Page 10

Brooke

I’m in some strange version of hell. I’m sure of it.

My hands are covering my eyes because behind my hands are boxes piled on top of boxes covering the entire living area of the apartment.

“B, you’re going to have to look at them eventually,” Cami says from the floor with her head in a box as she rifles through a box.

“Nope, if I don’t look, they don’t exist,” I whisper while still firmly holding my hands over my eyes.

Twenty minutes ago, the truck arrived with all my stuff.

Three weeks after the evening we do not speak of, even with Cami arguing daily with Josh about where the stuff was.

He kept saying it was scheduled and brushing her off, then she randomly got a text this morning saying it’d be here in an hour.

“Who brings this much stuff to college?” Adam grunts, and I move my fingers to see him bringing another box up the stairs, and I groan.

“I didn’t! I don’t even know what half of these are.” I waved my hands towards all the boxes. “This must be someone else’s stuff.”

Gunnar walks in with two more boxes on top of each other and turns, trying to find a space before putting them on the couch.

“Oh my God, how many more?” I exclaim, pushing some boxes into more manageable spaces. I step over Cami, who’s started looking in each box instead of helping.

“Like ten more.” He sighs, taking his cap off and wiping his brow.

“I’ve got some bad news,” Grant says, walking in before putting his hands on his hips. “He is insisting on dropping the furniture off.”

“No, I told Josh I’m not taking the furniture.” I frantically look at Cami while climbing over boxes to talk to the driver.

“He’s already unloading.” He sighs. “And it’s a lot; we might need to move some stuff over to ours.” he looks around and at all the boxes.

Bear walks in, holding my childhood bedroom bedside tables, and my mouth drops. The truck didn’t pick any furniture up from my mom’s, so how did they make their way to Cami’s apartment?

“Um, B, why did you pack your childhood Easy-Bake oven for college?” Cami says, lifting it out of the box to show me.

“Cool,” Adam shouts, leaning over the couch to look at it, and she holds it out of his reach like he’s a toddler.

“Not now, Adam!” Cami screams in frustration.

“She’s gone insane,” I whisper. “She’s packed up my room and moved it all here.” I whirl around, looking at all the stuff; no wonder there’s so much, and the truck was “delayed”. She needed time to pack and move it all.

“Brightside! At least your room will be furnished,” Bear says, moving towards my new bedroom before whirling back around. “Ooh, it already is, wait, what?”

“That’s why I didn’t want the furniture.” I sigh, putting a hand on my forehead. “This is everything I own.”

“B, it’s going to be okay.” Cami gets up and hugs me from the side. “We can keep it all if you want to.”

I can’t help but laugh at that. There is no way half of this stuff will fit in the apartment, aside from the fact that I’ve lived without most of it for two years.

So, do I even need it? This is all a game to force my hand to call her so she can worm her way back in and try to get Josh and me back together.

“I’m going to have to sell most of it.” Sighing, I sit on what looks like a sturdy box.

“I need the money anyway, since I’m pretty sure I’m cut off. ”

“Are you selling the mattress?” Adam randomly asks, looking at the mattress from Josh and my last apartment; it’s top-of-the-line memory foam. It’s like sleeping on a cloud, but I don’t want to go anywhere near anything Josh has touched.

“Adam, ew no!” Cami shouts

“How much would you pay for it?” I ask at the same time; might as well make something out of it.

“Oh my God, what is happening?” Cami shouts. “No one is selling or buying a mattress; we need to figure out what to do with all this stupid stuff.”

“Stupid stuff?” I gasp, clutching my throat and looking at her in shock."You just said I could keep it”

“Sweetie, I love you, but come on, this is excessive.” She looks at me pityingly.

“Um, Cami, by the looks of this, it’s her whole life.” Grant scratches the back of his neck. “Maybe give her time to process.”

“Sure, sure, would you like to process next to those piles of boxes or maybe these piles?” she asks, motioning towards spaces that don’t exist between boxes. “The ones already in your room? Or hang on, just leave it here for the rest of the semester. We can use all the boxes as coffee tables.”

“I get it, thanks.” I gave her while looking around again. Puffing out my cheeks and letting the breath I was holding out, “I’m mentally not prepared for this.”

“Okay, game plan, you boys bring the furniture up and we will start going through boxes,” she instructs like the military sergeant she should have been.

“There is a party at the basketball house tonight that I know we all want to go to, so we work together, and we aim to get as much done before we leave and then we drink off all this shittiness?”

“I don’t know why you posed that as a question.” Adam shakes his head. “That’s the only plan you will accept.”

“I’m sorry, Adam, that didn’t sound like a yes, ma’am,” she shouts at him while he moves towards the door.

“Yes, Cami, ma’am.” He mock salutes to her as he walks out the door, giving her the finger as he goes, and I laugh.

“He’s getting too big for his boots recently,” she mutters as the other guys make some more space for the furniture and head to the door. I hear Grant mutter, “You notice neither of them carried more than the first box they brought up.”

“What was that?” I shout at his back, placing my hands on my hips.

“Nothing,” he shouts back, rushing out the door and down the stairs to the moving truck.

“Hey, that is fun.” I laugh at Cami.

“Right?!” I hear Cami say as she opens the fridge, coming back with hard seltzers and a roll of trash bags. “Okay, keep stuff, stay out, donate goes back in boxes, and throw away in bags.” She drops down next to me, crossing her legs, and we both crack open the seltzer and cheer.

“Let’s do this,” I say.

“Let’s quit doing this now.” I sigh with exhaustion. I’m lying on my back; we are two hours in, and the boys have rearranged my bedroom and their living room to accommodate as much of my stuff as possible. They are currently all spread around the room where they’ve found space.

“You’re doing so well,” Cami encourages, holding up another item of clothing. “Sports sweater. Keep or donate?”

“Ew, that’s Josh’s, burn it,” I say, scrunching my face up, sitting up and chugging my seltzer, I stand to grab another. Gunnar extends his can as a signal for a refill, and I grab it as I walk past him and his pile of schoolwork from the age of six that he’s dutifully putting through the shredder.

“Woah, hold on, that’s a vintage Knicks sweatshirt.” Adam pipes up as I walk back over. “Lemme see it.”

Cami throws it over to him as Grant holds up his phone, showing us all a screen of the same sweatshirt on eBay.

“That sweater is going for like two hundred bucks online,” he states while turning it back to himself, and I lean over his shoulder from the back of the couch to get a better look.

“What? I used to sleep in that.” I snort, shaking my head. “That’s crazy.”

“That’s a hot image.” He turns his head to the side and whispers into my ear, making me shiver. I suddenly realise how close we are to one another, and I blink back, surprised by the flirty comment.

“That image isn’t for you.” I stick my tongue out childishly, not knowing how else to respond since I'm so thrown off by it

Walking around the couch to sit in front of it, crossing my legs and cracking my new seltzer open. He moves his legs to spread out on either side of me, and I hear him whisper, “trouble” to himself, and I can’t help but smile to myself.

“Can I have it?” Adam asks with puppy eyes, dragging me back into the conversation, he’s clutching it to his chest like a child. “Please”

“Um, sure.” I don’t want it back. As memories of Josh and me lounging around mine and his old dorm rooms fill my brain, I say without hesitation, “Keep it.”

“Hot image replaced by Adam sleeping in it.” Grant leans down to whisper again, and my breathing hitches slightly.

Subtly looking around the room, but no one’s paying attention to us, so I turn and stare up at him and give him my best innocent eyes before saying. “I mean, whatever you’re into.” Giving him a wink.

He scrunches his face in disgust, and I giggle, turning back to look at the boxes.

We’ve made a decent dent in it, for now; the donation piles are full of clothes.

Who knew I was such a hoarder? “Can we please just go to the party now?” I beg, not wanting to lose my buzz, and I'm sick of digging through my childhood and relationship.

“Great work so far, team. Let's step back, hydrate, reset, we'll hit it again fresh.” Grant puts on his captain’s voice

“Does that work for you on the ice?” I snort out a laugh, looking back at him and receiving another Grant Anders wink.

“Lets fucking go” Adam shouts grabbing all our attention, jumping on the couch and chugging his beer before crushing it in his hand.

Guess it does.