The Teddy Bear Agreement | Updating

1- the apartment

It is a truth commonly known that if you don't wear sunscreen in Texas and spend over three seconds outdoors, you will irrevocably screw up your skin for the rest of your life. I can feel the hand of Satan on the back of my neck as I pull another box from the trunk of my car, but I refuse to let my hair down because I know it'll just stick to the sweat all over my tomato-red face.

Setting the box down on the concrete sidewalk, I take a moment to look up at the blaring sun overhead and lift my middle finger at it.

One-hundred and two degrees in the third week of August. Supposedly the worst it can get today, according to my weather app, even so, what the actual hell Texas? I get it that Global Warming is all the rage right now, but my good God.

"Love you, too, I'll see you soon." Michelle saunters over towards me, pocketing her phone in her denim shorts before adjusting her headband, a smile on her lips. "Need some help here?"

I sigh, nodding at the box I had just set down on the sidewalk. "Fuck yeah this one is a hefty boy."

We heave up on the box between the two of us, carrying it all the way down the path leading to the cluster of duplex apartments that will now be my new community of sorts. They are gray and a couple of decades old, but the landscaping is nice and new for the incoming college students that want to live within walking distance to the school, like me.

"Put it down for a second," I tell her, and we set the box (that possibly has a lot of my clothes considering the weight) down in front of the flight of stairs that lead up to the apartment I had been ogling for a couple of months already and had managed to visit once since I first laid my eyes on the post in apartment hunter. A flight of stairs that isn't a problem to go up and down whenever you aren't carrying multiple boxes and furniture. "How much more do we have in my car?"

"Like six or seven boxes, not counting whenever you get the furniture truck in."

"Right." Mom had helped me rent a moving company take the furniture I wanted from home, which I could not have afforded on my own, but I still wasn't sure when they would get here and whether they'd help me unpack my small couch, bed frame, desk, and some other weightier boxes didn't fit in my small sedan.

"Shouldn't your roommate be here already?" She asks, motioning to the door with her head.

I breathe in as we grab the box by the sides once more and begin the treacherous trip upwards.

"Should be, I'm not sure – grab it from the side as well so it doesn't tip backwards. He said he was over on Saturday to get some last things in order and that he'd be driving up today as well, but I don't know when." The last few steps are the hardest, but once we're up on the small porch, we set the box down on the front door and simply slide it inside the place.

"I'm still a bit surprised." Michelle lets out a puff of air as she sits on a box we have brought up to the place. She had tried convincing Ray to help us with the moving and while he's usually down to be a buddy, they too had things to move to their new place.

"Surprised about?" I walk across the living room, which leads straight to the tiny kitchen, to the fridge where I stocked a couple of water bottles I brought over from the trip.

"You living with a guy you met online." She gives me this saucy look that I roll my eyes to as I hand her a barely cooled water bottle. "Scandalous."

"Shut up, you're living with a guy as well."

"Well, he's my boyfriend." She points.

"Did that make a difference to your parents?" I know the answer to that already, Michelle's very traditional Mexican parents had not taken the news that she was moving in with Ray for college well, even if they had been dating for over a year. Of course, that happening in the middle of their divorce process had helped little, but Michelle is very independent and knew exactly what she wanted to do, so even when her mom threatened to disown her she simply told her "You'll get over it".