Page 60 of Not In The Contract

“Right, but I’m not exactly the quintessential example of subtlety, am I?”

“No.” She laughed. “No, you’re as subtle as a flaming school bus.”

“Thank you for the vote of confidence.”

“I’m agreeing with you!” she hissed. “But I think you’re maybe overthinking this. You have enough to worry about between her schedule and your thesis. Don’t add more to it.”

“That’s easier said than done,” I said unhappily. “I feel like I’m setting myself up to fail, somehow.”

“Yeah, that’s the fatigue talking.” She sighed. “You don’t have classes today, right?”

“No, they were canceled,” I said in relief.

“Good, go home and get some rest,” she said. “Take it easy, eat something delicious, and let some stupid Netflix show run in the background. Just unplug, please?”

“I’ll try.”

Unplugging, as it turned out, would be a lot more nuanced than Tamera had led me to believe. Mainly because Alex somehow sensed my arrival later that evening.

“Devon?” she called as I let the massive front door swing shut behind me.

I walked the familiar path to the kitchen and found her in a pair of dark purple sweatpants and a fluffy looking cardigan, the sleeves rolled up to her elbows. She chopped tomatoes into precisely diced slices before shucking them into a frying pan.

“Yeah?”

She looked at me over her shoulder, her hair slipping free of the loose bun. Her face was free of makeup and I realized how often I’d seen her without her classic red lip and smoked out eyes.

Almost never, to be precise.

“We haven’t had much time to talk lately,” she said, turning back to the cutting board. “I thought we could do that over dinner.”

“I’d be happy to,” I said with a forced smile, smothering the yawn that danced on my tongue. “Can I get changed real quick?”

“Sure,” she said. “Dinner won’t be done for a while so you can do whatever you need to.”

I dashed upstairs, pointedly ignoring the siren call of my bed. I changed out of my clothes and grabbed the comfiest plaids I owned and shoved my feet into my slides, wishing I could plunge into a sleep so deep that Brendan Fraser would have to pull me out.

I joined Alex in the kitchen, where she expertly tossed vegetables in the pan.

“That was fast,” she noted, hearing me skid into the kitchen.

“I didn’t want to keep you waiting,” I said, hopping up onto one of the kitchen bar stools.

She chuckled and the sound made something in my chest clench. “It won’t be too far off from our day to day, would it?” she teased, and I blinked.

“Was that… a joke?”

She threw a smirk over her shoulder. “Is that hard to believe?”

Amusement tugged at the corners of my mouth. “No, I guess.” I smiled. “I didn’t expect it. I really messed up the other day.”

She shrugged. “Holding a grudge over something that can’t be changed is a waste of time,” she explained.

“Ah,” I said. That was in character for her.

“We’re going to be changing the schedule.”

“We- what?” I stammered.