Perhaps the dog knew, too.

Dex turned his head to the side, his eyes darting at my face sheepishly. “You must think I’m an idiot.”

I smiled despite myself. “I’m an idiot too.”

“No,” he said with a sigh. “You’re not, Perry. You’re sweet, honest and a very good friend.”

Ah, the damn friend word again. The term made a flush bloom on my cheeks and was glad he took that moment to reach over for the box of cereal and pour more into his bowl.

I cleared my throat. “Well. I know what I would do but I’m not you and I can’t tell you what to do. Did you talk to her last night?” She had been asleep when we came in.

“Briefly,” he said shoveling cereal into his mouth. “She said she had been out with some girlfriends and that her phone had died.”

Likely story, I thought.

He eyed me. “Of course, my phone didn’t work either so I can’t exactly accuse her of lying. Not that I think she was. She may be a bitch, but she does care about me and I know she wouldn’t have just left me in a mental hospital basement, especially not alone with you.”

I spied his cup of coffee, picked it up and took a sip of it. It was lukewarm but it worked. “She really thinks something is going on between us, doesn’t she?”

He nodded grimly. “I guess if she’s been stepping out then it’s easy for her to imagine I’m guilty as well.”

I stared at him, dumbly. He was kind of guilty. Unless I imagined the whole tryst we had on the island, and I knew my imagination wasn’t that good.

He caught my eyes and looked away quickly. “Fine. I’m guilty too. Goddamn it, this whole situation is fucked.”

It certainly was.

We both exhaled in unison. We sat there in silence for a bit, both of us side-by-side in our pajamas, he eating mushy cereal and me drinking his coffee, both consumed by our thoughts. I couldn’t pretend that my motives for him dumping Jenn weren’t at least a bit selfish. With her out of the picture, it opened up a whole realm of possibilities. At least, I hoped it did. But even if Jenn weren’t an issue anymore…did he feel the same way I felt about him? I didn’t think so.

“You need to break up with her,” I suddenly blurted out.

He flinched. He placed his spoon down and shot me an inquisitive look. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“I know. But it’s not that easy,” he said carefully. I watched his eyes and understood what he meant. The apartment. The dog. Ending a long-term relationship. No, it definitely wasn’t going to be easy.

“I don’t…like change,” he added, adding weight to his words.

I could help with the transition, I thought. I wanted to put my arm around his bare shoulders and hold him, pull him close to me.

“And then what happens after that?” he continued.

“You’d be single,” I told him. My voice had automatically dropped in volume.

He pushed the bowl away from him and started chewing on his lip. Finally he looked at me and asked, “Would I be?”

That glowing cord of tension between us was suddenly visible and sparking again. My lungs felt heavy and the air around us felt static and alive. The hairs on my arms stood up and the area around my neck bite was pleasantly cool.

I shrugged carefully, wanting to break away from his intrusive eyes but I couldn’t. They held me in place.

“Could you see yourself with someone else?” I asked softly. There was so much ridiculous hope in the question, and I know he could see it on my face.

He turned in his chair by an inch, facing me. He looked tired, with faint bags under his eyes. But they were so feverish and sparkling, so intense and alive, that it lit up his face and made even his five o’ clock shadow look youthful.

“I could,” he said with conviction. “If she’d have me.”

My eyes widened at that. I couldn’t help it.

“But I can’t chance it,” he added quickly. “And I don’t think it would be a very smart choice. It would be too much of a risk and I’ve had too much of that in my life.”

And at that he abruptly got off the stool, taking the bowl of cereal and my half-drank coffee out of my hand, walking around the bar and placing them in the sink. He avoided my eyes.

I sat frozen in shock, my heart thudding loudly.

“I’m going to give Doctor Hasselback a call and see what the damage is,” he said casually, picking his cell phone up off the table. He walked past me and disappeared into his bedroom, shutting the door behind him.

“What the hell?” I said quietly and to no one in particular. Fat Rabbit was sitting on the couch and he looked over. I could almost see him rolling his eyes at me.

He had been talking about me, right? I mean…shit, he was vague but it had to be me. I was a risk? How the hell was I risk? Didn’t he know how I felt?

No, you retard, I thought, cutting myself off. You just told him point blank that you were not in love with him. Now he is taking that as the truth.

Yup. The situation definitely was fucked and now I was partially to blame.

~~

After I had taken a shower and got ready for the day (blow-drying my hair extra straight just in case I wanted to wear it down for the Christmas party tonight), Dex came into the den with good news.

“Doctor Hasselback said we could still air everything,” he announced, walking across the room and sitting down at the computer. I was on the bed trying to re-stick the toe pads into the balls of my devil shoes.

“Oh yeah,” I said mildly. Since our conversation earlier, I was feeling a bit swirly about that still. The show didn’t seem to matter, though I knew in the long run it did.

He spun in the seat and gave me a funny look.

“You OK, kiddo?” he asked earnestly.

I managed to prevent my eyes from rolling.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” I said. Then added, “What about the Spook Factory?”

“That’s just what I’m looking up,” he said, turning back to the screen and clacking away on the keyboard. “He didn’t seem too pissed off about the other show; I guess in the end any publicity is good publicity, but we know for sure that they didn’t get any interviews with the doctor, so maybe we still have a chance of standing out against them.”

“You’re really worried about this, aren’t you?”

He paused. “As I should be.”

He went back to typing and the Fantasy Network website came up on the screen. He scrolled along until he got to the Spook Factory tab.

“No,” he said with relief. “It’s the same old episode as last time. They haven’t uploaded theirs yet. They were bluffing.”

“Or they never found anything.”

“But we did. And we’re going to do this now.”

I pulled my phone out of my purse. It was almost noon.

“Are we going to have enough time before the Christmas party?”

“Christ,” he swore, and focused his attention on the wall. “I totally forgot about that.”

Had he really? I had been thinking about it on and off all day. About how damn awkward it was going to be. Me and Dex. Jenn and Bradley. The rest of the Shownet peeps. I had a feeling something major was going to go down.

“Yeah, well Rebecca texted me a little while ago,” I told him. “She and Emily are going to come over here at six to get ready together.”

He looked at me. “Are you serious?”

“I’m always serious,” I mimicked him with a smile.

“Rebecca, Emily, you…Jenn. All in my apartment?”

“Better get used to the awkwardness now because it’s only going to get worse tonight,” I pointed out.

He chewed on his lip. “God, I hope Rebecca brings some more pot.”

“Yeah, sorry that the wasps got most of yours,” I said.

He tilted his head to the side and a fleeting smile graced his lips. “I can only hope I was worth it.”

“You know you were,” I said.

He nodded, not believing it, and turned back to the computer. “Well, we better haul some ass. I’ll get everything connected. I’m thinking I can run this episode without a score, or perhaps just use a bit from another episode. I could see this using the same stuff I wrote for the Darkhouse.”

“What can I do?” I asked, getting up off the bed and joining him by his side.

His eyes darted to the bookshelf and back. “For one, you can hand me my pills and get me a glass of water.”

I was glad he wasn’t looking at me. The flash of terror would have been totally visible on my face.

“Why, uh, why are you still bothering to take the pills if they aren’t working?” I prodded as innocently as possible.

He shrugged. “I don’t know. I think it could be dangerous if I stopped cold turkey. I’ll just go back to the doctor next week or something and discuss my options or something.”

“Next week,” I repeated slowly.

“Yeah. You’ll be back home by then.”

“Right.” Suddenly not spending every waking minute with Dex was a terrifying thought. I didn’t want to go home now.

“Don’t you have a date with that ‘roid monkey, too?”

Oh man, Brock. He completely slipped my mind, and rightfully so.

“Maybe,” I said.

“Hell, maybe this time next week, you’ll be the one in the relationship and I won’t be. We’ll switch places. Role reversal.”

And at that he looked up at me. His eyes were soft and playful. He didn’t seem bothered at all by the concept of me being in a relationship with Brock.

“Please, the pills, Perry,” he said again.

I nodded, snapped myself into action and handed the book to him. While he opened the cover, I went out to the kitchen to get a glass of water.

As I was filling it up, I heard a familiar buzzing noise. I turned around, the water splashing out of the glass and into the sink. A wasp landed on the fridge and was climbing up it, its little yellow and black body bright against the chrome steel. I looked behind me and grabbed the nearest suitable smashing device, which happened to be the box of Fruit Loops that Dex had left out. I put the glass down and crept closer to the wasp, not wanting to scare it.

“Die, you little bitch,” I muttered before slamming the box into the fridge. The wasp fell onto the floor in a wriggling heap. I picked up a hanging saucepan and brought the flat end down on top of it with a resounding SMASH. I carefully lifted it up. The bugger was squished beyond recognition.

“What the hell are you doing in there?” Dex cried out from the den.

“Just a minute,” I yelled back, and scraped the remains of the wasp into the sink, washing it down the drain. I wondered how it got in the apartment. There didn’t seem to be any other wasps. It was probably the wasp that stung my neck. It must have hitched a ride in my clothes or hair.

I shivered at that thought while I filled up his glass again and brought it to him.

He looked up at me curiously. “What happened?”

I didn’t want to scare him so I just shrugged. “Killed a spider.”