The Laundry Room

It was three in the morning, it was cold and she was there because she'd leaked her fucking period all over the place.

She sleepily pushed her hair away back from her face, second-guessing her decision to leave her dorm in nothing but her tattiest pair of shorts and a fluffy dressing gown. The concrete made her wince from underneath her naked feet and if her body clock hadn't gotten so screwed up from winter finals so that she had to be up this early, she probably would've stayed in a coma of recovery, lying in a pool of her own period-blood.

She wrinkled her nose. Even by her standards, that was gross.

When she'd stuffed everything – bedsheets (including pillow cases because she may as well wash everything in one go), reddened underwear and warmest sweats, wet towels and whatever else she could afford to let colour – into the washer and pressed the button, she sipped at the hot chocolate she'd had the sense to bring down with her. Upon regaining some sort of consciousness, she'd stared idly at the machine. She'd heard rumours that some girls had been found sitting on the machines down here, using the... Movements as a way of relief. She wondered why. Just because it washed things in it, it didn't mean the top was necessarily clean. She was regularly dropping stuff in the laundry room and hastily wiping it away, not bothering to clean it properly.

That was when she noticed it.

A little, leather-bound book, half-fallen down between the machine and the dryer beside it.

She leaned down and picked it up, before walking back to her position opposite the washer. She flicked through it. It was handwritten and only half full. It looked like a journal.

She decided there was nothing wrong with reading someone's journal, if you didn't know them. A journal was only personal if you knew that person. And what moron left their journal in the laundry room?

Randomly, she flicked until she found a little passage, something to see if it was worth questioning her views on privacy for. Her eyebrows raised as her eyes caught mid-sentence – fuckers underlined three times – and started from the beginning.

I can't deal with this "hipster" bullshit. I mean, fine, if you want to dress a certain way, go for it, but calling me "different" and hitting on me like I'm a nail that needs hammered (pun intended) because I don't own more than three T-shirts with Aztec print is fucking stupid. They're all fuckers. I sleep with one girl after a drunken broke up and all of a sudden, I'm a walking vibrator for the blonde population of my class? What? Why? Isn't that what the fucking dryer in the laundry room is for?

She raised her eyebrows. She wasn't weird, this guy had heard about the story, too.

She carried on. There were only a few sentences left on this page.

Maybe I should hide under a cave somewhere, or maybe this is all a twisted fucking metaphor, sent from Plato from beyond the grave, for choosing a philosophy minor and thinking I wouldn't suffer for it. And I know it's the accent. Why can't I just talk to a girl? Is talking to a girl before consensual sex not cool anymore or something?

So fucking done.

Well, she thought. He officially had her attention.

She flicked onto the next page.

I'm really fucking horny.

Not even in a just-jack-off-a-couple-of-times before bed kind of way, but in a like I'm-going-to-get-blue-balls-if-I-don't-find-a-real-person kind of way. I mean, am I turning into a girl? I don't want porn, I want a person. And not some wannabe porn star who competes with her "friends" about what we did like this is goddamn high school, but an actual person who I can talk to and laugh with and God forbid, snuggle with and steal buttered popcorn from while watching Two and a Half Men re-runs from when it was still decent.

Jesus Christ, I'm turning into one of them. I may as well go to Zara or something stupid and buy those dumbass Aztec T-shirts now.

Glancing up, she saw she still had another twenty minutes before she could dump her stuff in the dryer and nap for a couple of hours. Pulling the pencil strapped to the inside lapel out, she began to write. She was bored, after all.

. . .

He found in the next morning, way before anyone else was up. It was too humiliating to admit he'd lost his journal. Jesus, even he couldn't believe it. But it had been a cool gift – he liked the old feel to it, even though that was painfully... Hipster to admit – and one day, he'd been pissed off and drunk and it had been a good way to vent.

Glancing around guiltily, he'd picked it up from on top of one of the washers in confusion. Shit. It couldn't be so out in plain sight.

And the pencil was in one of the pages closer to the front. Fuck.

... And buy those dumbass Aztec T-shirts now.

And underneath, in pencil but in different handwriting.

Maybe because it's fucking 3am and I'm high on a lack of sleep and too much sugar in my hot chocolate, but dear Lord I have never heard a guy whine this much. Girls want you. Go get the V.
And don't just sit on your ass and expect a girl to talk to you and want to randomly get screwed and then eat buttered popcorn pre-Ashton era, because you're just as bad as the wannabe porn stars. Don't get me wrong, I'd love a guy to entertain me with warm hands and nakedness at 3am while my hormones are raging and I'm pissed off in the fucking laundry room (and no, I'm not the chick that gets recreational), but I know I'm too lazy.
Clearly, there's something sexy about you. Good for you, my friend.
Now go get the V.

He stared for a few moments, utterly shocked. As if the writer of the message would randomly appear to him, he glanced around. It was still empty.

He glanced at his watch. It was nearly six am and all of the machines were empty.

He shook his head as he made his way out of the laundry room, hitting the leather of the book against the back of his hand. He was halfway down the hallway when he had an idea.

Checking nobody was around, he went back into the laundry room, took the pencil out from the journal and wrote down a simple message – before leaving the diary between two machines, feeling stupid but strangely curious at the same time.

He checked back the next day, but there was nothing. After a few days, however, there was.

. . .

She smiled to herself that next morning, after she went to look for a missing sock; she saw the diary between the machines again and remembered the fun she'd had replying to it. She didn't bother to look at it again, however – somebody had probably accidentally let it fall and it was of no interest to her now.

When she returned three days later, though, it was still there. She knew the cleaners had been in. She knew the book should be gone. But it wasn't – so either the cleaners were competent enough to get rid of the cobwebs on the ceiling but not a book between two machines, or somebody was leaving it there.

So she opened it.

What are you doing in a laundry room at 3am? Who are you?
And why don't you take your own advice? Go find a guy who'll entertain you with warm hands and nakedness at 3am in a laundry room, if that's what you're into...

Her lips lifted into a half-smile at that. Okay. Cocky, was he? Strangely enough, she was hardly surprised.

Because I like sitting on my ass and eating pizza too much, watching post-Ashton re-runs.
I'm just a girl who frequents laundry rooms at 3am, who are you? No wait, let me tell you. A guy that's not a hipster, who keeps a journal and randomly leaves it lying around in the off-chance a loser who does her laundry at 3am may reply.

She immediately regretted it. That was too harsh for a first reply.

But then she checked herself. Why was she worried? She didn't even know this guy. Though she had to admit, the prospect of a talking diary worthy of Tom Riddle made laundry a Hell of a lot more interesting.

So, instead of erasing anything, she added –

Aren't we something? Maybe we should take each other's advice.

Four hours later, he almost missed the leather-bound journal as somebody used the machine. But just as he was leaving he saw it in the same place as before and, wondering whether "she" would have really replied, he managed to stumble over to it in his post-hangover funk.

. . .

Time passed, seasons changed.

Washing machines broke.

Somehow, she was still writing replies in his journal.

They knew each other now. Not names, or dorms, or even majors – well, she knew his minor was in Philosophy, but they'd never formally brought it up – but other things, little things.

She knew he'd suffered from a bad break-up; but she knew more than that now – she knew that he'd cared for her more than she'd cared for him, that she'd been too concerned about how others perceived her weakness in a relationship, that he'd had to hide his emotions and that had become the problem. She knew he hated hipsters because the other girl had tried to make him one of them and because he had family that were all about looking cool. She knew he watched Bob's Burgers and suffered an over-active imagination and yes, had taken her advice about "getting the V", only to remain dissatisfied later.

He knew she had a temper. He knew she was sarcastic and thought she ate too much, but didn't do anything about it. He knew she'd learnt to slut-drop whilst sober at her friend's birthday party; he knew she had tried to learn how to twerk whilst waiting for her laundry late on a Friday night only for the custodian to walk in. He knew she was attracted to Ashton Kutcher, he knew she missed getting laid, but hated the skirts that helped get her there.

They spoke about lots of things – about dorm cliques, bad drinking games, about misconceptions from both genders about sex. They discussed awkward room-mates and even more awkward encounters with them and their sexual escapades. They argued about religion; they argued about art. They dared one another to do silly things, to push themselves – and then chronicled the usually catastrophic events later.

It was fun and something to look forward to. Once, they'd almost lost the black, leather book – and so instead, he'd stuck Post-It notes all over the machines, asking anyone if they'd seen his collection of Aztec T-shirts. She'd cracked the code immediately and asked with a borrowed red pen if they had butter popcorn marks on them. She'd found a new book the next week, its opening entry simply "damn we're good".

But now summer was here and break had started. She left for home early the next morning – on the first flight out. And although she'd written in the journal that she hoped he had a good summer, and they'd stay in touch – somehow, there was an anonymous chatroom for the college available they could try – she knew it was over.

Which was why, four hours before she was due to be en route to the airport, she was lying wide-awake and staring at the ceiling.

The only things she hadn't packed were the sheets she was lying on, which for some reason, was keeping her awake. It was hot, too – much too hot, to the point where she was sticky – and every time she moved, the thin fabric of her fitted sheet stuck to her back.

"For fuck's sake." She finally muttered, throwing back the blanket she was using as a fruitless duvet and turning on her lamp. Her room-mate was already gone – she'd left this afternoon – and so she felt no qualms in undressing her bed whilst checking her twerking in the mirror every now and then.

Disgruntled, she finally admitted she still sucked.

Bunching the sheets into one large ball, she made her way downstairs to the laundry room. It was always creepy, walking to the laundry room at night. The lights came on without flickering, but she still expected a scene out of a horror movie to start rolling as soon as she left her dorm.

She wiped sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand as she trudged into the laundry room, in an oversized T-shirt, a pair of fairly cute panties – hey, there was no point sticking the good underwear with the rest of the boring stuff to wear back home – and flip flops, her hair frizzing erratically around her face.

After sticking her laundry in the machine, she stared forlornly at the room around her. Strangely, she was going to miss it – and she frowned slightly as she saw the black book was nowhere to be seen.

She passed time for fifteen minutes, spending a stupid amount of money on Candy Crush boosters that didn't do anything anyway. She started playing music from her iPhone after that, finding a weird kind of joy in headbashing like an idiot to Lady GaGa out of time.

She was still – embarrassingly – doing that, whilst hitching up her T-shirt and trying to work out if her ass actually looked bigger (and not in a good way) in her nice panties in the window, when she heard a cough behind her.

She whirled around with wide eyes, to find a guy watching her with one eyebrow raised.

"Oh." She said, quickly turning off the music. "Sorry. I... Wasn't expecting company."

"Yeah, not many people do laundry at 3am." The guy shrugged, looking awkward as he walked in. "It's understandable."

She'd just gone to nod politely, when she saw the black book sticking out of the pocket of his sweats.

She opened her mouth to speak, but the words stuck in her throat. All of a sudden, she was scared for no reason, which really pissed her off. But... Well, what if it was... Him?

Self-consciously, she studied him from the corner of her eye, berating herself for being so nervous. Why was she nervous? She hadn't done anything wrong. But suddenly, all of their little quips in the journal – if it really was him – felt much more real.

He had light brown hair that was sticking up in all sorts of places, and dark, almost angry-looking brown eyes. Tall and broad shouldered, though in a wiry sort of way and she was surprised to see what looked like a tattoo of a fierce, armoured horse peeking out from underneath the short sleeve of his white T-shirt and a black marker tucked behind his ear.

Oh God. Not once, not once, had she considered he'd be a hot. He wasn't usually her type – she liked her guys as a blank canvas, ink-wise – but there was something strangely pulling about him.

It was oddly silent between them, the sound of him slipping a small bunch of clothes into the machine seeming comically loud.

Her heart thrummed in her chest at the thought of talking – which was usually not the case – but it couldn't be a coincidence, could it? Could it? And why was she even stressing out so much?!

She tried to act nonchalant as she felt him eyeing her from the corner of his eye, under the pretence of making sure he hadn't dropped anything. She was hot – he could see long legs and had seen a perfectly curved ass when he'd walked in on her with her T-shirt above her stomach. Not too flat, but not more than he preferred, either. She had dirty blonde hair, brown eyes and a full mouth that suddenly had him imagining how good it would feel to cover those lips with his own – and that was when he knew that he knew who she was, that her eyes flickering to the book in his pocket wasn't a coincidence.

"Butter popcorn stains." He finally commented lightly, nodding to the washer. He felt... Anxious and his voice came out gruff as a response. He'd felt silly, being so angry that term was coming to an end. He had a whole summer overseas with a bunch of friends to look forward to and the thought of getting attached to pencilled comments in a diary had been ludicrous.

Seeing this girl, however, at 3am in the laundry room? Suddenly, it didn't seem so stupid.

Before she could stop herself, she replied –

"I'm more of a pizza girl myself."

They both stopped and looked at one another – before breaking out into tentative smiles.

"So where's your naked guy to keep you company?" He asked, smiling. He leant against one of the machines to watch her and she couldn't help but laugh at how he'd remembered. "It's 3am, you're in the laundry room – you're slacking."

"What about you, shouldn't you be off getting laid somewhere? You know, finding your soul-mate?" She teased. They both laughed self-consciously again, before glancing up at one another. "It's nice to finally put a face to the handwriting. So, spill – did you find her? The girl to watch re-runs with?" She patted the space beside her. "And come here, I want to get a real look at you, Tom Riddle."

He didn't get the Harry Potter joke, judging by his confused expression, but she felt her chest warm in satisfaction as he moved beside her.

They openly surveyed one another, grinning when they reached one another's eyes. Oh yes, they definitely approved of one another.

"If you weren't so lazy, you'd be able to get a guy." He commented, nudging her. She was surprised at the jolt of heat she felt from his skin touching hers and instantly told herself to stop being so silly. "Not a hipster, of course."

"Why are you so allergic to guys who dress a certain way?" She crumpled her nose as she stopped her laugh. "I don't get that."

"Don't girls do the same thing? You know, with blonde cheerleaders and so-called emos?"

She leaned forward, so that her face was closer to his. Retrospectively, she would regret that decision – it really was hot and she was feeling it, regardless of being so scantily dressed – and whispered secretively –

"Shh. We pretend we don't do that."

She was only being silly and he knew that, too, except neither one of them remembered that when their faces were so close.

It wasn't just hot – the air was stifling, even so early and the sky was still a hue of blue outside.

It didn't help that he was so close either.

Then something snapped.

Suddenly, he was standing between her legs, his hands on her waist and her hands on his neck.

"So its been really great, talking to you." He began conversationally, though his voice was thicker than it had earlier been. "But seeing as we didn't make any concrete plans to talk again and you're in a laundry room at 3am, bored-"

"And you haven't found someone to have butter popcorn with-"

"We could help each other out." He offered.

"Right." She mumbled, her fingers beginning to entwine with the hair at the back of his head. "That's what friends do, right?"

"Right." He agreed – just as he began to kiss her.

He pushed up her oversized T-shirt so that his hands were dangerously low on her waist and her hands slipped underneath his shirt, making her smile as she felt the contours of his body underneath. Hey, she was allowed – after all, she was too lazy to find a guy. He'd at least had offers.

Her eyelids fluttered closed as he hungrily began to kiss her neck, her hands tangling in his hair. Over his shoulder, she saw the machines flashing how long they had left – plenty of time.

"When we last discussed this," She begins, struggling to breathe as his kisses trail further and further down her neck. "I believe nakedness was involved."

He stopped for little over a second, glancing up at her in surprise.

"You're sure?" He asked seriously.

She faked a gasp.

"Are you worrying about my feelings?" She teased, making him scowl, the grip on her waist tightening. "Next you'll be wearing prints on your-" But she stopped to laugh loudly as he tickled her sides, one of the many other small things he'd learnt about her through the journal.

Things escalated quickly. Her palm rubbed against his crotch over his sweats and a shot of heat ran down her spine when she felt that only his sweats stood between their skin. He allowed her to yank off his T-shirt as he pulled at hers, busying himself with her lack of a bra.

It didn't feel strange; she didn't question why she was having the equivalent of a drunk-on-lack-of-sleep hook-up because it didn't feel that way. It was oddly... Familiar, having him kiss her down her chest and massaging her thighs and it suddenly dawned on her that she'd imagined this before. She'd thought about it – she'd wanted it before, without even realizing.

"You must have a name." He breathed against her, his head buried in her neck.

She'd laughed and told him, before finding out his.

Their breathing became heavier and the air became stickier as she wrapped her legs around his waist, pushing his sweats down with her foot. Finally, they stopped breathing at all; and when they resumed, they laughed in disbelief.

. . .

On her flight back home, she smiled to herself, remembering her morning. They'd both been too tired to move... After and when someone had sleepily walked in, yelled and covered their eyes in embarrassment, they'd both laughed as he'd hid her body from view with his own.

Just before retrieving their clothes and going their separate ways, however, he'd kissed her gently on the lips and told her – stay in touch.

She hadn't known what he'd meant until she'd gotten back to her dorm, wide awake and grinning foolishly. She'd been slipping on a pair of jeans when she'd found it – a number, drawn onto the inside of her thigh in black marker.

. . .

Summer went by quickly. She enjoyed country boots and drunken nights around the camp-fires; he enjoyed a hot foreign sun and soccer games on the beach.

But all the while, they thought of each other.

They only spoke sometimes, just to say hi. What could they say, after their last – and first – meeting? Although they both now, more than ever, believed in the power of words... Somehow, it wasn't enough anymore.

Fall returned and as did classes, they both remembered the laundry room of their old dorm. They looked out for one another on campus and text about meeting soon – but, of course, they never did.

So life moved on.

. . .

It happened in their final year. The storm had taken out the power and, naturally, that had called for a party everywhere on the grounds.

They found one another by the lake; her in sweats and listening to her iPod, him with a beer.

They were surprised at first – then awkward, before settling into an easy conversation that made them both question why they hadn't been friends sooner. Not that their thoughts were entirely platonic – but this time, they didn't randomly act on them. She blushed just to think about what she'd done before and although he considered it a fairly happy memory, he wasn't that much of a dick to bring it up.

They talked, the laughed, they drank – and then they left. This time, however, their vow to stay in touch wasn't empty.

They met one another's parents at graduation and celebrated with a mix of their old friends when they got their first jobs – and pay checks. They started regularly having coffee with one another on Saturday mornings, even if it secretly meant he couldn't get wasted on Fridays and she stayed in so she wouldn't have gigantic bags under her eyes.

After almost a year of their Saturday meetings, ones filled with tales of bad dates, crazy bosses and their general lives, he decided to shake it up a little. He asked if they could meet on a Friday night instead – for dinner, maybe even call it a date if it didn't freak her out too much.

She'd sipped her coffee carefully, before telling him that she thought they'd been dating anyway.

. . .

Another two years passed and they were together now, properly together, in an apartment they called home with furniture and dishes and a sink and a shared bathroom and everything.

Then one day, as they were doing their laundry and he was whispering things in her ear that were anything but clean, he stopped to tell her she'd dropped something.

She hadn't – but he had. A ring.

She'd always been sceptical of happy ever afters and she remembered that when she wrote the wedding invitations a few months later, but she had to accept – they'd never really stuck to stereotype.

They got married and had children, eventually, though they extended their honeymoon period for as long as possible – and the laundry room in their new house was christened first.

They took turns taking the kids to school. His Philosophy minor was nothing compared to his major in Graphic Design when it came to paying the bills, and her major in Animal Physiology meant there were always plenty of free trips to the zoo.

But between all of that – and soccer practices and music rehearsals, drama productions and art classes, feeding the dog and barbeques – they found the time to frame their wedding certificate on the wall over the mantelpiece, just because they could and, well, the kids could look at it without leaving marks.

They signed their cards the same way as the certificate, too – and sometimes, when the kids were in bed and they were watching TV together with a bottle of beer, she'd laugh at how, even now, their names beside one another seemed foreign to her.

Years and years later, when their children had grown up and graduated from college, when the two of them were long ago placed in the ground, she found two dusty, old, black leather journals tied with a ribbon. A note was slipped between the ribbon and the books, telling her one was a story – and the other was hers.

Although she would later understand, at first, the daughter didn't understand how they'd signed the card; not Mom and Dad, like she'd expected.

No. Instead, the note was simply signed –

Love,
Dave & Ruby