The hot water relaxed her muscles almost too much. If she wasn’t acutely aware of the fact that she was in a shower stall that maybe fifty other girls had used this week, she would be tempted to just sit down and let the water fall on her. But the tile grout had hair stuck on it that wouldn’t go down the drain, and the black mold in the corners of the stall told Cat that this was one of those instances where she would have to power through her fatigue or risk getting some sort of unidentifiable disease.
Her head throbbed, now that she stood under the faucet and let the shampoo run down the drain. This time was different, she thought, Peter’s words echoing in her head. What’s different is that she couldn’t just return to the way she saw him anymore. Sure, he was obnoxious and an idiot--but he was an obnoxious idiot with a lot on his plate, and she was just addicted to poking at his open sores like some sort of psychopath. What kind of person did that? And it wasn’t like she could just change the way things were.
Their heated banter was a habit, now. It was a comfortable part of her day. See Peter, insult Peter, get insulted by Peter, rinse and repeat. Even worse, whenever she’d learned anything about him, she just used it as a new way to hurt him. A way to see some sort of vulnerable side that he hid from her, rightfully so, because all she did was chip away at him.
Was he even actually like this? Or was he just reacting to her? Or was he responding from the mountain of stress and pain he had to hold up every day? She was just like this. She didn’t have any excuses. Her parents were both still alive, faithful, and seemingly in love with each other. She just saw her little brother before coming to school. (Though, she now wondered--if this all just arose since August, where had his brother been for a year?)
Did she really delude herself into thinking she could be friends with Peter this morning? That she would be capable of being decent and sensitive to him? He’d give her attitude once, and then she’d immediately fire back at him--which wouldn’t help anything at all, especially since she had almost no self control when it came to him. And maybe she could pretend to be some sort of sensitive friend for a day, but it would fade too quickly and she’d just make it all worse.
Somehow, Cat managed to will her muscles into letting her finish her shower routine, and returned back to her dorm, her smelly gym clothes under her arm as she opened the door.
“Cat!” Hannah cried the minute she stepped in. “Where have you been?” Oh, God. She hadn’t prepared herself for this. Cat steeled herself with a deep breath, and shut the door behind herself.
“I went for a run,” she answered truthfully. She tried to tell herself to maintain eye contact, but she couldn’t figure out how much was too much or too little, and instead decided to focus on dumping her gym clothes in her laundry basket and focus on putting on her clothes from earlier. But as she reached down to pull on her pants, she saw her hands shake.
“You went for a run?” Hannah echoed. She sounded like her mother. “You left work early to go for a run?” What excuses could she come up with? Everyone spoke to each other. She had to assume that Peter talked to them by now, said he didn’t know what was up or why she was being a mythic bitch.
“Yeah,” she said without looking up. “Peter pissed me off, so I left and went for a run. Jeffrey owes me, so....”
“What happened?” Ugh, if she heard that question one more time....
“He just annoyed me,” she answered too quickly. Cat pulled her tee shirt over her head, then finally looked to her roommate, who stood, phone in hand, looking an awful lot like a disappointed parent. For whatever reason, this just made the heaviness in her stomach twist in irritation.
“What did he say?”
Cat grimaced. “Look, we just don’t get along, okay? I know you all think that if you just hung out with us enough that we’d eventually get along or something, but that’s not going to happen, that’s not how life works. So I’d appreciate it if you just--left me out of it.” She tried to keep her tone coiled back. It wasn’t Hannah she was upset with--well, sort of. Maybe a little annoyed, but it wasn’t her fault.
“Um...?” Hannah couldn’t seem to do anything other than sound her confusion.
“I’ve got a lot of studying to do.” After flipping her hair to be outside of her shirt, Cat reached for her book bag.
“I don’t get--” Her roommate looked so confused; not even upset, just genuinely trying to piece together information that Cat wouldn’t give her.
“I mean,” Cat said through a sigh, “that if you all want to hang out, go for it. I’m going to be busy for a while, so don’t feel like you have to--choose or whatever.” She grabbed her laptop off of her desk to shove in her bag, but the thing now would hardly close, with her books inside it. But she pretended that this was what she was planning all along.
She went to go for the door again, but Hannah stopped her.
“Cat, wait--your phone?” She turned around, almost surprised, but pursed her lips.
“I...think I’ll stay disconnected for the rest of the day,” she decided on a whim. Nothing like that group chat to drill in the guilt. “I’ve got to focus.”
“What--” Her roommate was still blinking wildly, struggling to take in what Cat threw at her. “Did--did I do something wrong?”
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“No,” she was quick to correct, but she still held the door handle and twisted it open. “I just--I can’t--I....” She sighed to the ceiling. “Other than midterms coming up.... Everyone has enough going on. I’m just going to step back from--from everything.” From Peter.
“Okay,” Hannah started, taking a step forward. “Just--just tell me what happened. Cam can’t think of anything that happened to bring this on, and Peter’s freaking--”
“He didn’t do anything wrong,” she repeated firmly. “God--you think I wouldn’t tell you if he did something wrong?” She white-knuckled the door. “No, everything’s fine.”
Before her roommate could stop her again, Cat twisted the knob and showed herself out.
Not that she expected it to be, but studying wasn’t very helpful or productive. The majority of the time she spent in the library, she spent reading the same pages over and over again, absorbing nothing, learning nothing.
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Despite being unable to keep her eyes open, Cat struggled to get at least something through her head Saturday night. She’d grabbed a croissant from the night shift at Jittery Joe’s to keep herself satiated, but then returned to the review questions immediately and tried to drill every perfect answer in her head.
She knew that if she went back to her dorm before regular bedtime, Hannah would question her like a detective--and she didn’t know how much of that sort of thing she could handle before she broke. So despite her exhaustion, Cat stayed in the library until she literally jolted herself awake from her head slumping to her book. Okay. Exhausted Cat meant she would fall asleep before Hannah had the opportunity to interrogate her.
But somehow, Cat must have gotten back to her dorm when Hannah was showering or something, because she was alone, and free to fall asleep as fast as humanly possible.
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Sunday wasn’t that easy, though. Though she did go to the library immediately after changing out of her work clothes, upon returning that night, Hannah was waiting for her.
“Why are you walking like that?” was her first question when Cat opened the door. She grimaced.
“I’m sore from my run,” she answered truthfully. “Like...sore enough to think that maybe I should actually be going to the gym regularly. Embarrassingly sore.” Her parents joked that she wasn’t going to be young forever, that sooner than she would even admit, age would catch up. Building good habits now didn’t sound like a bad idea.
“Which run?” Hannah asked as Cat set her stuff down. Oooh, boy. She knew that tone. “The run from yesterday? When you literally left work early, pretending to be sick, to go run because you were so mad at Peter?” As Cat picked out some pajamas to change into, she could feel Hannah’s stare at the back of her head. “That run?”
Cat sighed in response, but continued getting changed for bed. Her roommate jumped off her bed to stand in the middle of the room, ready to question.
“Yeah,” Cat said finally as she stepped out of her jeans, “that run.”
“I wonder...what could Peter have said to make you so mad?” As Hannah started her monologue, Cat let her, and just tied her flannel shorts at her waist before climbing onto her bed. “I went through everything he said with him--and even checked with Jeffrey--” Whoa, inappropriate, much? “And yeah, some of what he said was dickish, but not more than usual.
“And Peter reports your reaction stemming from mentioning how he had no memory of what he did Friday night. And, according to Cam, the only thing that either of them did to you from the time you showed up to the party to when you put them to bed is that they annoyed you.”
“Mmhmm,” Cat sounded as she peeled back her sheets.
“So whatever happened must have happened between Cam passing out and you going to work. There’s two hours of unaccounted time, and Jeffrey says you weren’t upset at the beginning of your shift.” The more Hannah continued explaining her investigation, the more Cat’s brows furrowed. Was this impressive or weird? She couldn’t put her finger on it. “So whatever upset you happened before you went to work, and obviously didn’t bother you until Peter reminded you of it. So what happened?”
“Literally, everything you just said, is very extra,” Cat decided to say. Hannah scrunched her face together, an unserious frown.
“What happened?” she repeated. “And why is it so secret?” Cat settled into her bed, head on her pillow, phone (on airplane mode) on its charger, but didn’t say anything. “Like--I literally can’t imagine anything that could have happened. You say he didn’t do anything wrong, but, like, how is that possible?” It was at this point that Cat opted to stop listening, and instead reached to her nightstand to motion that she wanted to turn off the light. “Cat! Seriously!”
“Hannah, seriously,” she responded with a lower tone. “Drop it.”
“But everything was going so well! You guys hadn’t had any issues. I mean, not really. You didn’t complain of anything big, he didn’t complain of anything big--” Cat flicked the light off and on a few times like an intermission light at a theatre, but Hannah ignored it. “There is literally no reason for you to be upset if he didn’t do anything wrong. But it makes no sense, because that would mean you’re protecting him or something. Which you wouldn’t do. I don’t think.” She seemed to be running out of steam, now, thankfully. “But you don’t surprise me that much anymore. I mean, I feel like I know you pretty well--” Flick, flick, turning the lights off, then on again. Hannah huffed and put her hands on her hips. “Can we just seriously talk about this?”
Cat sighed, irritated. “No, Hannah. I don’t get what’s hard about that. It doesn’t matter, I said no, just drop it.”
“No!” Hannah cried, seemingly desperate. “I need to know what happened! You went from--like everything’s fine, to--to don’t even invite you out if Peter’s going. That’s weird!” Cat replied only by turning off the light for real, now, and slamming her head on her pillow. “What! Cat!” Hannah stomped up to the light switch to turn it back on. “That’s so rude, I was talking to you--”
“No,” Cat snapped, sitting up a little. “You’re talking at me. You don’t care what I get or don’t get out of this ‘conversation’.” She used air quotes to emphasize her point. “Shouldn’t it be enough that I’m just done? Even if I wanted to tell you, which I don’t, it’s not even up to me.” That might have been too much. “And I’d really appreciate it if all of you just stopped harassing me.”
“What do you mean?” Hannah caught her. Her head cocked to the side like a puppy, and damn if her big eyes didn’t make her look more innocent than Cat’s annoyance allowed.
“I mean leave me the fuck alone. I won’t say anything. I’m serious,” Cat settled with, tone low. “I said you don’t have to pick between me or Peter, and I mean it. But I’d appreciate that you’d at least support me in this." Hannah deflated, any playful detective persona long gone. She just blinked, wide-eyed, but at least she understood. That much Cat could see.
“Oh--okay...I’ll stop.” Voice soft, cautionary. Cat let out a small “thank you” before she flipped over to face the wall, and waited for Hannah to turn off the light, herself. She may have to deal with Hannah being passive aggressive for a few days but...when Cat remembered Peter’s expression, the tiniest little furrow of his brow, the cracking of his voice from when he spoke that night....
She could handle Hannah’s temporary pettiness to keep that secret...even if Peter was drunk when he asked.