“Who wouldn’t love my programs? I’m a genius. My programs are genius.”
Eli nodded. “And geniuses take two ibuprofens before going to bed in addition to drinking a glass of water every time they wake up.”
He handed Marlon off to me as I wandered over to the couch that Icurrently called home. Then he began to open cabinets until he found Ruby’s pharmaceuticals stockpile.
With a glass of water and two pills, he crouched down beside me. “Here, take this.”
I threw back the pills like a champ and chugged the third glass of water. “I have to sleep. Actually, I think I already am asleep.” I scooted back and fluffed my pillow before collapsing, my lower back immediately sinking into the unfortunate space between the cushions.
“Let’s get you to bed,” he said.
My eyelids began to droop. “This is bed.”
“You’ve been sleeping on a couch for weeks?”
“Technically, it’s a chaise longue.”
“We’ve gotta get you off this couch,” he said with a barely there laugh.
“Chaise longue. But fuck me. Yes, please,” I told him through a yawn that hit so hard, tears began to stream down my cheeks.
He cleared his throat into his fist, his cheeks the slightest bit pink.
Marlon settled on my chest, whining.
“You have to give Marlon a kiss good night. You made him like you and now he demands a kiss. I don’t make the rules.”
He shook his head. “Small dogs are ridiculous.”
“Don’t speak ill of my son.”
I closed my eyes as he leaned down and gave Marlon a soft kiss between his ears.
A finger—or maybe Marlon’s tongue—traced down the center of my forehead and up the slope of my nose.
The next morning, I woke up sore but headache-free and to a note on the coffee table that read:
Two more ibuprofen and a glass of water for the genius. Doctor’s orders.
ELIAS BUCKLEY
SEVENTEEN YEARS AGO
MATURE ADULTS
“I should go,” Vera whispered as she and Brody stumbled into our moonlight-soaked room.
One of them tripped over something on the floor, and Vera laughed. Skin slapped skin, and then her voice was muffled, likely by Brody’s hand, as she said, “You told me he sleeps like the dead.”
“I didn’t think you were actually gonna put that to the test, V.”
His bedside lamp flickered on. I imagined his fingers on her lips and wondered what it might feel like to run the pad of my thumb along the shape of her mouth.
I lay on my side, facing the wall. In four hours, my alarm would go off for a microbiology test, but I had yet to fall asleep.
Vera and Brody had gone to aBuffypub quiz night. Brody dressed as Angel and Vera as Willow in combat boots, a floor-length silk skirt, and a square-neck top that made her look like a milkmaid. It was an image I couldn’t forget if I tried. The only thing that interfered with the boner it could have caused was her fawning all over Brody for getting some kind of callback for a guest spot on a soap opera.
I would have much preferred that time a week before Thanksgiving when she got drunk on Mike’s Hard Lemonade and gave a lecture on why some Canadian TV show calledDegrassiwas the most groundbreaking television of our time. I mostly stared at the wall behind her head as she and Brody did a deep dive on an episode with an abortion plotline that was never allowed to air in the US. But admittedly, I did go home, smoke a joint, and binge three episodes while Brody snored from the other side of the room.
