Special thanks to Kyle from Twitter and deberzer for their help with this chapter!
All feedback appreciated!
When Sam awoke the next morning, she wasn't in a bathtub, on a couch, or next to a pile of her stomach's disgorged contents. Following the events of the day before, and her phone call with Jess in particular, she had lost all energy for partaking in any nightly hedonistic activities. As if losing all contact with the one person she cared about more than anything wasn't bad enough, Jess herself seemed to be the opposite of struggling to move on based on the pictures she had uploaded to Facebook.
Seeing her ex's smiling face amidst a group of other college age girls at Hope Park, all Sam could feel was miserably inadequate. Jess was living her life up in Philadelphia, meeting loads of new people, and what was she doing in the meantime? Mixing drugs and alcohol to bury her feelings and missing class on the regular? Even though she was privileged enough to attend one of the best universities in the world? She felt disgusted with herself. She never deserved to be with Jess in the first place.
So for the first time since getting to school, Sam spent the night in her dorm and finally met her roommate, who also happened to be the girl she could hardly keep herself from ogling at in class. Even as Lara remained fast asleep on the other side of the room, Sam still found herself struggling to avert her gaze someplace other than the former's finely-sculpted facial features.
From her defined jawline and pouty lips all the way up to her brows, whose shape and angle perfectly framed her eyes to give off the impression of sharpness and intuition, there wasn't a single perceptible flaw in any facet of her being. And pining for Jess as she was, Sam had to admit to herself how attractive she found Lara to be, the acknowledgement of which only left her feeling conflicted on the inside. She still felt as though her and Jess had broken up just yesterday; pursuing other women felt tactless.
Besides which point, who knew if Lara was even interested in women romantically? There was no point in running the risk of putting herself in an awkward position to find out. And what if her attraction to Lara was nothing more than a mental fabrication designed to fill the void left behind by Jess's absence? In any case, she needed to get over Jess sooner rather than later-and the only way she would be able to do so was if she put herself out there more and met new people. Since she and Lara were going to be living together anyways, she reasoned she might as well start there.
Assuming Lara would actually wake up first instead of only getting Sam's hopes up every so often with periodic sleep-grunting. When she had stirred without waking for the third time in a row, Sam decided she couldn't take any more and threw her covers off herself. With a sigh, she lugged herself out of bed and took a moment to stretch the sleep from her limbs before grabbing her backpack off the floor. With that in tow, she made her way over to her desk to get herself set up and situated. If she was going to sit around and wait, she figured she might as well be productive and start catching up on all of her missed coursework.
Try as she did for the duration of the next hour or so, she only managed to get through one chapter of her Introduction to Film textbook before ultimately admitting defeat. Silently cursing herself and scowling in frustration, she closed her book and rubbed her tired eyes out while considering her other options. The odds of Molly being awake were highly improbable-she had scheduled all of her classes past noon for a reason. Even if Molly was awake, all she would most likely want to do is smoke "The Devil's Lettuce," as she called it, and Sam wasn't too keen on the idea considering those kinds of illicit habits were what put her in her current academic crisis in the first place. So, seeing no other viable alternatives for passing the time, she pulled her laptop and earbuds out of her bag and settled herself back down in bed to watch movies until Lara woke up.
Halfway through The Shawshank Redemption, Sam detected movement in the periphery of her vision and paused the movie to investigate. Turning her head, she saw that Lara had at last rejoined the realm of the living and watched as, with a soft yawn, the latter heaved herself up off her bed and sluggishly made her way to the bathroom. The moment the door snapped shut behind her, Sam removed her earbuds with a pensive frown and deliberated over the best course of action. There was the ever-lingering chance that Lara might still be tense from whatever had happened to her the previous night, and trying to strike up a conversation with her might only make her more irritable. But what if things didn't hit the fan and all went smoothly?
Gargles echoed from the bathroom, followed by the sounds of liquid splattering into the sink basin, and Lara reemerged into the room shortly thereafter. Sam bit her lip and closed her laptop; as good as she was at reading people, she couldn't tell whether or not Lara was still agitated by her body language. She didn't seem angry or distressed-maybe a bit distracted with the way her eyes seemed to stare off into the distance, but that was it.
Nothing ventured, nothing gained...right? She thought, taking a small breath to steel herself before speaking, "So...you feeling any better today?" Lara, who had been rifling through her drawers, gave a start at this and gave Sam a look of perplexion.
"What are you-? Oh," she looked down at her bruised hand and rubbed it with her other hand, "yeah, a bit…" She hesitated before adding, "I'm really sorry, by the way, I didn't mean to cut you off last night-"
"You're fine," Sam interjected, waving a hand out in front of her dismissively. When Lara still looked uncertain, she continued, "Really, it's not a big deal. Trust me. I gotta ask though...what happened? You looked pretty pissed off when you first came in."
"An accident," Lara answered matter-of-factly, "it's...kind of a long story."
"Don't worry about trying to explain anything, then. I just figured I'd try asking one more time, but I don't need to know any of the details." Sam swung her legs off the side of her bed to face Lara completely and sat herself on the edge, "So since we're going to either love or hate each other for at least the next few months, let's try this again… Hi! I'm Sam, nice to meet you!" She grinned cheekily, mentally fist pumping her victory when she saw the corners of Lara's lips twitch upwards in unmistakable amusement, "I won't shake your hand this time since that'd probably hurt."
"Probably," Lara agreed, "well...nice to meet you again, Sam. I'm Lara." She nodded at Sam's guitar leaning up against the wall in the corner, "You play?" Sam looked over at the spruce and rosewood acoustic before shifting her focus back to Lara and nodding.
"Yup! For a while now, actually. I took lessons for a few years and kept practicing on my own after that. Been playing for ten years now. It's a nice way to detox after a long day." She remembered with a pang the lazy Saturday afternoons her and Jess used to spend playing their guitars together, and she shook her head to clear it of the painful memories, "Anyways, do you play as well or were you just curious?"
"Just curious," Lara said, "I do play the piano, though I'm a bit out of practice." Sam had to resist the urge to smirk; Lara was beginning to seem like a walking stereotype with her accent, the piano playing, and the way she sat on the edge of her bed all upright and proper.
"Out of practice or not, that's still pretty cool. I could never get the hang of the piano when I tried it."
"I just had a good teacher, I suppose…" Lara's voice drifted off as she gathered her unruly mane behind her head using a scrunchie on her wrist. Sam was marveling at how something so messy could look so effortlessly perfect when she spotted the jade pendant hanging around Lara's neck.
"What's that?" She asked, pointing to it. Lara looked down to see what she referred to, and cupped the jewelry in the palm of her hand.
"This? It's a magatama, I'm fairly certain it's from the late Kofun period judging by the material it's made of. I...found it on a dig." Sam blinked in surprise.
"Wow, remind me to never let you meet my dad because he'd probably adopt you on the spot. He's obsessed with his Japanese heritage… Also, what'd you mean by 'dig'?" Lara regarded her intently.
"Your dad's Japanese?" She inquired, leaving Sam's question unacknowledged. Sam debated about asking again but let the matter drop.
"Why the sudden curiosity? Think you might want to put yourself up for adoption now?" She joked instead. "But to answer your question: yeah, he is. He's technically Japanese and American since he has a dual citizenship, but he was born in Tokyo and grew up there," Lara raised an inquisitive brow at her.
"Huh. Anata wa nihongo o hanasemasu ka?" Sam stared at Lara in utter disbelief, her intrigue increasing with every passing minute.
"What the shit?" She blurted out before catching herself and answering the question, "Hai, watashi wa ryūchōdesu but okay, for one thing where'd you learn to speak so well? And for another, what're you even studying anyways?" Lara let out a small laugh.
"Well, for one thing I learned to speak Japanese at school but haven't really had anybody to speak it with-"
"Get used to speaking it on a regular basis then, because I'm totally abusing the hell out of this around other people!"
"-And for another, I'm studying archaeology with a concentration in East Asian history," Lara finished.
"Okay well that makes sense," Sam remarked, "but why archaeology?" Lara shrugged.
"I suppose it's because I've always had an interest in history and learning where we came from," she said, thumbing her magatama while she spoke.
"Isn't the second part more-so related to science? Like a biology and evolution sort of thing?" Lara, clearly caught off guard by Sam's question, sat there in pensive silence for several moments before delivering her reply.
"Do you consider archaeology a science?" She asked at length, and it was Sam's turn to think.
"I honestly don't know," she finally admitted after a minute or two, "do you?"
"Absolutely," Lara said without hesitation. "Archaeologists frequently utilize the scientific method and come up with testable, falsifiable hypotheses for how certain things came to be. As more facts are unearthed, these hypotheses are either proven or disproven. From there, the hypotheses either become widely accepted as theories until such a time when further findings confirm them to be facts, or archaeologists go back and revise them accordingly." Sam was beginning to see Lara's point, "So now lemme ask you again: do you consider archaeology a science?"
"When you put it all that way, I do," Sam affirmed. "I guess I never really looked at things that way before, it's an interesting perspective…" She regarded Lara with interest before continuing, "Y'know... I dunno if anybody's told you this yet, but you're pretty damn smart. I can tell just by the way you talk." Lara's face flushed at this.
"I- wot?" She stammered.
"C'mon, gimme a break," Sam persisted, "I can't be the only one who's noticed! Admit it, you know your stuff!"
"I...I mean…" Lara cleared her throat, "I try to stay on top of everything, sure, but…" her voice trailed off weakly and Sam, taking pity on her, let up.
"Alright, alright-breathe! Your face makes it look like you're going to pass out from oxygen deprivation or something!" She exclaimed, alarmed by the bright red hue Lara's face had adopted. Is she not used to getting compliments or something? She wondered, hard as that was to believe with everything Lara had going for her. Perhaps she was simply shyer than Sam had been led to believe? That wasn't too far-fetched given the fact that Lara apparently seldom spoke up in class, as evidenced by the way Sam remembered their Lit professor reacting when she had answered a question in class the previous day.
"I'm fine, really, I-" Lara's face was still light pink when she looked down at her phone mid-speech and stood up, "Sorry, I need to take this." She answered her phone, "Hello? ...Yes, this is she," she said, pacing back and forth across the room while she listened to whoever spoke on the other end of the line. "Yes… Yes? Yeah, I can do that…" her eyes lit up all of a sudden, and when she spoke again her voice was full of poorly contained excitement, "of course! Thank you very much, I'll see you then!"
"What's up?" Sam asked when Lara pocketed her phone, "Am I keeping you from something you need to do?"
"Oh no, of course not," Lara assured her, her face finally a normal color again when she took a seat back down on her bed, "that was just a bar I applied for a job at calling to set up an interview." Sam must have done a terrible job at hiding her skepticism at this, because Lara tilted her head slightly with a brow raised a moment later, "What?"
"Sorry...I was kinda thrown off because, you know…" Lara frowned.
"No, I don't know...what're you talking about?" Sam scratched the back of her neck nervously.
"Well...it's just that with your accent...and everything…" Lara's mouth formed somewhat of an "O" shape at this.
"I see…" she remarked, her hands busying themselves with her ponytail, "well, you know what they say: don't judge a book by its cover."
"I know, sorry," Sam groaned, "it was totally shitty of me to jump to conclusions like that…" Way to make a good first impression, Sam! She mentally berated herself.
"It's quite alright," Lara responded calmly, "in fact I'm not surprised in the slightest considering those myths people have come up with about correlations between various intonations and socioeconomic background. Sure, it can be accurate to assume somebody's a 'peasant' if they have a cockney accent for example, but not always. It's like me assuming Americans with a New York accent are automatically impatient assholes-er, no offense if you know anybody who speaks like that." Sam snorted.
"None taken because the people I know who're like that are assholes...but I see what you mean. I've never been to England before, let alone London, so I don't even know what I don't know," Sam shrugged. "For instance, the other day these two guys were looking at me while talking about a septic tank and I still dunno why."
"Septic tank?" Lara posed, "That's cockney rhyming slang for 'yank,' which is a term we have for Americans. Unless they were talking about actual septic tanks, of course, but that doesn't seem to be the case."
"So when they were saying they'd 'really like to shag that septic tank'..." Sam's voice trailed off and Lara sniggered nervously, apparently deciding the ceiling was more interesting to look at right then.
"That, ah...that basically means they really wanted to get into your knickers," she admitted sheepishly, looking a touch bashful.
"Oh," Sam uttered, feeling her face go hot, "uh, good to know. At least I think it is? I have no clue… You wanna just be my permanent British English translator from now on?"
"I could try," Lara replied, "but sometimes I don't even know what people from different regions are saying."
"Trust me, I know what you mean. I've been to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania before and I swear to God they actually use the word 'yinz' for 'you all' over there, isn't that awful?" Lara's bewildered expression was the only answer she needed, "Yeah. I don't get it either. Anyways, having somebody around who understands most of what other people are saying is better than not having a friggin' clue."
"Well then I'm happy to oblige," Lara declared, and Sam couldn't help but smile.
"You know what, Lara?" She began, "You seem pretty cool, you have any plans for the day?" The look Lara wore on her face when she grinned back at Sam was one of sheer guilt and embarrassment.
"Not at all...you wouldn't happen to have seen Mean Girls, would you?"
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