Guess That Is How I Know You

Chapter II

February 20, 2016

It is starting to get rainy and stuffy. The nice windy weather is gone, and that meant I had to get a whole different set of my wardrobe cleaned in order to have appropriate clothing for this hellish climate.

I had moved to a new building located closer to campus two weeks into the new year—a couple things made me set for this one, the first was the decent apartments, and the second was the communal laundry room in the basement.

Waking up I figured today would be as good a day as any to do some laundry since this Saturday was bound to be an uneventful one—or so I thought.

I remember being a freshman and buying a few of those cliché t-shirts at the campus store, now I only used them to sleep or stay inside. I had put on one of those t-shirts—although this one was mainly plain with only a discreet small logo on the back—along with black leggings and flip flops.

I plugged my headphones on my phone—even though there was nothing on— and laid my phone on top of my clothe-full basket before leaving my apartment.

I usually had my headphones on just so I could avoid small talk in places like a communal laundry. Most of my neighbors were at least ten years older than me.

My building was not exactly cheap to afford for most students, which meant I would not have much in common to talk about with my neighbors and I was not in the mood to serve as their road down memory lane about their time back in grad school or anything like that.

I had chosen to go down once it was close to noon, figuring there would be fewer people then.

Walking in, the first thing I noticed was the strong smell of clean clothes—a soothing mixture of lavender and something else I could not pinpoint—and the bad yellow lightning that made it hard to see the back of the communal laundry room, which, for me, was a rest to my eyes and my incessant migraine.

I chose a washer close to the door to deposit my laundry—some darkish mid-length dresses and pencil skirts, as well as couple of gray and black band shirts—sitting down on one of the benches in the middle of the room to wait.

On the left side there were about six washers while on the right side stood the dryers—about the same amount and distribution as the washers—, it was a lengthy room with a large counter on the back wall so people could fold their pieces after drying them.

Maybe it was the fact I was not exactly paying attention to my surroundings, or the disposal of the communal laundry, or even how I had wasted no time to close my eyes once I sat down.

About twenty minutes after I walked in, someone at the counter dropped a basket-full worth of clean clothes on the floor disrupting my bubble of silence and making me subconsciously turn to the side to observe.

I was surprised by the sudden noise, but mostly by what my eyes met once they adjusted to the light to look at the clumsy neighbor whose clothes were then scattered on the floor.

At first, I figured it was too much of a coincidence, just someone that looked a lot like her, but as she turned around, either to look for help or to see if anyone else had witnessed her misfortune, our eyes met, and I was able to properly see her face.

Those caramel eyes were familiar to me, but the blushed cheeks and an abashed semblance was something I had yet to see on the face that usually resembled confidence and empowerment.

The first thing to cross my mind was that it ought to have been as awkward to her as it was to me. After all, people just do not forecast to bump into one of their students while doing something as intimate as their laundry, especially if they happen to be dressed just as casually as we were.