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I awoke to a sound that can only be described as hellish, with some overly-happy ringtone blaring mere inches from my ear and an overly excitable parakeet screeching along to it.

Some days it was hard to tell which was more annoying.

"Monaco... Monaco... cool it buddy," I said, my eyes unfocused and half lidded as I stumbled for my phone, only to knock it off the couch and under the coffee table, the narrow confines creating an echo chamber to enhance the most obnoxious qualities of the song.

Monaco seemed determined to break his decibel record, and responded to my pleas by screeching even loader and more off-tune. I managed to shove my glasses onto my face from where I'd lain them last night, then rolled off the sofa onto the floor, stretching my hand under the table.

I managed to drag the screaming hate-box out, and slammed my fingers on the snooze button as hard as I could. The song stopped, though Monaco continued the tune for a number of seconds before stopping, giving me a very judgmental look.

"Don't give me that," I said to the bird, "you have horrible taste in music."

I looked at the clock in the top right corner of the phone. 8:20. That would give me just enough time to clean Monaco's cage and have dishes done before Vicky inevitably showed up twenty minutes early.

I started with the dishes, dumping the lot of them into a soap filled sink to soak as I dragged a clump of steel-wool across them, getting the bulk of the mess off them before dumping them in the dishwasher and starting it.

I then moved on to Monaco's cage. As far as birds went, he was fairly clean, content to keep his mess on the newspaper I lined the bottom of his cage with - likely the only reason the Beecher's Gazette stayed in business. I cleared all of it out as he stared at me from the topmost perch, chirping occasionally as I made an effort to keep anything from directly touching my fur.

I gathered it all in a ball, keeping the most pristine of them on the outside and moved towards the front door, holding it away from my chest. It was at this point I realized that the only bit of clothing I had actually bothered to put on after waking up was my glasses. I turned back to grab at least some shorts or something, but realized I had thrown all of that in the laundry, and it would require me digging through all my freshly cleaned clothes to do so.

After a moment's hesitation, I decided to just suck it up and risk the trip to the garbage can commando. I held up the bird-shit paper-mache in one hand and opened the door with the other, giving the outside world a quick one-over before stepping out.

I hurried around the corner, lifting the lid and tossing the ball of newspaper in the same swift motion, rushing back to the front door with my shoulders hiked, as if I hoped desperation alone would make me invisible.

"Uh, hey dude."

I froze, closing my eyes and hoping the shame would kill me before I had to face whomever I had accidentally flashed. I forced a single eye open, and saw Isaac standing on the opposite side of the door, already dressed in his loose-fitting weekend clothes with an awkward, uncomfortable expression on his face.

"Shit," I said, diving towards the door, opening and closing it behind me before the zebra could follow me in. I ran to the kitchen, washing my hands before sprinting to the laundry room, pulling out some casual clothes to put on.

"I can come back latter..." the zebra's voice drifted through the door.

"No, it's fine," I shouted back, struggling to get my second leg into my pants, "I was just cleaning."

"Is this your way of hitting on me?" the zebra asked, his voice clearly uncomfortable despite the wall between us muffling the sound, "'cause I'm flattered and all, but you're not really my type... not like you're unattractive or whatever, it's just like... I don't like dicks, not that there's anything wrong with that..."

Shut up, shut up, shut up, I begged in my mind, my skin surely far redder than my fur at this point.

"I mean, yours looked alright, I guess," he continued, my cheeks growing hotter by the second as I struggled to determine which way was out on a t-shirt, "I mean, I haven't seen a whole lot of them, and it was in its sheath... it wasn't like huge, or anything, but I'm a zebra so..."

I tossed the shirt on the ground, the need to shut him the hell up outweighing the modesty of covering my chest, at least for the moment. I slammed the door open, clamping a hand around his muzzle mid-sentence and holding it shut.

"Isaac," I said, shuddering with a mixture of embarrassment and disgust, "I was not hitting on you, I've known you since 3rd grade, you're like my brother, for fuck's sake."

I released by hold on his face and stepped back into my house, grabbing the shirt off the floor before pulling it on.

The zebra stood in the doorway, frozen by embarrassment, and unlike me, his fur was light enough to see the blush below it, if only in the white-striped portions.

"If you ever, and I mean ever, describe my dick to me again," I said, holding up a finger, "I will kick your ass."

He seemed to get over his embarrassment, if only by a fraction, and stepped into the house, closing the door behind him.

"And I swear to god, I never want to hear about your dick; I mean for fuck's sake Isaac."

"Well I don't know!" the zebra said, defensively, "I just came over to play video games and you're out here waving your dick around!"

"Vicky called and said she's coming over at ten, so I have to clean the place," I protested.

"You could have at least put on some goddamn pants!"

"Well I had to do laundry too!"

The zebra opened his mouth to say something else, but was stopped as the door behind him rang out in a quick series of rasping knocks.

We shared a look, and I gestured for him to be quiet as I attempted to straighten my appearance as much as I was able.

The woman who stood on the opposite side of the door looked like she viewed Barbie as a role model, with a knee-length purple skirt and flowered blouse, her hair dyed a rather stark shade of blonde in comparison to the grey and black of her fur. The badger was on the shorter side, but skinny and athletic, a remnant of her youth as a cheerleader and fitness councillor before becoming a child protection agent.

"Hey there Ethan!" she cheered as I opened the door for her, patting me on the head as she stepped through the door, "Have you gotten taller? Oh, hello Isaac, I wasn't expecting to see you today. How's your mother?"

"She's alright," The zebra said, "running errands with the girls today."

Vicky smiled, "That's nice. I was talking with your father the other day, he say's you've been doing quite well in band. Maybe I'll get to go to one of your concerts this year."

She then turned her eternally happy gaze on me, "how about you Ethan? Keeping up with your assignments this semester?"

"Well enough," I said, "Isaac's been helping me with chemistry, and everything else is easy enough."

"That's nice," she said, her eyes now drifting from me to the room at large, sweeping over every surface with a critical eye.

She stepped further into the room, looking into the kitchen and reaching to pet Monaco before turning back, gesturing for me to lead the way upstairs. The stairway was tucking into the corner of the room and incredibly narrow, making even my less-than-broad shoulders rub against both sides if I didn't angle my torso while climbing.

The second floor had only three rooms, with two bedrooms and a single bathroom split between them. I hadn't used this floor much since I was a kid, and hadn't even used my bedroom since the last month's inspection. My parent's room was empty, as usual, left largely untouched aside from acting as a guest room on the one or two occasions that had merited it. She looked in all of them briefly before nodding in approval, and we made the trek up to the third floor for the last bit of her inspection.

My studio was smaller than the previous two floors, covering only a third of the space occupied by the base of the house, though the vaulted roof and turret led for much greater headspace, even if that also meant the space tended to fluctuate wildly in temperature. As we crested the tops of the steps, I stepped out into an open space, the floor covered by thick layers of sheets intended to keep paint from ruining the hardwood. Sun filtered in through the windows of the turret, casting deep, angular shadows from the legs of my easel and workbenches. A few canvases were scattered around the room, covered with sheets to protect them as they leaned against walls. A larger canvas sat on the easel, uncovered and only half-completed. It was a colour-field panting, with only a few blocks of complementary oil paints arrayed in what I found to be visually pleasing formats.

"Oh," Vicky said upon seeing it, "this one is new. It's a little dull for my tastes, I think it could use some more bright colours."

I nodded, pretending I wasn't completely ignoring everything she had just said, "I'll keep that in mind."

She turned in place, pulling out her phone to signal the end of her inspection as she went over her checklist.

"So I talked with your grandmother's estate attorney," the badger said, "apparently the judge has ruled that her will is not enforceable, so her estate falls to you."

I wrinkled my nose at that, "I don't want anything that old hag left behind."

She looked up from her phone, scowling at my use of what she deemed 'inappropriate language.'

"If you're sure," she said, "I can see about selling off her estate, using those funds to pay her debts, then you can use the remaining funds as you see fit."

"Fine with me," I said, shrugging, "I assume I'll have to wait until I'm eighteen to use those as well?"

"They'd be added to the trust fund, yes," Vicky nodded, "I'm not sure how substantial an amount it would increase, but you would see an increase to the monthly allowance."

The question that had been swirling around in my thoughts for months fought to get through to my mouth, held back by trepidation. It was only as she began lowering her phone that I found the courage to speak up.

"Actually, Vicky, there was one thing I wanted to ask about," I said, the words coming out quickly, so I wouldn't have time to second-guess myself.

She looked up from her list, expectantly.

"It's just that I'll be turning eighteen in a couple months," I said, looking down a my hands as I began fidgeting, "and since Isaac and his parents live right next door and all, do we really need to keep doing these visits?"

She sighed, "I really wish I could, Ethan, but you're a ward of the state, and until you're of age, it's my responsibility to make sure you're safe."

"I know," I said, in my gut knowing she had already made up her mind, "but I've basically been on my own since I was fourteen. You know I can take care of myself, and it really only inconveniences the both of us."

She sighed, placing her hands on her hips, "you're right, Ethan, you can take care of yourself, and I haven't had reason to correct anything for a couple years now, but these visits are the only reason you're allowed to live on your own at all."

She placed her phone in her pocket and made her way to the stairs, ready to show herself out, "It's a matter of a court order; it's out of my hands."

I tried to hide how disappointed I was, but from her expression I knew I had failed.

"Don't get so down about it," she said, "You said yourself it's only a matter of months. Then you'll be free to do what you will with your inheritance and house."

She started down the stairs, waving back at us as she went, "I'll talk to you soon Ethan. It was nice seeing you again Isaac!"

Isaac and I waited at the top of the stairs for a few moments until I heard the front door close, then let out a sigh.

"She's got a point, man," Isaac said, pulling himself up to sit on one of my workbenches, "you've got, what, seven months to go? That's not too bad."

"Easy for you to say," I said, "you don't have to do the reports, and you don't have to talk with Dean Anselm every month."

He had already tuned out of the conversation, and was crooking his head back and forth at my painting, testing new viewing angles of it.

"What is it supposed to be?"

"It's not supposed to be anything," I said, looking at the unfinished work myself, "It's a colour field painting."

"That's dumb," the zebra blurted, and I had to fight the urge to tear my fur out in frustration, "Why don't you do portraits or landscapes? I've seen you do them before."

"I don't do them because if you want a picture of someone, you can use a camera," I said, keeping my tone even, "this is more stylistic."

He looked between me and the painting for a moment, "It's like, three blocks of colour on a black background."

I opened my mouth to go on a rant about the merits of abstract expressionism, but bit my tongue, knowing such a conversation would be as useless as talking to a wall.

"You know what... never mind," I said, shaking off his dirty uncultured words, "just stick to jazz and horrible dating advice."

"Shows what you know," the zebra said, jumping off the table as he stuck his nose in the air triumphantly, "I invited Lindsey to hang out after school Monday."

I followed the zebra downstairs, careful not to roll my eyes so I wouldn't slip on the steps, "Is this a date with you, or one you set up to fail with me?"

"It can be both," the zebra said defensively, "we were going to meet after school to head over to your place, if that's cool with you."

"Fine," I sighed, "If I can't dissuade you from your dumb-ass ideas, I can at least supervise and mitigate them."

He sat down on the couch and I went over to turn on the gaming console and TV. Gaming with Isaac was really the only reason I still had a TV in the first place, that and it was cheaper to get cable with the internet and his house was too far away to leech off the Wi-Fi.

As usual, he was better than me, singularly managing to embarrass me in all but one game, and even then putting up enough of a fight to shake my confidence in my skill.

"You have too much time to play this," I said as he killed me for the third consecutive time in the past thirty seconds.

"I have the same number of classes as you, work more hours, and have band practice," the zebra said as Monaco climbed out of his cage to sit on his shoulder, "what's your excuse?"

"I have to watch movies and paint," I said, realizing the excuse was piss-weak even as I said it, "and you've corrupted my bird to the dark side."

Monaco cried out upon realizing we were talking about him and deciding it wasn't enough attention. Isaac reached up, scratching the little traitor on the head and somehow managing to get another kill with only one hand on the controller.

"He just knows how hopeless you are," the zebra sneered, that big dumb striped smirk of his infuriating me further, "and wants to be on the winning side."

"Well, he likes pop music," I retaliated, "so that shows you how much his opinion is worth."

Isaac looked at the bird, offended at the audacity of the avian's musical taste, "et tu, Monaco?"

"It's not even the kinda good stuff that you don't want to admit to liking," I added, sowing dissent in their ranks, "it's the real bad, cheesy, douchey stuff."

"Well it's your fault for exposing him to that filth," Isaac snorted, killing me again, "he's a delicate, impressionable child, and you aren't a responsible parent."

"He hears it from your house!" I said, deeply offended, "your sisters blast it, and it's made my bird dumb."

The parakeet jumped from Isaac's shoulder to my head, biting one of my ears playfully.

"Nothing I can do," Isaac said, sombrely, "those girls are too far gone. They actually go to concerts for that trash."

"Ow!" I shouted as Monaco bit me again, this time hard enough to draw blood from the corner of my ear, "you little shit! Keep it up and I'll turn you into chicken nuggets."

Monaco jumped back to Isaac, looking back at me with a look of confusion that was absolutely not fooling me. I knew what evil and menace lurked in that little feather-coated head of his.

"Aww..." Isaac said, buying into the little turd's bullshit, "he would never, Monaco. You're too much of a sweetheart."

"Like hell," I muttered as the game over screen came up, displaying a score I immediately purged from my mind before it physically hurt me, "you don't know the pain of that little asshole's singing."

Isaac checked the time on his phone, reading off the messages left during the course of the game by his parents.

"Alright," he said, stretching as he got up, "gotta go. Have fun at work with the newbie."

He had to physically remove Monaco from his shoulder, placing him in his cage to prevent him from following him out the door, and departed with a wave.

I sat there for a moment, mourning the poor, abused character I'd played as, then locked Monaco's cage to get ready for work.

It wasn't much of a preparation, just switching from my normal t-shirt to the one that had the theatre's name printed on the back.

---

The drive to the cinema wasn't that long, maybe five minutes if I got stopped at the one stoplight in the entire town. Beecher's Cinema was one of those old, old school places designed for stage productions first and movies second, back before they had sound. It only had one screen, and it wasn't even a particularly big one at that. It had an old school sign that needed the letters to be changed out by hand, currently announcing that they were hiring and the show times of some crappy CGI-filled action film.

I parked in the employee parking around back, noting an unfamiliar bicycle chained to the rack and Kara's car parked in the other spaces. I stepped in, the smell of popcorn permanently baked into every conceivable surface of the place. It wasn't so bad, considering the age of some of the furnishings and the building itself, but the place was permanently freezing cold and everything looked like it might fall apart if you leaned against it.

Kara stood behind the counter that served as both the ticketing booth and concessions stand, clearly bored out of her mind.

The raccoon wasn't old by any means, barely out of college. She was manager by virtue of it being the family business, though in my experience she was defiantly capable of the job. She looked up from her phone as I walked in and gestured towards the stairs leading to the projection booth.

"New guy's here," she said, her tone blasé, "I've got interviews with two more this weekend, so you'll have to show him the ropes."

"Alright," I shrugged, "when's the next showing?"

"Seven," she responded, "If anyone shows up."

I went up the stairs, turning right at their top to push through a door marked 'employees only.' The service corridor was tiny and cramped, apparently a staple in Victorian architecture, and lined with cardboard cut-outs and random crap that had been accrued over literal centuries of operation.

The hallway opened up to the theatre on a narrow walkway on the second floor, behind the box seats where it was impossible to get a good view of the screen and stage. The bottom floor was only slightly sloped, meaning anyone in the back was almost certain to get a view of the back of someone's head. There was a pit just before the stage where the orchestra would play before recorded sound was a thing in movies, and Kara had managed to fit a couple more seats into the space, though the view was abysmal.

Really, only the balcony seats were much good, and we never really saw crowds big enough to require the downstairs be filled.

The projection booth was on the left side of the catwalk, one of the few rooms in the place that felt like it was sized for an adult person and not an anorexic toddler. I could hear shuffling through the thin walls as I approached, and decided to give the door a courtesy knock before entering.

The room was warm by virtue of housing a surprisingly modern projector and computer to run the movies off of, with the hulking corpse of an old fashioned film projector pushed to the back corner. A couple soft chairs and thrift store couches filled the rest of the space, along with a desk I used to do homework while I worked.

The new employee stood in the back, inspecting the film projector and collection of reels we had stacked on it. He was tall, in the realm of six and a half feet, and built like the Greek sculpture that gave all the other sculptures insecurities.

He turned at my approach. His eyes widened a bit as he recognised me, and he seemed to stumble over himself as he fought for something to say.

"Hi," the panther said, "I'm Harrison, I guess you're going to be training me, huh?"

I froze, my brain trying to compute what exactly was going on.

"I know," I said after an awkward pause, my mind finally coming back online with what had to be the dumbest possible response, "Everybody knows you."

His expression seemed to cringe for me, and I began to back away towards the door.

"Just a second," I said, trying not to sound like a botched lobotomy recipient.

I jogged back across the catwalk and down to the theatre lobby. Kara looked up as I approached.

"What's up?" she sighed, her manager's sixth sense kicking in as I neared her.

"Can't you train him?" I begged, "I can do your interviews or whatever, I've been here long enough to know how."

"What? No! What's the problem?" she said, crossing her arms.

"I know him," I said, trying to keep my voice level so I didn't sound like a crazy person, "he and his friends are a bunch of assholes."

She rolled her eyes, "Ethan, you're teenagers. You're all assholes; that's basically the definition of being a teenager."

"I really, really don't want to," I pleaded.

"Let me put this as diplomatically as possible," the raccoon said, leaning across the counter towards me, "tough shit."

I groaned, stomping back up the stairs. I paused at the entrance of the catwalk, taking a deep breath as I ran a hand through my hair, trying to get a handle on the situation.

Harris. Harrison fucking Moriarty, all-state wonder-boy who shits gold and excellence. The literal pinnacle of the kind of person I most wanted to avoid, and symbol of everything wrong with Beecher's Hollow. Harrison - couldn't be more of a white-bread apple pie American ideal type if he was grown in a fucking lab by uncle-fucking-Sam himself - Moriarty.

I leaned forward, planting my head on the door to the booth as my hand hovered over the handle.

It could be worse, I told myself, It could've been Parker.

I swung open the door, determined to get this over as quickly as possible.

"Alright!" I said, causing the panther to jump at my sudden entrance.

"This," I said, pointing at the computer next to the projector, "is what we play all the movies off of. All movies come on a flash drive, and are uploaded by Kara. You are under no circumstances allowed to take said flash drives, and if you try to copy the files, Kara will murder us both."

I pointed at the series of cables connected to the computer, "This is the power cable. This is the audio cable. This is the video cable. You don't need to know this, because they are not to be touched, ever."

I moved on to the projector itself, "This is the projector. The settings are currently perfect, and it is not to be touched. Once a month it will be cleaned, and if settings are not exactly as they are now, Kara and I will take turns murdering you."

"When movies are about to start, you will press this switch," I said, pointing to the first in a series of switches next to the computer, "at five minutes before showtime, you press play on the computer. At showtime, the trailers should be starting, so you press the second switch. At ten minutes past showtime, it should go dark and the movie should start, that is when you press the final switch."

"There are a couple other people who work here," I said, gesturing to the building around us, "but they mostly work when we'd be in school, so you probably won't see them much."

I turned around to where the panther stood, frozen in place, "any questions?"

"What about the film projector..." the panther started, pointing with a thumb to the dust-covered monstrosity behind him.

"We haven't used that thing in years," I said, "most companies don't even make reels anymore, we just can't get it out to the dumpster."

"What do we do while the movie plays?" he asked as I sat down on one of the couches, pulling out my phone.

"We sit on our asses and do nothing," I said, "you can do homework, play games, watch the movie - whatever - so long as you don't make too much noise."

"Oh, ok," he said, sitting on one of the chairs opposite me, folding his arms over his chest as he sat back, folding his legs and generally trying to get as far away from me as possible while looking around the room.

I scrolled through a couple news articles, feeling his eyes boring a hole through me. I looked at the panther sidelong a couple times, waiting for him to do something - anything. But he just sat their twiddling his thumbs and peering around the room.

"You can use your phone," I said, the heavy silence getting to be too much to bear, "Kara really doesn't care about that kind of thing as long as there's nothing to do."

"I, uh, didn't bring it," he said, his expression embarrassed. It was an odd look on him.

"It's not in your car?"

"I don't have a car," he said, and I remembered the bike locked up outside, "I left it back in my dorm so I wouldn't get distracted."

"Ah," I said, feeling embarrassed myself, "well, next time bring something to do; we're not exactly the busiest place in the world."

There was another long bout of silence, and I checked my phone. Apparently this was going for the record for the longest and most awkward five minutes of my life, and the panther across from me was clearly equally as uncomfortable.

"So..." he said, trying to clear the silence with small talk, "are you on the cross-country team?"

"No."

"Right, they were practicing when you showed up for your run," he said, "are you on the soccer team or something then?"

"I'm not on any team," I said, seeing his expression dim as I cut down a good portion of his topics of conversation.

I felt a pang of regret as his expression soured. He was at least trying to be sociable, and Harris had been one of the less obnoxious jocks at St. Marc's. And while Isaac could be an absolute cretin at times, he was probably right in saying my attitude wasn't the best.

"I used to be on the swim team," I offered with a shrug, "I stopped sophomore year though."

"Oh," the panther said, sitting up in his seat, eagerly jumping onto the conversation, though he made sure not to get much closer to me, "why'd you quit?"

"I couldn't keep up with the otters and dolphins anymore," I shrugged, "don't have the tail for it. That and I had to go to a bunch of custody trials for a while."

"Right," Harris said, nodding, "I remember hearing about that; you live by yourself now, right?"

"Yeah," I answered, wondering just how specific the rumours around the whole ordeal had been.

"That's cool," The panther said, his face cringing midway through the sentence, "I mean, aside from your parents dying."

His expression fell as he realized what he had said, throwing up his arms and stammering as he tried to correct himself.

"That's not what I meant! I mean, it's cool that you get to live by yourself while you're in high school, but the reason why sucks."

I couldn't help but crack a bit of a smile as he tripped over himself trying to apologize. Compared to the calm, collected, intelligent Harrison that I knew from a distance, he was practically a raving lunatic. He sounded like Isaac, except with a filter and a bit more tact.

"It's fine," I reassured him, "it's been a long time."

---

Seven o'clock rolled around not long after, and the theatre below soon saw a thin trickle of customers, maybe twenty in total as the found their seats. I started the projector, feeling the panther's eyes on me as I went through the steps I had described earlier. From the perception in his eyes and the careful nodding as I explained the steps, I could tell he was taking mental note.

He watched the movie from over the projector, suffering through the crappy action scenes and romance subplot that teetered between awkward and laughable. I couldn't help smiling as I watched him from the corner of my eye as he cringed in time with a line that was probably intended to sound romantic, but instead came off really creepy and cheesy.

By the midway point, his emerald green eyes began to glaze over out of boredom as action scenes dull enough to kill brain cells rolled by. It was hard not to get lost staring at him. He was practically the perfect specimen of masculinity, with everything from his musculature to his clothing in immaculate shape. The only defect I could find on him was a chip in one of his fangs, though that was easily concealed whenever he wasn't smiling at the stupid one-liners the protagonist shouted at the bad guy.

---

There were two more showings after that one, and Harris got visibly more bored through each run until by the end of the third viewing he was laying on his back on the couch, mouthing along with all the half-witted dialogue with an expression of bored contempt.

It was after midnight when Kara finally closed the door to the theatre, and she handed the two of us brooms and dustpans to clean out the lobby and seats.

It wasn't that tough of a job, and it only took a couple minutes to sweep up all of the spilled popcorn and empty soda cups. Kara sent Harris off a bit earlier than me so he would have more time to get home, and cornered me as I helped her clean behind the counter.

"How'd he do?" she asked, moving the cash from the till to the safe below it.

"Alright," I shrugged, "this is an easy job not to screw up, Kara."

"You'd be amazed the lengths some people can go to just to fuck something up," she said, "I don't get your problem with him. He seems like a nice enough kid."

"Maybe not him specifically," I said, "but his friends are a bunch of homophobic dipshits."

"Well," she laughed, "If you're going to avoid all of those types in this town you may as well not leave the house."

I rolled my eyes, "I'm aware."

"He's definitely better than some of the people that've applied," she said, shaking her head as she pulled on a sweatshirt and gathered the keys to lock up for the night, "and I mean,

he's not eighteen yet, so don't quote me on this, but he is really hot."

"Kara!"

"What?" She said, indignant, "don't you agree?"

"I have eyes, Kara."

She led the way out to the parking lot, switching off the lights behind her as she went.

"So everyone can think it," she complained, "I just can't say it? That's no fun."

I unlocked the door of my car and stood there, shouting across to where Kara's truck waited for her, "well you can say it now, we're no longer in a workplace."

"Fine," she said, laughing, "he is really goddamned hot."

The drive home was uneventful, and I collapsed on the couch the moment the door was locked shut behind me. I worked from noon to close the following day, so I needed to make the most of the few remaining hours until dawn, and even Monaco's excited chirping couldn't stop me from falling into the cool dark of sleep.