Football singularity

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[Lockdown Week 3]

"Urgh, I can't stand this anymore, I need to see other people," A sprawled out May groned from her end of the sofa, barely mustering enough energy to look up. "(Thawk) Are you listening to me?"

Not minding the pillow that smacked the back of his head, Rakim simply raised his hand, giving her a thumbs up. The living room that would usually be clean without a speck of dust now resembled something closer to the aftermath of a battle. Nerf darts lay strewn about, coloured water balloons splattered the rug colourfully.

However, most notably, the glass coffee table in front of the couch had been shattered. If that wasn't bad enough, bits of spaghetti clung to the walls from their most recent food fight. Topping this battlefield, a signed baseball was stuck in the centre of Rakim's 100-inch TV mounted on the wall.

Rakim finally sat up, eyes roaming the destruction around him. "You know, when you said lockdown would be like a vacation, this wasn't exactly what I had in mind."

May rolled her eyes dramatically. "Well, I thought it would be fun and romantic since we are together, but I was wrong. There's only so many Netflix shows we can binge and TikTok dances, before I would get sick of looking at your face..."

He shot up in shock, shaking his head as he looked at the baseball lodged firmly in his precious TV. "That's blasphemy, you love my face."

She shrugged nonchalantly, hiding her smile behind a throw pillow. "It's gotten pretty bland the more I see it. Honestly, at this point, I'm wondering if it was ever really that handsome."

"You take that back right now, or prepare for the consequences." Rakim retorted, subconsciously getting up from his side of the sofa, approaching her slowly.

"What are you doing, get back arghh...hahaha" without being able to resist, she was tickled without mercy, her laughter ringing throughout the house.

Rakim pinned her gently onto the sofa, fingers moving swiftly and mercilessly against her sides. May squealed, kicking her legs out wildly, desperately trying to wiggle free.

"Okay—okay! Your face is beautiful! It's stunning! You're the most handsome man I've ever seen," she gasped between fits of giggles, tears of laughter streaming down her flushed cheeks.

Rakim paused, his lips curling into a smug grin. "See, was that so hard?"

May took a deep, exaggerated breath, eyeing him warily. "You're a menace, you know that?"

"I completely agree, and yet, you adore me," he teased, releasing her and settling back beside her on the sofa.

May pushed the hair from her face, pretending to scowl. "Barely."

They fell into an easy silence, listening to the quiet hum of the air conditioning and the occasional bird chirping outside. May eventually rested her head against his shoulder, her fingers drawing lazy circles on his thigh.

"You think we should clean this mess before your parents' video call again? Last time, your mom almost fainted when she saw that we hadn't cleared the table after breakfast; she might actually lose it if she sees this," she murmured.

"Won't she see this anyway when we upload the next episode of our war series on our YouTube channels?" Rakim commented with a light shrug of his shoulder, only then remembering that her head was resting on one of them. "Though we should still clean up, don't know about you, but I can't relax in a messy environment."

"I'll just tell, Lisa, you're a bad influence, so I guess it's fine." She replied in a matter-of-fact tone, smacking his knee as if she had just thought about it. "You're right through, even in a pandemic, we shouldn't become Pagans ourselves."

~~~

[Week-3, 14:20]

"Ma'am, yes ma'am." Rakim snapped a mock salute, grabbed the broom, and began herding errant Nerf darts into a dustpan like neon-orange sheep. May scooped spaghetti off the wall with a spatula, both humming the Annie Hard Knock Life song.

Fifty sticky, sweaty minutes later, the living room looked magazine-ready as the floors had been hoovered, scrubbed and washed. The carpet had been deep cleaned, after being hoovered and softened with special centre powders. The walls had been scrubbed spotless, and anything that they had broken and couldn't be saved had been thrown in the bin.

The room looked spotless with no hints of the earlier chaos, if not for the signed Barry Bonds baseball stuck in the TV. Rakim had tried to turn it on, and surprisingly, it did if one ignored the buzzing sound and the spider-webbed cracks that made it impossible to make out anything.

Slouching down on a single-seater couch, Rakim stared unflinchingly at the crater. "She was only five months old."

"Quit pouting," May said, wiping her hands on a towel. "One might think you lost something important by the way you act."

"She was important, you wouldn't understand the relationship between a man and his TV." He retorted, resisting the urge to reach for a handkerchief to wipe some imaginary tears.

"Y'know what I don't really care, just cry quietly, please. I'm calling Emma; Jenna's farm life sounds like the exact opposite of this disaster." She ruthlessly responded before fishing out her MacBook Air, placing it on a much smaller wooden coffee table meant for those sitting at the edge to place their coffee mugs.

Since they had destroyed the glass coffee table, she had to make use of it. It barely rang twice before the first person joined the call, and Emma appeared with her light blond hair tied in a messy braid. Next to her, Jenna sat with her long black hair tied in a ponytail with a baby lamb cradled in her lap as she fed it a bottle of milk.

A second later, Olivia joined the call, her petite figure enveloped in an oversized Princeton hoodie. Olivia was the first to speak, the sleeves of her hoodie flopping like extra-long rabbit ears. "Guys, I swear Princeton's dorms were never this empty. You could film a zombie movie in the corridor and nobody would notice."

Olivia's screen juddered as she swung her laptop around to show a silent, fluorescent-lit corridor. "There, see? If a brain-eater popped out, I'd just hand it my last packet of ramen and wish it luck."

Emma laughed so hard that the lamb in Jenna's lap bleated in alarm. "Try waking up at five to actually feed creatures, Liv. Jenna's dad has me shearing sheep by sunrise, then it's straight to the milking shed. I smell like a walking cheese stick."

"Worth it though—look at this fluffball. He thinks Emma's his mum." Jenna held up a fleecy bundle. "Plus, and I quote, it was you who said, since we are here, we should help with work"

"Which is hilarious," May said, propping her chin on her hand. "Em's idea of 'outdoorsy' used to be the Starbucks patio or a walk around the lake."

"I've grown and matured, now I ride dirtbikes with the best of them like budget action hero." Emma stuck out her tongue. "Plus, where are you going? You're not in your room?"

Olivia sighed theatrically. "Unlike you guys, who can go out whenever you want, we have a rota for each floor to use the quad. If you overrun your hour, the staff look at you as if you punched their baby."

May winced. "And here I was complaining about having to wipe spaghetti off the skirting boards."

Rakim, only half-listening, flicked through online catalogues on his phone. "Do you reckon I can squeeze a one-twenty-inch OLED in here? Maybe something curved—"

May elbowed him. "Priorities, blockhead, we are busy bonding over here."

"Is that something to say after you threw a curveball into my pristine TV?" He retorted, annoyance dripping from his tone.

"Yeah, yeah. We all make mistakes. Emma, tell us about your life on the farm. Did you get to milk a Cow yet?" May nonchalantly retorted, unwilling to hear another tirade about that blooming TV.

Emma puffed a loose wisp of hair from her forehead. "Did I get to milk a cow? Girl, I am the cow-shift manager now. Five a.m. sharp—udders in my face, Jenna's dad quoting Yellowstone like it's scripture."

Jenna nodded gravely beside her. "She complained for exactly two mornings, then started racing the farmhand on a dirt bike to see who could open the north paddock first."

Emma grinned. "Loser buys breakfast, which is normally just fresh eggs and whatever pastry Mrs McKinnon left cooling on the sill. Honestly, farm life is sorta fun if you give it a chance."

Olivia snorted. "Cardio? My highlight was sprinting down four flights because some sophomore taped the shared kitchen toaster's 'bagel' button so it wouldn't pop. The whole corridor smelled like cremated cinnamon."

"You think you have it hard? We wake up to birds chirping, work out with some morning Yoga, and make our own breakfast before a round of morning streaming. I feel your struggle." May sighed in exhaustion, feeling like she had just dropped a load on her chest.

"This is bulls$!t"

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To Be Continued...