“I have it.”
She was quiet for a moment, and Asa could almost hear all the things they could say to fill that silence. He could ask if they’d considered names yet, if they were doing stuff like putting plastic covers over all the outlets, or he could apologize for not coming to her wedding. And she’d talk about painting the nursery and how much she missed being able to drink and tell him it was fine, she understood.
But it wasn’t fine. It killed him, but he also didn’t see any way to change things. Not unless his parents were willing to change, and he doubted they ever would.
“I gotta go,” he said. “You take care of yourself, all right? And the baby.”
“Of course. And you’ll—”
Asa hung up. It was a coward’s move, but that was what he was. A big, fat coward.
When he walked through his front door, all three of his housemates were on the couches, watching a terrible dating reality show John was obsessed with and the rest of them tolerated. Well, secretly more than tolerated.
“Just in time,” Elliot said, looking over their shoulder. “They haven’t made the eliminations yet.”
Elliot claimed to watch the show out of purely professional curiosity, based on the one article they’d written about the trans representation last season. As a health writer, Elliot’s main beat wasn’t usually entertainment, and they’d vowed to never write for that particular publication again after it took six months to chase down their fifty-dollar check. And yet here they were, still watching the show. For research.
Kiki never turned down anything she could make fun of, and she was Asa’s main partner in watching Hallmark holiday movies until they couldn’t stand another second of ex–sitcom stars in henleys. The trick was not to watch anything you actually liked with Kiki, as she showed no mercy in ripping any media to shreds.
Of all his housemates, John was the biggest mystery. He used to be the guitarist in some one-hit-wonder band, apparently. Asa had no idea how royalties worked, but he knew that John still made money off that song—enough that he didn’t need to work aside from playing a few gigs here and there with various local bands. Despite any rock-star stereotype, though, John was a homebody and kept to himself. Most nights, Asa found him a lot like he was now—his wild black curls sticking out over the top of the couch as he watched this show, a bowl of cereal in his lap.
“It’ll be that guy,” Asa said after watching a few minutes of the episode. An earnest ginger was doing a talking head about how much he’d given up to be on the show, but how worth it the experience was for the chance to meet the love of his life. “He’s talking sacrifices. That’s a death knell.”
“Yeah, but the other guy cried on his phone call home,” John pointed out.
“Fuck,” Asa said. “They’re onto me.”
So far, he’d been able to predict who was going home the last five episodes. He was very proud of his streak. He would’ve liked to settle in and hang out, see which unlucky bastard would have his dreams crushed on streaming television, but he’d told himself he would at least start thinking about his idea to revamp Cold World. He went into the kitchen to grab a drink from the fridge, planning to take it back to his room while he worked.
He almost missed the note, but his own name caught his eye. There was a word bubble suspended over one of their magnets: I’m getting a strong “A” vibe . . . Asa? Ass? It was a fairly regular occurrence at the house, them all riffing on one another, coming up with new and creative ways to call each other names. But he would know that scratchy, crowded handwriting anywhere, despite only really studying it for the first time that day.
He leaned out into the living room, grasping the kitchen doorframe with one hand. “When was Lauren here?”
“Oh, uh,” Kiki said, not taking her eyes from the TV. “Earlier.”
“Why was she here?”
That got Kiki to peel her attention away from the show. “She was returning my red dress,” she said. “What’s it to you?”
It was nothing. It was weird, that was all. The day that they both got an opportunity at work, the day that he’d offered to work together and she’d shut him down in no uncertain terms . . . that was the day she showed up at his house for the first time? And he wasn’t even there.
Plus, he thought she’d had some big plans for tonight. He wondered if that meant they’d gotten canceled or pushed back. He wondered if she regretted saying no to Daniel’s dinner invite.