Page 88 of Debugging Love

There aren’t many options. I could drop her off at a homeless shelter, or I could take her back to my apartment. Neither choice sounds good, but the latter sounds less cruel–for her anyway.

I’ve never spent the night with a girl and this isn’t how I want to start. But I have to make sure she’s safe, so I head home to the sound of her irregular snores and occasional mutterings about Nutty Buddy and her pet cat, Thomas the Tank Engine.

While I’m carrying her up the stairs, she pukes all over me, finding it rather funny, unlike me. I lay her on the couch and assess the damage. Her hair is vomit-y. Her clothes were spared. Me, not so much.

I set a puke bucket next to the couch and tell her where to aim if her stomach turns inside out again. She murmurs something so I feel pretty confident that she didn’t understand a word I said. I’ll take my chances.

After carefully peeling off my clothes, I jump in the shower. While I’m drying my hair with a towel, I check on her, find her snoring peacefully, and then my computer dings.

My mom and dad are calling on Zoom.

“Adi, you seem tired,” Mom says.

Mom looks perky, always the morning person, and a little too happy. I don’t trust it. Dad, on the other hand, must have pulled another late night. After saying hello, he closes his eyes.

“I am tired.”

“Why?” Mom asks.

Because after carrying Savannah out of the bar, I carried her to her ex-boyfriend’s, and then up the stairs to my apartment, and then from my couch to my bed where she’s currently passed out.

I’m not moving her again, which means I get the couch tonight. Lucky me. I can hear her snoring through the bedroom door. Hopefully my parents won’t notice.

“I carried something heavy up the stairs,” I say, telling the truth without the unnecessary details.

Dad’s head lulls over. He falls forward like a felled tree, slowly at first, and then gaining momentum, his forehead landing against the webcam.

“Hey, Dad.”

My voice wakes him up. His left eyeball blinks at me. “What happened?”

“You fell asleep.”

He grunts and then rights himself.

“Maybe you should go back to bed,” I say.

“Yeah, honey, maybe you should.”

Dad shakes out his arms and straightens. “I’m fine. What did I miss?”

“Jyotiraditya.” Dadi’s distant, singsongy voice rings through the speakers.

“What’s that noise?” Mom asks.

“Which noise?”

“The snoring.”

It’s definitely not the drunk woman I brought home tonight. “It’s…my dog.”

Dad perks up. “You bought a dog?”

“Yeah. A puppy.”

“That doesn’t sound like a puppy,” Mom says.

“It’s a big puppy.”

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