Hornet's Nest Ch. 02

His reply came a couple minutes later. "Got them kicked out."

I grinned at the screen. "How did Tyler last, then?"

"Ty was a great roommate. He just abused the bathroom lock being broke."

I chuckled and massaged my forehead. That sounded about right.

Wesley came in again. "Hey, Dave." He was even worse with knocking than at home.

"What?"

"You're coming out later?"

"Yeah."

*

The hot girl was back in her usual spot next physics class.

I considered going over to her side and pulling the same shit on her. Didn't have the guts, of course. I took my typical seat, leaning my back against the wall, and looked across the room at her.

She looked back.

Fuck.

I was desperately trying to concentrate on what the tutor was saying. She was explaining how we'd be heading into lectures and labs with a professor once all these introduction sessions were over. Workload was going to double. I was beginning to wonder how I'd juggle this alongside chemistry and biology. Why had Mum thought it was a smart idea for me to take triple?

Talk about fulltime education. Overtime even. But if it kept me from being drafted, hey, whatever, right?

There were a few moments of awkward eye contact with the girl during that class. I wished I could remember her name. I knew I'd heard it before, why had I forgotten it?

I hung outside the door for a few seconds at the end, thinking I'd wait for her and try to say something. Nope. Quickly fucked off. I'd just make an idiot of myself. I needed my head straight with some proper composure if I was going to do it right, not be some stuttering mess.

Mum called that night, checking up on me, how things were going.

"What's this about nightmare roommates?"

"Oh, nothing," I said. "It's nothing big."

"Oh?"

"Yeah. I'd be ringing you up and crying about it if it was."

She chuckled.

"Mum," I started. "How much do you know about dishwashers?"

"Oh, goodness. Um, hmm... It'd probably be better to ask Tyler."

The next day was a beautiful sunny Saturday. Wesley left with most of the flatmates to check out a nearby park - he was integrating with them quite nicely. I'd have some peace and quiet that afternoon. I did some research, pulled the dishwasher out, and decided I really had no idea what I was doing. So I called him up.

"Kid?" he asked.

"Tyler, are you home, are you busy?"

"Yes, and not really. Fuck, I'm not coming all the way down there for a lift, kid."

"Nah, mate. Do you know anything about dishwashers?"

He grunted. "I don't really do appliances."

"Well, I need to fix one."

"Call a technician?"

"That's kinda complicated right now."

"Yeah, here you go, doing everything by yourself again, huh? And googling it hasn't helped?"

"Pretty unhelpful." I raked my fingers through my hair. "Do you know anything or not? Want to just give me some moral support?"

"What's wrong with it?"

"I don't know. Can set it all up, the lights all do their shit, but it won't start."

"Wow. That's pretty vague, kid."

"Please help me."

He chuckled, sighed. "Okay, okay."

I left him on loud speaker on the counter while I started pulling things apart. There were some noises from his end - he was pulling out and taking apart his own dishwasher, to try and guide me through it. There was briefly Darren's voice in the background - "What the fuck are you doing, Ty?"

Of all the roommates to be home, it had to be the dishwasher girl. Of course, she hadn't wanted to go to the park with the others, with all the arguments. She came in and frowned, watching me for a few seconds, but left me alone and disappeared.

"Yeah, the round bit," Tyler was saying. "Mine's blue. Do you see it?"

"There's a lot of 'round bits'."

"Fucking hell. I don't know what these parts are called, and even if I did, you wouldn't."

I guess it's pretty hard, trying to fix something, when you don't know what's broken.

"Oh shit," I said.

"What?"

"Fuck."

"What, kid?"

"I done fucked it up now, there's water going everywhere."

"You didn't fucking disconnect it before you started taking it apart?"

"I thought I did!"

I scrabbled around, trying to stop it and clean it up. He almost squeaked with laughter down the phone.

"It's okay, it's okay, it was just some leftover stuff inside. I think I found what broke it. Oh God, this smells so fucking bad."

"Jesus Christ," Tyler chuckled.

It took over an hour, but I got the fucking thing working. Some other flatmates came home during it and I had a couple of spectators. They helped me fill it with some plates once I had everything back together. There was a little laugh and cheer as it turned on.

Dishwasher girl got in while it was swishing and churning away.

"Hey, Claire!" one of the guys called. He gestured at the kitchen. "Check it out."

She came over to me on the sofa, face contorted in one of her frowns. "You really fixed it?"

I gave her a glance from my laptop screen. "Yeah."

She just kept frowning. She didn't look happy, but it wasn't her normal expression. What was wrong? Baffled that I'd just done something that needed to be done? Feeling bad that I'd gone to all the effort, when she wouldn't even hand over a tenner for a repairman?

She was very quiet that evening.

*

Physics classes were turning into a farce.

I wish I could say that I'd got my act together faster. That I hadn't let it become such a joke.

For maybe two weeks, we sat on opposite sides of the room, tossing each other glances. Sometimes a few seconds of solid eye contact. After a while, facial expressions. Tiny conversations through smirks, blinks, frowns. Slight head tilts, darting eyes. And amongst it all, not a word.

The longer I left it, the more difficult it became, until it was impossible. It felt as though there was a physical barrier stopping me from approaching her and saying anything. My muscles went rigid at the thought. My throat closed up.

She was playing me.

She fucking was, and I knew it.

The whole thing seemed to be amusing her too much. She'd obviously been trying something that time she sat near me. I hadn't done what she'd wanted, or what she'd expected, so she'd changed tactics. She was waiting for me to talk. To make some move.

It was almost reaching the point where I didn't want to give her the satisfaction.

*

Wesley and I had a new town to explore. Bus routes to learn, shops to find, streets to map. We were spending the next Saturday walking around in our comfortable duo, hopping on random buses and seeing where they stopped. Getting off when something looked interesting.

We could get horribly lost, but that didn't matter. Locals could always point us towards the university again if need be. I was sure they got plenty of wandering freshmen every year.

Wherever we were walking came full circle, back to the high street with the main shopping mall. Wesley looked behind, then in front, and frowned.

"This town is weird."

"Yeah, I thought we were way over there."

It was growing dark earlier and faster. We were getting into October. Had the first month of university really gone by already? If life kept going this quick I'd be 40 before I knew it, greying at the temples like my dad.

Wesley picked up a milkshake from a stand down the high street, trying to haggle the price with his best charm. It didn't work. We sat on a bench to rest our legs, watching flocks of pigeons waddle closer and closer, hoping we'd drop something edible.

"Are we eating out somewhere?" I asked.

"Nah, that's fucking expensive." He took a slurp of his milkshake. "I got some pasta at home."

"Unless someone ate it already."

"Nah, mate, I got a massive stash in my room."

"Genius."

"I'm ready for the apocalypse. Pasta and canned food, it's the secret."

"The good sauces won't keep."

"Yeah, you gotta learn to love dry pasta if we end up in a nuclear fallout, Dave."

A pigeon tottered around my feet, head bobbing, giving me an evil look - how dare I not have any food? I moved my foot and it didn't flutter away. I poked it with the tip of my shoe, it gave its wings a flustered flap and puffed up its neck feathers. I was being started on by a pigeon. Fuck me.

Wesley was silent, frowning at his phone. He scrolled up with a flick of his thumb, then back down again.

"What's up?" I asked.

"Pretty sure I've just been dumped."

"Really?"

"Yeah."

It probably sounds like I'm bad-mouthing Wes if I say that I wasn't surprised. But I wasn't. He rubbed one of his eyebrows, re-reading a number of messages for the second or third time.

"This guy is a dick," he said.

"The problem is probably that he was looking for a boyfriend while you were looking for sex, Wes."

"That's not entirely true. And besides, I told him at the start of this. He knew I didn't want something too serious."

"Yeah, well, you can be an arsehole sometimes."

"I know. But this wasn't one of those times, I swear." He handed me his phone. "Look. Look at this fucking dickhead. Is this called for?"

I never felt in any position to comment on his relationships. How could I talk, when I hadn't had one? But he always wanted my opinions.

"Pretty uncalled for," I agreed.

"I told him I was going to try and make this work. He was just waiting to find someone else, and now he's found someone else, he breaks it off with me. Fucking dickhead. Couldn't do this earlier? Save me this whole month of shit he's been putting me through?" He let out a deep sigh, shook his head, and started typing a reply.

"I guess boyfriends are just as much hassle as girlfriends," I said.

"Yeah. Looks like it." He slurped loudly on his straw as he tried to drain every last bit from the cardboard cup. "There. Done. Now he can fuck off." There was a pause of silence, and he threw the straw at some pigeons that were getting too close. They swarmed it, before deciding it was uninteresting, and edged closer.

"So," I drawled.

"Yeah."

It was hard to tell how affected Wesley really was, sometimes. He felt things, definitely, but they passed quickly. He could be upset about something, even cry about it, but the next day it was as though nothing had happened. Whenever he got angry, it burnt out after he'd shouted a single sentence. He just didn't seem to have long periods of intense, sustained feeling.

"There's this guy," he continued. "In my psychology class. I think he's gay, not really sure. Might try and find out now."

And that was what I really didn't get, what I couldn't relate to. He moved on that fast. It made him look like a bad person. I knew he wasn't.

I was starting to say something, reminding him that he was about to look a massive cunt, and prove what his now-ex was saying was true, but I cut off. People were hollering down the high street.

Despite the crowds of shoppers thinning as evening closed in, there was still enough of a throng to see people reacting to some commotion. They either darted or were shoved to the side, parting and flowing away from something, like water at the hull of a ship.

A sprinting figure was what they were avoiding. It looked like there were more chasing it, shouting and swearing.

The figure was coming right at us. The flock of pigeons panicked and flapped into the air, a deafening flurry of wings.

I knew that face. Holy shit, I knew it. I tried to move from the bench as she hurtled towards us, but couldn't react fast enough. She was a blur of black hoodie and grey tracksuits. There was no collision. She vaulted and leapt over the bench, maybe six feet in the air, effortlessly. Landed and rolled. Sprung back to her feet. Kept running. Perfect momentum.

"Holy shit!" Wesley cried.

We were both off the bench, looking after her as she kept going down the high street. Three guys were on her tail, but they went around, not through us.

She kicked off a bin, leapt at the wall of a building. Used the drainpipe and climbed up. Vaulted onto the balcony of some apartment above the shop. Across the railings, another drainpipe. Scaled it to the roof. Disappeared from view.

The three guys remained at the bottom, swearing. One shoved another and shouted in his face. They took one glance around and ran off.

Wesley was laughing and hooting, hands clasped to the sides of his head. I had no fucking idea what I'd just seen. Other people from the high street crowds were shaking their heads, some talking, but mostly falling back to normal as if nothing had happened.

"Fuck," Wesley said. "That's Violet!"

My gaze snapped to him. "You know her?"

"She's in my soc' science class! Fuck, mate, she's in your physics class. Don't you know her?"

I don't know what expression I pulled, but Wes didn't see it because he was staring at the roof she had climbed and disappeared to.

"You've spoken to her?" I asked.

He brushed at the bangs of hair on his forehead. "Dave, she's my dealer."

"What?"

"Yeah." He just gave me a shrug.

"So you know her? Holy shit... She said something to me, something like 'Wes says hi'. I thought I just misheard her."

I couldn't believe it. All this time, Wesley had been casually interacting with her? While I couldn't even manage a 'hi'? I was almost angry.

Wesley studied my face, then chuckled again. "Holy shit, Dave."

"What?"

"She tried talking to you? And you just fucking blanked her?"

"No, I-"

"Yes you did. Just like normal. Oh my God, you're a prick." He clasped a hand over his face, laughed more, and sat back down on the bench.

"You have her number?" I asked.

He erupted into louder laughter. "Mate, nah, you're not doing this. I won't let you be that guy. You fancy her, don't you?"

I didn't reply.

"You blatantly do. Fucking hell. Go into your damn class and talk to her. I can be an arse sometimes, so can you. She tried talking to you?"

"She sat next to me this one time."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah, and since then, she's just been staring across the room at me."

He smacked his forehead with the heel of his palm. Twice. "So you blanked her."

"Not on purpose, I just didn't know what to say."

He let out one of his exaggerated sighs. "Yeah, well, she doesn't really talk. She always sits at the back in my class. Says nothing to anybody, unless they talk to her first."

So, apparently, it was a big deal that she'd sat near me and made the effort. It could've been so easy to say something. Just a hello, make some comment on the work. Easier than what it'd turned into now.

I gestured at the building she'd climbed up. "Do you have any idea what the fuck that was?"

Wesley shrugged. "Fuck knows. She's a gang kid, Dave. She says she's not anymore, but she could be full of shit." His tone went a little more serious. "You be careful if you talk to her, yeah?"

I swallowed. This wasn't helping. "What?"

"I'm just saying. She's a bit rough, she gets me weed, she just ran up the side of a building to escape three angry guys. Dad would probably have a fit if he knew we were hanging with someone like her."

---

Violet

It was the first day of 'labs'. Another room to find on the sprawling campus. A new interior to get used to. A new seat to pick.

I arrived early, as was growing typical of me, I suppose. I always liked to check out some new territory as soon as possible. Unfortunately, the door was locked, so I had to wait for the professor. I was wondering if I had the wrong room - five minutes passed and nobody showed up.

Three people did, at last. The only other girl in our small class, with two guys in tow.

"Oh, good," Chanice said to me. "Always know I got the right place when you're here."

She'd been talking to me quite a lot, stopping me in the corridor a few times. I think she was drawn to me, the only fellow female. She kept asking me things about the town, wanting information on where to go for nights out with 'her girls'. I was just waiting for the next person to ask me to get them drugs.

We didn't talk in class so far, though. She was getting a following from the guys, and they kept her busy. I'm sure she enjoyed it even if she pretended she didn't.

I wasn't receiving the same attention, and wasn't sure if that was an insult, or a relief. Can't say I'd ever been complimented with the word 'friendly' before, so maybe I shouldn't have been surprised.

That girl, though. Friendly was definitely the word. She was busy friend-zoning the whole class.

Except David.

David didn't speak to anybody. But he liked to stare. At me.

She could flirt with every guy there, so long as she left that one to me. I might get vicious. I was heavily set on something which was nothing yet. I couldn't deny the childish excitement each time I had a physics class.

More students turned up, and eventually the professor. Our professor was late to our first labs session. Fantastic.

He apologised and spoke in a quick voice, unlocking the door and letting us file in one by one. I hoped he'd speak slower during lectures, or I was going to miss everything he said. He had a big grin - he was going to be one of those typical ones, far too energetic about his field of expertise.

I spotted a seat in the corner, sat in it, and looked towards the door just in time to see David coming through.

His eyes shifted around and found me. He held my gaze and headed right towards me.

Shit. My stomach actually tightened with anticipation. Yes. Come here. Fucking finally.

He almost slammed his laptop bag on the desk. I flinched. For a moment he just stood over me, as if he needed to demonstrate how big he was before he spoke.

"What the fuck were you doing on Saturday?" he asked, in one of the gruffest, roughest voices I'd ever heard.

With one elbow on the back of my chair, one on the desk, I blinked up at him.

"Hi," I said.

"Hi."

"My name's Vio-"

"No. Seriously." He took the chair beside me, but didn't break eye contact. "What was that?"

This... wasn't actually how I'd planned for things to go. Wrong place at the wrong time, and all. Honestly, I was hoping he wouldn't have recognised me on that chance encounter. But Wesley had been there, too.

The professor's voice was starting to fill the room. David broke his stare to glance at the front and pulled out his laptop. I did the same. Then he looked back to me, speaking through his frown, the way his mouth tightened. He wanted his answer.

"I do parkour," I said.

"Okay. Why were those guys chasing you?"

"Because they're cunts."

"Excuse me," the professor interrupted. "You two lover birds at the back. Would you mind sitting a little nearer to the front? There's not enough of you to fill this room, no need to be shouting so far."

Nice. There were a few snickers from other students. David's face fell, close to mortified.

"Sir," he started. Might as well have scoffed a 'please'.

The professor simply gave a cheeky smile, fingers beckoning in the air. David picked up his laptop and got to his feet, I followed. The professor patted an empty desk, right at the front.

"There'll be no 'sir' in here," he continued. "I have a name."

We sat down in our new, designated place. David gave me another look, I shrugged in return. Apparently neither of us wanted to talk and risk being called out again. We were silent for a while.

I leant in closer, brushing my shoulder against his, and kept my voice low. "I'll talk after class, aight?"

"All right."

That brief moment of clothed contact excited me. Fuck knows why. This guy was just intriguing me in ways I couldn't explain. I'd never been one for thinking about my feelings, or trying to understand them. I just impulsively reacted.

Some of my impulses right then were very unsuitable for the environment.

We had three shitty hours of class. We didn't do anything, we were simply told how things would be once we did do things. It was an interesting room, full of drawers and cupboards and some equipment on display. Computers around the sides, which seemed pointless as every student had their own laptop.