Rumours Only Grow [Jamilton]

Scene Three {Thomas}

I Can't Believe People. Or My Roommate.

I picked at my food while I listened to James and Aaron argue about who the better Schuyler sister was. I could still hear whispers and snickers from the people that had been in the crowd during my embarrassing incident. I felt like everyone's eyes were on me, and it annoyed me to no end. The tightness from my chest that I had felt during the occurrence was returning. Finally, I heard the end of my best friends' debate as they turned to me. 

"Thomas, you need to eat. You don't ever have breakfast, and you only ate dinner yesterday." James shook his head. 

"I'm trying to watch my weight." I huffed. "I weigh far too much." 

"That's not the way you diet, Thomas." Aaron pulled his phone from his pocket. "Besides, you weigh far too little. What was your weight yesterday?" He knew very well that I checked my weight every day after dinner. 

"One hundred eleven pounds and six ounces." I shrugged. "Why, what are you trying to prove?"

Aaron's eyes went wide as he loaded a website on what I assume was the healthy weight range for a person of my height and age. "Thomas, according to this, your weight should be at least one hundred twenty pounds for your gender, height, and age. You need to gain nine pounds in order to have a healthy weight."

James, who had been scrolling through Eliza's Instagram feed, stopped in his tracks and looked over at me. "Thomas, you should see the nurse about this. You could be anorexic."

"I'm not anorexic, James." I lowered my voice to a whisper. I was worried that other people would hear our conversation. "You're just jealous because I happen to be skinnier than you."

"We're serious. If you keep this up, you could end up really sick." James turned off and pocketed his phone. "If anyone knows how awful it is to be sick, it's me."

"Look, I appreciate your concern." I sighed. I finally took a bite of the pasta on my plate. "I think I know what I'm doing. But after all, I'm "quite frankly idiotic"." 

"Don't listen to Hamilton. His mouth runs like a faucet. He doesn't know what he's talking about half of the time. He doesn't know you at all and has no right to say that." Aaron insisted. "If he knew what you were actually like, he wouldn't say those things. He has a tendency to stand by what he says. He wouldn't stand by a mountain of lies."

"He's right, Thomas. Hamilton is probably just jealous of you." James agreed. 

I leaned back in my seat, shaking my head. "Nobody has any reason to be jealous of me, James. If they are, I think they should be the one contacting a doctor, not me."

~~~

I entered the dormitory, raising an eyebrow as I spotted Alexander with a cup of coffee from the commissary typing away on his desk mounted laptop. The model was probably four years old, which had to be the oldest model I had ever seen. With my family's endless income from our two major businesses, I always had the funds to buy new electronics. All of my belongings were top of the line and up to date. I couldn't imagine working on such an old piece of junk. He seemed to have sensed my presence, for he removed his glasses and turned to face me. 

"Jefferson, about earlier-" He started, but I interjected. 

"It's fine. I don't want to talk about it." I rolled my eyes, walking over to my dresser and pulling out a loose magenta hoodie with a pair of sweatpants to change into. 

Alexander raised his hands in the air in defeat. "Fine. I was just trying to apologize. I think I might've gone a little further than I intended to."

"I'm fine, Hamilton. Don't you have something to write?" I asked irritably as I made my way to the bathroom to change. 

Alexander turned around in his chair, picking his glasses back up from the desk and getting back to work. I myself entered the bathroom and changed, folding my clothes. I had put them on right after my shower earlier, so I figured an hour or two of wearing them wouldn't make them dirty. 

"Are you really still writing?" I raised an eyebrow as I put away the clothes I had been wearing before.

"What does it look like?" Alexander chuckled. He didn't bother to look at me, although his fingers stopped their little dance on the keyboard when he heard my voice. 

I went silent, glancing at him briefly as his typing continued. I made the conclusion that yes, he was really still writing.

I grabbed my songbook from out of my dresser, grabbing a pen from my bedside table as I began to focus myself on my own work. This work was my latest song, one of the first ones I've ever written that was intended to be about love. Of course, this wasn't a Taylor Swift song about a break up I had or anything of that sort. It was about how much difficulty I had learning how to genuinely love someone. I had been in a relationship briefly during my time in France, but I wasn't emotionally invested. I, in fact, had been the one to receive the news I was being broken up with. Maybe it was the fact that I had just been interested in not being the only teenager in America when I came back that hadn't had their first kiss. 

A question occurred to me as I wrote: Why did  Hamilton write?

"Hey, why do you write?" I asked, moving my gaze over to my roommate. "You do it all the time, you must have a reason."

Alexander didn't answer, although I could tell he was considering the question in his mind. I could tell this because his fingers once again had paused and his brows furrowed slightly

"At least tell me if you're going to answer it or not." I sat up to stop the aching in my back from my slouched posture. 

Again, an answer didn't leave his mouth for a few minutes. At last, he spoke. "Writing has always been my escape. There was a hard time in my life where I had a hard time motivating myself to stay alive." A light sigh escaped his throat, his hands removing themselves from his keyboard as he leaned back in his seat. "Whenever I found writing, I found a reason to keep going. It went from being something that I had done only for schoolwork to something that I can't live without." He looked over to me. "That's why I write." Alexander explained. I could tell it was a more of a personal question that I had intended. 

"That's pretty interesting." I remarked, mostly to myself as I wrote a side note in my songbook. Alexander Hamilton writes because it helped him through a hard time and became something he couldn't live without. It was a terrible summary of all of those heartfelt words, and I had no reason to write this down. Well, I had one. Maybe one day, this would come in handy. 

END SCENE THREE