I look over at Xander, who is staring at me with an expression that is part pity, part curiosity. Wait—does he know?
His eyes shift to the floor.
Shit. Hedoesfucking know! He knows and was just trying to give me an out. A small part of me is intrigued by this gesture of kindness. The larger part is now once again horrified.
Xander turns to Ben. “I believe the contract we signed mentioned our results would be kept confidential and not shared beyond the on-site team,” Xander says, putting his lawyer voice on.
“With your permission, of course,” Ben says to me.
Rock. Hard place. Me. What kind of excuse can I give for saying no that won’t make him even more curious to watch it on replay, slowing it down, rewinding it, zooming in like an NYPD cop trying to figure out who the Central Park Flasher is?
“We’d rather not,” Xander says simply. I wait for his excuse. His reason. His rationale to explain why we’d rather not. But it never comes. It has never occurred to me until this very moment that as adults, we do not need to justify why. We can simply say no.
“No problem,” Ben says without skipping a beat.
Thank you, Sweet Ben. He proceeds to de-wire us, thank us, and leave.
And that’s the end of that.
A few minutes later, we’re standing by Xander’s car wearing the clothes we came in with.
“Thanks,” I say, forcing it out before I chicken out.
“For what?” he says.
“For making sure my terrible …” I swallow. “Nightmare wasn’t paraded around the science department.”
“Sure,” he says, his expression indifferent.
We stand, staring at each other. It’s so awkward. He knows. And I know he knows. And he knows that I know that he knows.
I’m wondering when he’s going to give me a wisecrack. Give me shit about what happened. But he doesn’t.
“Okay,” he says, ready to wrap this up.
“See you tonight,” I say quickly, beating him to it. I turn and hightail it toward my car, hoping I can get out of there before anything else happens.
And then I hear his voice from behind me. “Shouldn’t you say, see you tonight,Xander?” He calls out his name in a spot-on impression of my moan.
I freeze and slowly turn around just in time to see a wicked grin spread across Xander’s face before he disappears into his car.
I let out a long and slow breath. Well, that’s our first night done and dusted. Only twenty-nine days to go. So, if everything that could possibly go wrong went thunderously wrong the first time, am I safe to say it’s smooth sailing from here? The devil on my shoulder laughs.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“You what?” Em’s face does a three-way surprise expression—eyebrows shoot to the sky, eyes bug out, and mouth drops halfway to the floor.
“Unfortunately, my new one-woman show,Sleep Wanker, is coming to a late-night sleep study session near you,” I say, straight-faced.
The fact that this legit happened to me last night registers on Em’s face, and her entire body shudders as fits of laughter spill out from her.
“I will not laugh,” I say in the face of Em’s deadly contagious laughter. “I refuse. Because this is super serious stuff. I need advice. I need to know how to navigate tonight. Do I ignore it? Do I confront it? Do I ask Ben if he studied the tapes? No. I can’t. I won’t,” I say as Em’s laughter gets louder.
The straight face I’m holding is about to break. I clench my jaw tighter and swallow, but Em’s chortling pushes me over theedge. The corners of my lips start to curl, giving me away. I avoid eye contact for a second to reset.
“I think you should, um, well …” Em attempts to talk her way through her laughing fit, but she can’t finish the sentence. The gleam in her eye turns into a full-blown tear that rolls down her cheek—and that does it for me. I start laughing. And my laughing spurs on Em’s laughing, and we’re just two dickheads who went out for a cafélunch on a Monday only to end up laughing uncontrollably instead of eating anything.
Em finally regains some semblance of control. The laughter subsides. And I think we’re in the clear. But then she takes a sip of water and instead of swallowing it, she looks at me again and it must remind her of what I told her. She sprays it out all over our table. Our Cuban sandwiches—with the perfect crusty sourdough bread—turn soggy under the mist.
