20-year-old Leah Whiteford needs to get away. That's how she finds herself over 2000 miles from home in the bustling city of Chicago that is the furthest thing from the life she has left behind in Los Angeles.
She fully intends to keep her head dow...
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Grant my last request and just let me hold you Don't shrug your shoulders, lay down beside me.
~ Last Request (Paolo Nutini)
"I really don't think that this is necessary at all." I tell the two men in the middle of the room. Alistair is holding Kaiden by the waist, stretching him up towards the ceiling as he holds a lightbulb in his hand like the Statue of Liberty. Their dorm had outrageously high ceilings for absolutely no reason at all and the lightbulb had went while Kaiden and I were working on our short stories for professor Lundt.
Alistair had burst into the room with his eyes covered like he expected us to be doing something inappropriate till he found us staring at him, each of our hands in the same sleeve of cookies, me on the bed and Kaiden in the bean bag, writing. He apparently couldn't change it himself leading to the display in front of me from where I lean in the doorway.
"Ali, hold still for fuck sake." Kaiden says, trying to screw the new bulb in and Alistair makes a tutting sound and gives me a look against the other guys back "I'm trying, you're not that light by the way. And I'm only taller than you by a few inches." He complains but Kaiden ignores him.
"Couldn't you have just used a step ladder?" I ask them both as the new bulb is screwed in and Alistair let's Kaiden down, breathing heavily because he really wasn't that much smaller than him. "Sure, but we don't have a step ladder and I'm not going looking for one. Last time I stood on his back and nearly snapped my neck when he sneezed." He explains and Alistair makes a grumbling noise like he remembers that all too well.
"You two are like an extremely chaotic married couple." I'm shaking my head, smiling and the two of them return it. Alistair goes back to watching football on the TV, stretching his large body out across the length of the couch and Kaiden makes his way back to me, still grinning.
We'd settled into a kind of routine with each other, all of us, over the last few weeks. Alistair, Kaiden and I worked together or covered shifts whenever one of us was free at Jackie's, and I'd met the real Jackie who was extremely old and yet incredibly fashionable. Alistair and I shared odd yet wonderful moments where we could genuinely relate to each other on the strangest things and it had become clear to me that despite his wealthy family he was one of the most down to earth people I'd ever met.
Mandy had established herself as my partner in crime, turning up at the diner occasionally to mess with us and we had begun hanging out in each others room with coffee and snacks and laughing until the small hours. She was so vibrant and accepting that it had been easy to fall into that pattern with her like she was a long lost sister to me.
And Kaiden... Kaiden and I had become somewhat inseparable. We woke each other up with good morning texts and went out of our way to bump into each other on campus. This morning he had walked passed me with a grin and called "Stop following me stalker." behind him. The look in his eyes was so wicked that I couldn't even respond even if I found myself doing similar things to him.
