Love in the Time of Serial Killers(54)

“I knocked a hundred times,” Conner said as he squeezed a packet of hot sauce onto his burrito. “And called you. Seriously, Pheebs, you’re the one who fills my head with stuff about how the best motivation to keep a clean house is the thought of the grainy crime scene footage they’ll show in court later. The neighbor must think I’m insane, always going over there to check for you.”

“Sorry, I was in the shower.” I realized that my hair wasn’t even wet, and that saying I’d already taken a shower would hurt my chances to take one after lunch, which I desperately wanted to do. “About to take a shower,” I amended. “What did Sam say?”

“Just that you weren’t there, obviously,” Conner said. “And then he asked me some weird stuff about video games. I’m going to have to make that guy a list of my top ten, because he’s barely played anything. I brought up Mass Effect and he looked at me like I was an alien. Mass Effect!”

“Ha,” I said, trying to think of a way I could subtly ask questions like How else did he look? and Did he seem mad at me? But obviously that was impossible.

“While we’re on the subject—” Conner set his wrapped burrito precariously on his knee, reaching into a bag next to him to pull out a black rectangle wrapped with a power cord. “I brought you a present. I know it’s old, but I figured it was better than nothing, and it already has Crash Bandicoot and some other games loaded on it. There’s the small TV in Dad’s room you could hook up out here. I can’t play right now with my wrist. This way you can have something to do for when you get bored.”

I thought of all the ways I’d spent my time since I’d arrived—cleaning and packing and painting and reading and writing. And Sam. Most of all, I thought of him. I thought of how much I liked seeing the red climb up his neck if I said something suggestive, the look in his eyes when I’d been on top of him last night.

I was a lot of things, but bored wasn’t one of them.

Still, it was sweet of Conner to think of me, and I took the old PlayStation from him so he didn’t have to keep holding it in his one good hand. Somewhere in the exchange he hit his burrito with his elbow, and sent it to the floor with a splat.

“I knew that would happen,” he said almost cheerfully, like he was more happy to be right than to have his food intact. He reached down to wipe up the mess with one of the rough brown napkins, but I waved him off, going to the kitchen to get some cleaning spray and paper towels.

“You got way more done than I expected,” Conner said, glancing around the Linen White walls. “It’s starting to look almost HGTV in here.”

“Yeah, well. Sam came over and helped. Did you know he spent three whole summers painting houses back in Chicago? He did all this trim freehand.”

“Huh.”

The tone of Conner’s voice made me look up from my cleaning. “What?”

“It’s just weird,” Conner said. “When I talked to Sam earlier, he said he hadn’t seen you. He didn’t even mention being over here to paint last night.”

“Dude, this isn’t an episode of The Confession Tapes,” I said. “It wasn’t that big a deal, and he probably assumed you meant if he’d seen me today. Which, obviously, he hadn’t.”

That was the first outright lie I’d told Conner, if I was keeping proper track. It didn’t feel great. And it didn’t feel great that I’d asked Sam to lie to Conner, too. But when I thought of the alternative—how Conner would tease me about being obsessed with the neighbor, even more than he already did, how I’d get questions till the end of time about whether I was still seeing Sam, and was I going to bring him to the wedding, and when was I going to have a wedding . . . Conner could grind something like this with the same persistence he applied to his video games.

“All right,” Conner said. “You don’t have to attack me about it. I just thought it was weird. Oh! I remember what I wanted to ask you. Do you have plans for the Fourth?”

Never before had I been as thankful for my brother’s sometimes short attention span. “Yeah, I’m going to bake a three-layer red-white-and-blue cake and throw our country a birthday party.”

“Really?”

“Fuck no,” I said. “It doesn’t deserve it. Why, what do you have planned?”

“I’m going to propose to Shani,” he said. “And I want you to be there.”

Why did that get me feeling all emotional, like for one horrifying second I might actually cry? I must be about to get my period. I hated the idea of public proposals, of such a personal moment being put on display, but for some reason Conner wanting to include me had me feeling honored. Touched, even.

I cleared my throat. “Sure,” I said. “Of course. How are you going to do it?”

I mostly listened as he described his plan—apparently, he’d talked to the guy who did the fireworks across the river, the ones we used to go see sometimes when we were kids. And the guy had said for some money he could do a special display that would spell out Conner’s proposal, arranging the timing ahead of time so Conner could be sure to get down on one knee in front of Shani. It all sounded very sweet and very expensive.

But my mind also kept drifting back to Sam. Wondering what he was doing. Wondering how he was feeling about last night, if he regretted it. Because as conflicted as I felt today, I definitely didn’t regret it.