Sarah Dessen (19 page)

“I always put the soap in right when it starts,” he said.

“Which is why,” I said, pouring a bit of detergent in as the water level rose, “your clothes don’t ever get truly clean. There is a chemistry involved here, Dexter.”

“It’s laundry,” he said.

“Exactly.”

He sighed. “You know,” he said as I poured in the rest of the Tide and eased the lid shut, “the rest of the guys are even worse. They hardly ever even do laundry, much less separate their colors and brights.”

“Colors and whites,” I corrected him. “Colors and brights go together.”

“Are you this anal about everything?”

“Do you want everything to be pink again?”

That shut him up. Our little laundry lesson this evening had been precipitated by his throwing a new red shirt into the hot water cycle, which left everything he’d been wearing lately with a rosy tinge. Since the plastic ware incident I’d been doing all I could to be the very opposite of domestic, but I couldn’t abide a pink boyfriend. So here I was, in the laundry room of the yellow house, a place I normally steadfastedly avoided because of the enormous pile of unwashed underwear, socks, and various T-shirts that dwelled there, often spilling out into the hallway. Which was not surprising, considering that hardly anyone ever bought detergent. Just last week, John Miller had apparently washed all his jeans in Palmolive.

Once the cycle started, I stepped carefully over a pile of nasty socks, back out into the hallway, and eased the door shut as far as it would go. Then I followed Dexter into the kitchen, where Lucas was sitting at the table, eating a tangerine.

“You doing laundry?” he asked Dexter.

“Yep.”

“Again?”

Dexter nodded. “I’m bleaching out my whites.”

Lucas looked impressed. But then, he was wearing a shirt with a ketchup stain on the collar. “Wow,” he said. “That’s—”

And then, suddenly, it was dark. Totally dark. All the lights cut off, the refrigerator whirred to a stop, the swishing of the washing machine went quiet. The only brightness anywhere left that I could see was the porch light of the house next door.

“Hey!” John Miller yelled from the living room, where he was absorbed, as usual about this time each night, in
Wheel of Fortune.
“I was just about to solve the puzzle, man!”

“Shut up,” Lucas said, standing and walking over to the light switch, which he flipped on and off a couple of times, click-clack-click. “Must be a blown fuse.”

“It’s the whole house,” Dexter said.

“So?”

“So, if it was just one fuse something would still be on.” Dexter picked up a lighter from the middle of the table and flicked it. “Must be a power outage. Probably the whole grid’s out.”

“Oh.” Lucas sat back down. In the living room, there was a crash as John Miller attemped to navigate the darkness.

This wasn’t my problem. Surely it wasn’t. Still, I couldn’t help but point out, “Um, the lights are on next door.”

Dexter leaned back in his chair, glancing out the window to verify this. “So they are,” he said. “In-teresting.”

Lucas started to peel another tangerine as John Miller appeared in the kitchen doorway. His pale skin seemed even brighter in the dark. “Lights are out,” he said, as if we were blind and needed to be told this.

“Thank you, Einstein,” Lucas grumbled.

“It’s a circuitry problem,” Dexter decided. “Bad wiring, maybe.”

John Miller came into the room and flopped down on the couch. For a minute, no one said anything, and it became clear to me that this, to them, wasn’t really that big a problem. Lights, schmights.

“Did you not pay your bill?” I asked Dexter, finally.

“Bill?” he repeated.

“The power bill.”

Silence. Then, from Lucas, “Oh, man. The freaking power bill.”

“But we paid that,” John Miller said. “It was right there on the counter, I saw it yesterday.”

Dexter looked at him. “You saw it, or we paid it?”

“Both?” John Miller said, and Lucas sighed, impatiently.

“Where was it?” I asked John Miller, standing up. Someone had to do something, clearly. “Which counter?”

“There,” he said, pointing, but it was dark and I couldn’t see where. “In that drawer where we keep the important stuff.”

Dexter picked up a lighter and lit a candle, then turned to the drawer and began to dig around, sorting through what, to the guys, was deemed Important. Apparently, this included soy sauce packets, a plastic hula girl toy, and matchbooks from what looked like every convenience store and bar in town.

Oh, and a few pieces of paper, one of which Dexter seized and held aloft. “Is this it?”

I took it from him, squinting down at the writing. “No,” I said, slowly, “this is a notice saying if you didn’t pay your bill by—let’s see—
yesterday,
they were going to cut the power off.”

“Wow,” John Miller said. “How did that slip past us?”

I turned it over: stuck to the back was a set of pizza coupons with one ripped off, all of those left still a little greasy. “No idea,” I said.

“Yesterday,” Lucas said thoughtfully. “Wow, so they gave us, like, a half day over that. That’s mighty generous of them.”

I just looked at him.

“Okay,” Dexter said cheerfully, “so whose job was it to pay the power bill?”

Another silence. Then John Miller said, “Ted?”

“Ted,” Lucas echoed.

“Ted,” Dexter said, reaching over to the phone and yanking it off the hook. He dialed a number, then sat there, drumming his fingers on the table. “Hi, hey, Ted. Dexter. Guess where I am?” He listened for a second. “Nope. The dark. I’m in the dark. Weren’t you supposed to pay the power bill?”

I could hear Ted saying something, talking fast.

“I was about to solve the puzzle!” John Miller yelled. “I only needed an
L
or a
V.
”

“Nobody cares,” Lucas told him.

Dexter continued to listen to Ted, who apparently had not taken a breath yet, making only hmm-hmm noises now and then. Finally he said, “Okay then!” and hung up the phone.

“So?” Lucas said.

“So,” Dexter told us, “Ted has it under control.”

“Meaning?” I asked.

“Meaning that he’s royally pissed, because, apparently, I was supposed to pay the power bill.” Then he smiled. “So! Who wants to tell ghost stories?”

“Dexter, honestly,” I said. This kind of irresponsibility made my ulcer ache, but apparently Lucas and John Miller were used to it. Neither one of them seemed particularly fazed, or even surprised.

“It’s fine, it’s fine,” he said. “Ted’s got the money, he’s going to call them and see what he can do about getting it on tonight or early tomorrow.”

“Good for Ted,” Lucas said. “But what about you?”

“Me?” Dexter seemed surprised. “What about me?”

“He means,” I said, “that you should do something nice for the house by way of apology for this.”

“Exactly,” Lucas said. “Listen to Remy.”

Dexter looked at me. “Honey, you’re not helping.”

“We’re in the dark!” John Miller said. “And it’s your fault, Dexter.”

“Okay, okay,” Dexter said. “Fine. I’ll do something for the house. I’ll—”

“Clean the bathroom?” Lucas said.

“No,” Dexter said flatly.

“Do a load of my laundry?”

“No.”

Finally, John Miller said, “Buy beer?”

Everyone waited.

“Yes,” Dexter said. “Yes! I will buy beer. Here.” He reached into his pocket and came up with a crumpled bill, which he held up for all of us to see. “Twenty bucks. Of my hard-earned money. For you.”

Lucas swiped it off the table, fast, as if expecting Dexter to change his mind. “Wonderful. Let’s go.”

“I’ll drive,” said John Miller, jumping to his feet. He and Lucas left the kitchen, arguing about where the keys were. Then the screen door slammed, and we were alone.

Dexter reached over the kitchen counter and found another candle, then lit it and put it on the table as I slid into the chair opposite him. “Romantic,” I told him.

“Of course,” he said. “I planned all of this, just to get you alone in a dark house in the candlelight.”

“Chee-sy,” I said.

He smiled. “I try.”

We sat there for a second, in the quiet. I could see him watching me, and after a second I pushed out my chair and walked around the table to him, sliding into his lap. “If you were my roommate and pulled this kind of crap,” I said as he brushed my hair off my shoulder, “I’d kill you.”

“You’d learn to love it.”

“I doubt that.”

“I think,” he said, “that you are actually, secretly attracted to all the parts of my personality that you claim to abhor.”

I looked at him. “I don’t think so.”

“Then what is it?”

“What is what?”

“What is it,” he said, “that makes you like me?”

“Dexter.”

“No, really.” He pulled me back against him, so my head was next to his, his hands locked around my waist. In front of us the candle was flickering, sending uneven shadows across the far wall. “Tell me.”

“No,” I said, adding, “it’s too weird.”

“It is not. Look. I’ll tell you what I like about you.”

I groaned.

“Well, obviously, you’re beautiful,” he said, ignoring this. “And that, I have to admit, was what first got my attention at the dealership that day. But then, I must say, it’s your confidence that really did me in. You know, so many girls are always insecure, wondering if they’re fat, or if you really like them, but not you. Man. You acted like you couldn’t have given less of a shit whether I talked to you or not.”

“Acted?” I said.

“See?” I could feel him grinning. “That’s what I mean.”

“So you’re attracted to the fact that I’m a bitch?”

“No, no. That’s not it.” He shifted his weight. “What I liked was that it was a challenge. To get past that, to wriggle through. Most people are easy to figure out. But a girl like you, Remy, has layers. What you see is so far from what you get. You may come across hard, but down deep, you’re a big softie.”

“What?” I said. Honestly, I was offended. “I am
not
soft.”

“You bought me plastic ware.”

“It was on sale!” I yelled. “God!”

“You’re really nice to my dog.”

I sighed.

“And,” he continued, “not only did you volunteer to come over here and teach me how to properly separate my colors from brights—”

“Colors from
whites.
”

“—but you also stepped up to help solve our power bill problem and smooth over the differences with the guys. Face it, Remy. You’re sweet.”

“Shut up,” I grumbled.

“Why is that a bad thing?” he asked.

“It’s not,” I said. “It’s just not true.” And it wasn’t. I’d been called a lot of things in my life, but sweet had never been one of them. It made me feel strangely unnerved, as if he’d discovered a deep secret I hadn’t even known I was keeping.

“Okay,” he said. “Now you.”

“Now me what?”

“Now, you tell me why you like me.”

“Who says I do?”

“Remy,” he said sternly. “Don’t make me call you sweet again.”

“Fine, fine.” I sat up and leaned forward, stalling by pulling the candle over to the edge of the table. Talk about losing my edge: this was what I’d become. True confessions by candlelight. “Well,” I said finally, knowing he was waiting, “you make me laugh.”

He nodded. “And?”

“You’re pretty good-looking.”

“
Pretty
good-looking? I called you beautiful.”

“You want to be beautiful?” I asked him.

“Are you saying I’m not?”

I looked at the ceiling, shaking my head.

“I’m kidding, I’ll stop. God, relax, would you? I’m not asking you to recite the Declaration of Independence at gunpoint.”

“I wish,” I said, and he laughed, loud enough to blow out the candle on the table, leaving us again in total darkness.

“Okay,” he said as I turned back to face him, sliding my arms around his neck. “You don’t have to say it out loud. I already know why you like me.”

“You do, huh?”

“Yep.”

He wrapped his arms around my waist, pulling me closer. “So,” I said. “Tell me.”

“It’s an animal attraction,” he said simply. “Totally chemical.”

“Hmm,” I said. “You could be right.”

“It doesn’t matter, anyway, why you like me.”

“No?”

“Nope.” His hands were in my hair now, and I was leaning in, not able to totally make out his face, but his voice was clear, close to my ear. “Just that you do.”