“Wow,” I murmured as my gaze flicked back and forth across the expansive landscape. This was the place I was going to call home for the next two years. This was the place where I’d learn who I was, not who my parents wanted me to be.
“It’s pretty, isn’t it?” Willow asks as she chuckled at my expression.
“It’s far better than I imagined, and we both know that I have quite the imagination,” I pointed out, recalling the few stories I had concocted on video chats with Willow.
The shuttle stopped outside of the library and let us out, the driver helping me with my large suitcase as I stepped down onto the sidewalk. I smiled warmly at him in thanks and I was surprised when I got nothing more than a grunt in response.
With her hand gesturing around us, Willow exclaimed, “So, this is it. Are you ready?”
“Not in the slightest.”
“You’ll be fine, just keep to yourself and try to blend in. They’ll leave you alone,” she said as we started the trek to her, well now, our apartment.
“What did you mean about being left alone?” I asked, trying to maneuver the large suitcase while also taking in my surroundings. Willow trotted ahead with my carryon and laptop bag.
“I’m not sure how it is in Alaska, but this college has the same cliques that you’d find in high school, except there are fewer rules and more alcohol.”
“Oh,” I whispered. I remembered some of public high school, but I spent my junior and senior years in an online classroom graduating early.
“You’re pretty, I’m sure you’ll be fine,” Willow made sure to point out, which left me wondering if she found herself on the wrong side of the mean girls. I always thought Willow had an understated beauty that no one could match.
We continued our walk through the campus until we reached the opposite end. Rows of homes and apartments spread out before me. Dark side was what Willow called the area and clarified that it was because they had fewer street lamps than light side, which was where fraternity and sorority row resided.
I followed her blindly, switching my hands on the suitcase handle as my arm began to tire. Finally, my cousin stopped at the front of a large apartment building. Christmas lights and tiki torches lined the balcony railings. Kegs were stacked in a pyramid near the dumpster in the parking lot. Music thumped from an apartment close by. And I had never felt so far out of my element before.
“This is. . .” My words lingered in the air. I couldn’t quite describe what was laid out in front of me. I wasn’t necessarily disappointed, but for some reason, I expected more.
Since I enrolled at the college with a bachelor’s degree already under my wing and enough prerequisite credits from the local college to qualify me as a junior, I wasn’t required to live in the college dorms. I lucked out that Willow had secured an apartment for herself and her two previous roommates, then one of them decided not to return to school. It seemed like everything had worked in my favor, up until now.
But my luck always seemed to have a way of running out when I needed it most.
“It gets better inside,” Willow assured me, her skeptical eyes running over my fearful expression. “We have an apartment on the top floor with a great view of the nature reserve.” She knew where my heart lay.
Nodding, I began to follow her up the stairs, one at a time, as I heaved the suitcase behind me. We had four flights to go. Willow stopped at the first landing to wait for me, and once I reached the top of the first flight, I told her to go ahead without me. I knew the apartment number and didn’t want to keep her waiting.
“Are you sure?” she asked, the bridge of her nose wrinkling as she contemplated my decision.
“Yes, of course. You’ll just be standing around waiting. I’ll be up in a bit. It’s totally fine, Willow.”
It took her an extra second, but she turned on her heels and sped up the stairwell, leaving me with my wobbly legs and a suitcase that seemed to gain weight during the trip. I tried not to inhale deeply since the stairwell had an odd scent wafting through the air.
Five minutes later, I turned the corner as I approached the landing between the second and third floors. I hadn’t quite made it to the top, but I had long since lost the feeling in my fingers. Resting the suitcase on a stair, I released my hold and shook out my hands. The tingling of the nerves was a bit painful, but I was glad to get the blood flowing again.
I stayed in the spot for another minute, catching my breath. Four flights didn’t seem like a lot, especially when I was used to hiking the mountains behind our house in Alaska daily, but it seemed I wasn’t built for stair climbs while pulling a fifty-pound weight.
Just above me a door slammed shut, and I exhaled deeply knowing that I needed to move my suitcase out of the way. My arms hadn’t quite recovered, so I wasn’t surprised to find them shaking as I gripped the handle.
Holy pigs in a blanket.
A man stood at the top of the stairs, phone pressed to his ear, and he was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. Did all of the boys here look like they walked out of a Calvin Klein ad?
I watched in rapture as he wound his fingers through his unruly dark hair and began his descent down the stairs.
Remembering that I blocked his way, I mustered up as much strength as I could, and I yanked on the handle once, then twice, in the hopes that the luggage would move out of his way. On the third tug, I realized my good luck had taken a nosedive.
The handle gripped tightly in my hand detached from the outer shell and I flew backward just as the man passed me while the case bounced back down the stairs. I barely had time to shout for him to watch out before the luggage clipped his leg just as my back slammed against the concrete stair behind me.
He gripped the handrail and turned his steely gaze toward me, ice practically shooting from his eyes.
“What the fuck?” the man snarled just as my suitcase landed with a thud on the bottom step.
That zipper I had been worried about? Well, it finally had enough and tore apart, releasing the contents inside. I’d never been more grateful to have picked up storage cubes, but my gratefulness didn’t last long when the man kicked my suitcase and continued on his way, not giving me another glance.
Despite the pain in my back, which would inevitably turn into a hideous bruise, I gripped the rail and pulled myself up to lean over the side of the stairs.
“Thanks for the help, you. . . you. . .jerk.” Name-calling wasn’t my forte. I was taught to never curse, so I had to get creative, but he left me so flustered that I couldn’t come up with anything interesting.
In response, he flipped his middle finger in the air. I knew what that gesture stood for.
How dare he?
My anger seethed. When was the last time someone treated me so carelessly? I could remember only once, and that did nothing to extinguish the fire igniting deep in my gut.
“Yeah? Well, I hope your momma knows that she raised no gentleman,” I shouted, ignoring another door slamming above me.
That seemed to get his attention.
He turned his face back toward me, his nose flaring with every breath. God, he truly was quite the specimen, but apparently, I’d pissed him off. Well, served him right.
“Sorry,” another man said as he scooted around me, his brown hair pulled back in a neat bun. He winced at my open suitcase and turned his eyes back toward me, regret filling them, then looked around the corner at the man who had focused his furious stare on me.
“J, do you need some help?” Willow called down from the top landing. I glanced up through a sliver in the stairwell, breaking my contact with Iceman.
“Yeah,” I sighed. After the mess that was made, I was definitely going to need some help.
Turning back around, I found that the two men were long gone. What a great impression I’ve made on my new neighbors.
As Willow clambered down the steps, I made my way down to my suitcase, my back protesting as I bent forward to reorganize the mess and stuff it back inside. E
xcept as Willow made it to the landing, I noticed that the zipper had completely torn away from the suitcase.
“Great,” I grumbled, looking up at Willow as she nibbled at her lower lip. We huffed out a sigh simultaneously and reached down to grab a stack of the storage cubes.
“This is not how I wanted to start things off,” I complained as I meticulously stacked the remainder of the cubes in my arms, blocking my line of sight.
Slowly, I followed Willow up the stairs and down the hallway until I watched her feet stop outside of an apartment door.
“This is us. Welcome home, Jolee.”
Willow balanced her stack of cubes precariously in her arms as she opened the door. A minute later, I felt hands grip one of the piles in my arms and remove them, carrying them further into the apartment as I stood still in the hallway. Finally, the other stack was pulled from my grip and taken in to the apartment.
Inside, I was met with a small hallway, just wide enough for one person to pass through at a time. The wall to my left had a set of bi-fold doors that Willow described as a coat closet and a laundry area. We were lucky to have laundry in the space; I was not a fan of laundromats.
Slipping passed me, Willow explained that she was going to grab my broken suitcase while I looked around the apartment.
I barely made it through the entrance before a woman with jet black hair bumped into me, her glasses slipped down the bridge of her nose.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” she squeaked.
“It’s my fault. I wasn’t looking where I was going.”
She stared blankly at me as she removed her glasses from her face and wiped the lenses on her shirt. I didn’t realize that purple eyes were real, and I absolutely would have thought this woman wore contacts if I hadn’t noticed her extremely thick glasses, but she had the most stunning eye color I had ever seen. I couldn’t stop staring.
“What?” she asked as she propped her glasses back on her face.
Ashamed to have been caught looking too long, I shook my head in embarrassment. This was not how I wanted to make a first impression. First, with the boy on the stairs and now with the girl that I assume will be my roommate.
“Nothing, I didn’t mean to stare. It’s just, you have beautiful eyes.” My cheeks reddened in embarrassment. I couldn’t believe I had admitted to her that I had been staring. “I’m sorry, that was incredibly rude of me.”
Just as the awkward silence grew between us, Willow came gliding into the apartment with my broken suitcase.
“Oh, good. I’m glad we’re all here,” my ordinarily shy cousin said. “J, this is our roommate, Haley. She and I were suitemates in the dorms last year. Haley, this is my cousin, Jolee.”
“Nice to meet you,” I replied with my hand extended toward Haley. Thankfully she quickly shook my hand and smiled. And I could see that my momentary lapse of normalcy was easily dismissed.
After the introduction, I took in the living room, pleased to find it spacious and warm. The couch looked new and it faced a large television propped on top of a media cabinet, only a wooden coffee table separated the two items.
“The living room is great.”
“Thanks,” Willow replied. “But be careful with the coffee table, one of the legs wobbles.”
Nodding, I turned around, taking in the kitchen. It was small and tight, but I didn’t need a lot of room to cook. Willow made sure to show me my dedicated shelves in the refrigerator and the pantry, making sure that I knew what items were available for sharing like milk, butter, and eggs. The kitchen was exactly like she had told me on the phone, but I didn’t bother pointing that out.
Following the girls down the hall where Haley and I had collided, Willow pointed out each of their rooms and then led me to the very last door. I placed my hand on the knob and turned the cold metal while holding my breath. This was the first time I would be living in a space that wasn’t under my parents’ reign. Even though I was twenty-two, I felt eighteen all over again.
The door slid across the tan carpet and I exhaled with a whoosh. The room wasn’t massive, just big enough for a queen-sized bed, a dresser, a desk, and a nightstand, but the knot in my chest tightened. This space was mine. It would be the place I would make my dreams a reality. It would be my home.
Willow began to speak from behind me, but the heartbeat pounding in my ears drowned her out. Spinning on my heels, I grabbed my cousin in a tight embrace and squeezed her as if she were going to drift away. This woman had offered me a sanctuary in a time that I needed it most, and I would be eternally grateful. Nothing could mess this up for me, this opportunity to live my own life.
I released her just as quickly and stepped into my bedroom, turning around as I took it all in. There was a large picture window facing the reserve’s park across the street and I imagined the afternoons I would spend beneath its sills watching the world come alive.
“Where did the furniture come from?” I inquired as I ran my hand over the gray dresser. The wood was solid and warm beneath my touch, and I knew that not only was it beautiful – it was expensive. There was a wrought-iron bed across from me with a nightstand that matched the dresser. It was exactly what I would have chosen for myself.
When I didn’t get an immediate response, I turned away from the window and stared at Willow, who was twisting her fingers together in front of her body. Haley took a leisurely step backward.
I knew the answer then. I knew that somehow, Willow had done this for me.
“Willow, I. . .” I began.
“J, I knew that you didn’t have a lot of money to splurge on furniture. So I told Mother that I needed a new bedroom set. She didn’t even blink an eye. I picked out the furniture with Haley over the summer. Are you mad?”
Willow worried her lip, scared of my reaction, and it took all of my strength not to shed the tears welling in my eyes.
“Thank you. It’s. . .it’s perfect. It’s exactly what I would have chosen.”
Her worried expression quickly morphed into relief. Had she really been worried that I would be ungrateful or angry at her selfless gesture?
The girls helped me carry the storage cubes into my bedroom and I put away what I could. There was only one bathroom for the three of us, which I wasn’t so sure was going to be the easiest situation when getting ready for classes and work, but I wasn’t going to be choosy.
Willow and Haley offered to show me around campus so that I was ready for classes on Monday and I eagerly accepted their gesture. I needed just a few minutes to take a quick shower and change my clothes. My skin felt dry and scratchy from the recycled air of the plane and I yearned to wash it away.
The water was heavenly and when I stepped out of the bathroom after a quick rinse, I felt new and refreshed. Looking at the few clothes I had brought with me, my excitement quickly diminished. There wasn’t enough research in the world to tell me what to expect when I arrived here. At the college I previously attended, the majority of my classmates showed up in either pajamas or loungewear. I was confident that a prestigious university outside of Boston would require a more upper-class appearance, which was why I had packed a few dressy shorts in various colors, classy shirts, and a pale pink sheath dress. Judging by Willow and Haley’s appearances earlier, I had chosen incorrectly.
The only casual items I had with me were the jeans that I had worn on the plane and my green T-shirt, neither of which I had any desire to put over my clean body again.
Begrudgingly I slipped on a pair of white shorts and a blue lace camisole, thankful that Boston’s temperature wasn’t too dissimilar from Anchorage’s. I was going to have to deal with my wardrobe for now until I got a few more paychecks under my belt. Clothes were not a necessary expense.
Winding my hair into a neat knot on the top of my head and slipping my feet into a pair of fake leather sandals, I walked toward the living room where my cousin and Haley were waiting for me.
Both girls blinked up at me from the couch when I entered the room and I could immediately
sense that they wanted to say something.
“I know. I made a bad choice with clothes, but all I had at home were my scrubs for work and the jeans I wore on the plane.”
Rising up from the couch, Willow circled around me. “Did you raid my mother’s closet?”
“I can’t afford anything else until I get my first paycheck,” I retorted. Looking over to Haley, I asked, “Am I going to stand out?”
“Oh, you’re definitely going to stand out,” she explained, and then added, “but it won’t be because of your clothes.”
I didn’t have time to question her comment as Willow dragged Haley and me from the apartment. Our feet ate up the pavement as we walked toward campus, the buildings aged before my eyes, but not in a bad way. The structures changed from wood to brick, then brick to stone. It was magnificent to take in.
My heart sped up as we walked down alleyways between the buildings. Willow made sure to point out which buildings held my classes. I almost got the hang of the school’s octagonal layout when the growling of my stomach echoed across the fountain. If I hadn’t stood out before, I certainly did then as a few classmates looked up from their perches on the grass.
It wasn’t my fault; I hadn’t eaten since the day before and the time change had severely messed with my schedule.
Willow and Haley slunk away from me, obviously attempting not to draw attention to themselves. Still, as the gathering around us continued to stare in my direction, their eyes darted to my roommates.
“Sorry,” I mumbled, noticing how much I truly stood out amongst the masses. The guys mostly wore gym shorts and T-shirts, but the girls were on an entirely new level. They were either dressed for a night of partying at a club like I had seen in the movies, or wore denim shorts cut and frayed to show as much leg as possible with midriff-baring tops.
I had never felt out of shape; more or less, I always thought that I was average-sized, but compared to the women lying across blankets on the school lawn, I would never measure up. These women looked as if they walked right off the runway with their perfectly blown-out hair and perfect bodies.
Of Bishops And Pawns (Ridge Rogues Book 2) Page 9
