Ryan leaned back in the couch as his thumbs flitted across
the buttons of his Xbox controller. Man, what a week! Even after getting all of
his stuff moved out of the truck and into the apartment, there had been the
unpacking, the sorting, dividing between stuff he wanted in his room and stuff
that would go elsewhere, etc. It had been a tiring and exhausting process, but
at least he’d had his Brambury roommates to help him out. There had been Chris
of course and he’d gotten a chance to meet his other two roommates. Mickael
Konelio was a dark haired young man of Polynesian descent who was kind of one
the quiet side and kept to himself in his room most of the time. Ian Kennson
was a freckled, gangly redhead from the colorfully named town of Kalamazoo,
Michigan, who was very… what was the best word? Church-y, Ryan supposed. Ian
had a lot of those MormonAd posters in his room and seemed to listen to MoTab
most of the time. He was just two months off of his LDS mission to Brazil and
there were times when he would start speaking Portugese while talking out of
habit.
Still, each of their eccentricities aside, he was grateful
for their help. And speak of the devil, er, roommates, Ian came bounding in
through the front door, a wide grin plastered all over his face.
“Hey Ryan! You like free food right?”
“What college student doesn’t?” replied Ryan with a grin.
“Well they’re doing a sort of a waffle brunch down at the
clubhouse right now. In the mood to eat?”
“Sure, why not. Are Chris and Mike here?” Ryan still hadn’t
quite worked out his roomie’s schedules.
“I think they’re both at work , so it’s just us.”
“All right, let’s go then,” said Ryan as he paused the game
right as his virtual Mustang GT crashed through some roadside barriers. Meh,
he’d been losing that race anyway.
A couple of buildings away, Lindsey was feeling a little
less charitable towards her roommate and was beginning to wish that this was one
of the four bedroom apartments here at Branbury. Rachel was a nice enough girl,
she didn’t seem to mind taking care of all the cleaning, for which Lindsey was
truly grateful. It wasn’t that she was a messy person per se, but she tended to
leave it all to the last minute. With Rachel around though, the apartment had
been sparkling from day one. Even their R.A., Lindsay, had mentioned that their’s
was the cleanest apartment in the whole building! Just then, Rachel swept in,
practically quivering in excitement.
“Hey Lindsey guess what?”
Lindsey had to resist the urge to roll her eyes; it was far
too early in the morning for this level of enthusiasm.
“No, what?”
“They’re having a free brunch down at the clubhouse! Do you
wanna go?” It was phrased as a question, but the blatant hope shining in the
Asian girl’s sweet brown eyes made it kind of hard to say anything but “Sure, I
wouldn’t mind. I’m not in the mood to cook anyway.”
“Great! Let’s go!” she cried happily, throwing open the door
and bounding out before Lindsey had even got up from her chair.
At the clubhouse there was a fairly large crowd there
already but this deal was being catered by the amazing Waffle Love dudes so
there was still plenty of waffles for everyone. Ryan had never been too much of
a waffle man, but the smell was starting to make him wish that the line would
hurry up and move! Eventually they did get to the front where two of the RAs,
Annie and Jake were helping the managers Nina and Erica serve the waffles. Ryan
and his roommates loaded up their plates and then began to hunt around for a
place to sit and chow down. Just as he was beginning to think all the good
spots had been taken, Ryan noticed that there were some tables set up in the Institute
room and motioned for his roomies to follow him in there. Turned out to be a
good choice as there was just a pair of girls sitting in there.
“Is anyone else sitting here?” Ryan asked politely. One of
the girls, an Asian with long, dark hair smiled at them widely and shook her
head.
“Be our guests!” she replied perkily.
Ryan and Ian took their seats across from the girls and the
dark haired one started talking almost immediately.
“Hi, I’m Rachel! I don’t recognize any of you guys; you all
must be new. Where are you from?”
Eventually it was sorted out who was who and where they were
from. Unfortunately while Ian seemed to be hitting it off with Rachel, Ryan
ended up making a fool of himself when Lindsey revealed she was from Australia.
“Australia huh? Let’s-put-another-shrimp-on-the-barbie
Australia?” he asked with a very exaggerated accent. Lindsey didn’t laugh,
instead her gaze turned frosty and her lips tightened into a thin line.
“Yes, that’s the one,” she replied bruskly.
Sensing he’d made a gaffe, Ryan tried to explain himself.
But you know what they say when you have to explain a joke…
“Actually I was doing that scene from the beginning of Dumb
and Dumber, where Jim Carrey gets Austria and Australia mixed up?”
“Right. Sure. I get it,” said Lindsey with a complete and
total lack of humor. Ryan decided that at that moment it was best to just shut
up.
As they left the clubhouse, Chris put his arm around him and
said, “Tough break, man. But hey, if us guys had a dollar for every time we
screwed up in front of a girl, we’d be richer than Tony Stark and Bruce Wayne
put together!”
“Tony Stark and Bruce Wayne don’t exist,” Ryan deadpanned.
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