Chapter 3: Beer and curtains
Lucas awoke to the faint smell of sandalwood and the unfamiliar weight of an arm thrown across his chest. Morning light, pale and diluted by a thin curtain, illuminated the foreign landscape of Freya’s room. The events of the previous night reassembled themselves not as a blur, but in startling, hyper-focused fragments.
The cool river stone in his hand. The clinical touch of the measuring tape. The shocking warmth of her mouth. The feel of her hair, like raw silk between his clutching fingers. The impossible, buckling release. Afterwards, she had simply wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, stood up, and looked down at him as he’d sagged against her desk, breathing like he’d sprinted a mile.
“My time is done,” she’d said, her voice husky but matter-of-fact. She’d picked up his jeans and tossed them to him. “Consider that your reward for your labor. Nothing more, nothing less. Now get some sleep. You look wrecked.”
She’d then climbed into her bed, pulling the patchwork quilt over herself, turning her back to him as if he were a piece of furniture. Stunned, trembling, he’d stood there for a full minute before mechanically pulling his clothes back on. He hadn’t known what to do, where to go. The walk back to his own room felt like a confession. So he’d stayed, sliding tentatively under the covers on the far side of her bed, lying rigid until exhaustion pulled him under.
Now, in the grey morning, her words echoed, stripping the experience of any lingering romance. A reward. A transaction. For hauling bottles.
He shifted slightly, and Freya’s arm tightened. “You think too loud,” she mumbled into her pillow, her voice thick with sleep. She didn’t open her eyes. “It’s annoying.”
“Sorry,” he whispered.
“Don’t be sorry. Be quiet.” She released him, rolling onto her back and stretching with a feline groan. She blinked at the ceiling. “Sam’s tonight, yeah?”
“Yeah. He said a rock cafe in the city center.”
“Good. He’ll talk at you for three hours about the phenomenology of espresso foam or some shit. No labor. Just drinking and thinking. Your dick gets a night off.” She said it with such casual obscenity that he couldn’t help but bark a short, surprised laugh.
She turned her head on the pillow to look at him. Her eyes were clear, green, and held no trace of sentiment. “What happened last night stays in this room. It’s not gossip. It’s not a sign of anything. It was a thing that happened. Understood?”
He understood. It was a boundary, clean and sharp. “Understood.”
“Good.” She swung her legs out of bed, completely unconcerned by her nakedness. “Now get out. I need to shower and you reek of existential crisis and cheap whiskey.”
The house was quiet as he crept back to his room. He showered for a long time, the water scalding, trying to wash away the confusion. It hadn’t felt like just a transaction in the moment. It had felt seismic. But she was expertly packaging it, defining its terms, and he was in no position to argue.
He avoided the common areas until the afternoon, surviving on crackers from his backpack. When he finally ventured out for coffee, Sam was at the kitchen table, same as always, annotating a dense text with a pencil.
“Tonight,” Sam said, without looking up. “Eight o’clock. The ‘Fractured Atlas.’ It’s a cafe. They play decent music. The chairs are uncomfortable. It’s perfect.”
“Looking forward to it,” Lucas said, and found he mostly meant it.
The Fractured Atlas was all exposed brick and low, vaulted ceilings, with shelves of worn paperbacks and a small stage in the corner. The music was a low thrum of indie rock, the air rich with the scent of ground coffee and stale beer. Sam led them to a small, round table in the back, ordered two pints of a local porter, and settled in.
“So,” Sam said, taking a slow sip. “Freya worked you like a rented mule, then gave you a cryptic debrief, I assume.”
Lucas nearly choked on his beer. “Something like that.”
“Her methodology is physical. Mine is cerebral. A different axis of vulnerability.” Sam’s tired eyes gleamed. “Freya tests your willingness to do. I test your willingness to think. Specifically, to think about why you’re here.”
“I’m here because I needed a room.”
Sam shook his head slowly. “A facile answer. You’re here, in this city, in this house of curated misfits, because you’re fleeing banality. You’re seeking experience. Raw data for the person you haven’t become yet. The question is, are you a passive collector or an active participant?”
Lucas swirled the dark beer in his glass. “Freya said I was playing at being a ghost.”
“Freya is perceptive. A ghost observes but cannot interact. It cannot change its environment.” Sam leaned forward. “Take the house. Lisa and Nico. You’ve seen their… dynamic. What do you see?”
Lucas thought of the silent battles over the kitchen, the charged glances. “They hate each other.”
“Do they? Or is hatred simply the most convenient conduit for a more complex energy? They are forced into proximity by their parents’ choices. Their conflict is a performance, a play they’re writing together because the alternative—indifference, or worse, attraction—is too dangerous to acknowledge.”
“That’s… a lot.”
“It’s a hypothesis. Observe Nilus and Jill. He orbits her like a desperate moon. She allows the orbit, occasionally pulling him closer with a gravity that seems sweet until you feel the tidal forces. It’s a game where only one of them knows the rules. Are they playing, or is one being played?” Sam took another long drink. “You are now inside the petri dish. Will you just note the color of the bacteria, or will you ask what it’s feeding on?”
The conversation flowed like that for hours, Sam deftly turning every topic—university, Lucas’s past, the nature of shared living—into a philosophical excavation. It was exhausting, but in a completely different way from hauling crates. Lucas felt his own thoughts being stretched, bent into new shapes.
At one point, a loud group spilled in from the street, and in the momentary din, Sam’s intensity faded. He slumped a little, his finger tracing a watermark on the wooden table. “The tribunal is Freya’s invention, but the need for it… we all feel it. This isn’t a dorm. This is a chosen collision. We need to know the new piece won’t shatter on impact, or worse, dull the edges of everything it touches.”
“And what happens after?” Lucas asked. “After all the one-on-one nights?”
Sam smiled, a rare, genuine expression that softened his entire face. “Then you’re in. Truly in. And you get to help vet the next poor soul. And the chaos continues, slightly altered by your presence. The play gets a new character.” He finished his beer. “My evaluation is complete. You listen. You push back when something is stupid. You’re tolerably awkward. You’ll do.”
They walked home through the cool night, the city sounds a distant hum. The house was alive when they returned; Chloe was watching a loud reality show in the living room, Mateo’s music pulsed from below, and a light was on under Laury’s door.
As Lucas passed the kitchen, he saw Nilus alone, staring intently into the fridge as if it held the secrets of the universe. From the hallway leading to the bedrooms, Jill emerged, wearing just an oversized t-shirt. She paused, catching Nilus’s eye through the doorway. She gave a slow, sleepy smile, then turned and walked back down the hall, the motion deliberate. Nilus shut the fridge and followed, a puppet on a visible string.
Sam, beside Lucas, let out a soft, knowing sigh. “Observe the data,” he murmured, before heading to his room.
Lucas stood in the dim hallway, the echoes of Sam’s theories mixing with the visceral memory of Freya’s mouth, the sweet weight of her arm in the morning. He was no longer just noting colors. He was starting to feel the heat of the culture, the weird, thriving life of it. He climbed the stairs to his room, not as a ghost, but as something new, something planted and beginning, uncomfortably, to grow.
He climbed the stairs to his room, not as a ghost, but as something new, something planted and beginning, uncomfortably, to grow. The feeling was fragile, a thin sheet of ice over deep, churning water. He lay in the dark, the phantom sensation of Freya’s mouth and the echo of Sam’s questions conducting a strange, silent war across his nervous system.
Sleep was a shallow pool. He woke to a gray, drizzly afternoon, the house holding its breath. His turn with Mateo was that evening, and a low, unfamiliar thrum of anticipation had replaced his earlier dread. He made tea, moving through the quiet kitchen with a newfound sense of ownership. This was his kettle, his chipped mug.
The back door to the garden squealed open. Laury shuffled in, her oversized charcoal sweater damp at the shoulders, speckled with rain and tiny flecks of paint. She carried the sharp, piney smell of turpentine. She froze when she saw him, one hand flying to self-consciously smooth her hair, which today was tied in a loose, messy knot.
“Oh. Hi,” she said, her voice barely a whisper. She looked at the floor, then quickly at his face, then back at the floor.
“Painting in the rain?” Lucas asked, leaning against the counter.
“The light was interesting. Diffuse.” She wrung her hands, stained with blue and umber. “You’re with Mateo tonight.”
“Yeah. Any advice?”
This made her look up fully. Her eyes, a deep brown, were wide and serious. “Don’t wear shoes you like. And… listen. Really listen. He doesn’t always say things with words.” She seemed to realize this was the longest speech she’d ever made to him and took a hurried step towards the hall. “Your tea is steaming.”
He glanced down. “So it is.”
She paused at the doorway, a shadow in the frame. “I liked your answer. To Sam’s question about banality.” Then she was gone, leaving him with his steaming mug and a sudden, warm confusion. He hadn’t known she’d been within earshot at any point last night.
Mateo’s “night out” began at sunset in the tangled, wet backyard. He handed Lucas a pair of worn work gloves and pointed to a stack of broken pallets leaning against the fence. “We’re building a fire pit,” he announced, his voice a low rumble. “Theoretical, then actual.”
The work was physical but methodical. Mateo directed with grunts and sharp gestures, showing Lucas how to pry nails, stack bricks, clear a circle of sod. It was nothing like the chaotic labor at The Venue. This was purposeful, quiet construction. The drizzle misted their hair and faces.
“Freya breaks you down with chaos. Sam with thought. I build,” Mateo said, hefting a concrete capstone into place. His arms bulged under his t-shirt. “You show who you are by how you handle materials. Patience. Respect for the tool.”
“What’s the tool here?” Lucas asked, wiping rain from his brow.
“Your hands. The night. This.” Mateo gestured at the emerging stone circle. “Fire is a tool. We’ll light it later.” He worked in silence for a while, the only sounds the scrape of brick and the distant city hum. “You’re quieter than most. You watch. That’s good. But watching isn’t knowing. Knowing comes from doing. From making.”
Once the pit was laid, Mateo produced a bottle of cheap whiskey and a sack of kindling from a damp shed. He built the fire with a meticulous, almost ritualistic care, layering twigs, paper, and split wood. The first match hissed in the rain, then a small, defiant flame took hold, growing until it crackled heartily, painting their faces in orange and black.
Mateo handed him the bottle. “Now we sit. And we don’t talk unless we have to.”
They drank. The whiskey burned a familiar path. The fire’s heat fought back the damp chill. Lucas felt an unexpected, profound calm settle over him, a direct result of the physical work and the silent, shared focus. This was another kind of vulnerability: sitting in silence, without the pressure of performance or intellectual sparring.
An hour passed. The fire settled into glowing embers. Mateo finally spoke, his eyes reflecting the coals. “You built a thing. It’ll be here tomorrow. That’s my evaluation. You can follow instructions. You don’t rush. You see a task through.” He stood, brushing dirt from his knees. “You’re okay, Lucas.”
The simplicity of the verdict was its own reward. Lucas walked back inside, smelling of woodsmoke and night air, feeling solid in a way he hadn’t before. The tribunal was shifting from an ordeal to a lexicon, each person teaching him a new dialect of this strange house.
He needed a shower. The hallway bathroom was empty, steam from someone’s recent use still clinging to the mirror. He stripped, the clothes smelling of the fire, and turned the water hot. The spray was a blessing on his tired muscles.
He was rinsing soap from his hair, eyes closed against the stream, when he heard the bathroom door open. A draft of cooler air hit his skin.
“Oops, sorry! Oh, it’s you.”
It was Julia’s voice, sharp and amused, cutting through the water’s roar. Lucas snapped his eyes open, fumbling for the curtain. He pulled it back just enough to peer out, one hand shielding himself.
Julia stood there, not leaving. She wore a silk robe, loosely tied, and held a toothbrush. She didn’t look away. Her gaze was assessing, curious, a faint smile playing on her lips. “Don’t stop on my account. I just need to grab my mouthwash.”
She stepped fully into the room, moving to the cabinet above the sink. The space was small, crowded. The steam swirled around her.
Before Lucas could react, the door swung open again. Chloe bounced in, clutching a facial cleanser. “Julia, have you seen my—whoa!”
She stopped short, her eyes darting from Julia’s robe to Lucas’s half-exposed, dripping form behind the shower curtain. Her mouth formed a perfect ‘O’.
“Looks like the tribunal’s getting a live demonstration,” Julia said drily, retrieving her bottle.
Nilus appeared in the doorway behind Chloe, drawn by the commotion. “What’s going—oh.” He flushed a deep red, trying to back out but bumping into the doorframe.
The bathroom was now impossibly full. Steam, confusion, and three pairs of eyes fixed on him. Lucas stood frozen, the water beating down on his shoulders, utterly exposed. The curtain felt as thin as tissue paper.
The curtain felt as thin as tissue paper. A beat of absolute silence hung in the steam, thick and choking.
Then Julia snorted. It was a short, sharp sound that broke the tension like glass.
Chloe’s shock melted into gleeful delight. “Well, hello there, Lucas! Getting a proper inspection, are we?”
The roommates burst out laughing. It wasn’t cruel, but a rolling, genuine wave of it that filled the tiny space. Nilus’s embarrassed chuckle joined in, his hand over his eyes though he peeked through his fingers.
“That’s what you get when the bathroom door can’t lock!” Julia crowed, wiping a tear from her eye. She unscrewed her mouthwash cap, utterly unfazed. “The latch has been broken since Mateo shoulder-charged it during a spider incident. You just have to hope for the best.”
Lucas, heart hammering, yanked the curtain fully closed. The floral pattern blurred before him. “Could you all maybe… not?”
“Oh, relax,” Chloe said, her voice muffled as she squeezed paste onto her brush. “It’s good there are more cabins. This is the hazard of peak hour. And we’re all human with parts, don’t worry. Everyone is naked under their clothing.”
“Speak for yourself,” Julia gargled, then spat. “Some of us are robots.”
Nilus, still flushed, managed to speak. “We all see each other naked sometimes. It’s kind of inevitable. Laury walks to the kitchen in just a towel every morning. Sam meditates in his boxers. It’s… a body. It’s fine.”
Their casualness was a blanket, smothering his panic in plain, simple logic. The laughter had stripped the event of any grand shame. It was just another stupid, mundane fact of life here—broken doors, shared space, incidental nudity.
“Evaluation note,” Julia said, tapping her chin as she looked at the closed curtain. “Doesn’t panic-scream. Maintains modesty under fire. Good bladder control, presumably. You’re scoring points, new blood.”
"You're scoring points, new blood."
Julia’s pronouncement hung in the steamy air, a joke that didn’t feel entirely like one. Before Lucas could formulate a response, a new wave of movement erupted.
Chloe, with a conspiratorial grin, shrugged off her fluffy robe. It pooled at her feet in a pastel heap. “She’s right, you know. Peak hour rules. And my skin is screaming for steam.” She stepped neatly into the adjacent shower stall and yanked the curtain closed with a decisive rasp.
The sound of the other showerhead erupting was startlingly loud.
Julia rolled her eyes, but her fingers were already on the knot of her silk belt. “Oh, for god’s sake.” She looked directly at the curtain hiding Lucas, her expression one of amused challenge. “Don’t have a coronary. It’s just skin and water.”
The silk whispered as it slid from her shoulders. She hung it neatly on the back of the door, utterly unselfconscious, and stepped into the third and final stall. Another curtain ring screeched, another blast of water joined the symphony.
Nilus made a strangled sound, mumbled something about “laundry,” and fled, pulling the door shut behind him with a soft click.
Lucas was alone. And also profoundly not alone. Three streams of water now drummed against three plastic liners, a percussive, intimate rain. He could see the vague, blurred shadows of their bodies moving behind the floral curtains—the arc of Chloe’s arm as she washed her hair, the tilt of Julia’s head.
His own shower felt suddenly, electrically charged. The water on his skin wasn’t just water; it was a shared element. The steam was their collective breath. He stood frozen, soap suds sliding forgotten down his legs.
“So, Lucas,” Chloe called over the water, her voice echoing off the tiles. “Mateo’s night. Did you have to wrestle a bear or just build something terribly masculine?”
“We built a fire pit,” he managed, his voice cracking. He cleared his throat.
“Practical,” Julia stated from her cabin. “Mateo believes in tangible results. I respect that. My night won’t involve manual labor. Consider this a fair warning.”
There was a casual, terrifying normality to their chatter. As if they were in the kitchen, not naked and separated by millimeters of vinyl. Lucas felt the last of his panic morph into a dizzying, surreal acceptance. This was the house. This was the collision. Freya’s physical test, Sam’s cerebral one, Mateo’s practical one—and now this, a brutal, casual demolition of privacy.
He found himself answering, his voice steadier. “He said I was okay.”
“High praise from the strong, silent type,” Chloe laughed. “He called me ‘a distracting noise’ after mine. I think he meant it as a compliment.”
Julia’s curtain swished open for a second; a hand snaked out to grab a bottle of conditioner from the ledge, then disappeared. “He told me my energy was ‘unfocused.’ I was hungover. It was accurate.”
Lucas began to move again, rinsing off. The initial shock was receding, replaced by a strange, hyper-awareness. The warmth of the water, the scent of three different shampoos mingling into something tropical and clean, the sound of their voices woven through the drumming spray. He was inside a moment he could never have imagined, and they were treating it like a Tuesday.
“My turn’s after Julia’s, right?” Chloe asked. “I’m thinking karaoke. Total baptism by fire. You’ll have to sing a duet with me. Something from Grease.”
“That’s not a night out, that’s a war crime,” Julia said.
“You’re just jealous of my vocal range.”
Their bickering faded into a comfortable hum. Lucas turned off his water. The silence in his stall felt suddenly loud. He wrapped a towel around his waist, the terrycloth rough and grounding.
He pulled back his curtain. Steam billowed out. The other two showers were still running. Chloe was singing a pop song off-key. Julia was a silent, contemplative shadow.
He didn’t rush. He brushed his teeth at the sink, watching the three blurred figures in the mirror’s fog. The vulnerability felt different now. It wasn’t one-sided. It was mutual, unacknowledged, and woven into the very plumbing of the place.
He left the bathroom, the cooler air of the hallway raising goosebumps on his skin. The door sighed shut behind him, muffling the sounds of water and song.
He walked back to his room, the towel slung low on his hips. He passed Nilus in the hall, who was pretending to study a poster about recycling with intense focus. He passed Laury’s door, which was open just a crack; he saw her seated at her easel, and for a fleeting second, her dark eyes met his, glanced at his damp hair and towel, and then flicked back to her canvas, a faint, unreadable tension in her jaw.
In his room, he dressed slowly. The echo of the water was in his ears. He thought of Sam’s words: You are now inside the petri dish. He looked at his hands, still faintly smelling of woodsmoke beneath the soap. He was no longer just observing the culture. He was submerged in it, breathing it in, his own boundaries dissolving in the steam.
From down the hall, he heard the bathroom door open and close, followed by the sound of laughter and retreating footsteps. The ritual was complete. He had been seen, and in turn, he had seen. The measurement was mutual. He sat on the edge of his bed, the hum of the house vibrating up through the floorboards, and waited for whatever came next.