Chapter 5 Clover #2
“You could always sit on my lap,” he says with a wink before walking past me, his fingers grazing my shoulder before he posts up behind me. I can feel the heat of him at my back, but I refuse to turn around.
Dylan rolls his neck one way and then the other, making an audible crack.
“All right, so let’s make this quick. This is your common room.
Keyword is common. Don’t be a dick and make a mess of a space you have to share with sixty other people.
As you can see, we have tables and couches.
Kitchens are located on the first, fourth, and eighth floors.
Please don’t be the person who burns a bag of popcorn.
The bulletin board on the far wall has info on student resources including the student health center, which generously provides us with a tub of unlimited condoms. You will find those on the counter behind me.
Do not steal all the condoms at once. You are not having that much sex. ”
That gets a laugh out of everyone.
“Unless you’re the newlyweds,” calls some guy on the other side of the circle.
The room breaks into chatter. Many people already seem to know who we are, while others are surprised to hear that there’s a married couple on the floor.
I sink into my chair a little and wish that I could melt into a puddle and slip through the cracks of the walnut-colored hardwood floor.
Bennett squeezes my shoulder. “Says the sad fuck who isn’t getting laid.”
There are a few ooooohs, and Dylan’s baritone carries over the noise.
“The Wexley dorms have a no-drug-and-alcohol policy. Based on the whiff I just got, someone is already breaking that rule.” He shakes his head.
“Listen, just smoke your weed anywhere but here. Laundry is in the basement. It’s not haunted.
It’s just old. If you feel unsafe for any reason, unless you think the laundry room is haunted, my number is on the emergency evacuation instructions on the back of your door.
I’m also in the room at the far end of the hallway with the hand-drawn mer-cat taped to the door. ”
Briar snorts. “So we should just look for the door with the wet pussy?”
Daisy rolls her eyes at her roommate’s crass comment.
Dylan’s expression becomes nearly deadly. “I’m sorry. Was that a joke?” he asks. “I don’t do jokes.”
“Fucking A,” someone mutters, and Briar flips Dylan off when he turns away.
“All right, let’s get this icebreaker over with so we can all get back to our lives,” Dylan says.
A girl in head-to-toe Lululemon raises her hand. “My friends on the seventh floor got an activities calendar that their RA planned out for their floor. When should we expect ours? Also, I heard each dorm tries to steal the trident in front of the dean’s office in the spring. Is that true?”
Dylan hops off the counter. “You want activities?”
The girl nods.
“What’s your name?”
“Sara. No H,” the girl says.
He claps his hands together. “Congratulations, Sara with no H. You are officially the floor five activities coordinator.”
Sara with no H is at once confused and overjoyed.
Dylan then explains that our icebreaker is to find two other people we have something in common with that isn’t a physical attribute. The moment he gives us the all clear to break the ice, I make an effort to disappear into the crowd and away from Bennett.
And then I realize that this exercise will require me to approach people.
I used to never think about things like this when I was younger.
Ever. But I don’t even raise my hand in class anymore, because it takes me too long to come up with the perfect answer.
It’s the same way when I order food or run to the grocery store for my mom.
I’m spinning around, searching for anyone who hasn’t found their partners. Surely I can find something in common with most people. But then someone takes the hand dangling at my side and I’m pulled through the crowd by Daisy, who has Briar by the other hand.
“Found you!” says Daisy with a laugh.
“What do we have in common?” I ask.
Daisy winks. “Our names, silly! All flowers.”
“Again, clovers are a weed,” Briar says with her arms crossed.
“And aren’t briars just thorny shrubs?” I ask her.
“Wasn’t the whole purpose to break the ice with people we don’t know?”
“I’m sorry.” Daisy’s voice takes on a distinctly take-no-shit-mom quality and I find myself impressed. “Would you rather me leave you to the wolves so that you have to make another friend?”
Briar rolls her eyes but doesn’t budge.
“I tend to attract stray black cats,” Daisy whispers.
Once everyone has found a group of three, we all introduce ourselves to the rest of the students and explain what we have in common.
The trios range from heartfelt to absolutely and desperately random.
Three students dub themselves the Dead Mom Club.
Another three have never been to the state of Ohio.
Weird, but okay. Three are lactose intolerant.
Three blondes are natural brunettes—they sound traumatized.
Homecoming court members. Military brats.
Bennett is paired off with a girl and a guy.
All of whom dislike the taste of coffee.
I try not to smile. Poor little rich boy doesn’t even enjoy the very thing his riches are sown from.
After the orientation, Daisy loops her arm through mine and I listen to her chatter about how her mom almost named her Dawn but changed her mind at the last minute, while Briar excuses herself to run some sort of errand that has to do with cheese.
When I get back to my room, Bennett is thankfully gone. I open the notebook with our rules and add two more.
No pet names.
PDA on as-needed basis only.
In the middle of the night, I wake up to pee, and when I open the door, a line of students has formed just outside Daisy and Briar’s room.
They smell like varying combinations of cigarettes, weed, and booze.
The door swings open and one guy ducks out.
I catch a glimpse of Briar sitting just inside the door in a short folding beach chair with a mini ironing board sitting low to the ground in front of her.
She wears an apron, and her hair is pulled back into a tight braid.
Maybe I’m high.
I have to rub the sleep out of my eyes to ensure I’m actually seeing this. I feel like Alice after she fell down the rabbit hole. Along the wall is a line of four students, who look to be varying degrees of drunk or high.
She glances up to see me staring as she flips a grilled cheese on the board and then presses an iron down on top of it.
The next student walks in, and Briar motions for him to leave the door open. She puts the grilled cheese on a paper towel and hands it to him. “Ten bucks.”
He hands her a ten and then drops two extra dollars into a paper cup that sits at the tip of the ironing board.
“I can’t tell if this is real or not,” I say, the words thick and sleepy on my tongue.
“Real,” she says as she slathers two pieces of bread with mayo before adding three slices of cheese without looking up.
“I spent twelve dollars on ingredients at the dollar store and I’ve already made over a hundred bucks tonight.
” She presses the iron down on the first side of the next sandwich.
“You want one? No neighbor discounts. Sorry. I’m a small business. You get it.”
I rub my eyes again and shake my head. “I—I have to pee.”
She shrugs and I scurry down the hallway to the bathrooms.
When I return, two more students have joined her line.
“Last call,” she says, her head poking out of the door. “I have enough for three more sandwiches.”
The last girl in line groans and shuffles away.
“Clover,” Briar says. “If Dylan or any other RA-shaped humans ask you if you saw me selling grilled cheese tonight, no you didn’t, understand?”
She sounds sufficiently threatening and I’m too tired to push the point. I still don’t fully know what the hell I’m seeing right now. “Understood.”
I let myself back into our room, and Bennett, still mostly asleep, mutters, “Does it smell like grilled cheese in here?”