Page 7 of Wandering in Darkness
“That’s why I have you,babe,” Felix tells him.
“So there’s two of you and you’re still just saving the pig and not me?” I ask.
“Yum, these tacos sure look good,” Felix says before telling Lane what’s spread out in front of him. Lane reaches for a shell and Felix pushes his hand over to it when he misses it by a couple of inches.
I’d transferred the meat to a bowl so he wouldn’t accidentally touch the hot pan, so he should be good with the rest. He’s definitely not one who likes to be waited on, and the group of us never care if he fumbles around or accidentally sticks his finger into the food.
“This is sooo good,” Felix moans. “Cal, I’d like to hire you as our chef. And pay you with compliments.”
“I’ll consider it,” I say, not necessarily because I enjoy cooking, but because the moment I enter my place all alone, it’s as though the suppressing darkness starts to consume me.
“Why don’t we just have a slumber party here?” Felix asks, and it makes me wonder if the man who seems to understand zero social cues is actually quite talented at reading people.
“I’m game!” Antonio says. “Frank’s been gone a couple days, and like day one it was fun in an ‘I’ve got the house to myself, listen to this silence’ way and then after that I was like dear god, was my life always this boring? It was. I realize it was.”
“Sure,” I agree. “I can sleep on the couch.”
“You can share a bed with me. Frank won’t mind,” Antonio says.
“This couch and I are old friends, I’m fine,” I assure him, but Antonio won’t hear of it.
So after we’re done eating, Felix sets us up with a movie while repeating the words, “You know what goes good with a movie? Brownies. I sure love brownies. I think brownies would just set the movie off. I might die without brownies,” until I cave and make brownies out of a box.
The noise of a home filled with people enjoying brownies and watching a movie fills my mind and pushes all of that darkness far away.
TWO
CAL
My phone beeps, startling me awake. I try to roll over before I realize that I’m being pinned to the bed by the pig lying on top of the covers.
Why the fuck am I spooning a pig?
And as I reach for my phone, the pig seems to get irritated with me moving around and disrupting his sleep and kicks me right in the balls.
I bite back the curse I was about to mutter, afraid I’ll wake Antonio up. Instead, I reach over and finally manage to grab my phone. I pick it up, but the moment I see Grayson’s name, I think about tossing it. Fuck him and fuck him even harder for waking me up.
But whywouldGrayson send me a text at four AM?
I roll back over and try to open the text, but the phone has forsaken me in the darkness of the room. Then it insists I’m a traitor and needs me to input the passcode, which I fail two times in my delirious state before I finally manage to get in.
Once in, I read the text, really hoping it’s worth all of this hassle.
I need you to get Traveler. Please watch him for me.
I hesitate as the sleepiness in my mind drifts away and I’m left staring at the phone, extremely confused.
Why would he text that to me at four in the morning? And if he just needed me to watch the dog, wouldn’t he have texted me in the morning? It’s a strange time to be reaching out to me about this. Or has he been gone so long that he needs someone there for Traveler before it’s too late?
Me: What’s going on? You need me to pick him up now?
Grayson: Soon.
Me: Why?
The three bubbles come up and stay up for a long time before disappearing completely. I stare at the phone, feeling baffled. Like… he knows I’m what, three hours from his place? It’s not like it’s a jump and a skip and I’m there.
And then is this a trick to get me to see him? What if I go there only to find that he’s there and he tries to convince me that things can go back to how they were?
