Chapter 6: Laundry Day (Part 2)

Ryan's roommates, including Pete, were all still asleep on Saturday morning when he loaded all his laundry into his duffel bag, added his laptop and earbuds on top, and hauled everything down to the laundromat a block away.

The Somerville streets were fairly quiet at this hour, but still busier than Ryan had expected. Cafes were open and the sidewalks were filled with students grabbing coffee before a study session and lithe women carrying yoga mats. Ryan passed an older couple strolling along hand in hand and smiled.

The laundromat wasn't as empty as he had hoped. A woman spoke rapid Spanish at the two children chasing each other around the bank of washers, and Ryan managed to get out of their way before they plowed him down. After sorting his clothes and starting the two washers, he considered the café next door. He'd been worried about leaving his stuff here unattended, but he could take his bag with him, and he'd be back before the cycle ended.

Ryan got in line, thankful for having a three people ahead of him so he could decide what to order. The menu was extensive and eclectic, and Ryan had to hunt for anything familiar-sounding. "Can I get the Plain Jane egg sandwich and the Classic Coffee-to-Go?" he asked, still gazing up at the menu.

"Somehow, that order doesn't surprise me at all," the cashier said, and Ryan immediately recognized her voice. After all, he'd listened to Marina talk for about three hours the other day. He'd managed to avoid going on another "date" with her, but she was in several of his classes and made sure to sit beside him in all of them.

"Why is that?" he asked.

She smirked. "You're kinda vanilla."

Vaguely he knew that was meant to be an insult. "But I like vanilla."

"Sure you do. So does everyone. Don't you ever want to switch it up? Try something new?"

Ryan glanced at the line behind him, sensing them growing restless.

"Come on," Marina drawled. "How about instead of the Plain Jane, you try the Salt-n-Pepa Sando? It has bacon! And this great maple mustard sauce!"

Ryan found the item she was talking about on the menu. "But it's two dollars more."

Marina leaned in and lowered her voice. "I'll lend you the two bucks just to see you try something new."

"O-okay," Ryan said. He could feel his face warming, not because he was flattered by Marina's obvious flirting, but because he could feel himself getting stuck deeper and deeper in a situation he didn't want. He didn't want this weird sandwich. He just wanted to get out of the café and go back to his laundry.

Marina's flirting actually helped Ryan escape once his food was ready, because she now had a line about ten deep to contend with. He snatched up the bag with his sandwich and his coffee and gave her a wave as he hurried out.

When he got back to the laundromat, the kids were still running wild, and there were no longer any seats to sit in. An older woman in a muumuu and slippers was watching the timer on Ryan's two machines, which were down to under five minutes. Ryan set his bag down on top of one of his machines, then used his other machine as a table while he unwrapped his sandwich. It smelled good, he supposed. He was nervous about the sauce, though. Maple mustard? But when he bit in, the mixture of flavors combined to a savory sweetness that really hit the spot.

He was only halfway done the sandwich when the washers finished with a hiss, and Ryan hurriedly packed up the remainder so he could dump his clothes in one of the laundromat's rolling laundry baskets. The muumuu lady practically shoved him out of the way to get to the now-empty washer.

With his clothes in the dryer, Ryan didn't have a washer to sit on. There was one empty seat, between the woman with her kids and a man asleep in the corner who looked and smelled like he was homeless. He chose to stand near the door and finish his sandwich, his duffel bag on his shoulder.

Not quite the study time he had hoped for. Once he finished his breakfast, he scrolled through his phone and found himself back at Jacky's last message: Haha Pete doesn't stand a chance of staying straight with you all

A weight settled over him as he stared at those innocuous words. They were perfectly friendly. Upbeat. Inoffensive.

They sounded nothing like Jacky.

So already they had slipped into being familiar strangers who shared nothing real about themselves. But then Ryan realized that Jacky's very first message to him, the one about his roommate, had sounded like Jacky. It had been Ryan who forced that distance, and Jacky who had seen Ryan's carefully crafted response and put up this wall.

Ryan had to put away his phone for a moment to take a breath and a desperate sip of his coffee, which thankfully was just regular coffee and not pumpkin chai or something. He tried to remember all the things he learned in therapy.

Ryan wouldn't have responded to Jacky's message that way if Jacky hadn't broken up with him. He had a right to protect himself. Jacky couldn't do something big like break up with Ryan without consequences.

Heaving another breath, Ryan opened his phone again and closed out Snapchat, then opened Instagram. Charlie's profile page was still up. Ryan's thumb hesitated over the follow button for just a moment before he tapped it. Then he put his phone away before he made any decisions he might regret. Friending Charlie was a good baby step towards getting over Jacky.

When Jacky returned to the laundry room to switch his clothes over, Fox was no longer there. Granted, Jacky had taken a shower and nearly fallen asleep under the hot stream of water, and taken his time getting dressed, and then Braedyn knocked on his door wanting to know if Jacky wanted to go down to breakfast, which Jacky couldn't exactly say no to when his stomach was growling. So he shouldn't have been surprised that Fox had gone home to sleep or write or hook himself up to an intravenous caffeine drip or whatever he did in his free time.

He also shouldn't have been surprised to find his loads of clean clothes unceremoniously dumped on one of the folding tables, but it was Saturday morning and how did this many people need to wash their clothes on a Saturday morning/afternoon? The dryers were all full, too, the room warm with their heat. Jacky scooped his clothes into his laundry basket and hopped up on the table to wait for a dryer to open.

Then he realized that no one else was in the laundry room, so why should he have to wait?

Peeking out into the hallway, he didn't see anyone else coming. He chose the dryer with the most time left and opened it, only to see it full of lacy bras. "You're not even supposed to put bras in the dryer," he grumbled, only knowing this because that one time his mom lectured him after he put her bras in the dryer and apparently ruined them. But he didn't want to touch them, so he found another dryer with a lot of time left and thankfully it was boy clothes. A guy was less likely to be on time to check their laundry, anyway. He dumped the damp clothing on the folding table and shoved his own clothes inside.

He'd just started the dryer back up when a tall guy with glasses wearing a polo shirt walked in.

"Hey, did you just steal my dryer?" the guy demanded.

"It was stopped when I got here," Jacky lied.

"No it wasn't." The guy stalked over and towered over Jacky. "I had just started it five minutes ago."

"I don't know what to tell you." Jacky threw up his hand in a desperate shrug, and that was when the guy's expression changed. He wasn't looking at Jacky anymore. He was staring at the empty sleeve of Jacky's shirt.

"You shouldn't steal other people's dryers," the guy said, all conviction gone out of his voice. He pushed past Jacky to his pile of clothes, scooped it all up, and struggled past Jacky again to open the dryer right beside the one Jacky's clothes now occupied.

"Oh, so it's okay for you to steal someone's dryer, then?" Jacky shot back.

The guy frowned down at Jacky, then his eyes flicked to Jacky's shoulder. "These are also my clothes," he retorted. "I guess I'll just run it for longer."

An offer to pay for the extra time rose up in Jacky's throat, but he coughed instead and at on the folding table to wait for the awful feeling in his stomach to die down.