Edith stood in her dorm room looking at the mess that was her belongings. It was Thursday and she still had so much cleaning to accomplish before Friday's departure. Sighing she walked over to the counter and started some coffee in the cracked dormitory coffee pot. This mess called her dorm was going to take an eternity to sort through.
Edith stepped her way back around the dirty piles of clothing as the cloying smells of coffee began to fill the air. Black coffee smelled like her grandma, who lived far off in her own universe. It had been a good five years since the last time Edith had seen her grandma and it was all due to the fact that Edith and her mom would never live up to her approval. What was a person suppose to do about such a biased disapproval? It was situations like her grandma that made Edith believe most of what made a person an adult was sitting back and letting things happen. Like her dad used to lecture her when she would throw a tantrum that she was too old for. He would sit back and say, "You're not a child any more. You need to sit back and act like an adult. Anything you're thinking about doing while you're angry, don't do that." She never learned that lesson until it was too late and to this day continued to struggle with it.
It hurt to think about him and Edith lifted up a pile of dirty clothes and threw them into the hamper and also tried to throw her feelings in with it. The light on the coffee pot went off and she dragged her body over to the heavenly pot of happiness. It had been a long week of finals, by far her hardest year yet and the amount of coffee she had consumed in this one week was enough to fill the Hoover Dam. Thankfully the academic stress was behind her, it was thoughts of how the holidays would go that made her face break out.
Edith leaned against the plastic counter top, sipping her coffee and looked at the wall beside her. Along the banister there was a crack on the wood that spiraled all the way up to the ceiling. Edith traced this crack as far up as her lean arms would reach feeling the split wood trail against her finger print. Her arm stopped at least three feet short of were the crack stopped. Right where wall merged with ceiling. She sighed, a deep soul sigh, too old for someone her age. Life was just like the crack in the wall. Her reaching but it was always too far for her to reach.
She leaned her head against the wall and looked around at her roommates side. Lindsay had had an easier week with her jury on Monday and her finals done on Tuesday. She had packed up Wednesday afternoon while Edith had been on her side of the room studying for her physics test. Lindsay left with a flourish, kissing Edith on the cheek and then strutting out of the room belting loud enough to be heard out the door, confident with what life had to offer her. Once three floors away her voice disappeared and Edith had an uneasy feeling settle in her stomach as the silence became overwhelming. Alone with her thoughts she became nervous and she had slammed her physics text book shut and flown out the room barely shoving a jacket on to take an hour long walk around campus. When that was not enough she had gone to the park to run where no one could see her.
Now the silence was a comfort. Edith sucked in a calming breath and looked out the small rectangular window provided and saw a mountain range of buildings all looking like they were climbing on top of each other to get the best seat in the house. There was a small knock at her door, but one had been etched into her brain since freshman year. She turned around and pulled open the door for Jude. He was leaning against the door frame grinning cheekily at her. There was humor in his eyes that she was so glad to see back now that his jury's were over.
"Coffee?" She smiled and raised the mug she was holding to him. He smirked before taking the mug in his hands to take a sip. He knew her addiction for coffee was severe and there was likely no breaking her from that habit. Edith left the door open and walked back over to her pile of clothes she needed to finish shoving into the laundry bad. Jude followed her into the room and leaned onto the counter to take a sip of coffee and grimaced as the black liquid hit his taste buds. He himself was an avid creamer fan and had stalked the girls dorm cabinet with two large creamers. One hazelnut and the other chocolate. The chocolate one was the one he reached for as he opened the cabinet behind him.
"Guess what you get to do." Edith called from behind him. Jude glanced around and saw the mounds of clothes littering the dorm room floor.
He glanced over at her with his eyebrows raised, "I can tell you what i'm not going to do."
She laughed and to Jude it was like the sound of bell towers on a wedding day ringing and raining down all the happiness in the world.
She walked over to him with a laundry bag and smiled at him, "If you're going to drink my coffee, you're going to help me with my laundry." He rolled his eyes but took the bag.
Edith stuck her head into her closet to find another laundry bag. It was dark and there and something smelled funny. Not something she wanted to think about at the moment. She pulled out the laundry bag and began to shove another pile of clothes into the bag. This was a task that would take all day and she was just one person. One who should not amass this many dirty clothes. But if one did wait until the last moment to do laundry, the work really did pile up.
"What is this?" She heard Jude say behind her. She spun around worried that Jude had begun to rummage in her underwear pile while she had been turned around. The man really had no shame. But thankfully he was only holding up a shirt. Her favorite shirt. Also her most embarrassing shirt. It was a cat riding a unicorn wearing a santa hat with a rainbow shooting out of its butt.
"That...is my sleep shirt." Edith said hesitantly ducking her head down to hide the flush that was beginning to rise in her cheeks.
Jude started laughing. "Are you serious? This is the most distasteful piece of fabric I have ever seen in my entire life! Where did you even buy this?" He continued to laugh holding the shirt up trying to get a better view of it.
"Oh shush you!" Edith threw some dirty clothes at him, her giggles beginning to rise beneath the surface of her tightly pressed lips. The clothes aimed for his head all but missed except for a tank top that caught him on the shoulder. It fell to the ground and he continued to laugh while he bent over to pick up the clothes and shove them into the laundry bag he was carrying.
"Come on, quit making fun of me. However, you should know that is the damn comfiest t shirt I have ever worn in my life and some people will never achieve that kind of greatness in their lifetime." Edith snapped but smiling under that fake anger and pointed a thin elegant finger at him. Then she turned around and marched out the room leaving Jude to catch up. Of course he could be the only person on this earth who thought Edith's fingers were elegant. Most would just call them bony.
