A smile flickered on my lips. “Right, well, we should put these out in the common room for whoever wants some and then donate the rest. And Bennett?”
“Yeah?”
“Out of curiosity, how many times a day do you think a person changes their tampon?”
His eyes bug out a little, and he is completely perplexed. “I don’t know? Fourteen?”
I pat him on the shoulder and his eyes, full of warmth, follow the movement. “Not quite. What’s in the bags?”
He shakes out the bags to reveal brand-new linen sheets in a soft dove gray, and a feather duvet plus four fluffy pillows. “We can keep the wall of pillows, of course,” he says. “But I just figured the room looked a little out of place. And if you don’t like it, we can—”
I stand up on tiptoe and use his shoulder to balance while I give him a light kiss on the cheek.
His whole body goes rigid, and I immediately step back.
“Sorry,” I say. “I just wanted to thank you for taking care of me and now this.”
A hand drifts to his cheek briefly and he nods. “I’m going to run to the gym, but I’ll get these laundered so we can—”
“I know how to use a washing machine,” I tell him. “It’s the least I can do.”
The apples of his cheeks have a pink tinge as he clears his throat and throws a few things in a bag. “I’ll see you later, then. Glad to seeyou’re feeling better.” He lingers in the doorway for a moment with an air of regret.
“Have fun at the gym.”
“Just doing what I can to maintain this cute butt,” he says with a smirk.
He’s gone before I can offer up any kind of retort about how it’s ungentlemanly of him to even bring up anything I said while I was deliriously ill, so I just hold my pillow to my face and let it swallow my muffled scream.
After I get the duvet and the sheets started in two different machines, I sit on top of a recently used dryer, which is a warm relief in the damp basement of Haystack Hall.
I answer a few texts from my mom and nibble on the corner of my pencil as I consider the roughed-out concepts I sketched for my pottery midterm. Even though Tate and I still make fun of the art majors in a good-hearted sort of way, I’m finding that I actually enjoy letting my brain shut off as I focus on the sole purpose of creating something out of nothing.
“Mind if I join you?”
When I glance up, Daisy is in the doorway with an overflowing basket of laundry, cheeks flushed and eyes puffy.
“Come on in,” I tell her. “In fact, the dryer next to me is still warm if you want. If I close my eyes I can pretend that I’m in a really nice car with a seat heater.”
She sighs and begins to throw things into the machine. “That’s perfect. I’m on my period and if I could just numb my uterus with heat, that would be ideal.”
“Preach, baby.”
After she drops her coins in the machine and adds detergent, she hops up next to me. Daisy is taller than me, and her upper body is narrow with small, perky boobs. Her hips, though, are magnificent. I’ve been attracted to a few girls in the past, and Daisy’s hips make me understand the phrasebiological imperative, because I don’t even have the right equipment and evenIwant to get her pregnant.
She sighs again, and this time it’s a little more tortured, reminding me so much of when we were little and Bennett would pout, dragging his feet until someone finally asked him what was going on.
“Is something wrong?” I oblige her. “You seem a little upset.”
As if on cue, she tosses her book to the side and swivels to face me. “My hockey player won’t sleep with me until I agree to be his girlfriend.” The words practically steamroll out of her.
“And that’s a problem?” I don’t know Daisy very well, but she screams relationship material.
“Uh, yes. Ahugeproblem.” She jumps down from the dryer and then shuts the door to the room. “I’m a virgin,” she whispers. “Like in every way. I’ve done some hot making out, and I gave half a hand job once, but that’s basically it.”
“Only half?” It’s not the point, obviously, but that’s a story I want to hear.
She leans on the machine next to me with her head in her hands. “Yes! It was the hockey player, actually. His name is Aaron, by the way. Anyway, things were going great. I practiced over the summer with cooking oil on a cucumber. I didn’t mean to, but I was just in the kitchen and then—whatever. I was in the middle of, you know, and—is it weird that I felt powerful when I was… holding it?” Shepauses and I realize she’s waiting for a response. “I mean, you’re married, so obviously you’re getting the most action out of anyone else on our floor.”
