“We got an email,” he says, glancing at his phone.
“What does it say?”
He squints, his head dropping toward me a few times, and I instinctively stick my arm around his shoulders to give him support. “I’m too tired to read right now.” Callum’s voice is weaker than I’ve ever heard it, and he’s not a loud guy to begin with. “Can you help me out?”
Did he?—
He asked me for help, and I won’t make a big deal out of it.
“Of course.” I take his phone and scroll back to the top of the email to read it.
And then I read it again.
Then I scan the main part a third time, in case my reading comprehension flew out the fucking window.
Nope, I’m seeing things right. The university’s so-called careful, meticulous planning apparently resulted in the most boneheaded solution that’s ever cursed my eyeballs: busing the one hundred and fifty affected students to and from hotels in St. Johnsbury.
Almost forty minutes away from campus.
In anotherstate.
And the one hundred and fifty students will be three or four to a room.
“What does it say?” Callum’s voice snaps me back to the more pressing issue at hand: the fact that he’s about to be completelyshaftedby WMU.
I hand his phone back. “Uh, they’re sticking you in a hotel. In Vermont. With two roommates. Or up to three.”
Callum seems to wake up upon hearing that, and he groans. “Are you kidding me?” He scans the email before shutting his phone off. “That’s… I don’t know how to describe it.”
“Bullshit?” I supply.
“Yeah, that.” He doesn’t say anything else, choosing instead tobury his face in his hands and sigh, clenching a fist through his dark brown hair.
Yeah. This man isspent.
I hesitate for a moment, hovering awkwardly above him. He turned me down yesterday when I offered for him to live with me. But that was before he had an idea of how incompetent this school’s administration is, and how horrific his living prospects are.
I settle next to Callum on the creaky cot. “You know, my offer still stands. I live a lot closer to campus than Vermont. Say the word, and I’ll set my couch up for you.”
He takes his head out of his hands and blinks his red-streaked eyes at me. He opens his mouth, almost as if there are wordsphysicallyon the tip of his tongue, but it still takes him a second to speak.
“That’s so generous of you, but I can’t. Thanks though.”
I don’t know if it’s stubbornness or something else. Callum is one tough cookie.
Cookies aren’t meant to be tough. Crispy, sure, but the center still needs to have some give.
Maybe I can bake him cookies and tempt him into a better living arrangement. I gave him the last of my most recent batch yesterday.
Fuck no.That’d be too much.
Wait, is he turning me down becauseI’mbeing too much?
Shit.
I fire off a text to Sabrina.
Is it a bad idea to invite Callum to live with me bc of the maple hall sitch
