Taylor really hoped that was just a weekend-before-classes-started kind of thing. However, worse than that, Hannah hadn’t shown back up. Taylor wondered about that even as she fell asleep. This roommate thing was going to be an issue.
Turned out, she had no idea just how much of an issue it was going to be. It was four in the morning when Hannah came in, flipped on every light in the place, and commenced getting ready for bed, which amounted to pitching her boots onto the floor and stripping her clothes off without leaving the room.
Taylor closed her eyes, willing her roommate to just go to bed. However, half-dressed, Hannah sat on her bed and started tip-tapping on her phone.
The sigh that tried to get out was slow and measured. Just give her time. It is the weekend. Just give her time…
Greg was honestly surprised the next day when he heard the text ding on his way to the testing center. He waited to check it because he was almost there, and when he did, he couldn’t stop the smile that brushed across his heart and lips.
Praying for you! UR going to do GREAT!
Texting back quickly, he sent, Thanks! Pray hard. I’m gonna need it.
Just before he opened the door to the testing center, he got another one back from her.
Don’t stress. UR gonna ace it. You had a GREAT teacher, remember?
How could I forget?
Hannah didn’t get up all morning. Taylor did her best to try to stay quiet. She hadn’t even turned on a light except the little one on her desk. With the blinds closed, it was like being in a tomb.
The sound Hannah made when she rolled over and practically fell out of bed was hardly human, and Taylor only barely bit back, “Tough night?”
Not really wanting to stick around for the show and needing something to eat, Taylor took her purse from the desk, clicked off the little light, and headed out without a word. Her roommate was on her own dealing with all the issues she was dragging along.
More than once Greg asked himself who he was kidding as he took the test. Terms like lateral, supine, medial, coracoid, ischial, and thoracic started to twist together in his brain in very unhealthy ways. Was the hamate in the wrist or the ankle? And was the lateral supracondylar ridge on the humerus in the arm or the femur in the leg?
Think, Greg. Think.
His brain spun through chart upon chart as he tried to sort through them all.
Come on. We’ve got to do this. Think.
Although she knew she needed to call Mitchell, Taylor found herself making every excuse in the book not to. With classes set to start in two days, she went to the bookstore instead. It would be at least another hour before she heard from Greg, if it happened then. She went through the books she would need, searching for the used ones. The price of the books was the epitome of insane. She was sure you could buy a small island for what she would probably spend on them this semester. Science books were the worst. In the good news department, if you could call it that, she already had her psychology book and her chemistry II book from her previous attempts at those two classes. She managed to find the others, and because she had no real desire to do this again, she went ahead and bought them.
Books taken care of, she headed to the student union for lunch, thinking about calling Mitchell the whole way, and knowing she would find a way to talk herself out of it once she had the time. Added to that was how weird it was to walk across campus with nowhere to be and no one waiting anywhere for her arrival. In fact, she could walk right off the planet, and no one would probably even miss her. At the student union, she bought a sandwich from a vending machine and a water as well. No need to go all out.
Choosing a little two-person table and stacking her books on the other side, she tore open her sandwich and took a drink of the water. There would be time to peruse the books, but right now, she needed some company to give herself a reason to forget to call Mitchell. Dialing Yoli, she took another drink and listened to the ringing. “Please be there,” she whispered only to herself. “Please be there.”
“Oh, Taylor,” Yoli said when