I scribble a note to her, get dressed quietly while she snores a little. It feels like a particularly new low, to be sneaking out of a girl’s bedroom, hoping her clingy ex-boyfriend won’t be there when I get back.
I’m just stopping by the hideout real quick to wake Maestro up for his meds. Even though Vin is there, I know he’ll give me shit if he has to do both the a.m. and the p.m. routine. Besides, I’ll get fewer questions from Maestro if I swing by to give him his meds and then tuck him back into his desk chair. Vin will give me more shit on my way out for not sticking around, but it’ll just be for another hour or two.
Sometime during the night the temperature dropped another ten degrees, and the rain turned sleet. Sheets of ice cover the sides of buildings; every railing hosts a slew of daggered icicles. Black ice glints in the morning sunlight around patches of salt-dusted pavement. The world feels like little more than the same few gradients of gray, black, and white.
“Sluts don’t get cold,” I mutter to myself like a morning affirmation, as I slip out onto Lacey’s balcony, bracing for the chilly dash back home. It’s a shivery ten-minute flight that can’t end fast enough.
It’s hard not to let my mind wander back to reality, as much as I want to linger over the cozy daydream of being wrapped up in bed with her. I don’t know if last night was finally crossing the line, or if it was somewhere back when we first started flirting; regardless we are firmly past it now. We’re involved, and I’m struggling to imagine what a future with us together would even look like, even if I ignore that I’ll probably have to dodge her ex’s wrath.
I haven’t brought a girl home before, for all the obvious reasons. The first being, it’s not a secret hideout if you tell people where it is. On an unrelated note, I’ve never had a relationship last long enough to get to the “meet my dad” stage of things.
But Lacey is different. She figured out where it was all by herself, for one. It’s not a secret I need to hide from her. And I think she actually likes me, and not just the dickprint photo that’s on my dating apps’ profiles.
The hideout is reliably iced over by the time I get there. For a moment I hope it’s early enough that they’ll both still be asleep, but when I punch the key code into the lock, the door swings open and the sound of labored breathing and weights clinking together greets me. That’ll be my favorite guy ever.
I pause in the hallway just long enough to make eye contact with Vin, straining and sweating as he sets down a bar full of a stack of weights that in my mind, I could definitely lift, but realistically probably can’t.
“How many more of those lifts do you have to do?”
He waits until he’s lowered the bar onto the ground, answering through gritted teeth. “I go until my muscles fail.”
“What, you can’t count and lift at the same time?”
He grunts loudly, ignoring me as he curls the bar up toward himself again. It’s what Vin has decided to do instead of having a personality, I guess.
He follows me into the kitchen, leaning in the doorway as I start pulling the little plastic pill bottles out of the drawer, popping open all fourteen little slots in the pill organizer. Maestro hasn’t been able to open the child-safe plastic tops of the prescription bottles in years. At this point I could probably refill the pill organizer in my sleep.
I glance over my shoulder to him between twisting the lid off another orange bottle, the pills rattling inside. There’s a half-eaten Pop-Tart sitting out on the counter that’s been sitting there since yesterday, so I scoop it up and take a bite. “What happened to failing?”
Vin eyes me disapprovingly, his glower growing gloomier atop the barricade of his arms crossed over his chest. I glance down and realize he’s staring at the fucking Steel Company logo on the hip of my borrowed sweatpants.
My chewing slows as I realize my favorite meathead is catching on.
His eyes narrow. “You just got back. Where’s your flying suit?”
“I, uh, had to take it off.”
“Why?”
“It was gross and cold and soaking wet, and there was a hot shower,” I explain, with a hand wave that doesn’t do nearly enough to make him drop it.
“In the laboratory?”
He just keeps fucking staring at me, brow heavy with pre-emptive disappointment. I gotta give it to him, his interrogation techniques are one note, yet flawless.
“No, in Lacey’s apartment.”
More staring.
“I might have, uh, accidentally slept with Lacey,” I admit, perhaps not on pain of death. I did have the sense that I wouldn’t be able to keep that part of my relationship with her a secret forever, especially if we ever got to a more serious stage.
I brace myself for the fallout.
His brow just furrows even further. “I don’t understand. Did you trip?”
“I mean, it wasn’t on the agenda—”
He full-on growls at me, which like, yeesh, chill dude. “No shit. I told you not to get involved with her! The fuck do you mean, accidentally—”
