Right Place, Wrong Time

32. Silent Message

After just a few hours at the party, Lauren was overwhelmed enough to need to retreat into her room. It wasn't quite the peaceful haven she longed for, with the voices and shouts and music seeping up through the floorboards and under the door, but she lay on her bed in the dark and let the relative quiet envelop her like a comfort blanket.

She allowed herself twenty minutes of that and was readying herself to go back, though she could happily stay there for the rest of the night, when there was a knock at her door. It could be Julia, one of the people intimate with this habit of hers, come to check on her. Or it could be someone who'd failed to notice the clear sign indicating the bathroom. Either way, she was tempted to ignore it, but then the door handle turned slowly and someone peeked inside, bringing a slither of light and a lot of noise in with them.

"Lolo?" came a tentative voice. She smiled to herself in the darkness, warmth cascading through her at the nickname, and sat up.

"You can come in." She reached for the lamp by her bedside, which cast enough light into the dark room for them to see each other's features but not so much that it disturbed the atmosphere.

"I missed you," Joey said, closing the door behind him now he had an actual invitation to come in, muffling the sound from downstairs again. His voice was softly slurred but not completely incoherent. It was actually kind of sweet.

"Really?"

"I kept looking for you, but you weren't there."

"I had to take a break for a little bit."

"Are you gonna come back?"

"Yeah, soon. I'll meet you down there if you want."

"We can go together," he said, with a wide, genuine smile. She'd meant it as more than a suggestion, but she found she didn't mind if he stayed with her. His company was different than a whole party, and he wasn't someone who drained her energy.

When she smiled at him and nodded, he looked around him, and she realised today was the first time he'd been in her new room. She watched him pick up a snow globe from her desk, a trinket from a family trip to New York when she was a kid. Then he reached a framed picture of the two of them, one that someone or other had taken at a party and had ended up with her. He turned to her, face alight with excitement, and held it up.

"You have a picture of us!"

"Yeah," she said, smiling. "I like that one."

"Even though you don't like parties?"

"I do like parties. Sometimes," she amended. "I like hanging out with my friends, but it takes up a lot of my social battery."

He nodded like he understood, though she could have labelled him as an extrovert from day one. He ran his fingers over the bare wall above the desk. "You could put pictures here too."

"I could," she said. "I don't really put stuff on walls. It feels permanent."

"You don't have to put a nail in," he said helpfully.

She smiled. "I didn't mean physically. It's just... I don't want to decorate too much when I'm leaving at the end of the year."

The mood in the room immediately soured, and she wished she hadn't said anything. Neither of them needed the reminder that her time left at school was short.

"Do you like this house?" he asked after a moment.

"Yeah, I think so."

"I like it. It's near me."

This version of Joey was both endearing and terrifying; sweet, but unfilteringly honest. If she didn't at least try to match that honesty, she'd feel like a fraud. "It's good to be close to you."