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I get my first load in, then spend three full minutes reading the back of the detergent bottle, because my mom buys pods at home and apparently cheap liquid detergent requires measurements. There are four lines inside the cap, and none of them are labeled in a way that helps with the amount of clothes I actually have in the machine. I’m squinting at one when a washer two machines down creaks open.
It’s him. The guy from outside Corvin. Dining-hall asshole.
He has a laundry bag over one shoulder and the same blank expression he had outside the dorm, like being screamed at by a stranger didn’t make the list of interesting things that happened to him last week. His eyes land on me, register nothing, and move away, and he starts loading a washer. Somehow that annoys me too.
I pick a line that looks reasonable, pour, dump it where the diagram says, and screw the cap back on. He throws a pod into his machine. I look at the pod, then at my bottle. I need to just buy the pods.
We close our washers at almost the same time. His starts immediately. Mine makes me select six different settings before it decides I’m qualified to wash my own clothes. His says forty-one minutes. Mine says forty-three. Great.
I set the detergent on top of the machine and pull my phone out before I can stop myself. Nothing from Evan. My stomach drops, a small, stupid, sinking thing, like I’d been hoping, and I hate it enough that I lock the screen and shove the phone back in my pocket.
Beside me, a washer door opens. The asshole is loading the rest of his clothes into the machine between his and mine, the one I was about to use for my second load. The one on my other side is out of order.
“I was going to use that one,” I say.
He glances at me. “Okay.” He keeps loading.
“Okay?” I scoff. “I said I was going to use it.”
“You weren’t using it.”
“My basket is literally right here.”
He looks down at my basket and reaches for another pod.
“Can you use a different one?”
He looks past me at the washer on my other side. “You can.”
I turn and read out of order off the panel again. “I was here first. I have two loads.”
“So do I.” He drops the pod in.
“Are you serious?” I say. “Take your stuff out.”
That gets him to actually look at me. “No.”
“I was standing right here,” I say, noticing that my voice is getting louder.
He blinks. “And I used an empty washer.”
“I was about to use it.”
“Then you should’ve used it.”
My mouth falls open. His eyes drop to it for half a second before they come back to mine.
“You are such an asshole. Take your clothes out.”
“No.” He closes the lid, presses start, picks up his empty laundry bag, and walks out while I’m still deciding whether getting kicked out of Corvin for assault with Tide would be worth it.
“Dick,” I mutter after him.
Every machine is running, so I find the one with the least time left, ten minutes, and hoist myself up onto my washer to wait. It takes fifteen. A girl in a brown knit sweater finally comes in, sees me sitting there with my basket, says, “Oh my God, sorry, sorry,” and scoops her clothes into her arms and into an open dryer. I load machine six, measure to the line, and start it.
Upstairs, Tessa is on her bed with a textbook, exactly where I left her.
“Some guy stole my washer,” I say, dropping my empty basket by the door.
