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Dennis was half-asleep when the shoe hit his head.
“Get up,” Santos said from the door. “We’re going out.”
“Wh -” He sat upright in bed and whirled around but she was already gone, disappearing down the hallway into the kitchen. “Santos, you - you can’t just come into my room and -”
“The room you spent 10 months not paying for?”
“You can’t just come into my room,” he repeated, a little louder to try and drive the point home because she also, unfortunately, had a point, “and throw… shoes at me.” He grabbed it from where it was resting on his bed - it was one of her special edition Shrek Crocs, the ones he knew for a fact that she only wore in the shower at the gym. He shuddered and threw it back out into the hallway. “And what do you mean, we’re going out?”
“I mean we’re going out. Properly going out.” She appeared in the doorway again, crouching down beside her dejected Croc to tie up a pair of Doc Martens. At least she hadn’t thrown one of those - they probably could’ve killed him. “So get up, get dressed. They won’t let you in if you’re only wearing boxers.” She paused and cocked her head. “Well, maybe if we go to the right bar, but… no, I don’t wanna risk it.”
He smoothed his hands over his face. They still smelled like dirt. He had just gotten back from the farm, a trip that ended in another awkward conversation where Amy spent half of it looking at his lips and he tried not to notice, and the last thing he wanted to do was go out, let alone find out what Santos considered to be “properly going out”. “I don’t wanna get up, I don’t wanna get dressed. I want to go to sleep. I’m exhausted.”
Something softer hit his head this time. A bra, he realized when he opened his eyes. He yelped and flung it across the room.
“Yeesh,” Santos grimaced. “Alright, that settles it. We need to get you laid - and preferably by someone other than a grieving widow.”
“‘We’?”
“Five minutes, Huckleberry!” she called out as she disappeared down the hallway again. “Or I am dragging you out by the mullet!”
-
“She’s not coming,” Santos announced as she tucked her phone into her back pocket.
Dennis didn’t turn his head to look at her as she spoke. He was too busy watching a cat chase a leaf across the street. After the day that he'd had it was about the only thing he could cognitively manage, which meant that sympathizing with his roommate about her situationship was definitely not in the cards. “Bummer.”
“Yeah. Bummer.” A rough sigh left her lips, and the two of them shuffled forward a few places in line. “She’s so weird. One second it’s all, ‘Ohhh, let’s get a cabin for the weekend, let’s share underscrubs or whatever.’ Then the next it’s all, ‘Yeah, I’m actually super busy all week, but maaaybe I can squeeze in a quickie on Friday night if you have no other plans’, and I’m like - well, I don’t have plans because I only want to make plans with you, so sure, let’s do it, I guess.”
“Yeah, she’s super weird.”
Santos punched his shoulder.
“Ow! What was that for?”
“Can you at least try to have fun tonight?”
“I am trying, Santos, alright? I’m trying.” He exhaled hard and scrubbed a hand over his face again. Despite the fact he had doused them in Bath and Body Works soap and scrubbed them down to the bone before he and Santos left the house, they still smelled like dirt. “And in my defense, I already told you that I didn’t want to go out.”
“You never want to go out.” She kicked a rock. He dropped his chin to his chest and watched it skitter across the cement. “You know what’s really weird, Huckleberry? Is that we never get pizza. We never watch Too Hot to Handle and talk about who we want to fuck.”
“I’m well aware of who you want to… do that with. I would say that I’m too aware, actually.”
She punched his shoulder again. “I’m being serious. Can we do stuff together? More than once every two fucking months?”
He finally glanced over at her. Even though his first instinct was to say something noncommittal to get her off his back, he was surprised to see how hurt she looked. How desperate. And sure, maybe it was the exhaustion speaking, but it seemed a little like the same sort of desperation he saw when he went out with the street team, the same sort of desperation he saw in Amy when she pleaded with him to reconsider her offer to let him move in part-time. The sort of desperation that said, I can’t keep going in the direction that I’ve been going. I won't survive if I have to do this alone. Please, help me.
Maybe it was the exhaustion speaking. Or maybe it wasn't, because he knew that desperation very well - he used to see it whenever he looked in the mirror. He couldn’t anymore, though. Santos’s room and his bathroom shared a wall; he could always hear her music. Among other things, but... he didn't really want to think about those right now.
“Alright,” he said with as real of a smile as he could manage. (It probably looked more like a grimace - did he mention that he was really tired?) “Alright, Santos, sure. We can do stuff together. Uh - non-sexually, o-of course…?”
“Obviously,” Santos said as she pulled her phone back out. When he glanced at the screen, he saw her Googling other bars in the area. “Because, unfortunately, I am far too loyal for my own good.”
-
“Boo! You guys SUCK!”
“It’s not their fault,” he tried to reason, even though he was also a little pissed that the fifth group in a row was cutting them in line. This was the third club they had tried to get into that night alone, and they still hadn’t made it to a bouncer. At this point he was pretty sure he was going to fall asleep at the bar, and hoped that no one would think he died and call an ambulance before Santos had a chance to wake him up. “They probably know the owner or something.”
“Yeah, I know they probably know the owner or something,” she snapped, “my point is that other people who don’t know the owner are ready to spend WAY TOO MUCH MONEY AT YOUR BAR! DON’T YOU WANT OUR MONEY, MR. MONEYBAGS?!”
“Santos, can you chill out -?”
“MR. FRAT BOY MONEYBAGS!”
“Mr. Frat B- do you know the owner?”
“Eh, they’re all the same,” she said dismissively. Jesus. They’d been living together for over a year and he still had no idea how she could go from 0 to 100 and then back down to 0 so quickly. “Fuck. I mean seriously, I’m - I’m freezing my balls off out here.”
“How do you think I feel?”
“Pfft. I bet mine are bigger than yours.”
“I don’t think you could handle that.”
“Well, I certainly don’t want to handle yours.”
“You’re ridiculous.”
“Mmm, you mean ridiculously charming?”
“Yeah, something like that.”
Santos turned to the group behind them. “Do you guys come here a lot? Is it usually like this?”
“Come on, Trin,” he said, tugging on her arm. “Let’s just go find a dive bar or a Legion or something. We’re obviously not going to get into any of the places that you want to go, and - and I’m not much of a dancer, anyway.”
“Right.” He could feel her watching him as he ducked under the rope. “I forgot that you save your best moves for your bedroom mirror.”
“Yeah,” he replied, holding up the rope so she could follow him out of the line and onto the sidewalk. “Something like that.”
-
They did find a dive bar a few blocks away, and inside the bar they found a corner booth with no issues. The only other people in there were at least twice their age and wearing expressions that told Dennis they would rather be six feet under, which meant the drinks would probably be reasonably priced and that no one there was going to give them a second glance. Which was good, because Santos suddenly seemed very tense, and Dennis had no idea what to make of that.
“No one’s called me Trin in a long time,” she murmured eventually, staring down into her Long Island Iced Tea with a furrowed brow. “Like… a really long time.”
“I’m sorry,” he responded, frowning. He didn’t even realize he said it, and he didn't know why he did. He still referred to her as Santos in his head. “I didn’t - uh -”
“No, no, don’t be sorry.” She sighed. “I liked it. I think. It was nice, it… it reminded me of an old friend.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. But, uh, we don’t have to talk about that.” Abruptly, she sat up in her seat and raised her drink to her lips. “I gotta be a lot more drunk to talk about that. I’m just saying that… it was nice to not be called 'Santos' for once. To be reminded that I'm... yenno... an actual person. With thoughts. And feelings. And... whatever.”
“I get that.” He tilted his head, staring at himself in the reflection of his drink as she took an especially noisy sip of hers. “I kinda feel the same way? Like my relationship with my last name is sorta complicated, mostly because of my parents and -”
“Shut the fuck up.”
He paused for a moment, then winced like she had punched him. “Yeah. Alright. Huckleberry, shutting the fuck up.”
“No, I - shit, sorry, I wasn’t trying to - I will gladly listen to you rant about your parents whenever you want, but - but Mel just walked into the bar. With Dr. Fucking Langdon.”
The relief lasted only a second before the meaning of her words registered - Mel and Dr. Langdon - and he was cranking around in his seat to take a look. “What? Where?”
“Jesus Christ, Whitaker, could you be more obvious?” Santos grabbed a fistful of his hair and pulled his head down so quick that the movement nearly broke his neck. “Over there.” He was about to tell her that he couldn’t see where she was looking and therefore ‘over there’ was a useless direction before she added, “At the bar.”
There was a pole in the way, so he slowly poked his head out from behind it and sure enough, Doctors King and Langdon were sitting at the bar like it was a place that made sense for the two of them to be together. Dr. Langdon looked the same as he always did - his street clothes were just as dark as his scrubs, and his hair was, unfortunately, as immaculate at always - but Mel was wearing a beige cardigan with light blue jeans and white sneakers. She looked like she should be at a library instead of a bar.
“She looks like she should be at a library instead of a bar,” Santos commented.
“I was just thinking the same thing,” Dennis replied.
The two of them watched in silence as Mel and Dr. Langdon got settled. Mel stared at the bartender until the man glanced in their direction, at which point she practically jumped out of her seat and waved at him like she was saying hello, and Dr. Langdon checked his phone while resting his feet on the rungs of Mel’s stool. Then, when the bartender had taken their orders and disappeared, Mel turned to Dr. Langdon and placed a hand on his thigh. No - not only did she place a hand on his thigh, but she kept it there. Dennis even thought he saw her squeeze.
He glanced over at Trinity. Her mouth was hanging open, but when she noticed him watching her, she mouthed, Holy fuck.
Holy fuck indeed.
The pole was unfortunately still in the way, so he slid to the left to get a better view of them, and Trinity slid to the right until she was pressed into his side. Dr. Langdon reached out and tucked a strand of Mel’s hair behind her ear just as Trinity reached for the Specials menu on the centre of the table and opened it so it was covering both her and Dennis’s faces in time for Mel to throw her head back with laughter. It was weird enough seeing them outside of work, but seeing them sitting so close together and acting so familiar with each other in a place with such dim lighting - he felt like he was intruding on something.
“This is weird," Trinity whispered, "right?”
“Yeah," Dennis whispered back, "it’s pretty weird.”
“I mean I knew they had a weird, codependent, unlikely-best-friends thing, like a puppy and a snake or a cat and a bear or whatever.” Trinity leaned closer; her head was on Dennis’s shoulder now. “But is it just me or does this feel like -”
“A date."
“Yes! Exactly. Which is already weird, but, like, should you really bring a recovering addict to the bar?”
“Maybe it was his idea?”
"Obviously it was his idea, Mel’s not that stupid or that mean.”
“Do either of them even live in the area?”
“How the hell should I know?”
He rolled his eyes and was glad she couldn't see it.
“Oh, my God.” Trinity leaned closer and brought the menu with her, leaving too much of Dennis’s face visible; he leaned in closer as well. “What the hell is he doing?”
Apparently what Dr. Langdon was doing was giving Mel a gift. Dennis had no idea where he had been keeping it for the last few minutes, because it was about the size of a sandwich and he didn’t have a bag on him, but when he pulled it out from behind his back and held it out to Mel, she touched forearm and then his wrist before taking it from him.
“Place your bets,” Trinity whispered. “What’s he giving her?”
“I don’t know.”
“Come onnnn. Unleash your inner freak, Dennis. What is it?”
“Alright, it's... uh... a pair of mittens. That he knitted. In rehab. With some, uh… fancy alpaca wool his wife bought for him from the farmer’s market.”
“Jesus, dude, get your mind off the farm!”
“My mind is not on the -”
“Is that a fucking Walkman?”
It was, apparently, a fucking Walkman. It was old and scuffed up and Dennis thought he saw sparks when Mel popped the door open to look at whatever tape was inside, but she leaned so far forward to hug Dr. Langdon that the wrapping paper fell onto the ground and her stool tilted forward at a forty-five degree angle.
“Look at him.” Trinity was so close that her hair tickled Dennis’s cheek. “I think he’s trying to keep her stool steady with his feet.”
Dr. Langdon was obviously trying to keep her stool steady with his feet, but he also moved one of his hands from her shoulder to grab onto the back of it and make sure that either she didn’t fall off or that it didn’t keep falling forward. Now that Dennis was thinking about it, and now that she had reminded him, they did seem closer than the rest of the doctors. They seemed even closer than him and Trinity - and the two of them lived together.
“If you were about to fall off a stool,” Dennis told her under his breath, “I don’t think I’d catch you.”
There was a pause before Trinity answered. “You better not. You better get that shit on camera, or I’m throwing your ass to the curb.”
-
“You’re seriously telling me that you’ve never made a playlist for someone?”
“No.” Dennis frowned as he watched Trinity scroll through her Spotify library on the TV in the living room. He could tell that that was probably the wrong thing to say to her - it was becoming increasingly obvious that she had several hundred of them. “What reasons do I have to make someone a playlist?”
“Uh, lots of them. Getting laid, for starter’s.”
“Eugh.”
“And then, y’know, telling someone that you love and care about them without saying that you love and care about them.”
“Yeah, but how?”
“I don’t know. I made one once, for this girl - all the song titles spelled out a message. It was actually pretty cool. And it’s a lot harder than you think…”
He sagged lower on the couch and continued picking pineapple off his pizza. (He tried to convince her to do one of those half and half pizzas with different toppings on each side, but she was apparently “too tired” to click the two extra buttons and "too poor" to pay the extra dollar.)
“So what do you think Dr. Langdon put on his mixtape for Mel?”
“Hmm…” Trinity tilted her head back and stared at the ceiling. “I don’t know. I have no idea what music he’d like aside from, like, Weird Al and… I dunno… Coldplay.”
“Weird Al?”
“All white guys between the ages of thirty and forty five like Weird Al.” She reached over to scoop up some pineapple from his plate and toss it into her mouth. “Trust me.”
“Sure. I trust you.” When he looked back at the TV, he absently scanned the name of the playlist at the top of her library and then stopped mid-chew. “Wait a minute, is that - did you make that for Garcia?”
Her eyes flew back towards the screen. The second she realized what he was looking at, her face turned bright red. “No.”
“Did you seriously call it ‘Yo Yo Yo your Boat’? And - is that the cherries emoji?”
“Shut up.” She flipped to a new playlist, one that she had apparently titled ‘sad girl hours’, and retreated even deeper into the corner of the couch. “No, it’s… I mean yes, but that’s just because it’s funny. It’s, like, totally not serious.”
“The playlist, or the relationship?”
“... Augh. Both.”
He stared at her for a second, thinking long and hard what he wanted to say to her. She had been a lot less combative than she normally was that evening, but that might’ve meant that she had been storing up a bunch of throttling and was about to unleash it. “You know,” he started, “it’s… okay for it to mean something to you, even if it’s not that serious.”
“Speaking from experience?”
He thought about Amy. He shouldn’t have been thinking about Amy, of course, because it was serious, but he also had no idea what to call “it”. He wanted to say friends, but they weren’t friends, really. They never had been. And then he thought about whatever was happening between Mel and Dr. Langdon, about how Dr. Langdon still wore his wedding ring every shift and always lingered a little longer on his ring finger when he washed his hands, but also about how he went to the bar with Mel only to order a glass of water and rest his feet on the rungs of her stool before she even started falling.
“Relationships aren’t like medicine,” he said. “You don't have to label them just to prove that they're important.”
She tilted her head and peered at him thoughtfully. He could tell that he had gotten through to her, and he could also tell that she was a little impressed. It made him sit up straighter in his seat. “When did you get so wise, Dennis?”
“I’ve always been wise, Trin." He picked a piece of pineapple off his pizza and flicked it at her. “Although I probably won’t stay that way if you keep throwing shoes at my head."