“Good. If I ever find any of you in my room again, I’ll call the police.”
Message received.
“Sorry about that,” I say, but Chandie slams the door in my face.
Burton walks over and opens the apartment door. “Maybe we should leave this open when we leave. This place needs to be aired out.”
“Clark, I need you to drive,” Jessa says, handing him the keys. “Burton, sit up front so I don’t have to hear you complaining about your leg room.”
“What’s wrong?” I ask, wrapping an arm around Jessa’s back as we walk down the stairs.
“She gets nauseous with foul smells,” Clark says, pulling her to his side and giving her a kiss on the head.
“I’ll be okay. I’d just rather focus on breathing than throwing up while driving. The cleanup would be horrible.”
“How about we brainstorm over food?” Clark says with a grin.
Burton nods. “I’m game.”
“After what we just saw?” I say, pointing back to my apartment.
“At least your roommate is stuffing dead things rather than doing the killing,” Burton says with a shrug. He looks like he’s trying to keep a smile from forming, and the tone of his voice makes it hard for me to keep a straight face.
“I could eat,” Clark says.
“There’s a little diner I know close to here,” Burton says as we pile into the car.
He looks a lot more comfortable in the front seat.
I’m not sure if the entire situation has bonded us in a way that most traumatic things tend to do, or if I should feel like an idiot for thinking a deer was a dead body. Then again, Chandie was very vague about her job when she interviewed me to be her roommate.
“Are you going to be okay living there?” Jessa asks. She’s got her head leaned back against the seat and looks less green at this point.
“In my apartment?” I say, trying to understand what she’s asking me.
“Yeah, I mean, are you worried about her taking a scalpel to you in the night?”
“I wasn’t until you just mentioned it,” I say, swallowing hard.
Chandie wouldn’t do that, would she? Then again, I don’t know her that well. I’ve lived there for seven days, and even that seems like a gamble at this point.
“I have an extra room if you want it. Just holler and we’ll make the guys move you in one afternoon.”
I give her a small smile. “That’s the only apartment I could really afford when I moved back, so I’m just hoping it’ll be okay until I can save up enough to move again.”
Jessa gives me a small smile. “I bet living with me would be cheaper. Think about it.”
I nod, overwhelmed with how many things havehappened over the last hour. I’ve been trying to be grateful that I’m able to live this close to the city. My grandparents live on a lot of land thirty minutes to the west of where I am now, which was hard that first week back in Utah because we had late games and early events to get to. And without my car made it even harder.
At least if I lived with Jessa, I’d know I wouldn’t die. Probably.
Or would I be in a similar situation because I don’t know Jessa that well either?
Then again, she’s more into hashtags and reels than deadly weapons.
We get to the diner, and it’s a cute 50s style one, with black-and-white checkered tile flooring and sparkly red booths.
The server takes us to a table near the back of the restaurant, and I’m not sure what to do as far as sitting. I only know Jessa, but she’s got her boyfriend. If I sit next to Burton, this will feel like a double date. But I can always just chalk it up to our “brainstorming session.”
