Gwen shook her head. “No, I’m fine. I’m okay.” She coughed a few more times, trying to catch her breath. “It’s uh… not an appropriate game, if you catch my drift. Like apples to apples but rated R.” She explained, holding back another cough in her throat. When will the embarrassment end!
"….Oh." The faint blush on Marla's cheeks deepened significantly. "But wait– what's apples to apples?" she asked again, feeling horribly incompetent.
Gwen smiled softly. “It’s a card game. So, all the cards have words on them. One person picks a card with an adjective like… beautiful. All the players have cards with nouns. If we were playing let’s say I put frog and you put swan. You would win because a swan is more beautiful than a frog. The cards are supposed to describe you too. So uh—“ Gwen cut herself off when she realized what she was insinuating. “—yeah, that made sense right?”
Marla glued her eyes to the table, heart rate picking up as she realized the potential double meaning behind the statement. You're just imagining things… forget about it. "Oh, yeah, makes sense, thanks. That means– the other game is basically that but.. uh, yeah. Got it."
“In summary, 7th graders have no morals.” Gwen smiled weakly, calmly sipping her coffee. “Do you know what time it is? I left my phone in my room this morning.”
"A truer sentence has never been said," she agreed before pulling her phone from her purse. "It's 9:45, I've got about half an hour left until my next class."
“Same. I’m gonna run up to my dorm room to grab my other books if you wanna come.” Gwen finished her coffee and stood up, lazily stretched her arms.
Marla bit her lip, hesitant, but eventually nodded. She averted her eyes when Gwen got up and stretched, her heart skipping a beat. God, you're pathetic, you just met her for Christ's sake.
“I won’t take too long, I promise.” Gwen smiled, shouldering her bag and heading towards the door. She tossed the coffee cup in a bin on the way out, and pushed open to door to hold for Marla.
"Thanks." Marla ducked through the doorway, immediately turning away from the bright sun. "Gah, it's bright," she muttered to herself, shielding her eyes with one hand.
“Sorry! Probably should’ve warned you.” Gwen smiled awkwardly, letting the door swing shut behind her. “At least we don’t have to run this time?” She offered, starting to walk to the large building.
"Thank god," Marla murmured jokingly, blinking the black spots out of her eyes. "That was nice," she commented gently, following after. "Fun. I don't really.. have many friends, so it was nice to meet up with someone."
“I don’t either.” Gwen shrugged. “The whole talking to plants thing drives most people off.” She joked quietly, allowing herself to lapse into a silence. After a moment or two she began to hum absentmindedly, eyeing the greenhouses as they walked past them.
Marla bit her lip, eyes flickering across Gwen's admittedly beautiful features. "Well, you seem like a great person to me."
“To be fair we don’t know each other all that well yet, but for the record you seem nice too. I wish I’d met you my Freshman Year.” Gwen pulled a key card out of her pocket, swiping it to get inside the building. “Welcome to the ever classy Treetop Building. Where the true adventure is not in the destination, but is watching drunk college kids try to swipe their key card correctly at 4 A.M.” She announced sarcastically, leaning on the door to push it open.
A laugh bubbled up, escaping from between Marla’s lips. “If that’s not a summary of university, I don’t know what is.”
“It’s a magical place indeeed.” Gwen accidentally snorted in laughter and immediately slapped a hand over her mouth in embarrassment.
Marla, picking up on Gwen’s embarrassment, quickly mirrored the loud snort. “You’re telling me?”
Gwen looked over at Marla with wide eyes before allow a fit of giggles to escape her lips. After recovering for a moment she walked over to the elevator. “I’m only on the third floor, but I don’t have the energy to walk right now.”
Marla nodded in understanding, an almost giddy smile settling on her lips. “I wholeheartedly agree.”
Gwen stepped inside, hitting the button for the number three. “Uh, just be prepared, my room’s sort of messy.” She smiled sheepishly, fidgeting with the strap of her bag.
“Don’t- don’t worry about it,” Marla reassured her quickly, suddenly nervous about being enclosed in this small of a space with the other girl. Get yourself together, she told herself sternly, glancing away form the object of her fascination.
Gwen trotted our of the elevator as it opened, walking down the hall to find her room. She swiped the key card and stepped inside, cringing at the mess. “I’m so sorry.” She muttered to Marla, stepping over a pile of her roomate’s laundry in order to get to her bed. She switched out some books and grabbed her phone, stopping to check the notifications.
“Like I said— it’s totally fine.” Marla didn’t even blink when she saw the state of the room, moving past a haphazard pile of clothing to Gwen’s bed. “My mom wasn’t the neatest person.”
(Hehe what a slip up.. she forgot to say ‘isn’t’ instead of using past tense)
“Wasn’t? Those Pinterest cleaning tips really do the trick, huh? I should probably follow them. A whole board for cleaning and I never clean.” Gwen ramabled, pocketing her phone. “All set!” She smiled at Marla cheerfully. My day is actually starting to look up for once!
(Uh Oh… Gwen took note…)