Casting a furtive glance in Seth’s direction, she slips her phone out from beneath a pillow.
Prentiss: The run of show is late.
Lacey swallows, a hot flush of embarrassment and anger flooding her cheeks.
Lacey: By two minutes.
Prentiss: And? Perfection, Sutton.
Tears prick Lacey’s eyes. She worked her ass off today and that’s what she gets?
Asshole.
“Everything okay?”
Seth, coming back to the couch, two beers balanced on top of the pizza box he carries, peers at her close.
“Fine.”
Fuck it.
She tosses her phone on the coffee table, far, far away from her so she isn’t tempted to reply. Seth’s observant eyes flicker, but he says nothing and sits beside her.
He doles out slices of pizza, salty and gooey with cheese. Lacey’s stomach burbles. She doesn’t think she’s eaten this well since before Seth came along.
Seth nudges her shoulder with his. “Think you can scoot your bony butt over?”
She scoffs. “The couch is small, Seth.”
Her fingers find the remote and she presses play. Eerie music swells over the credits, blood dripping down the screen.
They settle into silence, watching a bloodthirsty zombie battle montage. As they watch, Lacey sneaks a glance at Seth. He sits, relaxed, his arm draped over the top of the couch. One smooth curl of her body and she could be in that arm. Under it.
“Oh, shit,” Seth cackles, cracking his beer as a zombie uses a severed limb as a baseball bat. His eyes flick to hers, amusement there. “I don’t know how you watch this stuff.”
“You’re watching it.”
“Yeah, with you and no one—”
Whatever he was going to say drops off, and his eyes move back to the TV, his throat bobbing.
But Lacey hears the unsaid words.
No one else.
She takes a bite of pizza, chewing robotically.
Normally, it’d be her favorite, but it feels slimy going down, settling like a brick in her stomach.
Lacey sits unmoving, fuming. Hating that it’s a compulsion to know where they stand. Hating that Seth has no right to be that attractive. Hating that she wants to talk about them when there is no them, hating that she’s giving it more energy than she should, because in the end, no one stays, not really.
Still ... she wonders what he wants and if that’s her. If she’s been misreading his signals. If he wants to kiss her just as bad as she wants to kiss him.
Maybe they could do this. Just for three days. A trial run of emotions they can opt out of at any time.
“Seth ...,” she ventures. “What’re we doing?”
He frowns, his eyes locked on the screen where a redheaded female zombie is decapitating her victim while exposing adequate amounts of rotting cleavage. “Watchin’ a movie, ain’t we?”