This hadn’t been said quietly, so all the women sighed happily, their eyes dreaming of romance, hearts and roses, while the men all made gagging noises.
Sofa. King. Great!
-Even with that, it was a freaking awesome night, and I’d loved every second, aside from passing Elodie over to Mom. Leo was off work for two days, so he was collecting her today and would be spending time with his ‘little pal’.
That left me alone and with time to think.
My family had moved to Piersville just after I’d started college, and it was only natural that we all gravitated back to them once we’d all graduated and were ready to live the adult life. This meant that I hadn’t grown up with everyone here, so I’d had to work hard to get to know people – well, hard for me, seeing as how I wasn’t the most social person. But the second I’d seen Jarrod when I got the job at Ren’s garage, I’d been hooked. It wasn’t just his height and looks that made him stand out, it was the fact that he paid attention. Whenever I spoke to him, I knew I had it and that he’d give it to me until I was done. Then he started to let down his wall, brick by brick, and I got to see the personality underneath. The whole mix was outstanding. Being shy and quiet, though, I never got to fully engage with him until recently, so the sudden change in our relationship and interactions was making me feel off center.
I was going to use today to get that center back, and the only way I knew to do that was to get so engrossed in one of my favorite things that I didn’t have to use my brain for anything else.
So, jogging down the stairs with Duke on my heels, I opened the back door and then bounced from foot to foot, waiting for him to come back in. When he did, I slammed the door shut, locked it and jogged straight back up again before I bounced on my bed. Reaching under it, I tagged the Alienware laptop that I’d saved for for two years, and opened up The Witcher game.
Then obviously I had to attach my phone to my Alexa and play the song, too… on repeat.
JarrodWaking up to the song was funny. Hearing it the second time made me laugh harder. By the third time I’d begun to stop finding it so funny. By the fourth I was close to begging her to change it. By the fifth I actually got out of bed and walked through to the study to tap on the wall that separated us.
And then I heard a muffled scream coming from her bedroom and lost my shit.
Picking up my jeans from last night, I pulled them on and ran down the stairs, managing to grab the keys I had for Katy’s house that she’d given me yesterday. Because we’d been helping each other out with shit, she had a spare set for mine, too, in case of an emergency. This meant that as I ran out the house and jumped over that fucking, fucking fence, it only took me five seconds longer than normal to get the key in her lock and turn it because I’d dropped it the first time I tried.
Not even looking around, I made my way upstairs and stopped when I came face to face with Duke, who was alert and looking pissed. When he saw it was me, he stood down and moved to the side, leaving the way to her room wide open for me – which is where I ran to.
I’d had many thoughts of what was making her scream, but not one of them was what I came across. She was so engrossed in what was on her computer screen, and the damn song was playing so loudly that she didn’t even notice me come into her room. A quick glance around showed that nothing looked abnormal in the room, and then I looked back at Katy and made a different type of discovery.
She was sitting in bed wearing a tank top that had what looked like the line you see on a heart monitor in the hospital (I’d never had one done so I had no idea what they were called) that was attached to an Xbox remote. Covering the bottom of her body was a knitted green creeper from Minecraft, but it was like a sleeping bag that was split up the middle so her legs could go either side and not be joined together like a normal one.
There was absolutely nothing that could stop me from bursting out laughing, which snapped her out of her gaming fog. Her head snapped up, and she finally saw she had company, screamed, jumped, and somehow managed to place her laptop on the free space on the bed. Then she rolled to her side off the mattress and onto her feet and stood up, staring at me like I was a character out of a game.