Be Quiet

Oscar

The past few days have been weird. No, that’s an understatement. Otherworldly, maybe? Like I’m living in an alternate universe where all of a sudden I have a girl and a dog sleeping in my roommate’s bedroom, even though she has a house right next door.

She was terrified to spend the night alone after the break-in, and despite our history, I didn’t have the heart to wash my hands of the issue and tell her it’s not my problem. It might not be, but I’ve spent the last three days with her in my house, and I don’t hate it.

My roommates agreed to cut their reading week short so they could come back to help get her settled back home. Austin spoke with Devin and arranged a multi-camera system he said will be more than sufficient. I didn’t pay attention to any details beyond that. I trust him.

They should be home in a few hours, so I have to make sure I get all the supplies we’ll need before they arrive.

I exit my bedroom just as Frankie walks out of Blake’s room, wearing a pair of long satin pyjama pants and button-down shirt. He insisted she use his fancy mattress and Egyptian cotton sheets to get a good sleep before his magnificent return. His words; not mine. I think it might have worked, because for the first time in about eighty hours, she looks well rested.

“Oh. You go first.” She points at the bathroom door before quickly spinning around to retreat into the master bedroom.

“It’s fine. I’ll use Austin’s.”

She pauses, then spins back to face me. “Thank—”

“You said that already. A lot.”

She really has. She’s thanked me about a hundred times over the past three nights.

“Right. Well… hopefully after today I’ll get out of your way. I can’t thank you enough—”

“Trust me. You can.” The words spill out a little harsher than I mean for them to. Just the fact she hasn’t clued in that I don’t hate having her around yet is a little annoying. So instead of wasting any more time trying to make her realize I’m not as upset about our current living arrangement as she thinks, I turn to head down the stairs without another word.

By early afternoon, the guys have all returned home, and Frankie thanked each of them twenty-eight more times. She’s also hugged each of them with an enthusiasm she’s never shown me, even when I came into her house to protect her from an intruder. Each smile she gives Blake, Keith, or Austin inches my jealousy up a notch.

“Grab that wire,” Austin instructs, redirecting my racing thoughts by snapping his fingers and pointing.

I grab the black wire and pass it to him.

“You not sleeping?” he asks, splicing the wire with a pocketknife.

“No less than normal. Why?”

He shrugs as he twists two pieces of wire together with a connector. “You look tired. And you seem distracted.”

I roll my eyes, trying not to be annoyed with Austin for not understanding how my brain works, but it’s hard sometimes. There’s only so many times you can explain the same thing before it becomes pointless. It’s also annoying that no one seems to point out when Blake is distracted or chaotic, because that’s his permanent state. When I have an off day, people try to ‘fix’ me.

“Things have been a little weird around here.” I shove the box toward Austin that holds one security camera he’s working to install. “Back in a bit.” I need some water. And a break.

Like our house, Frankie’s kitchen is tucked around the back side of the stairs. When I walk past the corner, I’m surprised to find Blake, alone in the kitchen, eating a bag of corn chips and jarred con queso.

“I don’t know how you eat that garbage and don’t lose your mi—” I pause and watch him scoop more toxic sludge into his mouth. “Never mind.”

Blake replies, “Touche,” holding his chip up in a cheers gesture. “Want some?”

“Pass. Thanks.” I stop at the fridge, tugging it open to grab a bottle of water. “Where’s Frankie?” I ask, looking into the fridge instead of at Blake. It becomes clear that con queso and corn chips are possibly the least toxic food items Frankie has in her house.

“Thinkin’ about her ‘garbage bin’, hmm?”

I stand straight to look over the open fridge door at this buffoon I call my best friend, resisting the urge to call him an idiot again. “Move on, guy. I’m not interested in her garb—” No, you know what? I’m not stooping to his level and using his stupid euphemisms. “Where is she?”

He wipes his mouth with the sleeve of his waffle-knit tee. “Upstairs with Keith and Brad. Installing a camera in her bedroom.” He waggles his eyebrows, and that’s the final straw that lands him on the list of people I’m over talking to.

Frankie’s laughter reaches my ears as I approach the top of the stairs. I grit my teeth as I approach the room and find Frankie seated on her bed with Brad, watching as Keith stands precariously on a dining chair and secures a camera to the ceiling.

Her posture stiffens when she sees me, causing her to pull her shoulders back and sit upright. “Everything okay?”

Not really. This is weird. Uncomfortable. It’s not that I don’t want her laughing at anyone else or thanking them or hugging them. I just don’t want to feel like she thinks she can’t do those things around me, and I don’t know how to fix that without making a fool of myself. So I grunt and nod… and immediately regret both.

Even Brad tilts his head while looking at me, as if he’s asking what my problem is.

Keith drops a screwdriver, which conveniently makes my presence less awkward. I step forward to pick it up and, from my vantage point, I can see inside Frankie’s closet. Returning the screwdriver to Keith is suddenly far from my mind as I glimpse the lacy fabric in a variety of colours.

“Oscar?” Keith asks, forcing me to look away.

“Yeah. Sorry.” I hand him the tool, thinking back to the two other times I’ve been in here. I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t been curious about what was in there based on her reactions. Never would I have guessed that she was hiding a lingerie collection. It would also be a lie if I said I wasn’t tempted to look closer.

But with Keith in the room and Frankie’s current feelings toward me, that feels fifty shades of wrong, so I reach my hand up to slide the door closed.

The soft sound of the sliding door making contact with the wall draws Frankie’s attention. Pink creeps across her cheeks, and her eyes widen.

Before I can formulate a response to offer reassurance or crack a joke, Keith hops down from the chair and dusts his hands off, clapping them together. “Finished. Austin just needs to connect the wires.”

I keep my eyes on Frankie instead of acknowledging him, and she’s wholly focused on me. For a few seconds, it’s as if we share a wordless conversation where she’s begging for verification I didn’t see what she knows I did, and I keep my expression neutral, not confirming either way. After a few seconds, her wide eyes transform into narrowed ones, sending an entirely different message. It’s hard to keep a straight face, but years of martial arts training have prepared me for this moment. Game face on.

“You wanna go ask Austin to hook this up?” Keith interrupts. Again.

I turn enough to look at him. “Yeah, sure. He was just finishing one on the main floor.” I glance at Frankie on my way out of the room and can’t miss the redness that has spread down her neck.

As hard as it was to keep my face neutral, it’s even harder to stop myself from picturing her in any of those lacy creations. Did she wear those when she was sleeping in the room down the hall from me? When she slept in my bed? I’ve acknowledged that she was gorgeous and intrigues me in a way no one else has before, but as I reach the bottom of the stairs, it’s hard to deny how insanely attracted to her I am. Not just physically.

All the more reason I need to get out of here, because even after everything, she still seems to think I’m the devil incarnate. Letting myself get in any deeper with her is just going to end in disappointment, and Sonia taught me that I can’t afford the distraction.

“Okay, we’ve got six cameras. One here”—Austin points at the camera I helped him with earlier—“one in that corner aimed at the front door, one outside each entrance, one in your room, and one at the top of the stairs. They’re all hard-wired with battery backup, and connected to a hard drive. So even in a power outage, they’ll still record footage; they just won’t be able to transmit the feed to your phone. As long as your internet is on, you can check the feed from anywhere. I installed the app and connected everything, so you can change the settings from there if you want to activate the motion sensors when you’re gone. Brad might set them off, though.”

We all look over at Brad, who has taken up two-thirds of the couch to have his fourteenth nap since we arrived five hours ago.

“Not as much as you’d think,” Frankie replies with a brief laugh. “This is amazing. Thank you guys so much.” She looks straight at me and adds, “All of you. I don’t know what I would have done without your help.”

“Just being neighbourly. Gotta protect each other’s garbage bins. Am I right, Ozzie?” Blake flashes me an irritating smile, likely knowing I want to throttle him, but I won’t with this many witnesses.

Instead, I reply, “Guy, I’m going to stuff you in a garbage bin.”

“Now you’re talkin’!”

Keith and Austin both laugh, leaving Frankie with a twisted face.

“Thanks to the solid new door from Devin and the security bar from Oscar, no one is getting through that thing again. The cameras are just more of a deterrent, and you can see if anyone is hanging around who shouldn’t be.” Austin places a hand on Frankie’s shoulder. “We’re going to find out who this guy is.”

She nods, taking a deep swallow.

“If you need anything else, you know where to find us,” Keith adds. “I’ve got so many reading week assignments to get done before Monday, so I need to head out.”

With few parting words and assurances she’ll be fine on her own, the guys and I leave to head back home.

The weird thing is, even with more people, it feels more empty than it ever has.