folklore; conrad fisher

43: hey steven

The next morning I packed my bags and made a premature exit from Cousin's.

I didn't say goodbye to Conrad; I didn't even see him before I left. I decided I'd stay at Steven's apartment for a few days, and then head down to Philadelphia to plan the bridal shower.

I knew Laurel wouldn't mind me staying a few extra days if I'd asked, but I felt bad imposing myself, especially since the reason I was going to Philly was to help out with the wedding––something she absolutely did not approve of. I called a car to take me to the station, buying a ticket for the next train out when I got there.

I knew Conrad was awake for sure as I sat down on my train. That boy never slept in. Still, I didn't receive a single text from him asking why I left, or where I'd gone. I didn't expect it, anyway.

The ride was rough, the entire time I'd been ruminating over my situation with Conrad. It was only until I saw Steven waiting for me at the platform, that I could let out a sigh of relief. Steven, historically, has been the one person who could take my mind off of Conrad. As we walked side by side to his car, I felt as though my life was finally returning back to normal.

Thankfully, he had no idea what was going on, so we didn't have to talk about it. Instead, he asked me about Belly and how the wedding planning was going. He also seemed a lot more excited to tell me about his job than the last time we spoke about it, which was a good sign.

As we were arriving at his apartment complex, Steven looked at me, and smirked.

"I have a question to ask you, but you're not going to like it."

Here we go, I thought.

"Okay," He took a deep breath, "Would you rather wake up and find out that all of your teeth have turned into pubic hairs, or have teeth where your pubes used to be?"

"Did you know you're disgusting?" I shot at him, which caused him to snort in laughter.

I held back my own laugh, because I didn't want to encourage more of these 'would you rather' questions, "Where did you even come up with that?"

"Denise and I were shooting these at each other, and she was coming up with really good ones, so I looked more up online after. She's going to hate that one."

I raised an eyebrow, "Who's Denise?"

"A coworker." He said, nonchalantly. A little too relaxed for Steven, who was always the first to swarm me with details of anything and everything regarding his life. I made a mental note to press him about this later.

We were soon out of the car and walking towards his place. He opened the door for me to enter the lobby, where a doorman greeted us behind a desk. We walked past him and towards a hall of elevators. I could tell by the marble walls and smell of pine-tree candles that this building was incredibly nice. Steven and I didn't talk about money very often, but it was clear his job paid him handsomely. We got off the elevator on the seventh floor, walking only a bit until we reached his doorway.

When I stepped inside I was in absolute awe of the place he'd managed to afford. Behind the main entryway, he had a spacious living room, decked out with nice furniture in front of floor-to-cieling windows. As I made my way further into the room, he started yelling at me to take off my shoes. I kicked them off and rolled my eyes, pushing them away with my feet.

It was a Sunday, so Steven was off for the day. We played video games together, grabbed lunch at a nearby restaurant he liked, and ran errands for the week.

At the grocery store, I spotted a bottle of merlot on sale, from a brand I'd heard good things about. I picked it out and added it to our cart, and he didn't notice it, even as we were checking out. His mind seemed to be elsewhere that day, and I wondered what could have possibly been troubling him.