Subway Cars & Lonely Hearts

four/irl/

italics ~ elliot

underline - grace

saturday april 14th 2:06 pm est

elliot and grace lived in a cramped studio apartment nine blocks from the campus of nyu. in this apartment, the residents treated every saturday like a girl's day. 

on this particular afternoon, the two were attempting to bake one of those instagram recipes, one of the ones where everything is condensed into a single minute and everything looks so much simpler and faster than it actually is. 

"grace, you cannot estimate every single ingredient if you don't know the difference between a cup and a tablespoon!"

"ellie, they're literally just dumping smaller bowls into the bigger bowl, they're guessing too."

"their ingredients are pre-measured, genius."

"show-offs," the taller girl mumbled.

"unlike some people," she gave her best friend a pointed look, "i actually want these to be edible, so skedaddle. i'll let you know when i'm done."

grace made the short walk across the sad excuse for an apartment and sat on the sofa the girls had hauled three blocks. the two had spotted it walking home from campus one day, sitting on the curb, and the cries of the lonely couch and of their empty wallets convinced them it was worth dragging down the busy streets of new york and up the six flights of stairs to their apartment. 

grace flicked on the television, which had been gifted to them from a fellow classmate. he had built it for one of his classes and was about to throw it away before elliott had managed to convince him to let her take it home. this one had been a solo job, so elliot dropped it on flight four of six of the staircase. it now sat proud on a folding snack table, thin cracks splitting the small display into a spiderlike design. the same student had come to their apartment to help them steal their neighbor's cable tv subscription, but he had only managed to gain them access to four channels. 

their limited entertainment spread across some very exciting networks like

1) a channel that played strictly telenovelas - neither of them spoke a lick of spanish, but they did have fun muting the sound and making up their own lines.

2) a local news network that kept them up-to-date with all the crazy scandals that went on in neighboring chinatown.  

3) animal planet - contrary to popular belief, there is only so much of shark week and meerkat manor reruns that a person can take.

4) a celebrity gossip channel who's host's voice was comparable to nails on a chalkboard level of irritating. 

"mariella, tu padre tambien es tu primo, conozco-"

"now if we peer down into the dense canopy of the rainforest we can begin to meet some of the world's most-"

"this week on hotgoss, we're proud to host one of hollywood's brightest stars! please welcome carter-"

"just turn it off gray, i'm trying not to poison us here."