Flat-Out Love - Park Jessica (книги txt) 📗

“Sure. No problem.” Julie took another sip of her drink. “Thank you for helping me out today. I’m sure this was a huge drag, but I really appreciate it. This was incredibly nice of you, and I’m sorry if I’ve been grouchy. I didn’t expect to start off my freshman year in such flux. You’ve become a social icon to me,” she teased.

“Yeah, right. You haven’t been grouchy. You’ve been expressive and feisty. Both of which I like. Considering that your first days in Boston are far from what you were expecting, I think that you’re doing great. I’m happy to help.”

They walked quietly for a few minutes, and Julie noticed that despite the lull in conversation, there was nothing the least bit uncomfortable about being with Matt.

“So, do you pick up Celeste every day?” She hoped that he wouldn’t bite her head off for this Celeste-related question.

He nodded.

“And do you stay with her after school, too, until your parents get home?”

“I do.”

“How do you get your schoolwork done? I imagine you’ve got more homework than the average student.”

He shrugged. “It’s not a big deal. I stay up late, which I like. Sometimes I go back to school at night if I need to use one of the labs. It works out fine.”

“Is that why you don’t live in the dorms? Or an apartment?”

“It would be rather silly to pay rent when my parents’ house is so close to school.”

“I guess so.”

 Matt took another sip of his drink. Aha! Julie smiled to herself and kept walking. He did like the Coolatta. Everyone did.

Chapter 6

Julie tapped her foot anxiously as she listened to the outgoing message. She had just called the last number from the group of potential apartment rentals and was hoping this would be it. A girl’s chipper voice said, “Hi! You’ve reached Sally, (that’s me!) and Megan, Barb, and our newest roommate, Chelsea! Leave us a message, and if we’re not too busy having fun, we’ll call you back!” Julie growled and hung up. She didn’t know if she was jealous of that fourth roommate or not. That Sally sounded an awful lot like the perky-yet-vacant crowd she’d left behind at home. On the other hand, there was something to be said for a core gaggle of girls who would love nothing more than to order pizza, do each others’ hair, and watch tawdry reality shows.

Julie left her mom a falsely optimistic voicemail saying that she had some very strong housing possibilities and would likely be happily settled into a new place by the weekend. It could happen, right? Except that it was becoming apparent to Julie that she and her mom had been grossly naive about what living in Boston would entail. Julie swore under her breath. Now she was another step closer to having to call her father for money. It was Wednesday night, so that gave her a few days to make good on her white lie. She had orientation tomorrow, and she’d just have to interrogate everyone she met for apartment leads.

Julie turned on her computer and checked the rental sites that she had bookmarked. Nothing new had come up. Even though her first few days in Boston had been a bit unsettled, she couldn’t complain. At least she had a good place to stay, even if it was temporary. Finn’s room was comfortable, and it somehow felt natural for her to be in here. Things would work out.

Plus, she was getting a kick-start to her undergraduate education just by eating dinner with the Watkins clan.

Dinner tonight had been Indian take-out complemented by a themed discussion about the religious diversity of India, arranged marriages, and the cash-for-votes scandal of 2008. Not that Julie had had much to contribute, since her knowledge of Indian culture and politics was embarrassingly limited, but she’d enjoyed the heated discussion. Erin had banged the table a number of times when making a point, Roger had thoughtfully tilted his head and delivered soft-spoken comments that sympathized with the people of India, and Matt had referenced several historic events, citing the year and exact date. Even though she had mostly just listened during the meal, Julie had found the conversation thoroughly enjoyable.

This is what she hoped her college classes would be like: dynamic, thought-provoking dialogue, piles of new information, and everything opposite from the dull, rote classroom teachings of her high school. Although presumably there would be no Flat characters in the college classrooms.

Right now Celeste was asleep with Flat Finn standing next to her headboard, Erin and Roger were back at work again, and Matt was holed up in his room. He’d applied and been accepted to be a research assistant for one of his professors, and so tonight he was pondering “effective decomposition strategies for certain nonconvex mixed-integer nonlinear optimization problems.” Whatever the hell that meant. According to Matt, his work involved lots of coding and testing of some new algorithm and then doing numerical experiments on the performance of said scintillating algorithm. This was apparently about as exciting as it got for Matt. Maybe he had a nice mainstream hobby that she didn’t know about?

Julie’s email notified her that she was now Facebook friends with both Matt and Finn. Oh, and that Finn had commented on her status about never being too rich or too Finn. Best. Update. Ever, he’d written. So he had a sense of humor. Although Julie wondered if he even knew who she was. Had anyone in his family let him know that she was a guest in their house? She sent him a quick private message:

Dear Finn,

Despite appearances, I am not in fact some weirdo who befriends strangers on Facebook and works their names into status updates. At least not on a regular basis. Our mothers went to college together, and I’m in Boston starting Whitney in a few days. My housing fell through, and your parents were nice enough to let me crash in your room while I figure things out. Not sure if anyone had told you about me…

Any booby traps in here that I should know about? I wouldn’t want Flat Finn to have an accident should he stop by to chat.

-Julie

Julie clicked on Finn’s profile page. He had a bunch of online albums, and she browsed through tons of photos of him in one picturesque spot after another: posing in the foreground of a mountain range; wading through a river; surrounded by tropical foliage; bundled up in ski gear during blizzard conditions; and kayaking on a pristine lake.  And then there were pictures documenting his volunteer work showing him unloading boxes of food from the back of a rickety truck, huddling with a group of children in a bare-bones classroom, and balancing on a ladder as he hammered nails into the beam of a house under construction.  And her personal favorite, a tan Finn emerging from the ocean with a surfboard and wearing only a pair of swim trunks. She couldn’t help it. Finn was decidedly gorgeous, and anyone would have drooled a bit. Rugged, lean, perfect hair, adorable smile…

Her email alert sounded. She had a message from Finn.

Hi, Julie-

Truthfully, I’m a little disappointed that you’re not a stalker. I’ve been doing what I can to lure one in, and I thought I’d finally succeeded. Oh, well. I’ll keep trying. Hope the monsters under my bed haven’t been keeping you up at night. (They tend to enjoy late night keg parties and loud doo wop music.)  If they give you any trouble, I suggest singing anything from 2000-2006. They don’t care for those years because it was during that time that the monster economy crashed, and they all had to cut back. Try a little Green Day (monsters don’t respond well to any pop rock anthem). John Mayer used to work, but after he said something about, “the Joshua Tree of vaginas,” the monsters couldn’t stop laughing. Noisily. If all else fails, there’s a baseball bat in my closet. Don’t be afraid to use it.