Page 47 of Faking the Heat

“This is objectively ridiculous,” she says to the ceiling.

“It’s a little ridiculous.”

“We slept in this bed last night. Actually slept. Your arm was numb.”

“My arm was fine.”

“You couldn’t feel your hand, Sterling. You told me it was a known hazard of the position.”

“That was a joke I made at four in the morning under duress and it should not be entered into the record.”

She laughs again and rolls onto her side toward the wall of pillows, and I turn my head and can just make out the shape of her in the streetlight coming off the lake, the glasses she still hasn’t taken off, the line of her shoulder under the silk.

“Okay, but why did you build it,” she says.

I think about lying. It would be easy. I have gotten alarmingly good at it over the last two weeks.

“Because you were vibrating,” I say. “And I’ve got about four moves for that and three of them require a medical bag.”

She goes quiet.

“You were doing the thing you do,” I add. “Where you stop breathing all the way down. You’ve been doing it since your mother said the word venue.”

“I hate that you can see that.”

“I’ve had six years of practice.”

“That is not comforting.”

“It wasn’t supposed to be comforting, it was supposed to be impressive.”

Something thumps onto the foot of the bed with the weight of a bowling ball and considerably less dignity.

Bowie, or Steve, depending on which of us is winning the naming war, which has never once been me, walks up the center of the mattress with the total unconcern of an animal who has never respected a border in his life. He steps directly onto the Great Wall of Hayes. He kneads it. He circles twice, claws snagging in the pillowcases, and then collapses full-length across the middle of it, flattening the entire northern section, and begins to purr like a small idling engine.

“The wall has fallen,” Mandy whispers.

“Six units,” I say. “Rated. Load-tested.”

“Compromised from within.”

“He’s been on their payroll since Tuesday. I should have seen it. He’s been sitting in your mother’s lap all night like he’s angling for a job.”

“He does not have loyalty.”

“He has a calico’s understanding of loyalty, which is that it is a thing other people do.”

She reaches over and scratches under his chin and he tips his head back into her hand, and the pillows are so thoroughly ruined now that there is nothing between us but a cat and about fourteen inches.

“Sterling.”

“Yeah, Sparkles.”

“The Roommate Rules.” Her voice has changed. It has dropped into the register she uses when it’s just us, no parents, no exes, no performance, and it does more damage than any of the last two hours. “Number seven. The one about not being weird.”

“What about it.”

“I think we might be failing it.”