Page 44 of No Place Like You

21

Lucy

Warm Thai foodandSupernaturalmarathons are slowly becoming a nightly ritual between Dexter and I. We habitually start the day with Starbucks, something I insist on getting early in the morning. Mainly because he’s the one splurging on dinner most nights, but also because he’s the worst morning person I’ve ever met, and I beat him to getting the coffee before he even steps foot out of his room. By evening time, after Dexter gets home from work, about an hour after I do, we nestle into the couch cushions surrounded by our own little mess of dinner, dessert, and enough jump scare moments to make me squirm like a rodent caught in a mousetrap.

“They use that salt circle thing way too many times,” I comment, my mouth full of mango sticky rice and the skin in my midsection pulled taut after helping myself to enough pad thai to feed a small army. “Haven’t they learned?”

“Apparently not.”

It’s Friday night. No Saturday shoots for me tomorrow, which means Dexter and I have the whole weekend to do whatever the hell we want. To celebrate this weekend of freedom, we decided on an all night binge session ofSupernatural. We included our usual Thai food order, always making sure to have mango sticky rice with our order, but tonight, I added a whole sundae station. Neapolitan ice cream, whipped cream, chocolate syrup, nuts, and sprinkles. The whole nine. The dwindling dessert supply, along with the large bowl of popcorn and the gradually creeping food coma, has me feeling the most worry-free and content I’ve felt in a long time.

A swarm of demons starts to occupy the TV screen, followed by doomy, threatening, ominous music, and I start to tense up under the throw blanket I grabbed for the exact purpose of hiding under. “Why do they have to do this? Can’t the killing commence without the scary music and creepy jump scares?”

“Now where’s the fun in that?”

I reach for the remote to hit pause. “I have to pee,” I announce, tossing my blanket on the couch.

“What?!” he shrieks as I walk away. “It was getting to the big reveal! Castiel was about to tell Lucifer?—”

“Don’t tell me!” I shout over my shoulder as I shut the bathroom door behind me. When I return, Dexter’s got his phone between his hands, his thumbs tapping a message on his screen. “Okay, I’m ready. My bladder complains when I’m stressed. I think they call it stress incontinence?”

“I don’t think that’s what that is.” His brow furrows when a message pings through his phone, and that scowl deepens when he looks at it.

“Is everything okay?”

“Uh, yeah,” he answers unconvincingly.

“Is it Janet?”

“No. It’s uh…It’s Hayden. He’s just wondering if I wanted to come by the restaurant for dinner. I guess Nat went back home for the weekend? I think he just wants some company.”

“Oh, right.” We sit in silence for a minute, my eyes lingering on his phone screen where it lights up once again, and his gaze rests on me, watching the remorse make me squirm. I realize how much I’m disrupting his life. With friends, his privacy, and even the general flow of his daily routine. The guilt of it starts to blanket over the sweet scent of ice cream and chocolate syrup, and I feel horrible. “Dexter, you can go out if you want. I really don’t mind being here alone.”

He smiles at me, his eyes turning soft with kindness, and lays his phone on the couch cushion. “Hey. Don’t worry about it. I prefer this.” He gestures toward the TV screen. “Plus, I don’t feel like being in a crowded restaurant tonight.”

I run the pad of my thumb over my bottom lip to hide my smile. It feels a little selfish to keep Dexter to myself, but a part of me is relieved he’d rather stay home. I can’t even begin to explain how nice it’s been being Dexter’s roommate. I come home, wanting to tell him things about my day. And not even big things. It’s the little, insignificant details that no one else would care to know. Like how I fed a treat to a lazy cat at the register of a bodega during my lunch break. Or how, in an attempt to come off as amiable and even a little breezy while talking to Kyle, I tried to say awesome and cool at the same time, only to mix the two and it came out as “cawesome.”

“I talked to Nat a few weeks ago. We talked about the wedding a bit. And Hawaii,” I tell him, veering away from the creeping guilt clouding over the giddiness rolling inside of me.

“Yeah,” he responds. “Hayden told me about it too. In about a month?”

“And it looks like I’m going to be the maid of honor. Me and Carmen, we’re kind of splitting the role.”

His smile brightens. “No way! Best man!” he exclaims, pointing a finger to his chest. He then high fives me, and my smile matches his. We’ve all but abandoned the show frozen on the screen with the glaring reminder of how easy this feels.

“It’s actually around the time when my internship ends, so…”

“Oh, that kind of works out.”

“Yeah.” I play with my fingers, twisting at the ends of the blanket draped over my lap.

“Is that bad?”

“No. It’s actually perfect,” I answer, my brow pinching together. “It’s just…when I talked to Nat, she kept telling me how she’d pay for everything. Like the bridesmaids stuff and my plane ticket. And then…” I pause before looking at him with shame. “She said my mom wants me to move back home.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m still stuck at that coffee house—or, shethinksI am. And with all the job listings she sends me, nothing’s panned out. I think when I brought up the internship, that was the final straw for her.”

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