In Halls

Arrival

I hadn't heard anybody else come in, but in the intervening time since my parents' cup of tea someone had put a spice rack on top of one of the cupboards and some food in the shelf below mine on the fridge. Not much – two aubergines, a few onions and other bits of veg and a massive slab of cheese. I thought about knocking on doors to find out who'd arrived, but since they hadn't tried to find me I decided trying to find them might come across as a bit needy.

Instead, I propped my door open an inch with a folded towel. I put the radio on from my laptop, balanced on a box of study supplies on the desk. Open doors and music says "I'm cool and friendly, you can talk to me," I decided. Of course it was possible that the radio station was not cool in the slightest, but at some point you have to draw a line under the over-analysis of your every move.

My door had been propped for about half an hour, and I was thinking of getting some lunch, when I got my first knock. I pulled back the door to find a young man just slightly taller than me leaning against the door frame.

"Hey," he said, "I'm Ed."

"Good morning... Ellen, nice to meet you," I replied. I'd been aiming for casual, cool and friendly, but it had morphed somehow into awkward and over-polite. I was unavoidably reminded of my best friend from home, Sophie, sat in the middle of my double bed last week saying we'll go to uni and we'll both meet tall, dark, handsome strangers who turn out to be secret billionaires, and we'll be set for life, screw exams and the coursework. It wasn't really an appropriate thing to be thinking and I winced at my own brain, but Ed was looking past me already, leaning into my room. He had dark hair, and dark shadows under his eyes.

"Have you made your bed yet? Ah, thank fuck. Would you come and give me a hand?"

"Uh, sure." I grabbed my key card, and Ed gestured me across the hall. His was room 2, our doors facing off against one another over the battered blue carpet. I came in to see a room that was the exact opposite of mine but messy in a different way. A backpacker rucksack was propped against the desk and a selection of bedding lay sprawled across the floor.

"How the fuck do I do this?" Ed asked, waving his hands at the crumpled duvet, half in and half out of a blue stripy cover.

"What, you mean make a bed?"

"Yeah. I've tried like nine times. I can't get the sheet straight, I can't get the thing into the right part of the thing and I so badly need a nap right now."

"Are you kidding me? You don't know how to make a bed?"

Gorgeous, maybe, but clearly dim. I noticed his slim-line laptop was perched on the bare mattress, open to a page titled "How to make your bed."

"What? I've never had to do it before, have I? And that's no good, it's all some shit about sheets and hospital corners."

"What century are we living in? How have you never made a bed?"

"Alright, enough of the judgement. I literally just flew in from Guatemala this morning, I'm desperate for a nap. Will you please help me?"

He didn't look particularly desperate for anything. Instead, his dark eyebrows were raised sardonically, and he leant against the side of the desk with his hands shoved into the pockets of his green hoody. It was logical that he would be an arrogant and entitled gap yah boy. Picking up his bottom sheet, I reflected that it saved me the trouble of liking him a great deal.

"Here, you do it, I'll talk you through it."

"Can't you just...?"

"Ed, I'm not changing your sheets for you every two weeks all year, you're going to have to learn now."

"Every two weeks?" He wrinkled his nose and sighed.

The parts of me that quite liked mothering people and showing off my superior domestic skills rather enjoyed the next few minutes of bullying him into getting his duvet in the cover the right way round.

"Are these yours?" I couldn't help asking, when the dull blue pattern was fully onto the duvet and thrown over the bed.

"No. They're grim, aren't they? It was a bedding pack optional extra. I came straight here, I didn't bring much to be honest. I'm going to grab more of my stuff later in the week from my Dad."

Privately, I thought that reasonable bedding was a minimum for arriving at a new home, but I had to reason that standards differed.

"Can you do any housework at all then, or is it just a phobia of clean sheets?"

"I've never really been into chores," he said, watching me shaking a pillow straight and trying to copy without great success.

"Your poor mother."

He nodded his head sideways, as though trying to shrug off the comment.

"Never really done any cleaning at least."

"Ugh. Remind me never to use your toilet."

He glanced up at me before frowning at the pillowcase again.

"Why would you? You've got your own just across the hall, haven't you?"

"Ha. Yeah, I guess. Don't know why I said that." Suddenly sheepish, I pulled out the corners of his duvet, smoothing down the creases in the brand new cover.

"I can cook, though," he said, after a moment's silence. "I'll cook for you tonight if you like, to say thanks?" A little smile accompanied his offer. He had a nice smile. I tried to say no. For one thing, I doubted his ability to actually cook, and for another, his offer had been in such a light-hearted tone that it hadn't sounded serious. But he insisted.

"I have to prove that I'm not completely incompetent now, you know," he laughed, "plus I was thinking of suggesting a group meal anyway, for a bit of flatmate bonding, right?"

"If you're sure... I guess a group meal would be nice. We can get to know each other and all that. If we're going to be living together for a whole year."

"Exactly. Hey, I never asked, what are you studying?"

"Biochem, you?"

"Same." He grinned, and held out his fist to me, meeting my quizzical look with a further sardonic raise of his eyebrows. I gave him a reluctant fist bump back. "We can go to our first lectures together and not be complete loners."

"Everyone will be brand new, everyone will be loners," I said.

"Not us," he said exaltingly. "We'll have the advantage. Now get out, I'm going to bed."

I gave him my best judgemental look and told him he'd missed a please somewhere in that last sentence.

"Please please please thank you thank you thank you see you at seven for dinner, right?"

"I'll believe it when I see it," I said, in what I hoped was a joking tone, and turned out of his door. Before I could cross the hallway, the front door slammed open and my next new flatmate came bustling towards me through it.

Testing... testing...

This is the first thing I've ever posted to WattPad and the first writing I've ever shared online, but I have been reading All The Advice and it sounds like Author's Notes are A Good Thing.

From now on, I'll be popping up down here to add context, share life moments and ask sparingly for the writing feedback I so desperately crave.

Your first piece of bonus info: I genuinely had a (male) flatmate at uni who asked me to help him change the sheets on his bed. The gross thing? It was about 4 months into the year. His Mum did them for him when he arrived, and he just hadn't changed them. He didn't even have the excuse Ed's secretly got. Cheeky dude asked me to "help" him again after another few months. I did not.

Updating Tuesdays and Fridays this month.