Which maybe was part of the reason my gaze kept sliding to her, garish hair aside.
I had to take my opportunities when they came. I sidled over to her at the folding table and grabbed a fitted sheet to wrestle with.
“So, you liked it here so much you decided you’d nab a spot that should be someone else’s?” I said in an offhand way, with just enough edge to needle her.
She glowered at me for only a second before going back to her stack of towels. “No one was using that bed. And I’m not planning on staying very long.”
“How do you know the administration wouldn’t have offered it to someone else? And thinking it’s okay to take it when you don’t even care enough to stick around?” I tsked. “Why not save us the trouble and take off now to get on with whatever more important things you have to do?”
I felt the misstep in my last sentence even as it was coming out and restrained a wince. I’d put on a lot of fronts in my time, but overt asshole wasn’t one I’d ever had much use for. Obviously that persona needed more work.
“The most important thing I could be doing is what I’m already doing right here,” Trix said tartly, not even bothering to look at me this time.
So much for getting under her skin. I’d only reminded her of her cause. As if she had any real hope of seeing it through. This place would chew her up before it let her get anywhere with her private mission.
She dropped the last towel on the top of the pile and moved to heft them off the table. “Of course,” I shot back while I still had the chance, letting my tone go dry with sarcasm. “We’d never survive without your stunning laundry skills.”
Trix didn’t even bother to respond. She marched over to the bins, set the towels in one, and wheeled that out of the room without a backward glance. But I caught a glimpse of her face as she straightened up, of the twitch of her jaw and the momentary knitting of her brow before it fell away behind her tough-girl façade.
She wasn’t hard all the way through. Lord only knew how much sadness and confusion lurked under there that even I hadn’t seen. She could put on all the fronts she wanted, but you couldn’t bullshit a bullshitter. I knew every gambit there was.
“And here I thought we had the privilege of being specially chosen for this fine establishment,” I said to the room at large after she’d left. “Whatever will we do if word gets out that just anyone can wander in and claim one of these golden spots?”
The wry remark earned me the snickers I’d been aiming for. My life here was a hell of a lot easier if no one else saw me as a total asshole. Self-mockingly charming jerks, on the other hand, got a pass almost every time.
There’d been a long time when that thought would have brought a satisfied smirk to my face, at least when no one was watching. Now, it poked a deeper hole in the pit of my stomach.
That was who I was. That was why I was here. What was the point in pretending any differently? It wasn’t as if I could really hurt anyone around me, not anymore.
“Ugh, I’m so tired of doing this crap,” one of my fellow inmates said, stumbling under the weight of the heap of damp fabric she was attempting to move from one machine to another.
I tossed the sheet I’d been grappling with aside—someone else could deal with the fitted monstrosities—and caught the mountain of blankets before they tumbled onto the floor. “Tell me about it. Here we go.”
We hefted it together into the dryer and closed the lid with a clang. The girl I’d rescued smiled at me as she reached for the dial to start the cycle. “Thanks, Jenson.”
I gave her a jaunty salute. “How can I leave a fair maiden in distress?”
It’d been way too easy to bring that blush to her cheeks. Another jab of discomfort ran through my stomach as I turned back to the folding table. Michelle was pretty, don’t get me wrong. But my time at the college had drained away most of my lustful spirit like it had so much else. It was hard to look at any of my classmates without seeing the broken soul beneath the surface.
Hardly anyone liked to talk about why they were here, but after enough classes, you could put together the pieces. Fuck-ups, all of us.
Except Trix. The school hadn’t claimed her—she’d claimed the school. At least at first. As much as I’d have liked to see someone saunter out of here giving the brick walls and the fucking roses the middle finger, it’d be hard to believe it was possible until it actually happened.
And she didn’t seem to be inclined to try just yet. How many kicks in the ass would it take?
With that question running through my head, I’d girded myself to offer more heckling by the time she ducked back into the basement room, this time with a bin full of towels and cloths from the kitchen. She’d wrinkled her nose—those loads always stunk to high heaven.
“I’d almost think you like the drudgery,” I said. “Are you so eager to fit in you’ll truck around dirty laundry just to be around us?”
She shoved the bin over to the washing machine Michelle had just emptied. “I told you, I’ve got something important to do here.”
“So why are you doing all these other things instead? I think you’re stuck, and you just don’t want to admit this was a dead end.”
Her gaze jerked to me, startled, but it wasn’t as if word about her search hadn’t spread all over school by now, especially with that dork Ryo championing her cause.
“You don’t know anything about me,” she snapped, which told me this time I’d landed the blow.
Hurray for me. I found I couldn’t think of any way to build on my “victory” while she tossed the contents of the bin into the washing machine with brusque movements. Then she was storming right back out of the room, and a few minutes later my shift ended, so it didn’t matter anymore.
The laundry was only my first housekeeping duty of the day, but my second proved to be mercifully Trix-free. Michelle had ended up on the same music-room maintenance shift as I had, though. As I wiped the dust from a flute and then a French horn, she meandered closer with the clarinet she was polishing.
“It’s stupid how they make us keep everything in here in perfect shape when no one ever uses the equipment, isn’t it?” she murmured as if she was afraid of being overheard. Which, to be fair, was a legitimate concern in this place.
“What, you don’t live for wiping down neglected musical instruments?” I said with a teasing arch of my eyebrows.
She giggled and gave the clarinet another swipe with her cloth. Even while she was complaining about the task, she was still making a thorough job of it. Why risk the potential wrath over something that small?
“I like the way you talk,” she said, her elbow brushing mine in an unmistakably deliberate motion. “You say what you think—what everyone is thinking, a lot of the time. You’re not afraid to tell it like it is.”
That statement in combination with the vast number of things she clearly didn’t know about me left me choking on a guffaw. I managed to swallow my sputter of laughter.
“Yes,” I said, with a dollop of irony that went right over her head. “I absolutely do.”
“Do you want to hang out sometime later?”
She glanced at me sideways as she asked, a hint of her previous blush coming back. There wasn’t a whole lot to do for fun at Roseborne College. An invite to hang out was basically an invite to seek out the spot where we were least likely to be interrupted and see how fast we could get each other off.