my heartbeat.

“Okay,” he says, pulling out a bottle of beer and a bottle of water, prying off the top of his beer bottle on the edge of the counter.

I meet him halfway between the kitchen and the living room and take the water from him. He sits in a chair at a right angle to the sofa. I take the loveseat cushion not already occupied by Sandberg, who’s dozing.

For lack of anything better to say, I point out, “He’s getting dark gray fur all over your couch.” My leg starts bouncing. I stare at it, wondering why it’s doing that and why I can’t stop it.

Jude finishes a long pull on his beer with a thwong. “Would you stop worrying about the bloody furniture? If anything, he’s making it more interesting.” Looking completely relaxed, lounged back in the low-slung chair with his hands resting on each arm, his legs spread wide, he smiles at me.

“You must have taken your sofa selection duties too lightly when you bought this furniture. Sounds like you needed my help. Huh-huh!” The nervous laugh that jumps from my mouth startles both of us.

He looks suspiciously at me and says, “Yes... That would have been nice… if I had wanted to search and search and never decide on anything. Are you okay?”

Even though I’m pretty sure I’m not, I lie and say, “Yeah, yeah. Fine!” I put both hands on my leg to try to still it, but it’s no use, so I fold them in my lap and smile tightly. “Just fine! Why?”

“You’re acting like you’re on one,” he states bluntly.

“No, I’m not!” I hastily object. “I wouldn’t know the first thing about taking drugs; you know that!”

Laughing, he imitates my blinky, twitchy, jumpy behavior. “What’s all this, then? Tweaker.”

I blush, making the sweat come harder and faster. Then I start hysterically laughing. Gasping for air, I manage to say, “I’m not a tweaker!”

He sets his empty beer bottle on the floor by his feet and leans forward. “Then what the hell’s going on with you?” It’s said with a smile.

I can’t bear to sit anymore. Jumping up, I cross the room and turn to face him. “Uh, nothing! Well, I mean… That is…” I scratch at a spot on my arm that doesn’t get less itchy, no matter how hard I scratch. It’s worse to have him think I’m on drugs than to just admit, “I took some, um, pep pills before you picked me up.”

“Pep pills.” It comes out more like a statement than a question.

“Yeah. Caffeine. Concentrated.”

He laughs, standing and walking over to me. “Oh. I wouldn’t have done that if I were you. Why the bloody hell did you do that?” He grasps my shoulders, which makes me giggle like Leslie, which reminds me about what I need to tell him.

“Oh, shit!” I blurt, ducking away from him. I practically run into the kitchen, keeping the island between us when he follows me. We circle it a few times before the level-headed one of the two of us stops in front of the refrigerator and opens it for another beer.

“You’re going to be up for days now, you know,” he informs me calmly. “You should have just let your body get naturally used to the time shift.

“I was!” I defend myself. “But I couldn’t sleep last night, and Sandberg wouldn’t let me sleep this afternoon, so by 6:00, I had been up 32 hours, and you were about to show up, and I was falling asleep on the toilet!”

Beer sprays from his mouth onto the floor and island in front of him. He scoots back and bends at the waist, cupping his hand under his dripping chin. After he mops up the worst of it with the front of his shirt, he grabs a dish towel and says, “Well. That was unexpected.”

“Sorry. I’m just telling you, it was necessary. I had to do something if I was going to hang out with you tonight.”

He mops up the beer and tosses the towel into a machine in the kitchen that looks like an old-timey dishwasher but upon closer inspection is a combined washer and dryer for clothes.

“Whoa! That’s weird! A laundry machine in your kitchen?”

“Focus, Foster!” he demands, taking advantage of my being distracted and catching me by the hand. “Why didn’t you just call me at the office and tell me you were too cream crackered to do anything tonight? I would have understood.”

His sympathetic tone hits another chord with me. I look up into his face and catch myself puddling up. “I know. You’re so understanding.” I sniffle and push on. “But I wanted to be with you tonight. I mean, hang out. Talk. You know.”

“Yeah…” he says, trailing off and leaning closer to me, gazing into my blinky eyes. “Libby?”

“Uh huh?”

A buzzing noise gets our attention. Whereas I don’t know what the source of the noise is, Jude curses under his breath and moves away from me. He digs his wallet out of his pocket and goes to the door, where he presses a button and says into the speaker, “Yes?”

“Food delivery!”

“Right. It’s open.” He turns to me. “Sorry.”

After he pays for the food, he sets the bags on a tiny table tucked under the metal stairs. He gets a fresh beer for himself and a fresh bottle of water for me. I search through the cupboards for some plates. But he comes up behind me and puts his hands on my hips, murmuring near my ear, “Why don’t you have a seat and let me handle the breakables?”

What would have normally been a tiny shiver manifests itself in my current state as a convulsion. My shoulder comes up and bangs against my ear. “Ow!” I hiss, spinning around to face him. I’m trapped between him and the counter, my head against the top cupboards.

After what feels like forever, he backs away and frees me to go to the table. I do and furiously begin to unpack the bags,

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