Moving On

Eight

EIGHT

S a n d r a

What the fuck, I think.

I think it's too much to deal with two drunk persons on one freaking night. I mean, Art was alright since I've got someone to help me, but Austin? Nah. He's humongous compared to me and remember what I said about unconscious peoples' weights? Yeah.

"What the fuck did you do?" I ask the insensible piece of shit slumped on my bed as I make my way to him, carefully avoiding his retch on the carpet floor.

"I drank. Duh," he says in reply. I guess he's not that drunk if he can form a coherent thought despite how he looks to me. "I'm not drunk, sweetheart."

"Don't fucking call me sweetheart. This isn't the Hunger Games and you're not Haymitch," I snap. You look a hundred times better than Woody Harrelson, is what I don't say.

"M-kay," he says dreamily. Maybe he is drunk. Gaaahhh I don't know. I've had a few beers too, you know. My thoughts are sort of sluggish now; my alertness disappeared from being protective over Art the moment I made my way back to my room. And now Austin wants me to babysit him. Fucker.

"Hey," I nudge him aggressively. "Don't sleep, jerk. Hey!" I shout.

"What?" He irritably says as his head snaps up at me. His eyes are bloodshot and his mouth reeks of liquor. Pretty obvious that he's intoxicated-well, like me, but much much worse. But not drunk enough.

"If you're not drunk, why'd you vomit all over the damn carpet?" I ask him.

"I couldn't find the bathroom."

I nostrils flared and I want to strangle him then and there, but instead I threw my hands up in the air (not the party kind, mind you). "Jesus, it's right over there! It's not going to take one kilometre! This is a small room!" I shout. "Now who's supposed to clean this?" I point at his puke. "Me? Na-ah. I didn't come here to clean up after drunken idiots." Well, except maybe Art because girls have each other's backs, but I don't say that of course.

"Call housekeeping. The number's taped on the telephone on our bedside table, there's no need to shout," he says calmly. "You know, I don't understand why they call it 'housekeeping' when technically we're in a dorm, and-"

I wasn't listening to what he's saying. I immediately yanked the receiver and pressed in the right numbers. His retch is starting to smell around the room and I'm not one to endure that.

After a few painful seconds, the damn housekeeping person finally picked up. "Hey, what's happened?"

"My roommate's drunk and he puked all over the carpet."

"Oh," the dude says. "Okay. I'll be up there. Give me five minutes."

And so I wait. Austin keeps on talking about shit, but I tune all of 'em out. I'm pissed at him from acting all so cocky around the girls this afternoon and now he had a surprised laid out for me when I get back to our room: a freaking mess. We haven't even been roommate for a solid twenty-four hours yet and I want to fucking kill him already.

Sorry for all the cussing. I'm just so pissed. And there's a reason that this story's PG-13. *wink*

After ten, not five minutes, the freaking housekeeping finally knocks on the door.

"What took you so fucking long?" I complain the moment I open the door. "Come in, it's smelling already."

He muttered a bunch of apologies but I just wave them off. Austin starts conversing with the housekeeping dude but he doesn't pay attention to anything Austin was saying.

"So there we were, on the beach, trying to figure out why our Physics teacher was such a dick." Drunk storytelling time with Austin. Great.

"Good for you," the housekeeping guy said, and I realized it's the first time he's said anything, and he's been here for nearly half an hour.

"What's that?" I ask as I look at the spraying bottle he has in his hand that looks like... You know what? I'm not even going to say it. This story's PG-13, not R. I'll let you guess what the liquid inside the spray bottle looks like.

"It's white vinegar and warm water," he replies. "It's for the baking soda," he explains further, and I'm starting to understand.

After cleaning up the literal puke of Austin, there was this huge ass stain that doesn't look good. He started sort of kneading the baking soda onto the carpet, like powdering a stain on your favourite white shirt to partially make the ugly ass stain go away.

"I'm going to leave this," he says as he sets the spray bottle on one of the desks in the room. "Just spray it if you still feel like you have the need to. That stain's probably going to be out a few days from now."

"Okay," I say. "Thank you."

"Yeah, no problem." He stands up from kneeling on the carpet floor and starts fixing his tools back on this little yellow basket he brought with him. "Return the spray bottle at the front desk if you're done with it. Just say it's Andrew's."

"Andrew? Is that your name?" I ask him.

"Yeah. See you," he says and makes his way to the door.

"Thanks again, Andrew. Sorry I yelled at you a while ago," I apologize.

"S'okay," he says dismissively. "I get that a lot. Welcome, frosh." And he's gone.

-

I didn't know that I was staring at my cup of coffee until Jessica told me I was. Turns out I'm so fucking drained after cleaning up after Austin. I dressed him in fresh clothes because the ones he was wearing reeked. Like totally reeked. Even hobos wouldn't stand the smell. That's how bad it was.

And I wasn't going to sleep in one room with a smelly guy. Plus, he was on my bed. We haven't talked yet if we're going to switch beds because I don't know if I can force myself to sleep in that mattress soaked with his entire liquor stench-unless I change the linings.

I even wiped that bitch clean last night. I ran a damp cloth over his body to get rid of the remaining stink he has left. It sucked. I'm exhausted.

Most of you probably think I'm a slut right now because I took care of my drunk roommate and I changed his clothes and I cleaned his body or whatever the hell you're thinking of me right now.

The things is, I don't care. I needed to do that. I'm not going to just leave him there, was I? I'm a good person. I help people, even if I'm kind of bitchy.

Plus, it gave me another reason to hate him. Win-win.

"What happened last night?" Jessica looks at me with a concerned look on her face. "Did you get sick from the party?"

"No," I say as I sip from my coffee. "I got sick from my roommate."

"Let me guess. He was drunk," she says with a smirk on the corner of her lips. "And you needed to baby him. Change his clothes and everything."

"Yes." I sigh tiredly. "This is the start of me hating college parties."

"Nah, don't," Jessica says. She puts down her latte. "They're actually fun, if you rule out cleaning up after our disgusting roommates, but they're fun."

"I can't say that," I chuckle.

"Why?"

I didn't meet a formidable guy last night, I think. But instead I say, "I just can't. I'm used to drinking but I don't like looking out for other people but myself when drinking. Austin kind of ruined that."

"Ah," Jessica says like she had an epiphany.

"What?"

"You like him," she says smiling. "You like him and the semester hasn't even begun yet."

Do I? No I don't. Absolutely not. I'm not going to do that. Ever. It's just a bonus that he looks exactly like Justin. "Yeah, I don't think so."

"I'm going to have to change that," a voice says, and Jessica sees him before I do. I turn around and I see that I was right on my guess who spoke.

I don't understand what he just said, though.