Moving in.

Mr. Aliev and I took care of moving the heavier stuff up the stairs while Thomas, Ben, Kevin and Mark moved boxes to the girls’ rooms. Kevin jokingly went ‘Oh shit!’ and ran away from me when I saw him coming out of Mila’s room. Mr. Aliev and I found it amusing and Mila herself looked confused as Kevin ran past her as she was going up the stairs.

“Kevin, don’t fucking run down the stairs or you’ll cause an accident!” Ben shouted back at him as he went down to get some more things.

“Hey, Alice, is this one yours?” Diana asked the blonde, gesturing to the box in her arms. “It’s not labeled but it was along with your stuff.”

“No, I put my name in all of mine,” Alice said. “I think that one might be Grace’s.”

“It’s really light. What’s in it?” Diana wondered.

“Stuffed animals, I bet,” I told her as Mr. Aliev and I carried a shelf into Mila’s room.

The house was full with the sound of steps and people yelling from floor to floor.

I carried one of Noelle’s boxes up to the game room, one that was labeled as ‘games.’ The redhead herself came into the same room just a few seconds after me.

“Hey, so… now that we’ll be living together… Is it a good time to start playing that game I told you about?” she asked me.

“Yeah, I haven’t forgotten. We already figured out our schedules, so we should have time for one or two sessions a week, right?”

She smiled. “Cool. You’ll like it, I promise. The music is so good.”

“So I’ve heard, and that’s what interests me the most, really.”

At one point, Ben, Grace and I stopped to drink some water in the kitchen, and I took the opportunity to check on Ben’s condition.

“Your fight is this next weekend, right? How are you doing?”

“My weight is perfect, I completed my training, I feel stronger than I ever have… and yet I still feel like throwing up every time I think about it. I keep thinking I should do more…”

“You’re gonna hurt yourself if you do that and you’ll regret it even more later,” Grace said, stealing the words from my mouth.

“I know that, of course. Just… Ugh. no use worrying about it, obviously, but it keeps me awake at night.”

“You’ll be fine. Follow your training, listen to your coach and if things aren’t working, just hit him harder,” I told him.

“Will do.”

As we all moved around from place to place, so did Cake. She was exploring with her ears high up and eyes wide open. It was a little hard to tell if that was excitement or stress, and while I would rather it wasn’t like that, I was leaning towards thinking it was stress. Too much movement in a completely new environment must’ve been getting to her.

Eventually, however, we were done moving stuff. Mr. Aliev and the guys left, and I promised them I’d thank them properly soon, but the rest of us still had work to do.

We went back to our respective rooms and began to put clothes in drawers and closets, fixing our spaces and such. We made our beds and stored the spare sheets. And this was just the start.

I was in my bedroom from about 11:40 pm to 1:00 pm. Cake had enough of exploring for the moment and went to hide herself in one of my empty boxes.

“I can relate, girl…” I said. “I know this is hard, but… This’ll be our house from now on? Think you can get used to it?” Cake let out a soft, short meow from inside the box that made me chuckle.

I took a moment to look around our new space. It was certainly bigger than my old room. The biggest bedroom in the house, actually, so I suppose you could call it the master bedroom. An Alaskan sized bed wouldn’t have even fit in my old room, but here there was space to spare. There was a big, built-in closet in the corner, too. Even with all my jackets and shirts there was still space left.

Honestly, I didn’t know what to do with all the space. There were rooms for practically everything, and considering my new roommates, staying cooped in my own bedroom didn’t seem like a great idea. Still, I suppose we all need some personal space. I’d put a desk, at least. And keep one of my guitars here because it doesn’t feel right not to have one close.

But anyway, I was mostly done with my own stuff and it was time for lunch. I could hear the others still working in their rooms, so I went down to the kitchen alone. Well, not alone. Cake jumped out of her box to follow me the moment she saw me step out of the room.

The kitchen had everything we needed already. Alice’s family actually gifted us our sets of plates, bowls, pots and pans. Alice and I had put everything in the proper drawers, so I knew where everything was… Yet I felt like a stranger in a stranger’s house.

On paper, this was all mine. My house, my kitchen. It just didn’t feel mine, at least not yet. It didn’t feel… lived in, which is a painfully obvious thing to say, but not any less uncomfortable for it.

The only way to remedy this was also painfully obvious. No matter how big or small, a home is made by the people who live in it. It’s up to us to make it feel like home instead of just a house. And I had a good idea of how to do that.

Time to amend an old blunder.

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