about the washer, about poor planning, about empty-machine law, and I feel my mouth open.
Then I close it. I’m not doing this twice in one day over a dryer.
I pull my clothes out one damp armful at a time, and when the basket is full I turn toward the second dryer, the one on the right.
He’s still half in front of it. His elbow is right there and his hip is right there, with maybe eight inches between him and the machine.
“Can you—” He glances over, and I make a small, sharp motion with my free hand. “Move.”
He steps to the side, which does almost nothing. I have to turn sideways and hold my basket against my chest to squeeze past, and my shoulder brushes his arm.
“Jesus Christ,” I mutter.
“What?”
“You’re like a fucking wall.”
I shove the dryer door open, dump my clothes inside, and slam it harder than I need to.
He drags his second load over to his dryer, starts it, and walks out without another word, and the door swings shut behind him.
Good. I don’t know why this building keeps putting him in front of me, but I’d like it to stop.
An hour later, I carry one clean load upstairs and leave the second one spinning. Tessa is still cross-legged on her bed with her textbook, and she looks up when I shove the door open with my hip.
“You look angry,” she says.
“I hate men.”
“Okay.”
“I fucking hate them.”
She marks her page with a finger. “Your boyfriend?”
“No.” It comes out too fast, and it sounds like I mean it, which I don’t, because I absolutely hate him too.
I drop the basket onto my bed. “There’s a gigantic asshole who lives in this building, and I’m tired of seeing him.
I want to hermit out in this room like you do.
I want to avoid everyone and everything. ”
I dump the clothes onto my comforter. They’re still warm. I push both hands into the pile and leave them there, feeling the heat come up through my palms, and then I start folding.
My phone lights up on the desk, and I see Evan’s name before I can stop myself.
I keep folding. Three shirts. It lights up again, and this time it doesn’t stop, buzzing over and over with his name sitting on the screen.
I pick up a pair of jeans and fold them in half, and in half again, and set them on the pile, and let it ring.
Tessa gets up off her bed, crosses the room, turns my phone face down on the desk, and goes back to her book without a word.
I’d thank her, but I’m too upset.