An Entire Year of You

Chapter 4: Coffee Run (Part 1)

Carlos would have loved to say that the next five days passed uneventfully, but it was quickly becoming clear that uneventful days didn't exist in Night Vale. Luckily, three days had passed without anything being thrown at him or his team, so that was an improvement. People still called him an interloper, but only a handful in an aggressive way. The rest seemed to use it as greeting or nickname. In fact, he was kind of into it. Carlos the interloper, had a nice ring to it.

There was only one real problem right in that moment and that was Cecil, the radio host. He just wouldn't stop talking about him, which was kind of sweet in a weird sort of way. So much positive attention in an environment that was hostile at worse and indifferent at best. It was just the way he talked. He kept talking about Carlos' hair and how he loved him. Carlos was sure that it wasn't possible for someone to fall in love without so much as conversation. Then again, he'd never really been in love, not properly at least, so maybe he just didn't know. It was his area of expertise.

"He talks about everyone, sweetie." Said Josie as they shopped for groceries. Carlos had been too scared to shop alone after the barking incident at the Ralph's, so after two days of starvation he'd asked Josie if she needed any help with her shopping in the hope he could pick up some stuff for himself while he was at it. She didn't, but she must have caught on to his plan because she offered to go with him. The two were walking down the aisles with separate carts when he finally mentioned Cecil.

"Like that?" He asked doubtfully.

"No, not like that. Well, there was this one guy but that was a very long time ago. But his radio show is often a weird mix of news and free thought. You know he's a pretty neat guy. Maybe you should give him a shot."

"I'm sure he is, but I'm not looking for a relationship right now." Carlos replied, shaking his head. Even if Cecil turned out to be amazing it would be nearly impossible to keep a real connection after the year was up. It would be unfair on the poor guy.

"Well I wouldn't worry about it too much." She shrugged. "Cecil's kind of like a puppy; yappy, loyal, and pretty easily distracted. Give it three days and I'll be talking about dragons or something."

Three days later and Carlos was still waiting.

"It's weird. It's so weird. Like I know he doesn't seem to think it's weird, but like...it's really, really weird." He ranted to his co-workers.

"Oh, you want to talk about weird? Today we find a house that doesn't exist." Said Robin.

"A house that doesn't exist? What do you mean?" He asked.

"Well, it looks like it exists and it's next to two identical houses so it would make sense for it to exist." Explained Jess.

"But?"

"It doesn't exist."

"Huh...hey, Marsha did you know about this?" asked Carlos.

"Yeah." Marsha replied as she poured a test tube of blue liquid into a beaker filled with green. This was Marsha's new pass time. Mr Markson had never given anyone specific directions, so they were all doing their own thing. Marsha's thing was mixing random chemicals together to see what would happen. Everyone was waiting for this to blow up in her face, quite literally. The beaker began to fix and spill onto the table, but it quickly calmed down. Carlos, Robin, and Jess sighed with relief. They survived another day. "You would have known to if you'd shut up and stopped talking about the radio host."

"It's just weird, okay." He mumbled. "So, what are we going to do about this house?"

"What do you think we should do?" Asked Robin.