Everything I Need

Part 2

//

When Shela wakes up, she’s surprised to find that she’s back in her dorm room. She startles away, wincing as the light through their small dorm window burns her retinas, and rolls onto her back. Her hands come up to rub at her eyes and she groans unhappily as she allows her senses to acknowledge all the aches and pains in her body.

The nausea hits her first, and then the stomachache. She presses a hand to her gut in an attempt to stifle it but it doesn’t work. Her head is pounding and there’s an ache in her hips and thighs that tells her she probably had a better time than she expected. Her mouth tastes like a*s.

“f**k my life,” she utters and doesn’t expect the low chuckle she hears from across the room.

She peels one eye open to find Charlotte already up and dressed, sitting on her desk chair and organizing the pin board on the wall in front of her. She doesn’t look at Shela, doesn’t even say anything, and as Shela leans up to glance over at her, she’s not even sure that little laugh was for her benefit.

“What time is it?” she grumbles.

Charlotte reaches for the jar of pins beside her then glances at the watch on her left wrist. “Eleven-fifteen.”

Shela gives a low hum of disappointment and lies back down when sitting up makes her feel more nauseous. “I drank a lot,” she comments. Charlotte doesn’t say anything. “How did I get back?”

Charlotte’s movements still and when Shela glances over at her, there’s a look on her face that she can’t read. She almost looks disappointed. It disappears the minute Shela sees it and Charlotte weighs the small pins in her hand before shrugging.

“I don’t really remember,” she says with a polite smile. “I was asleep.”

It surprises Shela a little bit when she suddenly puts down the pins and gets up from the desk. There’s a pair of perfectly clean Chelsea boots at the end of her bed and she pulls them on silently, fixing the bottoms of her skintight black skinny jeans once they’re on her feet. She barely glances at Shela as she pulls on her jacket and something about it feels strange. She pulls her leather satchel over her shoulder and arranges her collar as she gets to the door.

Something about it all feels… unfinished.

“I’m going to go get coffee,” she comments as she turns back softly. “Do you want anything?”

Shela narrows her brow and tugs her blanket more comfortably over her cold legs.

She thinks that Charlotte looks nervous.

Despite everything telling her not to, she smiles and answers.

“Coffee would be great.”

//

The campus coffee shop and bakery is empty and she gets herself a cup of coffee and drinks it at a little table in the corner before going back and getting two more. She picks up two blueberry muffins and two peach scones without thinking. She doesn’t realize that she’s got enough for Shela until she’s making her way back up to their room and knocking on the door because her hands are full.

She wishes she hadn’t when Shela opens the door in nothing but a fluffy white bathrobe. She’s glad that Shela’s more preoccupied with the tray of coffee in her hands to notice the blush on her cheeks and slips past her to put everything on her desk. She slips off her jacket silently and tries to ignore how Shela still hovers in the doorway.

“I didn’t know how you took it so I kind of got everything,” Charlotte mumbles as she grabs her own cup and takes a sip. She pushes the other towards Shela before settling down on her bed and reaching for her book. Shela hums as she moves over to collect it.

She soon learns that Shela takes her coffee ridiculously sweet and milky. She hums happily as she takes her first sip and then picks up the white bakery box. “What’d you get?” she asks curiously. “Did they make any peach scones today? Those things are worth getting dressed for.”

Charlotte looks up from her book and swallows. “There’s two in there,” she says. “And two blueberry muffins. Help yourself.”

Shela looks at her hesitantly. “You sure? You already got me coffee and you really didn’t need to do that.”

Charlotte looks at her and wants to tell her that there’s no way she bought all those sweets for herself and no one else is here. She wants to tell her to stop making it weird. She wants to tell her to just shut up and take the damn pastry.

Instead she says, “It’s fine. Go ahead.”

Shela opens the box and takes one of the scones. She eats it quietly on her bed and doesn’t say anything else. Charlotte rolls onto her side once her coffee is finished and they don’t speak for the next couple of hours. Shela moves around the room, getting ready and finishing her unpacking. She doesn’t say anything until the sun is sinking low in the sky and hovers at the end of Charlotte’s bed until she turns to look at her.

“Are you coming for dinner?” she asks. “We missed lunch.”

Charlotte swallows and shakes her head even though her stomach’s been rumbling for ninety minutes.

“In a while,” she mutters.

Shela leaves when Bang Sana appears at their door. It’s only then that Charlotte eats the other scone.

//

Sana and Harper are just as hungover as she is. Harper pretty much communicates in grunts and holds a cup of coffee to her forehead as she stares down at the plate of food in front of her. Sana carefully sips from a bottle of ice-cold water and turns green when offered anything else.

“How did I get home last night?” Shela finally asks them and they grimace at the way she ploughs her way through the plate of pasta in front of her.

It’s Sana that answers. “We took you home about four,” she explains. “We waited until we were sure that the Robot would be asleep so that you didn’t have to interact with her.” At that, it’s like Sana remembers something. “Where have you been today, anyway?”

Shela’s stomach drops a little but she decides to tell the truth. “Uh, I had to finish unpacking.”

Sana fixes her with a curious look while Harper’s moves the coffee cup away from her face to stare her down. “Was Charlotte there?”

Shela licks some sauce off her finger before shrugging at whatever thoughts her friends are currently having. She doesn’t look at them. She knows that they don’t really like Charlotte —that they’ve pretty much teased Charlotte since they knew of her existence—but Charlotte is okay. She thinks that maybe people just don’t get Charlotte. She thinks that maybe Charlotte doesn’t want people to get her. But Shela kind of needs to get Charlotte. She needs to be able to understand certain things about her because they’re stuck together for the next year.

“Yeah, she was reading,” Shela says like that’s the end of the conversation.

She doesn’t mention the fact that Charlotte wasn’t stiff and standoffish like she normally is. She doesn’t tell them how Charlotte didn’t do anything to prove how smart or better than them she is. She doesn’t tell them how Charlotte brought her coffee and a peach scone.

She can’t really believe it herself, so why should they?

Shela reaches forward to grab the bread roll next to her plate and begins to butter it.

“She’s okay,” she comments.

Harper and Sana stare at her for the whole of dinner. They stay there until it’s time for closing and Shela never spots Charlotte arrive to get food.

Her friends drag her back to their room where they ply her with a shot of the brandy Harper stole from her grandpa’s kitchen. It’s gross and they give her a beer when she complains before forcing her to watch trashy TV. Shela isn’t feeling it and instead she feels a discomfort she’s never experienced before. She doesn’t drink most of the beer and excuses herself early.

Instead of going back to her room, she finds her keys in her back pocket and heads to her car. She takes the ten minute journey all the way to the nearest grocery store and reminds herself that she probably shouldn’t be keeping a small fortune in her glove compartment when she grabs a hundred dollar bill from inside. She grabs a cart and zooms her way down the aisles, filling it with the things she might need.

She heads for the hot counter and thinks about Charlotte. She wonders if she skipped dinner and picks up a plate of mac and cheese before asking for some chicken tenders too. It’s the ultimate kid dinner and she feels a little embarrassed about it as she heads to go get a fuckton of ramen and cookies. She gets candy and sodas of all different kinds and makes herself feel less guilty about the sheer amount of sugar by purchasing a tea sampler and a bag of apples.

She barely has enough to pay for all the crap she’s bought and she shoves it all in the trunk of her car before driving back to school. She doesn’t know how she manages to carry everything up to her room. She’s ready to groan when she gets inside but stops when she realizes that Charlotte’s asleep with her face buried into her book. She doesn’t look like she’s moved since Shela left.

Shela steps over to her bed without really thinking about what she’s doing. She sits in the small space left behind Charlotte’s knees and rests her hand on Charlotte’s shoulder to shake her awake.

Charlotte startles and looks terrified when her eyes open to dart around the room. She stops when she sees Shela sitting beside her, taking a steadying breath before burying her face into her pillow.

“Did you eat?” Shela asks.

Charlotte frowns and looks at her curiously. Shela glances over to where one and a half of the blueberry muffins still sit in the bakery box. She clicks her tongue and rolls her eyes before stepping over to the small sea of grocery bags by the door. She takes out the container of mac and cheese and chicken tenders before stepping back over to Charlotte and thrusting it at her.

“Dinner,” she tells her. Charlotte frowns and looks ready to refuse her but Shela just drops the container on her desk and points to it. “You need to eat.”

Charlotte still doesn’t say anything but she sits up and watches curiously as Shela moves the grocery bags over to the deep window ledge and starts piling everything there. When Shela turns around, Charlotte’s sat at the desk, looking into the container. Shela hands her a bottle of water and a plastic knife and fork. Charlotte takes them and smiles gratefully.

“You didn’t have to—”

Shela shuts her up with an eye roll and a half smirk.

“Eat, Charlotte,” she instructs and Charlotte’s sweet little half-smirk is more than enough thanks. Her happy little satisfied noises make Shela smile and she laughs at her softly as Charlotte does the cutest little wiggle in her chair. She begins to wonder if anyone has ever seen this version of Charlotte and it’s almost too much at once. “We need to get my fridge out of storage,” she says, quickly changing the subject before she does or says something stupid. Charlotte gives her a questioning hum at the comment and Shela turns to her pointedly. “I can’t live without milk.”

Charlotte smiles and covers her mouth.

“Do you need it for all those cookies?” she teases.

Shela gives her a half-assed glare until Charlotte’s pleased smirk makes her smile instead.

“Don’t hate,” Shela says. “Or I won’t share.”

//

Charlotte wakes up early for her first Politics and Sexuality class and groans as softly as she can. There’s still a small cluster of grocery bags covering their floor and she glances over at Shela as she remembers the night before. One of Shela’s arms is thrown off the side of her bed and one of her bare legs pokes out the bottom of her blankets.

Charlotte smiles at her and gathers her things to get ready for the day. She knows that Shela doesn’t have class until this afternoon. Shela made her pin a copy of her schedule to the wall by the door so they both know when the room will be empty. Charlotte’s sure it’s so she knows when she can bring people back, but she tries not to think about that and gathers the books she needs off her shelf instead.

She slips them into her bag and leaves silently.