I blink several times. I didn’t realize role-playing fantasies were supposed to be this realistic. “Uh…what?”
“The fire!” she shouts again, jogging a couple steps back and swinging open the door to her room. “It’s in here!”
I follow tentatively, and sure enough, when I peek inside, there it is.
The actual fucking fire.
“Holy shit!” It’s my turn to shout. “There’s a fire in your room!”
“Hello! That’s what I’ve been saying!” she yells back frantically. “How about you tell me something I don’t know, like how to freaking stop it!”
In a rush, I storm through the door and use my dwindling Boy Scout skills to assess the urgent situation.
A small metal pot sitting on a hot plate—on top of an insanely bright and flowery cloth on her desk, mind you—smokes like a motherfucker while flames continue to billow from the bottom of it. I cannot fucking believe the fire alarms haven’t started going off yet.
“I know they said no hot plates in the dorm rooms, but I just figured that was some kind of stupid rule, you know. I mean, holy hell, I didn’t even know that hot plates could catch on fire! I thought they just got hot. Not burst into freaking flames! I would call the fire department, but I’m pretty sure they’d ban me from Columbia forever. Which is sad because I haven’t even experienced my first day!” she exclaims in a nearly incoherent ramble as she paces back and forth behind me. “Gah! Apparently, that no-hot-plate rule is for a reason.”
She’s so funny, I almost stop to laugh, but thankfully for the other occupants of this building, the growing, flickering flames somehow manage to win out as priority.
“Water!” I yell behind me to the pacing rambler as I jump toward the socket which the offending appliance is plugged into and yank it from the wall.
I hold out a hand, expecting a cup or bucket or something, but when nothing comes, I yell out my demand again. “Water! I need water!”
“Water!” she exclaims. “Oh yes, I have bottled water!”
“Get it!” I snap impatiently. In any other circumstance, I’d try harder not to be rude, but we’re about fifteen seconds from setting this whole room on fire.
After pulling several bottles from a mini fridge beside her bed, she hands them off to me one-by-one, undoing the caps frantically so I don’t have to pause to do it, and I pour them on top of the flames.
It takes seven fucking bottles before the fire is officially out, and for the first time since she rammed into me in the hallway, I take a full breath.
“Well, fuck,” I say on a heavy sigh, and she snorts a completely unexpected and yet, somehow endearing, giggle.
“I cannot believe I almost burned down my dorm room at Columbia University on the very first night.”
“Yeah,” I reply, and I have to bite back my smile. “Not exactly the first impression they suggested we make at orientation.” I move closer to the charred mess sitting on her desk and open up a window to let out the residual smoke.
She groans and slaps a palm to her forehead. “I’m an idiot.”
“Hey, accidents happen sometimes,” I reassure her. “Do it again, and then you’ll be an idiot.”
She laughs, thankfully, as I intended. And now that the urgency of the emergency is over, I take the opportunity to survey her room beyond the soggy remnants of her contraband.
“I think you have a casualty,” I comment and nod toward the little green-brown plant sitting beside the out-of-commission hot plate.
“No.” She sighs and shakes her head. “Teddy 3 was already like that before I got here.”
I turn to meet her eyes. “Teddy 3?”
“My plant,” she explains. “Well, my almost-dead plant.”
I don’t know why it strikes me as cute that she names her plants, but it does.
“You brought a dead plant to college?”
She shrugs one petite shoulder. “Almost dead. I’m trying to stop the streak.”
I quirk an eyebrow.
“The ‘I can only seem to kill plants’ streak.”
“So, his name is Teddy 3 because—”
She shrugs again, nodding to confirm my assumption. “Teddy and Teddy 2 are dead. Like, as a doornail. All shriveled and broken. Not even the main stems survived.”
“I see.” A smirk consumes my mouth. “Do you have another bottle of water in your fridge for him, then? I’d be happy to extend the scope of my services a little bit.”
She smiles, and when the skin at the corners of her blue eyes crinkles, a tingle shoots back into my dick—previously put into a medically induced coma by the unexpected flames.
“That’s okay,” she says, pursing her full, pink lips. “I’ll take care of Teddy 3 later…when I’ve calmed down a little bit. I’ll almost definitely remember.”
I smile. I don’t know how I can be so sure, but I’d go to Vegas and put down money that Teddy 3 doesn’t see any sort of hydration later tonight.