Familiar

Chapter Twenty Three

It's warm sitting next to Ryan, and I realize he must have done that on purpose. I wonder if that's part of the spell too, where you have to become so overly aware of your own body. Eventually, before the movie even ends, I doze off.

I wake with the living room dark, and the TV off. 

TW: Death

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I look around and find my phone on the coffee table, and a blanket has been placed over me. Grabbing my phone I realize it's 3:07am, but I hear water running in the bathroom. Shower. Ryan's up, probably what woke me in the first place. 

I lay there in the dark, not sure what to do, so I go on my phone for a bit instead. Eventually, I hear the shower turn off and the door to the bathroom opens. I hear footsteps and then they pause, probably seeing the light on my phone.

"Did I wake you?" Ryan whispers across the room. 

"No, just woke up." Ryan continues to walk to his room and returns minutes later dressed in slacks and a white dress shirt. I can make out his shape and the colors of his clothes from the dim street lights through the windows.

"Mind if I turn on the kitchen light?" He asks, and I tell him I don't mind. I sit up and hold the blanket to me, keeping the heat in. The light turns on and I squint my eyes and Ryan laughs.

"Not a morning person?" He asks as I watch him set up a coffee pot on the counter.

"Not really. But I'm not sure this even counts as morning." I tell him, wincing as I move. 

"How are you feeling?" He turns to me, leaning against the counter. 

He looks good in dress clothes, I think, before clearing my head and answering his question.

"Sore, but okay, overall. And thank you for grabbing my things last night." Ryan grabs his travel mug of coffee from the machine as I talk. 

"Of course, whatever you need. Are you, uh, gonna be okay while I'm at work? I'll be back around 2pm or so. There's some food I picked up last night too. It's not much, but hopefully you can find something." He sets down his cup. "Oh, and I almost forgot." He grabs a set of keys off the counter and holds them up so I can see. "Keys for the apartment and a key fob for the buildling, in case you wanted to go somewhere." 

It suprises me for a second, how casually he just gives me use of his apartment. Not that I had anything to hide from Ryan, but I wasn't sure I could be so cavalier about letting him stay at my place if the roles were reversed. 

"Wow, I, thank you." I say, still kind of shocked. I reminded myself that it was just temporary. A couple of days until my makeup showed up, and then I could go out. I supposed I could've asked Ryan to pick me up makeup, but that felt like putting him on the spot somehow. And it would only be a day or two. 

Ryan and I talked for a few more minutes until he said he had to go. I wished him a good day and locked the door behind him. This felt - weird. And if I had thought waking up in his apartment in the middle of the night felt odd, being here alone felt even more so. 

What should I do? I wondered. It was still early, barely passed 3:30am. I guess I could sleep more, but I wasn't tired now. And I had fallen asleep early last night. So instead I went to the washroom, then came back to the couch, pulling out my laptop and looking through my assignments. Sure, I was behind, but I thought I could still catch up. 

Thankfully, Ryan had also grabbed some of my textbooks from my shelves, so I could catch up on the assigned reading as well. 

As I worked, I saw a flash of orange out of the corner of my eye. Dane. I hadn't seen him since the cemetery. I wasn't even sure he had gotten back in the car with us.