Chapter 9: Receipts

I woke up in a stranger's bed at six in the morning with fourteen texts from Dell.

The first one said: "Where are you."

The seventh said: "I'm not worried, I'm just noting the time for the police."

The fourteenth said: "I'm holding a candle your mom gave me. Indoors."

I typed: "Alive. Home by noon."

She answered in under a second.

"WAS IT BILLABLE."

I put the phone face down on the pillow and looked at the ceiling.

Beckett was asleep next to me with one arm flung across my side of the bed.

In the gray light he looked younger, and I wanted to look at him longer than I was allowed to.

I got out of bed, found his gray hoodie on the floor, pulled it over my head, and went into the kitchen.

The coffee machine had more buttons than my whole dorm.

I pressed three of them, and it made a long, angry noise.

"You have to hold the one on the left," Beckett said, from the doorway.

He was in sweatpants, and his hair stood up on one side, and he was smiling at me.

"I'm in your hoodie," I said.

"I noticed."

"That's a fifty-dollar item. Garment rental."

"I'll put it on your tab."

"It's my tab. You owe me."

He crossed the kitchen, put his hands on the counter on either side of my hips, and kissed me.

There was no cafeteria and no stairwell and no excuse.

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