𝘩𝘢𝘳𝘥𝘦𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘯 𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘯𝘦.

[wvlfcs]

* // FREYA .

the frida kahlo room served as a transitory spot for most, to grab their drinks and then move on. two freshmen lingered, though, making their rounds from bowl to bowl, sampling each one, gradually losing balance, cross-eyed and all. “bets on who’s gonna go down face first tonight? personally, i’ve got my eye on the tall, lanky kid. he’s winced with every sip. definitely a lightweight,” freya ascertained, bringing her own cup of magenta to her lips. a tiny grimace followed, not yet used to its’ stringency – might as well have been rubbing alcohol dyed purple. “twenty bucks he runs to the toilets or collapses. what’d you say?” @radopens​

observing the behavior of the freshman students, eileen’s nose wrinkles with disapproval. she takes a languid sip of a vibrant green concoction; never much of a drinker, she’s sampling the punches solely for the sake of saying she had, lest she have nothing to contribute to the campus buzz this upcoming week. “obvi. but my money’s on his friend. fifty says the tall one gets a second wind after puking his guts out, they get right back to it, then the other one ends up obliterated ‘cause he’s still got it all in his system, while the lanky one’s playing catch up.” gaze flitting from the spectacle the younger students were making of themselves to freya, eileen’s brow quirks. “have we not seen it happen a million times before with my cousin and graham? look at those boys. they’re them: equally stupid, but minus, like, twenty pounds of muscle mass.”

[wvlfcs]

* // DOMINIC .

@wvlfcs​​

triple, venti, half sweet, non-fat, caramel macchiato. and, light ice. dominic had to repeat the order twice and then check the receipt against his phone notes (where all of eileen’s favorites were documented) afterward to make sure nothing was missed. he knew her order by heart, yet it was routine, not wanting to get any of it wrong. tradition meant having coffees together on moving day, helping eileen get settled in. the only difference this time was their relationship status, but he figured that this was a good thing – the ability to keep things the same, but friendly. stood at the entrance of her dorm room, he caught her attention by giving a tiny shake of the drink in hand. “hey, settling in well?” he asked, a bit lame and uncertain on his tongue. “got you, uh, coffee. figured you could use the pick-me-up.”

eileen’s straining to pin the edge of a tapestry when the rattling of ice gets her attention. she turns toward the door, propped open by an ottoman, and is surprised to find dominic there, though she shouldn’t be. as reliable as the tide, she can count on her ex-boyfriend to come back to her no matter how many times she sends him away, like waves to the shore. she gives a contrived greeting and the biggest, tightest smile she could muster, abandoning her task to accept his kindness. heat rushes to her cheeks as she punches the straw through the cup’s plastic lid, feeling a little embarrassed. contact between them over the summer months had been sparse. he was seeing someone new and she couldn’t stand it. if her silence had felt like a punishment, it was because it was intended to be. and still, here he is, making nice. keeping up an old tradition. she takes a sip of the coffee, which allows her the pause she needs, then gives a nod of approval. “so good. too much ice, though” she remarks, not meaning to sound as ungrateful as she did.  it’s just who she is. “they always blow me off when i ask for half ice here. but it really does water it down,” she insists, trusting that he had ordered it to her preference. she wonders then if he has her-- lana’s-- coffee order memorized, and how soon lana’s favorites would override hers entirely. but then, hers have outlasted the last girlfriend, so maybe first loves truly do never die. she flicks away the thought with a toss of her hair. “settling in’s been fine. i hate unpacking, so at least that’s out of the way.” she tips her head toward a bare wall, at the task she’d left unfinished upon his arrival. ”i could use your height hanging that, though.” venturing further into her room, she hands him a pin and lets him get to it, busying herself by draping a throw blanket at the foot of her bed. “you’re all squared away by now ‘cause RAs move in early, right? like, a week or whatever? how was your, uh, summer? good, i’m sure. you probably worked a lot. and stuff.”

[littlemusings]

[wvlfcs]

* // CONNOR .

Connor is absolutely baked like a ziti. The last thing he’s expecting when he walks into Gorham is for someone to try and convince him to put together fuh-reaking Ikea furniture, but she must be kinda desperate if he’s her best option. When she offers him alcohol he briefly wonders whether or not she realizes he’s an RA, but shit, he’s not on duty, and he wouldn’t care if he was, anyway. He’s not sure if he’s fully prepared for a beautiful girl to watch him attempt to assemble a Swedish shelf, but fuck it– he can’t even remember what he was going to do instead, so he gives her a friendly shrug. “Yeah, sure,” he grins, deciding to hold off on telling her he’s absolutely not handy at all. “What the hell is a rosé cider? I’ve only heard of those two things separately.”

“it isn’t too crazy of a job, i promise. if you think you can handle reading some instructions and maybe handing over some pieces every so often, that’d be chill. to be honest, i’m more interested in your company than anything else. like i said, i could do it myself, but i’ve been too bored. everyone i know’s busy and you don’t seem the type to murder me or loot my belongings, so.” trailing off to the stairwell, she leads the way to her room. it’s a rarity for eileen to engage too much with those outside of her immediate circle, so she didn’t realize she was offering contraband to an RA. “it’s like, fruity beer, essentially. apple and pear, i think. it’s pink, so it’s pretty. drink too much and it starts to feel like your teeth are rotting out, but luckily i’m a lightweight.” she pauses to crank open her door, which she stands against as she ushers her company in. closing the door behind them, she pulls two bottles, one for each of them, from the minifridge.  “you’re not allowed to bail if you hate it,” she says, finding a seat in a bit of free space among the various pieces and parts strewn about her shag carpet. her eyes linger on him as she takes a swing from her bottle, waiting to assess his reaction when he tries it for himself. in the process, she recognizes something all too familiar in him.  she swallows with a gulp, and a smile blooms on her face. “you’re high right now.”

[wvlfcs]

how many times have u been in love?

“once.”

[wvlfcs]

have you ever sat down and talked to your mother about her life before you? what came of it?

“you can’t really talk with my mother about anything. she’ll talk at you forever and ever, though, no matter how many times you tell her to shut up. so i’ve heard about it, but there isn’t much to report on. she claims she was almost a playboy bunny but then wasn’t, for some reason. she’s either never said why or i just tuned out that part of the story. i know she’s always wanted to be a mom. with daughters, especially. but she had my half brother in her early twenties, then met my dad and had my brother. they tried one more time and got lucky, i guess, ‘cause here i am, in the flesh! the girl she wanted.” 

[wvlfcs]

what scent do you associate with your childhood?

“weed and my mom’s designer perfume, which i was actually never mad about. my mom’s, like, a total pothead and has great taste. as much as it pains me to say, maybe the apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree, after all. and then there’s campfire smoke, too, because we had a cabin in new hampshire that we’d stay at pretty regularly during the summer. it was, like, my happy place, but my parents sold it when i was a teenager.”

[wvlfcs]

top 3 items you always have on you?

“this is probably cheating, but i usually have my bag on me. it’s got my phone in it, cash, cards, weed, grinder, lip balm, hair ties, and never less than, like, three packs of gum, ‘cause i always forget and buy new ones. something i never seem to have on me is a lighter, when i fucking need one, though. like, where do those things always go?”

[wvlfcs]

eileen was seated at a table in one of radcliffe’s dining halls. it wasn’t at all ideal. a small, two-seater in a sea of tables, where she was alone amid the hustle and bustle of the prime lunch rush. she would have much preferred to be seated off to the side by the wall or in a back booth, somewhere more secluded. positioning her computer just so, to where she was confident nobody at a distance could see the screen, she logged onto social media. only, the account she logged into wasn’t her own. it wasn’t anyone’s, the person didn’t really exist. a product of eileen’s vengefulness and some believable photos she was able to pull from somewhere online, it was primarily for the purpose of snoop on people who’ve slighted her, though it was occasionally used for slightly more nefarious purposes. she was in the middle of punching a name into the search bar, faux display picture in full view, when she sensed a presence behind her. it was possible they hadn’t noticed her computer, or even meant to be so close to her, but she had already panicked. she quickly closed her laptop and whirled around. “personal space, please. you’re practically on top of me,” she snapped. @ozdemired​

[wvlfcs]

eileen’s standing by the curb outside of the bar, arms folded across her chest. there’s a party in full swing behind her, but she keeps her back turned to it, doing her best to block it out. but it’s hard to ignore the rattling bass beat of the music, the jovial buzz of the overflow crowd around her. she shouldn’t have come. typically, she wouldn’t come out to places like this– but there are times that she’ll convince herself to give it a shot, as if there was any real chance it could be fun for her. it never is. this night surely wasn’t. eileen arrived with leah, who promptly went off to pee. she ordered an angry orchard in her roommate’s absence and idled by the bar until one too many randos tried their luck with her. from there she made her way to the bathroom, half in search of leah but mostly to escape the bustle of the bar crowd, and exchanged pleasantries with some girls by the sinks. one gushed about eileen’s top, eileen made small talk about another’s shoes. open-toed booties with a stacked heel. she made a mental note to shop for similar ones later that night, once she returned to the sanctuary of her bed, far away from this hell. then, she made a half-hearted attempt at engaging the girl’s offer to join her friends for a dance, but before long, turned her nose up at the grind train they assembled to gyptian’s hold yuh. though she wasn’t there long, she was just about ready to call it a night– grab her phone and call an uber, assuming she could successfully dislodge her phone from the back pocket of her too-tight jeans– when she spotted leah. “way to leave me for dead tonight,” is all that’s said in greeting, as she pulls her arms tighter around herself. “i hope you don’t expect me to go back in there, or out with you ever again for that matter, though i’ll delay the silent treatment i fully intend to give you if we can leave and get some crab rangoon now.” @leahsilbers​

[wvlfcs]

in a lounge chair on ground floor of gorham, eileen’s scrolling on her phone, surveying the residents that move past her on routes to and from their rooms. she’s looking for someone. not necessarily anyone in particular; she’ll know who they are when she sees them. when finally she does, she pulls herself to her feet. “you look… handy,” she begins, approaching without hesitation, or any regard for whether or not they have a moment to speak with her, never mind time for the favor she plans to ask. “i’ve got some ikea furniture that needs assembling. i could do it alone; the problem is that i don’t want to.” her shoulders rise and fall in a shrug. “so, interested in helping? compensation will be awarded in the form of my gratitude and as much of the booze as you desire from my minifridge, assuming you like rosé cider.” @conye-west​

[wvlfcs]

spotting lucy traveling in the opposite direction on a campus pathway, eileen cuts across to lock her arm around her friend’s, tugging her around the way she was headed. there are a few near-collisions as she as she leads them through an onslaught of wrong-way foot traffic, but she offers no apologies to anyone. not even to lucy, for disrupting her route to what was probably class. “skip out on today with me,” she chirps, “like, the whole day. it’s syllabus week so it hardly matters if we show to class. you might not believe me, since this is your first year and we’re told our whole lives that college is no bullshit, but cross my heart and hope to die, luc, college is all bullshit, all the time.” her eyes roll in emphasis, before her features soften and she gives lucy’s arm a squeeze. “are you down, or are you down? being back is seriously bumming me out, so i think we should go get brunch. crepes always help me feel better. after that, we can see where we end up. probably shopping.” @lucytm​

[phresious]

IG: emmaleger

[nomance]

[lovelivelyhood]

[silk101]

[leoascendantgirl]