Chapter Text
Annie Leonhardt meant to apply for housing early.
She really did.
She’d thought about it back in June, when the first notification arrived. She’d opened it, read the subject line—Fall Housing Application Now Open—and then closed the tab. She told herself she would do it tomorrow. But tomorrow turned into next week, and next week unspooled quietly into July.
In July, she went as far as pulling up the portal, staring at the blinking login cursor for a long, empty minute before closing it again. It wasn’t laziness, exactly. It was more like a quiet, nameless resistance to committing to anything before she absolutely had to.
Then, suddenly, it was mid-August.
When she finally logged in, a stark red banner stretched across the top of the screen: LIMITED AVAILABILITY. She clicked through to the room selection, experiencing that slow, cold drop in her stomach.
The singles were gone.
She sat there for a long time, just watching the blue light of the screen filter over her hands. The cursor hovered over the only option left. Double occupancy. Two beds. Two desks. Two people. She felt something heavy and still settle deep in her chest. This was her own fault. She’d told herself tomorrow, next week, later, and later had arrived, bringing a stranger with it.
She clicked submit anyway.
——
Now she was here.
Move-in day arrived at the tail end of August. The air was thick and motionless, carrying the kind of heavy, soup-like humidity that made every movement feel slightly slower. The parking lot was pure chaos. Cars were shoved up onto curbs with hazard lights blinking, their trunks gaping open as families unloaded boxes in quiet, exhausted shifts.
A father struggled with a mini-fridge, his face flushed an angry red. Some guy with a guitar case walked directly into a low bush, never looking up from his phone. Nearby, two girls hugged and shrieked like they hadn’t seen each other in decades, though they had probably graduated from the same high school three months ago.
Annie weaved through the noise.
She carried one rolling suitcase and a single duffel bag slung over her shoulder. She hadn’t brought much. She’d looked around her bedroom at home, at the bookshelves, the closet, the bare desk, and realized there wasn’t much she wanted to keep with her. Clothes. A laptop. A few notebooks. The bare minimum.
Her father had offered to drive her.
She’d said no.
He’d said okay.
That was the entirety of the conversation.
The dorm building was exactly what she expected it to be.
Brick walls and beige hallways, lit by the kind of institutional fluorescent lighting that made everyone look slightly jaundiced. The bulletin boards near the elevators were already plastered with bright, neon flyers. FLOOR MIXER THIS FRIDAY. MOVIE NIGHT IN THE COMMON ROOM. MANDATORY RA MEETING—ALL RESIDENTS MUST ATTEND. Annie looked at that last one for a second longer than the others. Mandatory.She was already planning her absence.
The carpet in the hallway was the dull, chewed-up color of a scab. Someone down the hall had already taped a mini-whiteboard to their door, with COME SAY HI :) written in purple dry-erase marker, the smiley face dotted with little hearts.
Annie walked past it without slowing down.
Room 214 sat at the very end of the hall, the last door on the left. She stopped in front of it. Her key felt cold and heavy against her palm. She didn’t know why she hesitated; it was just a room, after all. Four walls, a window. She’d lived in plenty of rooms before.
She turned the key and unlocked the door.
The room was entirely empty.
Two beds faced each other, a bare mattress on the left, a bare mattress on the right. A single window, its plastic blinds half-drawn, let in slanted beams of afternoon light that caught the dust floating thick in the air. Two desks were pushed against opposite walls, and two closets stood open, showing nothing but empty hangers inside. The air felt stale and completely still, as if no one had opened the window since the spring. It smelled of old paint, industrial cleaner, and long disuse.
It was small. Smaller than she’d pictured.
She stepped inside, and the door swung shut behind her with a soft, definitive click.
She claimed the left side immediately.
It wasn’t a conscious decision so much as an instinct. She set her duffel on the mattress, it made a soft thump, the heavy plastic wrapping crinkling underneath, and looked around. The room was beige. The walls, the floor, the ceiling ,all beige. It was as if someone had designed the space to be as inoffensive as humanly possible, succeeding so thoroughly that it looped back around to being offensive.
She didn’t care, not really. She wasn’t here to decorate, nor was she here to make friends, join clubs, or find herself. She was here to get through this. Four years, maybe less if she overloaded on credits. Get the degree, then get out. That was the extent of the plan.
And whoever walked through that door next—
She was already sure she was going to hate them.
Not for anything they had done, but simply for existing. For being the physical consequence of her own delay, and for taking up space in a room that should have been hers alone.
She unpacked in total silence.
It didn't take long. She was minimalist by nature, not by aesthetic choice, having never seen the point in accumulating things she would eventually have to move again. She folded her clothes into the dresser, set her laptop on the desk, and plugged the charger into the outlet behind it. A single notebook, a pen, and a phone charger were lined up carefully, each item placed precisely parallel to the edge of the wood.
She’d bought her sheets at a big-box store two days ago. She had walked through the aisles, past the bright colors and loud patterns, and picked the first set that didn’t actively bother her. They were gray. The blanket was gray, and the pillowcase was gray. She hadn’t noticed until now, but the pattern consisted of thin white lines intersecting into small grids. She’d accidentally made her bed look like graph paper.
She stepped back to look at her work. The bed was made, the desk was organized, and the closet was half-full with her few jackets hanging in a neat, uniform row.
The other bed remained completely bare.
It was just a mattress wrapped in plastic—the university's standard-issue choice, thin and sad under the fluorescent light. The plastic caught the glare in a way that made it look wet.
She stared at it for a moment, then looked away.
The rest of the day passed at a crawl.
Through the wall, she could hear the common room two doors down filling with noise. Laughter filtered through, along with someone playing an acoustic guitar badly, the chords changing at a pace that suggested they were learning the song as they went. A girl shrieked about something that couldn't possibly, in Annie's estimation, warrant that kind of volume. The sound carried through the cinderblock walls, muffled but persistent.
By ten in the evening, the hallway had finally quieted.
Annie killed the lights without acknowledging the sudden absence of brightness. The room went dark, save for a faint orange glow from the streetlights outside the window. She lay on her back, staring up at a ceiling she couldn't really see.
The other bed remained empty.
She didn't think about it. She didn't wonder where her roommate was, why they hadn't come, or whether they were coming at all. She didn't feel lonely. She had never felt lonely a day in her life; loneliness implied missing something, and she didn't miss anything. She had always been better off alone.
She turned onto her side, facing the blank wall, and eventually fell asleep.
——
The next morning arrived in shades of gray.
It wasn't raining, just overcast with the kind of heavy sky that couldn't decide whether to clear up or get worse. It matched her mood, or perhaps her mood was simply the same as it always was, and she was projecting it onto the weather.
Her first class—Introduction to Criminal Justice—started at eight. She’d picked it because it fit the time slot, not because she had a deep passion for law enforcement. She didn't have a deep passion for anything, really. She was undeclared, figuring she would pick a major eventually when something forced her hand.
The lecture hall was half-empty. It was only the first day of classes, and half the freshmen were already sleeping in. The ones who did show up were the overachievers, the front-row sitters who brought color-coded notebooks and were already taking extensive notes on the syllabus. Annie chose a seat near the back, on the far left aisle. It gave her good sightlines and an easy exit.
The professor was an older man with a monotone voice and a PowerPoint presentation that hadn't been updated in over a decade. He clicked slowly through the slides. Annie took exactly four notes. The rest of the hour was spent staring at the back of a girl's head, watching a messy bun bob every time she nodded, while thinking about nothing in particular.
After class, she walked across campus to the student center. The food court was already crowded, with long lines snaking out from the sandwich place and the coffee kiosk. She spotted them before they noticed her.
Reiner was sprawled across a booth, his arms stretched along the back to take up as much space as humanly possible. Bertholdt sat folded into the corner seat across from him, tall and hunched, trying to make himself look smaller.
They had been her friends since high school.
"Friends" was a generous term. Reiner had simply decided they were friends years ago, and Annie never bothered to correct him because it was easier to let it happen than to push back. Bertholdt came attached to Reiner, quiet, anxious. She had accepted this package deal. They were less exhausting than other people.
"Annie!"
Reiner waved her over vigorously, as if she might somehow miss a guy built like a refrigerator shouting across a crowded food court.
She walked over and slid into the booth across from them, setting her bag down. She took a long sip of the coffee she’d bought on the way in. It was lukewarm, but she drank it anyway.
"How's the dorm?" Reiner asked, leaning forward with a grin. "Did you kill your roommate yet?"
She didn't answer right away, letting the question hang in the air while she took another sip.
"They haven't shown up," she said flatly.
Reiner blinked. "Wait, like, they moved in and disappeared?"
"No. They never came."
Bertholdt tilted his head, slowly stirring a bright green smoothie. "Maybe they switched rooms? Or dropped out before classes started?"
"Or died somewhere," Annie said, her voice remaining perfectly level.
Reiner laughed too loud, drawing glances from a few nearby tables. He didn't notice. "That's dark. Even for you."
"It's practical. No roommate, no problem."
"You don't even know their name?"
She looked at him. "Why would I know their name?"
"I don't know," he shrugged, still grinning. "Maybe to confirm they're actually dead?"
"I'm not investigating. I'm just enjoying the silence while it lasts."
Bertholdt took a quiet sip of his drink, looking thoughtful or perhaps just nervous. "What if they're nice?"
Annie looked at him without changing her expression until Bertholdt looked away, his gaze dropping back to his drink. He had always been easy to win a staring contest with.
"What if I had a single room," she murmured.
Reiner leaned back, stretching his arms out again, looking pleased with himself. "Well, maybe you'll get lucky. Maybe they never show and you'll have the whole room to yourself all semester."
Annie didn't say anything to that.
But the thought was already there, settling into the back of her mind the moment she noticed the empty bed. It grew quietly, patiently. Maybe the universe was finally cutting her a break. Maybe she had applied late only to get stuck with a roommate who didn't exist.
She finished her coffee as Reiner changed the subject to one of his classes and a professor who had already assigned a sixty-page reading on day one. Annie let the conversation drift away from her, staring out the window at the quad. People were crossing the grass in clusters, laughing and forming groups that would either last four years or fall apart by midterms.
She didn't go back to the dorm right away.
She had a statistics class to get through, and afterward, she took the long way around campus to avoid the crowded paths where people blocked the sidewalks to talk. She walked the route behind the science building, past the maintenance shed, and through the distant parking lot that no one used.
By the time she returned to Eld Hall, it was late afternoon.
The hallway was quiet. Someone's door was propped open a few rooms down, playing a soft, unrecognizable acoustic guitar song.
She unlocked the door to Room 214.
The space was exactly as she had left it. Her gray bed sat on one side, the bare mattress on the other. The window was still cracked open from the morning, letting in low, golden light that slanted across the floor in long rectangles.
No one had been here.
She set her bag down and sat on the edge of her bed, watching the mattress dip under her weight. She didn't move for a long minute, just sitting there, letting the heavy silence settle around her.
She had the room to herself. She could exist without navigating another person's presence. But there was something else, too…something small at the very edge of her awareness. It wasn't loneliness, but rather the knowledge that the other bed was supposed to have someone in it. The silence was temporary. Eventually, someone would walk through that door, and the quiet would end.
She put her earbuds in, lay back on her gray pillow, and stared at the ceiling.
——
The second day felt worse than the first.
It wasn't because of anything specific; her classes were fine and the campus was perfectly pleasant. It was simply the accumulated weight of being somewhere entirely new, surrounded by people who seemed to have received a handbook that Annie hadn't.
She woke up at six-forty-five without an alarm, her internal clock operating with its usual, unnerving precision. She lay still for a few minutes, staring at a water stain in the corner of the ceiling and a small crack running along the seam. She’d only been here two nights and she had already memorized the ceiling.
Then she got up.
Her nine o'clock class was Introduction to Psychology, a general education requirement she’d picked because it fit her schedule. The lecture hall was massive, featuring stadium-style seating that descended toward a podium at the bottom, equipped with those tiny, cramped fold-out desks attached to the armrests.
She arrived ten minutes early to claim a seat in the middle-left section. It provided a good angle and a clear view of the screen. She pulled out her notebook, set her pen on top of it, and waited.
The room filled slowly as conversations bubbled up around her, people comparing schedules, sharing social media handles, and complaining about the professors. Annie kept her earbuds firmly in until the lecture finally began.
The class itself was unremarkable. The professor had a habit of pacing back and forth across the front of the room, which was mildly distracting, but the history of psychology was straightforward enough. Annie took notes in her sparse, efficient shorthand, recording only the essential names and dates.
When it ended, she bought a sandwich from the student center kiosk and ate it outside on a bench near the library, silently watching the crowd pass by.
Her next class was much smaller.
It was a seminar room rather than a lecture hall, containing thirty seats arranged in a loose semicircle facing each other. Introduction to Political Theory. She liked the idea of analyzing systems and the mechanics of power, but she hadn’t considered that a room this small meant the professor would expect regular participation.
She arrived early again, but her preferred spot in the back corner was already taken by a girl with bright red hair typing on a laptop covered in stickers. Annie settled for an aisle seat two rows from the back.
As the room filled, she stared down at the syllabus, mentally calculating how little effort she could put into the readings and papers and still secure an A. Her thoughts were interrupted when two guys dropped into the seats directly in front of her.
One was blond, with hair that looked like he’d cut it himself in a bathroom mirror without checking the back. He sat hunched over, as if trying to take up as little space as possible. The other was taller, dark-haired, and radiating a restless energy. He was already talking before he had even fully sat down, his voice carrying clearly through the room.
"—telling you, it's weird. She texted me last night and said she'd be here by Tuesday, but now she's saying Thursday. Who misses the first three days of classes?"
The blond one responded in a lower, calmer voice that Annie couldn't quite catch. It sounded reassuring.
"Exactly," the tall one continued, taking the murmur as agreement. "Mika never misses anything. She's pathologically on time. Remember that history project back in high school? She showed up with the actual flu, running a fever, and still did the whole presentation. She was dying and she still did it."
Mika. A nickname. Annie stared at the back of the tall one's head, wishing he would stop talking. She had spent her whole life wishing people would stop talking, and it had never worked once.
"Maybe something came up," the blond one suggested gently. "Or her coach?"
"What coach? Cheerleading? I don't think they even start yet." The tall one groaned, slumping so dramatically in his seat that his head nearly hit the back of the chair. "She's going to be impossible when she finally gets here. You know how she gets when she's behind on stuff. She's going to be stressed and snappy and make it everyone's problem."
"She's not you, Eren."
"Wow. Thanks, Armin. Really feeling the support."
The blond one—Armin—shrugged with a practiced kind of patience. "I'm just saying. She'll catch up. She always does."
Eren. That was the tall one's name. Annie filed it away like a warning label: loud, incapable of silence, and prone to talking with his hands. Armin was quieter, but still complicit in the disruptive conversation.
The professor cleared his throat at the front of the room, but Eren didn't notice.
"I'm going to text her again," he muttered, reaching for his phone.
"Don't. You'll just annoy her."
"I'm not annoying her, I'm being a concerned—"
"Eren."
"Fine. After class."
The professor cleared his throat again, louder this time, and Eren finally fell silent. Annie candy-wrapped her attention and exhaled slowly through her nose as the lecture began.
She tried to focus on the discussion of Plato's Republic and the allegory of the cave, concepts she usually found genuinely interesting. But she could barely hear the professor over the whispered conversation still happening directly in front of her.
"—just think it's strange. She didn't even tell me why she's late. Just said 'something came up' and stopped replying."
"Maybe she doesn't want you to worry."
"That makes me worry more."
Annie's pen stopped moving. She looked down to find she had written “the prisoners in the cave,” and then her handwriting trailed off into a jagged line where she had pressed too hard against the paper.
She hated them.
She hated Eren for his total inability to be quiet, and she hated Armin by association for being too passive to shut him down. But more than that, she hated this missing Mika person. Some girl who hadn't even shown up yet was already managing to ruin Annie's notes from afar, possessing friends loud enough to carry her name into rooms she hadn't even entered.
When the lecture finally ended, Annie closed her notebook with a sharp snap, shoved it into her bag, and stood up immediately. Eren and Armin were still talking about whether Mika would actually show up on Thursday as they gathered their things. Annie walked past them without a glance.
She didn't return to the dorm right away.
The afternoon was warm and bright, filtering golden light through the trees in a way that made the campus look entirely peaceful.
She passed the library and the student center, letting the fresh air fade her irritation. She didn't understand why the conversation had bothered her so much. It had nothing to do with her.
Yet, there was something about the way Eren had talked about this girl. Like her absence truly mattered to someone. Like someone, somewhere, was waiting for her to arrive.
Annie didn't have anyone waiting for her. She wasn't sure she even wanted that, but witnessing it felt like listening to a language she didn't speak, or being the only person left out of a joke.
She kept walking.
"Annie! Hey, Annie!"
She didn't slow down.
"Annie! I know you can hear me!"
She kept her eyes forward, her face perfectly neutral. If she didn't acknowledge the voice, perhaps it would go away.
"Oh my god, Annie Leonhardt, stop walking."
The footsteps behind her quickened, drawing close. Annie considered putting her earbuds in, but the voice was far too familiar, carrying the distinct tone of someone who absolutely refused to give up.
She stopped and turned around.
Hitch was standing right there. Her hair was shorter than Annie remembered, cut just above her shoulders in a slightly uneven style. She wore a cropped shirt, high-waisted jeans, and an expression that proved she knew exactly how annoying she was being and simply didn't care.
"There you are," Hitch said, a little out of breath but smiling wide. "I called your name like four times."
"Three."
"Three. Four. Whatever. You heard me."
Annie just stood with her hands in her jacket pockets, waiting. She had always been good at outwaiting people.
Hitch looked her up and down, reading her in that way she always did. "You look exactly the same. Did you even buy new clothes?"
"No."
"Of course not," Hitch said, falling into step beside her as Annie resumed walking. Annie hadn’t invited her along, but she didn't stop her either. "You didn't tell me you were coming here."
"You didn't ask."
"I shouldn't have to ask," Hitch's voice softened slightly, "We spent three summers working together. You could've sent a text. 'Hey Hitch, by the way, I'm going to the same university.' Just a thought."
"Didn't know you went here either."
"Yeah, because you never asked," Hitch shook her head. "I could've been dead in a ditch somewhere and you'd have no idea."
"The ditch would be lucky."
Hitch let out a sharp, bright laugh. "I missed that. I missed your whole dead-inside act. It's cute."
Annie chose not to dignify that with a response. They walked past the dining hall and a cluster of benches where a student was gathering signatures for a petition. Hitch waved at someone across the quad before turning her full, exhausting attention back to Annie.
"So, how's the university treating you so far? Found any dark corners to brood in?"
"I was doing fine until about two minutes ago," Annie said, keeping her eyes fixed on the path ahead.
Hitch laughed again, completely unfazed. "Classic. Well, you'll be thrilled to know I'm living in Blount Hall, third floor. The guys next door are on the lacrosse team, so the scenery makes up for the plumbing. Where did they dump you?"
"Eld Hall."
"Oof," Hitch grimaced. "The brick fortress? Rough. Isn't that mostly doubles?" She glanced sideways, a smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth. "Don't tell me you actually have to share your precious personal bubble with a stranger. Who's the lucky victim?"
Annie tightened her grip on her bag strap. "Nobody. She hasn't shown up."
"Wait, really?" Hitch's eyebrows shot up. "Like, at all? It's the second day of classes."
"Still the second day," Annie corrected quietly. "And I'm hoping it stays that way."
Hitch shook her head in genuine amusement. "God, you really are a stray cat. Someone offers you a whole room to yourself because of a housing error, and you just curl up in the corner and hiss at anyone who looks at you. Well, don't get your hopes up too high. The housing office usually figures those things out by week three. Enjoy your solo paradise while you can, Leonhardt."
They reached a split in the path where one direction led back toward the freshman dorms and the other toward the off-campus apartments. Both girls stopped walking. The smile on Hitch's face faded into something a bit more serious as she looked at Annie.
"So," Hitch said. "What's your schedule look like? We should get coffee. Or lunch. Or you can come over to my place and we can complain about our roommates."
"I don't drink coffee."
"Since when?"
"Since always."
"Right. Forgot. You're boring," Hitch said, gently nudging her shoulder against Annie's. It was a familiar gesture, and Annie didn't pull away from it. "Smoothies, then. Tomorrow? You can't say no. You owe me for not telling me you were here."
"I don't owe you anything."
"Rude," Hitch grinned, taking a step backward down her path. "Tomorrow. Text me. Do you still have my number?"
Annie did, though she didn't admit to it. "I'll think about it."
"That's a yes," Hitch called out, continuing to walk backward. "Seriously, text me. Let's catch up. Talk about classes, life, or whatever else you're brooding about."
"I don't brood."
"You're brooding right now. Your face is doing the thing."
Annie was certain her face was perfectly neutral. She watched Hitch turn around and weave through the clusters of students, her hair catching the afternoon light, until she disappeared into the crowd.
Annie turned back toward Eld Hall.
The sun was sinking lower, casting long shadows as the campus began to empty out for dinner. Annie walked with her hands in her pockets, her thoughts a bit quieter now. Hitch had that effect on her. She talked enough for the both of them, filling the silence so completely that Annie didn't have to strain to find words. It was exhausting, but it was also simpler. Hitch never expected Annie to be anyone but herself.
By the time she reached the heavy brick doors of the dorm, the irritation from her political theory class had returned as a low, persistent hum.
She unlocked the door to Room 214 and pushed it open.
The room remained entirely empty. Her gray bed sat exactly as she'd left it, while the bare, plastic-wrapped mattress across the room caught the final, dim light of the day.
——
The coffee shop was too warm.
It was one of those campus-adjacent spaces, the kind perpetually choked with students huddled over laptops and buried in heavy headphones, nursing a single lukewarm drink for three hours just to claim the real estate. The air inside felt thick, weighed down by the rich, heavy scent of dark roasted coffee beans and something sharp and sweet,cinnamon, likely. Annie didn’t like cinnamon.
There were simply too many people. Too many overstuffed, sagging armchairs; too many disparate conversations bleeding into one another; too many glowing screens claiming tables meant for two. In the corner, a guy was having a remarkably loud phone conversation that everyone could hear and everyone was actively pretending to ignore. A few feet away, two girls sat hunched over a massive, brick-like textbook, a small army of neon highlighters spread out between them like a barricade. The barista called out a name to the crowded room. No one moved to claim it.
Yet, this was where Hitch had insisted on meeting, and Annie had agreed. Even now, sitting in the corner, she wasn't entirely sure why. She could have easily said no. She had almost done it. But she had looked down at her phone, stared at Hitch’s name against the black screen, and something quiet had compelled her to type out “okay” instead of “can’t.”
She had gotten here first. She always got here first. It was a habit she didn’t care to break. She had chosen a table tucked deep into the back corner, her spine straight against the wall, facing the entrance. She ordered a plain black coffee and hadn’t touched it for the first ten minutes because it was entirely too hot, and she didn’t mind the wait.
Hitch arrived twelve minutes late. It was exactly what Annie had expected.
She breezed through the heavy glass door like she was stepping onto a well-lit stage. She spotted Annie almost instantly, there was no way she wouldn’t, considering Annie was sitting perfectly upright in the corner, tracking the entryway like she was anticipating an ambush, and her mouth curved into a wide grin. It was a bright, easy smile, a little too radiant for a dull Wednesday afternoon.
"You look like you've been here for an hour."
"Fifteen minutes."
"Same thing," Hitch said, dropping her canvas tote bag onto the wooden chair across from Annie. She didn't sit down yet. "I'm going to line up. Do you want anything? Another coffee? A pastry? You look like you've never eaten a pastry in your entire life."
"I'm fine."
Annie watched her go, her gaze tracking the easy, familiar way Hitch leaned her hip against the cash register. She watched her chat with the barista as if they were old childhood friends, laughing at some throwaway comment that probably wasn’t funny. It used to exhaust Annie. It still did, mostly. But there was a strange, quiet comfort in watching it happen from a safe distance, knowing that Hitch would eventually walk away from the counter and return to the corner table. She always came back.
When Hitch returned, she carried something frothy and caramel-colored, piled with enough whipped cream to qualify as a separate meal. She slid into the seat, took a long, drawn-out sip through her straw, and let out a soft, satisfied hum.
"So," Hitch said, casually licking a stray dollop of whipped cream off the plastic lid. "Tell me everything."
"There's nothing to tell."
"There's always something to tell. You just prefer keeping it to yourself." Hitch propped her chin in her palm, resting her elbow heavily on the table, leaning forward until she was entirely in Annie’s personal space. She looked at her as if Annie were the most fascinating object in the room. Annie knew better, of course; Hitch just possessed a natural talent for making people feel that way. "Fine. I'll go first. My roommate is driving me to the brink of insanity. She leaves her dirty dishes in the sink for days. Days, Annie.”
Hitch’s eyes narrowed into a sharp, vindictive squint. "I think she did it on purpose. We're in a total cold war now. Passive-aggressive post-it notes on the fridge. The whole routine."
Annie lifted her ceramic mug and took a small sip. The black coffee had finally cooled down enough to drink, though it was still bitter. "Sounds like your problem."
"It is my problem. That's why I'm venting to you. You're supposed to say something comforting, like, 'That's terrible, Hitch, your roommate sounds awful, you should just move in with me instead.'"
"We live in a double. There's no space."
"You said your roommate hasn't shown up yet."
"Yet."
Hitch stirred her drink slowly with the plastic straw, her sharp eyes assessing Annie over the plastic rim of her cup. "You're really hoping they died, aren't you?"
"I already said that."
"I know. I just enjoy hearing you say it out loud." Hitch took another long sip, letting the silence stretch between them for a beat. "What if they're actually nice?"
Annie thought briefly of Bertholdt asking that exact same question in the food court. She offered the exact same answer. "I don't need nice."
"What do you need?"
Silence settled over the table.
Annie looked down into her mug, watching the dark liquid ripple slightly. The question hung heavily in the warm air between them, unanswered and exposed. Hitch didn't push. She was remarkably skilled at that—stepping right up to the very edge of Annie’s boundaries and then quietly backing off, leaving the door cracked open but never forcing her way inside. It was one of the few reasons Annie tolerated her company.
"Nothing," Annie said finally, her voice low. "I don't need anything."
Hitch let out a soft, unconvinced hum, but she let it slide. "Okay. What about your classes? You mentioned that political theory seminar. The one that was bothering you?"
"It was fine." Annie paused, her fingers tracing the smooth handle of her cup. "The class is fine. The people are annoying."
"Annoying how?"
"There are these two guys sitting directly in front of me. They wouldn't stop talking through the entire lecture." She hesitated, considering whether it was worth the breath to explain, but continued anyway. "About some girl. Some friend of theirs who hasn't shown up to campus yet. It went on the whole hour. I couldn't hear half of what the professor was saying."
Hitch’s perfectly shaped eyebrows lifted. "That's it? That's what has you all tensed up? Some guys talking about a friend?"
"They wouldn't shut up."
"And you hate them."
"I hate the tall one. The other one was just... there."
"And the girl? The one they were worrying about?"
Annie gave a small, barely perceptible shrug of her shoulders. "She's not even here yet, and she's already irritating me."
"Wow." Hitch leaned back into her chair, her face lighting up with genuine amusement. She was smiling as if Annie had just delivered a flawless punchline, though Annie hadn’t been joking at all. "You're actively hating someone you've never even laid eyes on. That has to be a new record, even for you."
"I don't hate her. I don't know her," Annie said, her tone flattening out. "I just hate that two idiots ruined a page of my notes because of her."
"That's basically the exact same thing." Hitch took another drawn-out sip of her sugary drink, savoring the moment. "What's her name?"
Annie hesitated. For some reason, the name felt heavy in her mouth. "Mika. I think. That's what the loud one called her."
"Mika," Hitch repeated, rolling the syllables around as if testing the weight of them. "Cute. Sounds a bit like a dog's name."
"I don't care what it sounds like."
"Clearly." Hitch grins, leaning back over the table. She was enjoying this far too much; she had always taken a strange pleasure in Annie’s small miseries. "Well, whoever she is, she's already living rent-free in your head. That’s got to count for something."
Annie chose not to respond. Instead, she took another slow sip of her black coffee.
The conversation drifted easily after that. Hitch talked at length about her art history class, rambling about Renaissance painters that Annie didn't particularly care about but didn't actively mind listening to. Then she moved on to her part-time job at a boutique downtown—the kind of minimalist, overpriced place that sold clothes Annie would never wear at prices she would never dream of paying.
Eventually, Hitch began complaining about a guy in her apartment building who kept trying to ask her out, entirely incapable of taking a hint. "I told him I was busy. I told him I wasn't interested. I even told him I was seeing someone, and he still doesn't get it. What am I supposed to do, file a restraining order?"
Annie just listened, or rather, half-listened. She interjected occasionally with dry, brief comments that made Hitch laugh or roll her eyes. It was simple. It had always been simple, this particular back-and-forth between them. Even when they went months without a single text, even when Annie allowed the silence between them to stretch longer than it ever should have, Hitch always fell right back into the exact same rhythm, as if no time had passed at all.
It was familiar. Comfortable, almost. And that precise comfort was what made Annie pause.
She waited for Hitch to finish a sentence—something about the persistent guy showing up at her door holding a potted plant, as if a fern was going to change her mind—and then she asked, her voice entirely flat: "Is this you trying to have sex with me?"
Hitch stopped mid-gesture. Her hand froze in midair, still gripping the plastic cup. She blinked, her expression blanking out for a split second.
Then she laughed.
"Wow. Okay. Straight to the point."
"Is it?"
"No, Annie. I'm not trying to have sex with you."
"Then what is this."
"It's coffee," Hitch said. "Friends get coffee. That's what people do."
Annie stared at her, her gaze unblinking. "That's what you always said. Before."
"Before what?"
"Before you ended up between my thighs."
"That was different."
"Was it?"
"Yes, it was." Hitch paused, "We were different. We were kids, or whatever. Now we're..." She waved her hand vaguely through the air, gesturing to the small space between them. "Catching up. Getting coffee. Like normal people do."
"And then what."
"And then nothing. Then I go back to my apartment, you go back to your dorm, and we do this again next week. That's the whole thing." She smiled again,"I'm not trying to sleep with you, Annie. I just genuinely wanted to see you. Is that really so hard to believe?"
"No," Annie said finally, looking away. "It's not."
"Okay then." Hitch picked up her cup once more, taking a slow sip. "So stop looking at me like I'm running a long con. It's just coffee."
Annie dropped her eyes to her own mug. The coffee was nearly gone now, leaving nothing but a thin, dark ring at the bottom of the ceramic. She didn't know what to say to that, nor did she know what she was supposed to feel. Hitch had always been a complication, though not in the way other people were. Hitch was blunt, loud, and almost aggressively honest, yet there was always something deeper underneath—a layer Annie had never quite been able to map out.
She simply drank the last bitter drop of her coffee and let the conversation move on to safer ground.
By the time they finally got up to leave, the sun had dipped lower in the sky, and the coffee shop was beginning to fill with the late-afternoon rush.
Hitch pushed the heavy glass door open, holding it with her shoulder, and Annie stepped out into the open air. The afternoon was still hot, overheard, the sky was a pale, washed-out blue, streaked with long lines of thin clouds.
"That wasn't so terrible, was it?" Hitch asked,
"It was fine."
"Fine," Hitch echoed, stretching the syllables out with a smirk. "Hmm. High praise, coming from you."
Annie didn't answer. They walked in silence for a minute, passing the western edge of the campus quad toward the busy intersection where their paths would eventually split. Hitch’s off-campus apartment lay in one direction; Annie’s brick dorm lay in the other.
"Come back to my place," Hitch said casually.
"I have snacks. And you should probably see the apartment for yourself."
Annie slowed her pace, hesitating at the curb.
She thought of her empty dorm room at the end of the hall. The bare mattress wrapped in heavy plastic, untouched and cold. The quiet that was waiting for her behind the locked door. She didn't have anything to do there, but then again, she didn't have anything to do anywhere else either. An extra body in a room wouldn't change that reality, but...
But.
"Okay," Annie said softly, her hands sinking into her pockets. "Just to see."