Housemates

Chapter 36

Mia walked across the room, and down a hallway, apparently heading for her bedroom.

For a moment Ellie was surprised, and wanted to ask if they could sit on a couch. Then she realized. This was a share house, so of course they were going to Mia’s bedroom, just like Ellie would at home.

Ellie was suddenly nervous again. A bedroom seemed somehow more consequential than a lounge.

She stood where she was, hesitating briefly. Then told herself to stop being silly and walk. She told herself she was here for sex, so she needed to be in Mia’s bedroom, and she also told herself that she had to stop making every single little thing such a problem, all of the time.

She followed Mia down the hallway.

Mia went to the end, and pushed a door open with her foot, and went inside.

Ellie went to the doorway, and stopped to look, almost curious.

She saw a normal room. A good-sized room, on the side of the building that got the afternoon sun. She saw the obvious things a room ought to have, a bed and a dresser and a desk. She saw some nice touches as well. A desk chair that looked expensive, made of wood rather than cloth and plastic. Framed antique prints of old advertising posters on the walls. A bedspread that Ellie was almost certain she’d seen in a magazine. The room was tidy, and the room was elegant, and the only thing that seemed out of place was a TV hanging on the wall, and a pile of video game machines on a shelf underneath it.

Otherwise, it was a nice room. Ellie had expected superheros and pictures of guns, but it wasn’t that. It was a nice, tasteful room, filled with nice tasteful things.

Ellie was suddenly intimidated. Seeing Mia here, she seemed more intensely her than she did hanging out with Mark. Ellie wasn’t sure she wasn’t a little scared by that.

She kept looking around the room.

Mia had a lot of clothes, nice clothes, mostly hung up carefully in the wardrobe. She had dresses that Ellie had never seen her in, and almost couldn’t imagine her wearing. She a shoe rack hanging on the inside of the wardrobe door, so the door wouldn’t completely close. She had a lot of shoes. She had a nice shoes, with fairly tall heels.

Ellie was used to Mia in jeans and shorts and work suits. She wasn’t used to her in dresses.

She was almost confused.

Mia went and sat on the bed. She put her glass on a beside table, and slid backwards so she could lean on the bed-end, and then looked at Ellie, still in the doorway.

“What’s wrong?” Mia said, and seemed suddenly worried.

“Nothing,” Ellie said, and went into the room. She looked around, then carefully sat on the chair. The chair, rather than the bed.

The chair had rollers underneath, and slid a little when Ellie sat down. She rolled it closer to the bed, so it would be easier to talk.

Talk or whatever.

Mia leaned back on the pillows. The extra pillows she had to lean on, because she was someone who had pillows. Pillows that she’d put on her tidy bed which she’d obviously made this morning.

Ellie’s was a tangle of bedding and that she straightened right before she got in. She only had two pillows, and one was on the floor right now, because she’d thrown it there three nights ago when it had been in the way of her laptop, while she watched a movie, and she’d never picked it up again.

Mia was tidy about her bed. Ellie wasn’t sure if that meant something.

Mia had a tidy room, filled with nice things, and was sitting on her tidy bed, looking at Ellie, almost puzzled.