“Egg roll.” Sara demanded.

Josh reached over to pick up the brown paper bag with the eggs rolls and held it out to Sara. They were both laying down on the floor in the middle of the apartment, about a foot apart and facing the opposite direction. Josh had a brown paper bag with egg rolls and a white takeout box with chicken teriyaki. Sara had a tall container of beef pho soup and a tray of California rolls. Sara was dipping everything in the soup, which wasn’t so strange with the egg rolls, but the sushi made Josh a little unsettled; at least, before he’d tried it and realized that the addition of salty broth to the mixed texture of the sushi was actually pretty good. The beef savoriness was still strange, but it felt nice in his stomach.

“Rice cracker!” Sara announced as she unwrapped a rice cracker and threw it at Connor.

Connor had moved the couch back into the no mans land of the apartment so that he could watch TV and still keep an eye on his roommate and Josh. As the cracker was thrown in Connor’s direction, he bent his head to the side and tried to catch it in his mouth but missed. The cracker hit his chin and fell down his shirt.

“Why do you throw them so low?”

“I’m laying down on the floor, I have a low starting angle.”

“Whatever. Put some muscle into the next one.” Connor chuckled as he fished the cracker out from his tank top and dropped it into his mouth like a cartoon cat savoring a fresh fish. “Ah, processed food my beloved.”

“Is that really the only processed food you can eat?” Josh was still impressed Connor could eat it at all considering how many things he had listed that he couldn’t.

“Only thing I’ve found.” Connor paused as Sara gave him a silly look. “Well, besides this one kind of prepackaged trail mix I found at a whole food store, but it tasted like baby wipes.”

The evening continued like that. They ate takeout and told dumb stories that didn’t matter. And when the takeout was gone, Sara pulled out some ice cream. And when the ice cream was gone, and Connor had decided to wander off to bed, Sara discretely pulled Josh over to the kitchen and let him know where they kept their booze.

“This is Vodka, that’s rum, and that’s basically ethanol.” Sara pointed a finger to each bottle as she listed them off, the last bottle was an unlabeled glass gallon jug. “It’s Connor’s. He won it, or so he says, from his shifty uncle in a card game. He puts it on fruit when he wants to get wasted… and that’s only happened once in the entire time I’ve known him. He doesn’t really drink. I don’t drink much either, but that’s because I don’t have a reason to. But if you need to empty your head completely, you are welcome to what we’ve got.”

“Thank you…” Josh seriously considered it.

He didn’t drink much either, mostly because it made him sad and then he passed out, but it was tempting. Not the sad part, but the passing out part. After the night before, when he’d had his dream, he hadn’t properly been able to sleep. More truthfully, he hadn’t let himself sleep. He’d gone out and bought a pack of energy drinks and chugged them through the night to prevent himself from closing his eyes. The very thought of dreaming, even a good dream, felt sickening. But the thought of making a fool of himself for that short time between sober and passed out felt just ever so worse.

“I think I’ll pass.” Josh closed the kitchen cupboard himself with nearly flat, vacant smile. “But… I do have a slightly embarrassing request to make.”

Sara shrugged and smiled. “If I can help I will. It would have to be pretty bad for me not to.”

“Can I crash on your couch?”

“Sure… but we have a spare bed too. You could crash there.”

“No. I mean, I’m sure it’s fine, but after what happened to my arm in the spare bedroom, I kinda want to avoid it if I can.”

“I’ll grab you a blanket then.” Sara was about to leave when she turned on her heal with a frown. “Actually, I have a condition. You can only crash on the couch if you tell your roommate where you are.”

Josh was taken aback by the sudden change in attitude. “Why?”

It didn’t quite make sense to him that Sara wanted him to let Kerry know. It was probably a good idea, but it didn’t sound like something Sara would suggest.

“You’ve been acting weird and I don’t think it’s a good idea to let him worry about you being passed out in a itch somewhere.”

“He’ll probably be more upset to learn that I’m spending the night here. But I’ll tell him.”

Mid way through typing up a text to Kerry, Josh had a better idea than the full truth and began to type up a half lie. “Hey, Kerry, I’m gonna spend the night at Sara’s. I’m too drunk to walk home.”

Josh spent another minute making the spelling look bad so it would feel like he actually was drunk; which may not have been very convincing. Josh tended to text pretty well even while drunk, though mostly because he had such a low tolerance that by the time he would have been noticeably impaired he was unconscious.

“There. Is that good enough?” Josh held up his phone with the sent text.

Sara frowned at the lie, but shrugged. “Sure. I’ rather you not drag me into a lie I might have to remember, but sure.”

“Right. Sorry.”

“You get one.” Sara smiled and held up one finger over her shoulder as she walked off to get a blanket.

It was well past midnight by that point. There was no reply on Kerry’s end when Josh finally went to sleep. And he slept well, or at least without dreams. He was unsure of why he slept well so well. Nothing had really changed, he was still terrified of what could be lurking out in the world now that he realized there could be things that lurk. After his experience with Margot’s test, that hadn’t exactly gotten any better—it had gotten worse. And the dream he had had before, of falling through the void, still haunted him as he had closed his eyes and forced himself to sleep. But when he woke up, nothing had changed.

He was stable.

Nothing had gotten better, but nothing had gotten worse either. And it definitely wasn’t the couch. It was a nice wide couch but it was still a couch and not a bed. Maybe it was the extra, old and somewhat musty, blanket that appeared while had was asleep. Maybe it was the smell of sausage, egg, and hash browns waiting for him when his nose heard the message that consciousness was imminent. Or, maybe, it was something else.

“Look who’s up.” Sara’s voice rang out like a chime from the kitchen.

She was siting at the island on her usual bar stool watching Connor make breakfast. Connor was at the stove, apron on, tending to everything that smelled good in the apartment.

“Thank goodness, I can be as loud as I want now.” Connor shouted. “Get something to eat, or go home hungry.”

As Josh stood up from the couch he realized that he’d slept in the clothes he worse the day before. He didn’t have anything else to wear, of course, but he was starting to stink. “What time is it?”

“It is”—Connor leaned to the side to check the clock on the oven—”9:38 am. You slept in a bit, but so did we.”

“Well, I guess I’m not going to class today.” Josh groaned as he sat down next to Sara. “I might as well skip all of them if I’m going to miss the first one.”

Sara cocked an eyebrow at Josh as he grumbled, but didn’t comment. It was clear she wanted to say something, but was holding her tongue for some reason. Most likely, she didn’t want to disturb the peaceful atmosphere of a late morning breakfast.

Connor dished up three very full plates of hot food and tossed a bag of shredded cheese to the other side of the island for Sara and Josh. Sara also rustled through the fridge for a bottle of ketchup, but Josh thought better of using it. The cheese though, Sara and Josh both piled their meals high with cheese and let it melt while the food cooled to a more edible temperature. And when it was cooled and the cheese was gooey and soft, they ate.

There was no talking in the kitchen for several minutes. The only sound was the rustling of utensils on plates as they ate. Talking would have ruined it. It was hearty and filling and delicious. Connor might not have been able to eat much, but he had mastered making the food he could eat taste good.

After most of the food had been eaten, and they all reclined in their chairs with full stomachs, Josh began to ponder what his next move should be. “I need to go home… probably. I need a shower, and fresh clothes, and I need to catch up on the classes I’m missing.”

“You probably should.” Sara nodded in sober agreement. “But you can stay here as long as you need. My first class is at eleven, Connor mostly has online classes this semester, and I doubt you’d steal anything. And if you did, I know where you live and what scares you most.”

For a moment, that last part made Josh cock his head to the side in confused surprise. After the playfulness in her voice clicked it was fine, but for that moment, Josh realized exactly how dangerous Sara and Connor could be. They knew a decent amount about him—though he now knew a fair amount about them—they knew where he lived, and they knew where he lived. He could move, but something told him that the trail he had already left would be enough for them to follow anywhere he went. And while that paranoia wanted to eat away at him, there wasn’t much to eat. They wouldn’t hurt him. And if they did, he’d accept it as a fair misjudgment on his part. He felt safe.