9. PRESENT DAY – August
London, England
WILLOW HALE
“W hat’d you say?!” I try to yell over the thumping bass, a phone pressed to one ear while I plug the other ear with my finger.
I still can’t hear my best friend over the flat party. Beer pong cheering, thumps of drunken bodies, and house music cranked to head-splitting levels—I’m in a noisy tunnel of collegiate pandemonium. Who throws ragers on a Wednesday at seven p.m.?
My roommates, apparently.
A little earlier, Sheetal popped her head in my room. “We’re having a proper get-together, like. Need anything, a bevvie or a ciggy?” The party was already underway.
It was nice of her to remember that I’m here. I’m not invisible to my friends-turned-new-roommates: Sheetal, Tess, and Salvatore.
But I would’ve preferred an hour’s notice, and if I’m being really honest with myself, I would’ve wanted a full day’s preparation knowing we’re hosting a house party.
After declining drinks and cigarettes, I keep thinking it’ll die down, but it’s only grown. I keep hearing the main door open. More bodies piling in. More voices amassing.
“Hold on a sec!” I raise my voice over the music and speak into my phone. “I’m gonna find a quieter spot, Daisy!” I scan the small room, more cramped than my old dorm. A light blue comforter is wrinkled on a twin-sized bed, hugged against a white wall.
Most of my crap is still in a few cardboard boxes. But I’ve had some time to tack up a few X-Men posters and unbox photos of my brothers, the Calloway sisters, and of course, my boyfriend. I did put my Gravity Falls Funko Pop! collectibles on the dresser. No room for a desk.
Still, I’m lucky that I have all this space to myself, and I only share a bathroom and common area.
I eye the tiny closet.
Bingo.
I snatch the laptop off my bed before heading to the closet. It’s not a walk-in. So I bend down and sit beneath hanging overalls and plain T-shirts. Wedged under the clothes, I pry my fingers under the doorframe and scoot the door towards me until it’s pretty much shut.
Darkness.
And finally, some muffled quiet.
I let out a sigh.
So this is sort of what Harry Potter must’ve felt like. I bet he had more room under the Dursley’s staircase.
I push up my drooping glasses. “Can you hear me?” I ask Daisy and open my laptop, the bright screen illuminating the closet with a blue tint.
“A ton better,” Daisy tells me. “Where’d you go?”
“The closet. Maybe Skype will be louder.” I’m about to ask if she has time to video-chat, but she’s already dialing me on Skype.
My lip twitches in a smile, one I haven’t felt much tonight. I click into her Skype call, and her radiant, photogenic face pops on screen.
“Hey there.” She bites on a red Twizzler, blonde hair hanging against a crop top that says, yeehaw!
“If Garrison wasn’t coming, I’d totally fly out there and whisk you away from the madness.
” She tucks her long legs to her chest. “We’d ride off into the sunset away from the loud and into the quiet. ”
I touch my silver pinky ring, and through the computer screen, I see the identical one on her finger.
My lips keep rising. “Sounds nice.” I fix my glasses again.
“I’m not bothering you too much, am I? I know the summer just ended, but camp stuff has to still be eating your time.
” She’s the founder of Camp Calloway, and she’s spent so much energy building this adventurous getaway for kids in the mountains.
“Camp stuff has been dying down, and I like catching up with you.” She twiddles with a frayed string on her crop top, not able to sit still. “I don’t want you to think…that you can’t call or anything.”
Daisy has a baby now, a husband, a new career, and an ocean is between us.
Sometimes it scares me too that we might drift apart, but I know, deep in my heart, that she’s the friend I’ll have forever. Not just because she’s married to Ryke, my half-brother.
It’s what she said: if she were here, she’d help me escape the party, not try to pull me deeper into it.
Daisy loves the quiet as much as me.
“I don’t think that,” I say softly. “I’ll always call when I can.”
She’s about to smile, but she flinches as screaming blasts on my end. Screaming that usually accompanies sports games.
“I hate beer pong,” I murmur under my breath.
“You can ride it out with me until Garrison gets there,” Daisy suggests. “I’m just at the cottage for lunch.” The cottage is her quaint stone house at the end of the cul-de-sac, down the street from Lily and Rose in Philly.
My shoulders loosen, less tensed. She doesn’t pressure me to go “mingle” and try to have fun with strangers. I know who I am, and I know it’s not my cup of tea. Daisy never makes me drink the anxiety-inducing concoction.
“Thanks, Daisy.” I try to stretch my leg in the cramped closet, the laptop swaying on my thighs. I lift my neck, and overalls smack my face. I push them aside. “I’m hoping this party is just a first-week ‘welcome back to college’ celebratory thing.”
Bass intensifies and vibrates the floor beneath me.
Let this be a one-time occurrence.
Please.
I’m not made for house parties. I might’ve found college friends in London, but I’m still the same girl who lurks in corners of comic book shops and tries not to bump into shelves or strangers. I don’t want to be in anyone’s way, even with my roommates.
I’m an introvert at the core, and after one big group outing, I feel like I need to recharge alone for a whole week.
Staying in and watching Netflix sounds better than hitting the bars or inviting people to throw back shots and chitchat.
The latter is…exhausting.
“Are your roommates partiers?” Daisy wonders.
“I don’t think they are. I’d go with them out to Barnaby’s, but that wasn’t every weekend.
” I frown, thinking. “It was…chill. Just the three of us, and if they ever went bar hopping afterwards or met up with larger groups, I usually declined.” I pause.
“Tess is super popular though. She knows almost everyone on campus, and Sheetal loves staying out late. So does Salvatore…” Oh no…
Could I have really misjudged what it’d be like to room with them?
“You’re probably right,” Daisy consoles. “It could just be a welcome back party.”
“CHUG! CHUG! CHUG!” The chanting sounds close, like a foot away.
I focus on my computer. “I can’t even tell them to keep it down—I’ll ruin their good time and be the stuck-up roommate.” It feels unfair to ask everyone to be quiet. I’m just one person. “And I already felt badly because I didn’t warn them that Garrison is coming tonight.”
“They still don’t like him?” Daisy asks into a bite of Twizzler.
I shake my head.
I officially moved into the flat only a few days ago, and I wanted Garrison to see where I live, even if that means running into my roommates.
He’s in a much better place since he’s been living with Lo for eight months now.
But the last time Tess and Sheetal saw my boyfriend, he was swinging a fist at Salvatore.
“We just don’t talk about Garrison,” I explain to Daisy. “I think they’re trying to be supportive, but…it’s also like we’re avoiding the awkwardness of what happened.”
I thought about not rooming with them after the winter party, but they hugged me and said they still wanted me here, no matter what.
Garrison was also happy they didn’t abandon me over his actions, but living with college friends feels different than living with the Calloway sisters. It’s starting to feel like a challenging game boss on a new console that I’ve never played before.
“Your roommates might warm up to him tonight. I have a theory that the worst first impressions can be the mark of a really great person,” Daisy says optimistically. “So hey, there’s hope yet.” She swigs a water. “Are you escaping the party with Garrison once he gets there?”
I frown, realizing everything is all messed up. “That wasn’t the initial plan.”
“Do you plan on ravishing each other to the bone?” Daisy teases with the wag of her brows.
My neck reddens. “Um…sort of.”
“Willow,” she gasps into a bigger smile. “What’s ‘ sort of ’ mean here?”
“I want to give him a blow job tonight—the first one I’ve ever given. And I’ve already been nervous about it.”
“Nervous about what?” Rose asks icily, and on the screen, I see Daisy looking off to the side, like her sister just entered the cottage.
“Hey, Daisy,” Lily greets.
Make that sisters. Plural.
I’m just glad they walked in and not my older brothers. After a few minutes of catch-up, Lily and Rose join Daisy on a couch with boxes of Thai take-out. They fit into the Skype box, so they’re visible and ready to take part in my awkward dilemma.
I’m in a closet.
Avoiding a flat party in my own flat.
And discussing blow jobs. “I already Googled how to give one, and it’s not a lot of help. They just talk about being confident. I’m more worried about the mechanics of a blow job. I want to be sure I’m not awkwardly going down on him or hurting him.”
“You don’t have to give him a blow job,” Daisy reminds me. “I don’t love giving them that much.”
Lily blushes a little as she says, “I think they’re fun.” Quieter, she adds, “It’s hot.” Her shoulders rise as she nods to herself.
“At times, definitely,” Rose agrees, popping open a container of what she said is Pad Kee Mao. “Other times, it’s a pain in the ass, and I avoid.”
“I want to try,” I say more confidently. “Just to see if I like it or not. Garrison won’t pressure me, one way or the other, he never has.”
“You should practice,” Rose coaches.
“With…like a banana?” I look around the closet for something phallic.
“Just wing it,” Daisy suggests.
Rose cringes at those words.
Daisy mock gasps and says dramatically, “The disgust.”
Lily laughs.
My heart does a weird nosedive. I miss them. Being around them. Living with them. Even if they’ve all moved into separate houses, they live on the same street from one another.
And Rose raises a hand to both of her sisters before scooting closer to the screen. “Willow, I was a lot like you.”