It puzzled her that they had even bothered. She had never spoken more than a few words to either of them, they had never shared a meal or watched a movie or whatever it is that flatmates do, they’ve never even seen the inside of her room. She preferred it that way. So to find the note slipped under her door when she awoke that afternoon, scribblings about a party, friends, drinks, a good time, she thought them idiots for even trying. Six months of conscious avoidance, of dinners at midnight and 3 a.m. showers, she thought they’d get the picture by now.
Before they had returned home she left the door slightly ajar and listened as they rustled in with their paper bags and their chattering. She counted the cans of beer they placed on the kitchen table, and the tinkling of the potato chips they emptied into bowls. When the first guests arrived she positioned herself on the floor and watched in darkness. Through the strip of the doorframe she watched the room fill with strangers, how they slunk past one another in the crowded room, the way the boys would look at the girls and the girls looked at one another. She watched them ash their cigarettes on the carpet and dance ironically to hits from the 80’s, spill their drinks on the television she never used. She turned her attention to a couple on the couch, making-out violently. A hand running up her shirt, his hair pulled, kicked off shoes, thighs between legs, moist necks and bit lips. When the crowd thinned and everyone had gone home or passed out, she took to bed. She watched the curtains go from blue to pink to white, and fell asleep. That morning, she dreamed of nothing.
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