Bleed Until You Heal

4- Apartments

"Wow," I breathe as I step into the new apartment for the first time with a heavy box of books in my arms and Jasper behind me with one of his boxes.

"It's a lot bigger than I expected," Jasper says, looking around the new surroundings. It is really big- at least, a lot bigger than I thought that it would be. The floors were wooden and one wall was old brick while the other three walls were a dark green color. The living room space was to the right and then there was a kitchen area to the left with the bathroom and a small closet right across from the front door to the apartment.

But the really cool part is the bedrooms. Between the living room and kitchen spaces, there's a spiral staircase that leads to two separate loft-like floors. The first loft hovers over the living room while the spiral staircase leads up to the second loft, which is over the kitchen.

"This is so cool," I say with a wide grin. I can't believe that we did it. We're finally on our own. "I call the top room."

"That's fine," Jasper laughs. "Let's just get unpacked so that we can sleep."

"And then furniture shopping in the morning," I add, feeling so much more excited about this now that we actually see the apartment. It finally feels real but Jasper is right- we really should sleep.

The drive from Los Angeles to Atlanta felt like it took forever when it really was only two days and one night where we stayed at a hotel in the middle. With each of us taking three hour driving shifts, we made pretty good time but now, we were both exhausted from almost 35 hours of just driving with a four hour break to sleep in the middle of it.

It's only six at night though, so we still have time to unpack all of our stuff before we head to bed. Since we don't have furniture yet though, and we didn't bring our beds, we have to sleep on an air mattress that we brought with us. The apartment was so cheap because it didn't come with furniture and nobody else would rent it because there were rumors around the city that this room was haunted. The lofts cut off without any railing at all so apparently, somebody fell over the edge and landed on their head wrong and died.

I don't really care if the place is haunted or not, honestly. It cut our rent almost in half, they can throw as many ghost parties as they want in this apartment.

We spend an hour going back and forth from the truck to our new second story apartment so that the truck is completely empty for our shopping trip tomorrow to get furniture. None of it is really too hard to carry so we manage pretty easily even though we're both incredibly exhausted.

I don't unpack anything, I just put the totes and boxes where they need to be unpacked at a later date (tomorrow). For example, I put my boxes of clothes in my room but I just didn't unpack them. That way, I know where everything is tomorrow when I go to unpack.

"We're finally here," Jasper reminds me, unexpectedly wrapping me in a tight hug.

I hug him back and then giggle when he squeezes me into the air and spins me around in a circle. "I can't believe we really did it. I always kind of thought that somehow, something would stop us. My mom, for example. But I'm so glad that we're here. It's just me and you."

"We're going to be so awesome," He says as my feet touch the ground again and I look around the empty living room that we're standing in.

"We're already awesome," I tell my best friend, wrapping my arm around his broad shoulders. "We're going to be legendary."

"Yeah, you're right," Jasper concedes. "We need to find that air mattress before I just collapse on the ground."

"Right," I agree, heading for the box that I'm pretty sure we packed it in. I have to check a few boxes before I find the right one and then we dig it out of the box before opening it up and laying the mattress out in the open living room area. Fortunately, the air mattress has an automatic pump so all we have to do is plug it in and it blows itself up to its full size. "I'll go find blankets," I tell Jasper just before he pushes the button to put air in the mattress.