2. Give Me A Break
2
Give Me A Break
Carson
“Hey, compa ,” my housemate, Enzo greets me as I close the door behind me and slip my sneakers off. The most important rule in this house is to always slip my shoes off the moment I walk through this door. I don’t understand why but it’s the only rule that’s been enforced in the three months we’ve been living here.
I grunt as I drop my bag onto the ground right in front of the couch and fall onto it, stomachside down. After the week I’ve been having, I’m fucking beat. The only bright light has been earning back my calculus midterm, which I had extremely low hopes about.
“One of those days?” He snorts, munching on something.
My groan is muffled through the couch cushions. Three more semesters of this and I’ll be done with undergrad. That gap year is out of my reach but I can feel it inching closer.
And closer.
And closer.
I flip myself over onto my back, looking up at the light gray ceiling, and breathe in. “Thank fucking God it’s Friday.”
He rounds the kitchen counter and looks down at me. “Truer words have never been said.” Enzo continues munching on something. I sit up on the couch and observe the bag of mini M&Ms on his left hand.
“Bro, are those my M&Ms?” I ask.
Enzo shrugs. “So?”
My jaw drops, slightly befuddled. “How did you find them?”
“Ryder, you suck at hiding your shit. I didn’t do a hint of searching to find them.”
I narrow my eyes on my best friend. If I suck at hiding my stuff, then Enzo Rivera sucks at lying about stuff. Sensing bullshit has always been a talent of mine, but with Enzo, I don’t need to try.
“Okay,” he relents. “I was looking for my projector in your room and just found them. I didn’t search for them, specifically.”
“Why didn’t you ask the others?” I’m talking about our other three roommates. The loudest people I know—at least, in comparison to me and Enzo.
He gestures to the living room. “Do you see or hear them right now? Mason’s working, Adrian’s on set, and I think Jake is with his girlfriend or with his ex-frat brothers—that I’m not sure about.”
“How are they still together, again?” I wonder aloud.
“Beats me, dude. Bailey must give some good head if Parker can deal with her nasal voice yapping in his ear twenty-four seven.”
I fake-gag. “Dude, I did not need to hear that about my cousin, of all people.” I hold my hand out for the M&Ms and Enzo pours a few into my hand. Holding back an eye roll, I take the bag with my free hand. “Next time, ask before you steal.”
“Like you know how to share,” he scoffs.
“You’ve met my sister, Enzo. I have no choice but to share.” I pop the other chocolates in my mouth and munch while listening to the silence. My sister always says that for someone to be considered good company, you need to feel comfortable in their silence. Enzo is one of the few people I’ve found that with, along with the rest of my roommates.
“Did you find it?” I twist the bag of chocolate to seal it shut. “The projector?”
He shakes his head. “I’ll ask Ronnie about it.”
Now that has piqued my curiosity. Ronnie is one of our neighbors, in the house in front of us. Yeah, it’s a weird arrangement because we get the backyard (or front yard, in our case) while they have the driveway.
I’m not complaining about the arrangement, since I hardly interact with them except for the occasional party that most of our neighbors attend.
Jake and I are curious as to whether or not Enzo and Ronnie have hooked up yet. I mean, it’s only a matter of time because the tension between them is so thick that you'd need a fucking chainsaw to cut it.
“Which reminds me.” Enzo walks into his room. A few minutes later, he comes out holding a bright orange spiral notebook. “Are you headed to the Main Library this evening?”
I nod. There’s the matter of finishing the final touches on a group project due Monday for my human anatomy class. “Why?”
He holds out a bright red notebook to me. “Can you give this to Diana while you’re there? Please?”
This is the third time I groan out loud. Not out of being tired but because I would have to interact with a girl who can't stand me or my guts.
The fall semester has resulted in me sharing my pre-calculus class with Lucia Abraham and Diana Blanco, who also live in the driveway house, as I have so named it. Imagine having to sit right behind them for two and a half months. Lucia has no problem with me, and I am with her. Diana on the other hand…
Let’s just say that a girl walking into a prank warzone is not the best first meeting two neighbors could have. Ever. Especially when there’s pie involved. She still holds that over me every time I’m around her.
Luckily, our only shared class is two days a week and she’s never at the parties I attend. It’s not like I have anything against her—if it wasn’t for the pie incident, I would’ve attempted to ask her out a couple of times—but she’s too stubborn to make conversation with me.
“Do I need to?”
“I will pay for coffee the next time we run out,” he offers.
“Like you already do that,” I remind him. “Why can’t you do it, again?”
“I have to get ready for my closing shift and she needs it tonight. What do I need to do to convince you?”
Maybe create a time machine so that the pie incident didn’t happen? That sure as hell would be nice.
“Are you hesitant because of the pie incident?” Enzo asks. “She still doesn’t forgive you for that?”
I shrug. “Every time I see her in class, she’s always giving me the stink-eye.”
He winces. “Ouch.”
I nod in agreement. I wouldn’t wish the Diana Blanco stink-eye on anyone, not even my worst enemy—which in this case, is her. If that girl knew how scary she looked, especially with those burning hazel-green eyes of hers, I bet standing ten feet away would be her first reaction.
“So, throw a stink-eye back at her.”
“Dude,” I sigh. “I’ll find another way.”
“Oh, yeah. You’ve got a severe case of hate phobia.” He rolls his eyes. “How could I forget?”
I flip my middle finger at Enzo, who just laughs it off. Hate-phobia makes no sense, whatsoever. Sure, I try my best to bring people peace and stay out of drama when possible but that doesn’t mean that I can’t stand the thought of people hating me.
Right?
“Ugh, fine,” I give in. “But the next coffee I get from you better be free. And large.”
“Deal,” he says without a beat of hesitation. “Oh, didn’t you get your midterm score?”
“Yes, Dad,” I mutter, rolling my eyes. Enzo is the parent of our friend group if it’s not obvious enough.
“So?”
I shoot him a look. “How do you think I did?”
He grins. “Knowing that you like to downplay how smart you are, I’d say pretty damn good.”
Unfortunately for me, my best friend’s not wrong. When Professor Scott announced the highest score in the midterm, I nearly choked on my breath. That couldn’t have been possible whatsoever but after talking to him when the lecture ended, there was no denying it any longer.
Especially when sharing a class with my cousin Bailey, who didn’t do as well on the test as I thought she would. She asked me countless questions after the exam and how I managed to score as high as I did.
I’m supposedly not as terrible as I thought. It only took countless hours of studying and though I would take biology over calculus any day of the fucking week, math was never much of a problem for me.
Though there’s at least one person who just might have a problem with me.