Alone and sitting on the bed with her hair looped into a messy bun, Natalie had her work spread out around her on her amoeba-patterned bedspread. Her eyes stuck on me.
“Finally back to take a shower?” Natalie commented.
I rolled my eyes as I beelined toward the door.
“I do think there is a hygienic clause in the whole roommate agreement crap they make us sign at the beginning of the year.”
“I stayed with family,” I said. “Very good water system. Very good soap. Eucalyptus to exfoliate my pores. It was basically like a spa. Would you like me to bring you some next time?”
“No, thanks. I’m good.”
“Do you really think I’m that disgusting, or are we just projecting? I expected the room to smell a bit more like a brothel, so I’m glad we are still on the same page there,” I threw right back. I was impressed with myself tonight, minding my own business.
She huffed as she leaned back over her binder, clicking her pen shut. “He didn’t stay.”
“Excuse me?”
“My boyfriend. He didn’t stay,” Natalie enunciated, staring at me.
I paused, reaching for my towel on the back of the wardrobe door. “Oh.”
“Yeah,” she said stiffly. “Oh.”
I turned back around, dropping my backpack and things against my desk with a heavy thud. Would’ve been nice to know that. However, I never gave Natalie my phone number, or vice versa. Friends did that sort of thing. And we weren’t friends. It almost hurt that I did still want to get a shower.
I reached for my shower caddy, sure to flash the black soap that I’d brought a fresh batch of from Gertie’s before I turned back around toward the bathroom.
“I saw that you put in a funding request for some sort of project on campus,” said Natalie suddenly before I could make it home free. Or rather, private bathroom free.
I paused, holding on to the old doorframe that rocked in my hand. “I did.”
“I guess we’ll see what happens with that.”
A heaviness settled on my chest as I huffed out a breath of air. “Yeah. Guess so, Nat.”
“I’m going to bed soon, so don’t be loud, coming back in.”
“No other interesting things going on around campus tonight?” I ask, surprised to see her already in her pajamas so soon.
Her eyes tore away from mine. She shut her books. “I’m going to bed.”
I walked down the hall to the bathroom.
“Sleep tight,” I murmured to myself.
Stepping under the water, I made sure the curtain was closed before I took a deep sigh, feeling the tension of my muscles and in my shoulders from the day. It had been a long day—a long year already, and we weren’t even in the throes of fall yet.
And yet it still wasn’t enough time for me to figure out what stupid major I needed to be approved by the registrar or to contemplate and sort out exactly what Gertie had offered up the other day.
Because for that one, I knew what I wanted my answer to be.
Just like Gertie knew exactly who I was when no one else seemed to get it.
Except maybe Ryan. I still couldn’t stop running his words through my head. So simple as he’d asked me when I was going to think I was enough to let him hang out with me. I still couldn’t quite figure that out either. Because I was enough.
I knew I was enough.
Now. Always. Even when it seemed I’d forgotten.
