One Night Stand With The Alpha

Tuesday 25th June 1991-Marlene

I was grateful to Daniel for spending time with me, but forgetting about my father’s attempt at belittling me was only one of the issues that had been bothering me when he showed up, and there was no way he could help me with the other.

Living in a house with Biata and Elizabeth was a living nightmare, and there was no way I was going to cope with the pair of them fighting nonstop when university started.

I knew that Elizabeth liked me, and that she was deliberately winding Biata up because she found it funny, and that meant the main issue I had to contend with was the fact Biata saw me as an awful person with absolutely no morals.

It was a good job she had been out all day yesterday, because it would not have mattered to her that I spent the day talking to Daniel about what my life had been like before this and what I hoped to achieve now that I had moved away. As far as she was concerned I was a slut and he was just as bad.

She liked to get up unreasonably early and crash around in the kitchen because she wanted to wake me and Elizabeth up, and this morning was no exception, but I was so sick of the way we were living that I was close to screaming by the time I got out of bed.

I decided to try my hardest to reconcile with her, because that would at least make it less of a waking nightmare to live here, and I made a genuine effort to look presentable before I went downstairs, pretending there was nothing out of the ordinary about me being up at five in the morning.

She ignored me when I greeted her cheerfully, but that didn’t stop me and I decided I was not going to let her leave the kitchen until she had at the very least acknowledged me.

I was shocked when she finally responded to me, because she smiled for the first time and I realized she was actually open to talking to me.

She wasn’t so unpleasant at five in the morning, and after making awkward small talk over breakfast, I decided to take a risk and told her I was sorry that we had not had the best start as housemates.

I realized she had only been nice to me because she saw Elizabeth as some sort of cartoonish evil super villain and she thought she could win me over if she convinced me of that, too, but at least that meant I stood a chance of ending up on her neutral side.

I had expected to swallow my pride to make amends with her, but as I got up to leave, she called me back and told me she was sorry that she had been so horrible to me about Daniel.

She managed to make it seem like she was sorry without actually changing her opinion about me, but it was clearly the best I was going to get.

I was annoyed enough that I was not quite willing to let it drop completely, and I felt like I owed it to Daniel to stand up for him.

“I know you don’t approve, Biata, but I’m not asking you to. I just want you to know I do care about him. It may have happened quickly, but it isn’t meaningless and he cares about me, too. And I am not going to be a nightmarish party animal with a string of one night stands when term starts. This is a short term thing, and it is not going to distract me from achieving what I came here for. Please, just let me have this time with him without making me feel like an awful person. Moving here was difficult enough without being treated like I am a horrible person.”

She looked guilty for a fraction of a second before she sneered at me and told me she would refrain from talking to me about my poor decision making skills.

It was hardly a moving reconciliation, but it was better than nothing, and I was finally able to relax and stop worrying that my life was going to be a nightmare as soon as Daniel was gone.