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She sat on the bedroom floor and fiddled with his phone trying to get past the lock screen. He certainly didn’t use password as his code. She couldn’t get either of his computers to wake, but was amused to notice that all of his computer cables were meticulously tidy and clipped with Darth Vader and Storm Trooper Lego figures.
She went back to the bedroom and stood at the foot of his bed and watched him sleep. Creepy, even under these circumstances. He was curled on his side, with his knees up as if his stomach hurt, and the covers pulled up around his neck as if he was still cold. She should’ve thought to check his hand for gravel, bathe it in antiseptic. She should’ve called Melinda and asked for advice on what to do with him.
It was nearly four in the morning and she was tired beyond sense and there was no one she could reasonably call. She went back to the living room and took her shoes off, set the alarm on her phone for seven and crashed on his big ugly sofa. If he was sick again she’d hear him and if he was no better, she’d insist he call someone.
When her alarm peeped she woke to a wild sense of where the hell am I? She had a stiff neck from no pillow and she was starving. He had home-cooked Indian food in his refrigerator but she couldn’t fathom curried anything for breakfast. She padded into his room. He slept soundly, but he’d obviously woken at some point because he’d drunk a good deal of the water she’d left. He wasn’t so pale under his beard scruff. He’d live. She was done here.
She hoped she’d seen the last of his god-awful handsome face, his judgmental scowl that was kind of hot, and his surprisingly muscular body. And if she ever heard his imperious I know better tone again it would also be too soon.
She let herself out and wondered if he’d remember she was ever there.
FIVE
Reid woke with a sour taste in his mouth, a churning gut and a vague suspicion there was someone in the apartment with him. He was burning up, thirsty; either the whole room had entered another dimension, one that pulsed, or it was his head. He pushed upright and then he remembered. Lux put him in a cab. She’d gotten him home. Holy shit, he’d just about hurled all over her. He closed his eyes as the world tilted.
“Lux. Hey, anyone there?” What day was it? It was day, that much he could tell, through eyes that didn’t want to open. “Anyone.” He listened. Silence.
He pushed the bed coverings away and got himself upright. Made it to the bathroom, where a glance in the mirror confirmed that notion about the other dimension. He looked like he’d been slammed by a time machine, and pulled backward kicking and screaming through a black hole.
He was pale, sweating, smudges under his eyes that didn’t rub off, hair doing its best electric shock. He smelled foul too, body odor and alcohol and what the heck happened to his hand? A vague recollection of tripping, going down on his hands and knees. Yup, knees felt bruised.
A shower improved things. Toothpaste. Water guzzled. But that was the extent of it. He made it back to bed and next thing he knew there was definitely someone in the apartment. In the kitchen to be precise.
Was Lux still here? He’d told her to go, but she’d flipped him off, was that a memory or a dream? It was dark again. Had she been asleep all day? He hauled himself upright and rubbed his hands through his hair, then made the long, knee trembling, stumbling trek to the kitchen. It wasn’t Lux’s pert, squeezable backside poked out of his refrigerator.
“Dev.”
Dev straightened, knocking his head on a shelf and making the condiments in the door rattle. “Month of Sundays. What are you doing here? You’re not meant to be here.”
Because Dev was more comfortable sneaking food into the kitchen when Reid wasn’t home than he was being acknowledged for doing it. Reid fumbled for the kitchen stool and sat.
“Cripes, what happened to your hand? What happened to you?”
“Food poisoning.”
Dev’s head tilted hard right. “No way. Unless you messed up with the rice. Did you cook it like I showed you?”
“Not from your food.” A good portion of which Reid threw out, because he wasn’t hungry when he was drunk.
Dev flashed his perfect teeth. “Well, then, that’s okay.”
“I could be dying and you’re happy it’s not from your food.”
Dev made a circular motion around his face, then his smile was replaced by a grimace. “Stop eating bad food, Reid. Why do you think I cook for you? “
Doing nice things for people was how Dev lived. It was his thing, alongside being the kind of software engineer who could smell a bug before it was programmed.
“Because I’m a philistine who wouldn’t know a well-cooked meal if it tried to eat me, and you’re trying to hold on to a friendship that only existed through work.” Reid coughed.
Dev put a glass of water in front of him. “Look who’s sorry for himself. What did you eat?”
“Shrimp.”
“Oh, bad seafood, that could actually kill you.”
“Thanks for the reassurance, doc.”
“And you know, binge drinking and fighting. That could kill you too.”
