The Culture of Hooking Up

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Tip number two-hundred and thirty-seven on how to avoid working on the research paper you've been spending your weekends sprawled out in nightclubs for: walk into your sort of kitchen and open the fridge, look at the pitiful emptiness that is your pathetic little white dorm fridge, close the fridge, and then proceed to mope back to your room where your laptop lay waiting and open on your bed like a one-night stand.

     I almost laugh at my own joke--almost--that's how you know I've been spending too much time up in the club. I'm making pathetic and misogynistic jokes and am almost tempted to start twerking, or the cha-cha slide, or the cupid shuffle--anything to avoid going back to my room all alone with my laptop. It's been one unproductive hour since I hung up the phone with Violet. I even decided to swap my sweatpants for pajama pants, which also wasn't a good idea because it further triggered my sleepy-time vibes.

     "That's like the third time you've opened the fridge," Taryne says without looking up from her phone. She's slouched on the black cloth couch perched in the middle of the other half of the room. She's on the living room half of the half-living room, half-kitchen that both conjoins and separates our dorm room from our two other roommates and their dorm.

     "I'm hungry."

     "No, you're not."

    I pout even though she's still not looking. "You're right." I pop open the microwave just for a change of scenery and gasp.

    "What?" She finally looks up.

     "Someone made brownies." I sound like a little kid, and my sock-covered toes hop up and down against the grey kitchen tiles as if I am one.

     "Oh yeah . . ." It takes an extra beat for Taryne to look back down, but it takes me no time at all to pull the paper plate out and lift up the plastic wrap.

     "They smell"--I pause and breathe them in again--"a little funny. More like chocolate chips."

     "Yeah, they tried to make a healthy version, you know, with avocados or something."

     "Ooh, really?" I sound way too excited, but that's because I am way too excited--way too deep in the procrastination cycle--to even care. "This is now the most exciting thing to happen to me all day."

     "Easy there, killer." Taryne laughs while I'm now a brownie stuffed squirrel. The goofy mood has come out to play. I repeat, the goofy mood has come out to play. "I might as well try one." She stands and stretches before sashaying over to my side of the room, which only takes a few steps in her light purple jogger sweatpants and black slide sandals.

     "Good, right?"

     "Yeah, real good." She smiles behind her hand. "We def should put these back though before they whoop our asses."

     "With their lacrosse sticks." I nod.

     Taryne seals them back up while I almost skip back to our room--almost.

****

Two hours later, the clock strikes twelve, and Taryne is still where I left her only the room is darker. There's only a faint yellow glow from the skinny black lamp standing beside the far end of the couch.

     She looks up with her eyes not her head. "You okay?"

     "Yeah." My voice sounds faraway, like in a weird dream. "You?"

     "Yeah."

     "You know, I don't . . . I don't think those brownies were a good idea."

     "Yeah?"