White Space Season 1

laughed, then said, “Oh yeah, well, yeah.” Wow. Embarrassing. “Guess I wasn’t thinking. Yes, I’m home. I mean, I’m at Viv’s house. Not my place. Why? What’s up?”
    “Just wanted to talk.” Jon sounded off. “I’m outside right now. Mind if I come in?”
    “Give me a minute,” Cassidy said, not sure if she loved or hated the idea. “I’ll be right down.”
    Cassidy tossed the phone on her desktop, then went to the bathroom and stared at herself in the mirror. She had no idea whether she looked amazing or terrible since her brain seemed to be sending her both lies at once.
    Cassidy ran downstairs, hoping the entire way down that Jon wouldn’t be able to tell she was fucked up. Not just because he could one day use it against her in court, but because she genuinely didn’t want him to know what a triple A loser she was.
    Cassidy saw she had nothing to worry about the second she opened the door.
    Jon wasn’t just shitfaced, he was downright fuckered.
    “Hey, Cass,” he slurred.
    “You drove here?”
    He shook his head, then used his Jack Nicholson face to loudly, say, “Nope, I raced!”
    “Sssshhhh,” Cassidy said, pulling him into the house. She looked behind him and saw his car parked diagonally on the lawn. “You’re going to have to lower your volume like eight notches, unless you want to wake five of the six neighbors who can still hear.”
    She took another look at him and shook her head. “You’re definitely not driving anywhere else tonight. You can sleep in my room. I’ll sleep in my mom’s.”
    Jon stepped through the threshold and into the house, making it three long strides before collapsing on the couch and knocking over a tall water glass, which made more noise rolling across the table than it did landing and spilling onto the ancient carpet below.
    Jon looked down, embarrassed. “Sorry,” he said.
    “It’s fine, let’s go.”
    Cassidy held out her hand, pulled Jon to his feet from the couch, then led him up the stairs. When they got to her room, Cassidy started peeling the blankets from her mattress and making Jon a small but cozy bed at the foot. “You get the soft blankets and pillows and I get the mattress, cool?”
    Jon said, “Sure, if that’s what’s best for you. I’m the drunk guest. But I thought I was sleeping in here and you were going to sleep in Viv’s?”
    Cassidy’s head was swimming; she was 95 percent sure this was real and not a dream, but the 5 percent kept slapping her across the face with a dull thud.
    She shrugged. “I figured you wanted to talk, otherwise you wouldn’t be here. I’m inches from sleep, and was fading in and out when you called. I figure this way we can talk until one of us falls asleep. Cool?”
    Jon nodded, his eyes half open, and mouth in a half smile.
    “So,” she said, “what do I owe the pleasure of your company then, Popcorn?”
    Jon said, “Wasn’t sure where else to go, but I sure as shit didn’t want to head back to The Sands of Time.”
    “Room service too slow?”
    He laughed. “No. It’s perfect. Just like every other hotel. But I’ll have a million more hours in empty hotel rooms. I wasn’t in a hurry to spend any more tonight.”
    “Good news then,” Cassidy said.
    “What?”
    “You made it. No hotel room, at least not tonight. And you can count this as two days since it’s almost tomorrow, if it isn’t already.”
    Jon laughed. Cassidy dropped to her knees and started fluffing the pillows at the top of his makeshift bed. He crashed beside her.
    “I went to Warren’s.”
    “Ah,” Cassidy nodded. “That explains things a bit, or a lot. Were you shitfaced before you got there, or was your liquid adventure after you left?”
    Jon said, “I was diarrhea faced.”
    Cassidy lightly laughed, stopped fluffing, then dropped her pillow to the pillow. “Everything okay?”
    Jon shook his head but didn’t make words.
    “I’m so sorry,” Cassidy said. “Do you want to talk about it at all?”
    Jon kept shaking his head.
    “Okay,” Her voice went suddenly perky. She felt stoned out of her fucking mind. “What do you want to talk about then?” She stood.
    Jon pulled her back down to the floor, then said, “nothing,” and swallowed her lips.
    Cassidy pulled back, but only for a second so that she could later swear that she did, then shoved Jon against the floor and met his tongue, dart for dart.
    She started grinding her body against him. Jon finished mashing his mouth against