“I’ll just hop right over to the loveseat,” Melli promised him. “I’ll be fine. Go ahead—go on…” She shooed him away as she slipped inside the dorm room and cracked the door so that only her face was peeping out. “I’ll see you in a minute,” she said and closed the door, hoping Liosh would take the hint.
“All right—I’ll be back shortly,” he called at last, which made Melli breathe a sigh of relief. Okay good—the trip back and forth to the parking lot was a bit of a hike, so she had at least ten minutes to straighten up—where should she begin?
Her dorm room wasn’t very big at all, which made her decide to start right where she stood. Bending down awkwardly, she grabbed the pair of crumpled jeans she’d left there a few days ago and then hopped into the tiny living room, gathering stray clothes as she went. She was careful on her hurt leg but found that it hardly twinged at all as she went on her clothes-gathering mission.
It wasn’t that she was a slob, exactly, Melli told herself. More like she was distracted and too busy to constantly be cleaning, which was what Jodi was always telling her to do.
“If you’d just clean up as you go, you won’t have such a big mess all the time,” she always lectured, whenever she visited Melli and took the opportunity to straighten up.
At least the dorm was too small to get very messy, Melli thought. There was the tiny living area with a single love-seat and a TV… a galley kitchen which had a half-sized fridge, a tiny microwave, and a hot-plate as the only appliances…a bathroom with a sink, shower stall, and bathtub…and a bed room with two beds in it—one full-sized and one twin—and that was it. That was the entire dorm room.
It was actually nicer and larger than many dorms, Melli knew. She was rooming with her good friend, Cindy, whose parents were both surgeons at Tampa General Hospital and who could afford the upgrade. But Cindy much preferred living with her long-time boyfriend, Kyle. She couldn’t tell her strict Catholic parents that, however, so she kept letting them pay for the dorm—where only Melli lived—which allowed them to believe that she was living there, when in fact she was in Kyle’s apartment off-campus almost all the time.
All Melli had to do was tell Cindy’s parents she was out of the dorm anytime they dropped in and keep up the convenient fiction that her friend still lived there full-time. She always texted Cindy to let her know when her parents were on the prowl so she could “come back home” and see her mom or dad, saying she had only been out to grab a bite to eat or had been in the library studying.
All this subterfuge made Melli a bit uncomfortable, but Cindy’s parents didn’t drop by often and it was really nice having the place all to herself. It was better for studying—though it did get lonely at times. She never brought boys back here with her because of her difficult past so Liosh was the first male she’d had in the little dorm. Speaking of the big Kindred, she needed to get things cleaned up before he got back!
Hopping quickly around the dorm, she finished gathering up the dirty clothes strewn around and dumped them into her hamper. Then it was into the bathroom to clean her hair products and make-up off the back of the toilet and cram them all into the medicine cabinet where they belonged. The tub and toilet were clean, thank goodness and there were some fresh towels in the linen closet. The tub, in Melli’s opinion, was the best feature of the dorm room. It was actually deep enough to take a really nice long soak in.
Thinking of that made her realize she hadn’t had a bath or shower since before the Varians had attacked her mother’s house. She’d had a kind of quick sponge bath up in the Med Center of the Kindred Mother ship, but that hardly counted. Suddenly she felt grimy. Ugh—she was definitely going to get a nice long soak in the tub tonight. Well…she eyed the deep sides of the tub uncertainly…if she could get in and out of it by herself without re-injuring her leg, that was.
Bathroom taken care of, she hobbled swiftly to the tiny kitchen and surveyed it with a frown.
The crumbs on the counters were easily swept away and she put away the cereal boxes and instant ramen packs quickly enough. But the sink was full of dishes and there was no quick fix for that.
At least the dishes weren’t crusty with drying food or anything like that. Melli was always careful to rinse everything off before she put it in the sink. It was just that after she rinsed it, she rarely got around to actually washing it until just about everything in the dorm was dirty and she was completely out of dishes, bowls, cups, and silverware to eat from. Then she would do a big wash, all at once, and take care of everything only to start the cycle again the next day.