She shrugs, smiling. “Don’t sweat it.”
“I can, uh, come back in a few minutes, if … ?”
“Naw, you’re fine,” she assures me.
I can’t help but glance at her standing with her hands on her hips, pointing the high-beams at me. “Was there a nudist box on the housing form I checked by accident?”
She laughs, then finally reaches for a tank top. “I like to cleanse the energy of a place. A house ain’t a home till you spent time in it naked, right?”
“The blinds are open,” I point out.
“No tan lines,” she answers with a wink. “I’m Bonnie May Beauchamp. Guess we’re roomies.”
“Mackenzie Cabot.”
She smooshes me in a tight hug. Ordinarily I’d consider this a grievous assault on my personal boundaries. But, for some reason, I can’t find it in me to be put off by this girl. Maybe she’s a witch. Hypnotizing me with her witch tits. Still, I get a good vibe from her.
She has soft, round features and big, brown eyes. A bright white grin that’s equally non-threatening to women and approachable to men. Everyone’s little sister. But with boobs.
“Where’s all your stuff?” she asks upon releasing me.
“My boyfriend’s coming by later with most of it. I have a few things in the car downstairs. The driver’s waiting on me.”
“I’ll help you bring it up.”
There isn’t much, only a couple boxes, but I appreciate the offer and the company. We grab the boxes and toss them in the room, then wander the halls for a bit, checking out the neighborhood.
“You from South Carolina?” Bonnie asks.
“Charleston. You?”
“I’m from Georgia. Daddy wanted me to go to Georgia State, but my momma went to Garnet, so they made a bet on the outcome of a football game and here I am.”
Down on the third floor, there’s a dude walking around with a backpack cooler of frosé who tries to offer us each a cup in exchange for our phone numbers. His arms, chest, and back are covered in scribbled black permanent marker, with most of the numbers missing a digit or two. Certainly all of them fake.
We pass on the offer and grin to ourselves, leaving him in our wake.
“Did you transfer from somewhere?” Bonnie says as we continue our way through the bazaar of micro communities. “I mean, don’t take this the wrong way or nothin’， but you don’t look like a freshman.”
I knew this would happen. I feel like the camp counselor. Two years older than my peers, on account of my gap year and the fact that I started kindergarten a year late, when my parents decided to extend a Mediterranean sailing trip rather than get me home in time for school.
“I took a gap year. Made a deal with my parents that I’d go to whatever school they chose if they let me work on my business first.” Though if it were up to me, I’d have skipped this chapter of the coming-of-age story completely.
“You got your own business already?” Bonnie demands, wide-eyed. “I spent all summer watchin’ Vanderpump reruns and partyin’ at the lake.”
“I built a website and an app,” I admit. “I mean, it’s nothing major. Not like I founded Tesla or anything.”
“What kind of app?”
“It’s a site where people post funny or embarrassing boyfriend stories. It started as a joke for some of my friends from high school, but then it sort of blew up. Last year, I launched another site for people to post about their girlfriends.”
What began as me and a blog had ballooned in the past year to include hiring an ad manager, site moderators, and a marketing team. I have payroll and taxes and seven figures in my business checking account. And somewhere on top of all that, I’m supposed to worry about essays and midterms? A deal’s a deal, and I’m as good as my word, but this whole college thing seems pointless.
“Oh my God, I know that site.” Bonnie smacks my arm excitedly. Girl’s got steel rods for fingers. “BoyfriendFails! Holy shit. My girls and I probably spent more time readin’ those senior year than doin’ our homework. What’s the one? ’Bout the boyfriend who got food poisoning after a date and the girl’s dad was drivin’ them home and the guy got massive diarrhea in the backseat!”
She doubles over in absolute hysterics. I crack a smile because I remember that post well. It got over three hundred thousand clicks, thousands of comments, and double the ad revenue of any other post that month.