I wake up on Saturday feeling good. It's just after 8 when I throw the sheets off myself. My belly is empty, so I pull on my smelly hoodie from yesterday, and find my way out my room and down the stairs to find my dads.
"Dad? Larry?"
I meet Larry standing at the bottom of the stairs looking up at me. I wave cutely at him. "Heyy!"
He mutters a hi and I ask if there's food. We walk to the kitchen together and he continues breaking eggs in a bowl for an omelet. I perch myself on the counter trying to find an acceptable way to tell him. I finally settle on a pre-generated set of lines I've used a jillion times. "Larry," I begin in a wheedling tone.
"Huh?"
"Well..." I drag. "Um... sooooo... you know my friend Nikki? She invited me out this afternoon."
Larry doesn't look up at me. He just focuses intensely on beating those eggs till they foam like seawater. "Uh-huh?"
"Yeahh... Sooo... can I go?"
"Yeah, sure."
"Yes! Thanks, Larry. You're--"
"After all your chores are done," he says with an air of finality that has its own Do Not Argue sign. But I push it anyway. He turns the stove on.
"But Larry--"
"I went into your room last night to see if you were still up. It's a mess in there. Don't you ever clean? The air is so damp and you always have those curtains drawn like you have a pact with darkness. How do you breathe at night?!"
Larry's outburst makes my face heat up so I look away from him. He stares me down like he seriously expects an answer before deciding he'd rather not have his food get burned on my account.
"Final verdict: you clean up your space and do your laundry. Also, you would be a help if you vacuumed and also did the dishes." His look here tells me it's a command, not a debatable offer. "Max needs me at the store so I'll be out soon. I'll tell him you'll be out for the day. Make sure you're finished before you leave and we won't have any problems. Understood?" He hands me a china saucer and puts some egg on it. I roll my eyes. He nods curtly in reply.
By the time I'm done eating, Larry is dressed up and on his way to the store. He repeats his instructions and I wave him off. "Yeah, yeah, I'll have it done. I promise. Bye!!! Love you."
His freckles disappear from his flushed face. "Be back by 7," he mutters, puts on his baseball hat, and leaves. I smile.
"Alright," I say to myself when I'm done loading up the dishwasher and pressing start. "What to do next? Oh--right? My dirty laundry!"
I hurry up the stairs to my room and start picking up clothes lying around. My phone suddenly buzzes and I set the armful of clothes on my bed. It's a message from Nikki. I open it.
Somehow, I find myself a second later lying on the floor binging cat videos. By the time I realize it, Nikki is texting me again:
" Wyd bih
Just left the crib
Omw"
"Jesus!" I exclaim and throw my phone on my bed. "It's been two hours already?! It's literally only been a second!"
I begin to frantically scoop up shirts and underwear and shorts into my arms and run down the stairs to the laundry room. It doesn't help that some clothes keep falling every few steps and when I bend down to pick one up, three others decide to mess with me. I'm frustrated and tired so I shove everything that would fit in the washer and start it on mix setting. I run to the bathroom and, hell, I look ill. I rush through brushing my teeth and a bath.
Of course, "bath" being me just sloshing soapy water around on my face and in my armpits to at least feel clean-ish and less like a total disaster.
I throw on a blue Hello Kitty tee and gray three-quarter cargo shorts. I decide to style my hair in a messy little bun behind my neck with a slack rubber band and just slip my feet into my old Crocs covered in ink, paint splotches, and stickers. I know I need to get as much as I can done now or it won't ever be--notwith Nikki around.
I make my bed and shove all my bits of paper and coverless novels under it. The remaining dirty clothes find their way back into the closet with my cleaner clothes, because, duh, the future can deal with that shii. I then push the broom around the living room floor so it has a semi-clean appearance.
Just as I'm debating with my snarky inner monologue whether what I just did counts as vacuuming--and whether Larry would notice--the doorbell rings. My heart stops and sweat pierces through my skin.
Idiot! my inner voice snaps. You forgot to wear deo!
The bell rings again--more aggressive; more personal--and I immediately know who it is.
"I'm coming!" I scream with matching energy and sprint to get the door. I toss the broom aside (momentarily feeling sorry for abandoning it like that) before reaching for the door knob.
"Some of us have ears, you know," I scold my overeager guest. "Don't ruin them with your bad doorbell manners."
"Yeah, whatever," Nikki says flipping her hair in my face before face-planting onto the couch. "I knew you'd have some chore drama to deal with so I'm here to speed things up so we can leave," she mocks looking at the abandoned broom. She sits up on the couch, kicking her sneakers off and making a little mess.
"Really?" I say in disbelief. "You? Helping? With chores?"
"Yeah," she shrugs like she didn't just totally switch personalities. "Let's do it."
"Um.. okay. Let's go to my room."
We go to my room and begin the daunting task of sorting my clothes into clean and dirty. It's crazy how when you need to go out, your closet is the emptiest thing in the universe. But when it's chore day, suddenly you have more clothes than the entire cast of Henry Danger during the entire show's time on air.
Nikki is NOT a help. She hold up one of my dirty panties and squeals, "EWWWW!!! ANYA, LOOK!!!"
My entire body flushes and I snatch it from her. "Nikki!" I snap, and she stops laughing. I cover my face in my hands and pinch my cheeks to try to calm my twitching body down. Nikki shrugs an embarrassed sorry.
After a short while, we have everything sorted in three piles (clean, dirty, and I dunno) and now we have to fold the clean ones. Nikki hold up a shirt. "I didn't know you still had this."
I squint at the shirt in question. It's a white tee with horrifically faded print of what looks like four girls under some text. Nikki senses my confusion and adds, "That Blackpink shirt I got you last year during Coachella season."
"Oh!!!! That's what that is."
Nikki looks through the pile. "Why do you have so many kpop tees tho?"
"Uh... 'cause my dad getting them for me? Like, he gets so many from groups I don't even stan."
Nikki giggles and proceeds to fold my clothing into the most unconventional shapes known to humankind. I roll my eyes at that girl whose attention is now mostly on her phone. Occasionally, she would come across a dance video and stand up so suddenly the pile of "folded" clothes would fall over.
"Annie! Look!" she would say every five minutes if a cat video, meme, or trending dance accidentally crossed her feed. I'd just groan like, "Ugh! Nikki! You've knocked it all down again!!"
"Mmm.. sowee," she would say with very exaggerated "aegyo" (Korean for " cutesy") way and we would spend the next two minutes rolling on the floor laughing hard.
At 12, all my dirty laundry has been run through the machine and the earliest load is in the dryer. Nikki and I are in my room trying to master the latest dance trend when she suddenly says, "Hey, we're supposed to go see Aidan today, remember?"
"Ohh! Right! Let's get going then."
We head out the house, Nikki practically bouncing beside me. The walk is short, about twenty minutes, but my belly is doing an entire gymnastics routine. Meeting someone new has always been nerve-racking for me, and though Aidan isn't exactly new to me, we don't interact very much. And Nikki being in full chaos mode isn't helping my case.
When we get to his apartment complex and find our way to his apartment, Nikki wraps her arms around my shoulders. "Brace yourself, Annie, you're about to meet the legend himself." She raps her knuckles on the door in perfect rhythm, still not letting go of me.
"Who is it?" Aidan's voice calls from inside.
"It is I!" Nikki announces, pressing her lips against the door. I grimace and stop myself from mentioning how unhygienic that is.
Aidan opens the door with a big smile. Without skipping a beat, Nikki torpedoes herself at him and wraps her arms around his waist. "Addy Oppa!!" she squeals and I smile at them, suddenly envious that I don't have an older sibling.
"Hey! You made it!!" he laughs and plays with her hair. He's really tall, and Nikki just looks tiny next to him, though she's about four inches or so taller than I am (I'm 5'2). Aidan turns to me and invites me in warmly. "Come in. Come in."
"Thanks," I mutter and shut the door behind me. His apartment is small and messy with cardboard boxes scattered around. It smells like coffee and old books--two of my best happy feels triggers. I look around thinking, I like, I like. I glance nervously at Nikki who is already raiding the place for snacks.
Aidan runs a hand through his beige-colored hair and gestures for me to sit. I smile awkwardly and stiffly plant my ass on the recliner.
"So, how's life treating you girls?" Aidan asks brightly, clearly trying not to overwhelm me. He leans casually against the counter, and I can't help but notice his muscles ripple under his thin white shirt. My eyes widen and my skin heats up. I look away.
Nikki emerges from the attached kitchen with a bag of chips tucked in the crook of her arm. "Cool. You?" she chirps.
"Life's been going fine for me, thanks," I mumble.
"That's nice. Me too. Would you like the fan on?" Aidan asks me.
"Uh..." I fumble, trying my best not to trip over my own words. "Yeah, thank you."
Nikki conveniently chooses this time to bring up the dance we were learning earlier and soon, we're all standing in the middle of the living area trying to teach Aidan to twerk. Watching him struggle so terriblymakes me laugh soon, all my tension fizzles away.
We play Mortal Kombat and later, Aidan and Nikki build a paradise in Minecraft. I, instead, sit in the corner looking through one of his boxes. I find some thick novels in there and leaf though them, craving a good read. There are some nice classics, a few recent legends, and one promising adult novel from the 2010s.
I notice Aidan looking at me and I stiffen. "I was an English lit major," he explains quite unnecessarily because I already know. Nikki told me. I shrug and he runs his fingers through his hair again. I notice Nikki turn around to me from the computer with her brow raised slightly in that way. I wanna yeet her to tomorrow.
"Uh... you wanna read that? You can have it if you want."
I look at the cover and realize I'm holding Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte. I nod frantically and accept his gift. And though I've read this a thousand times before, knowing it's from him makes me want to read it again.