#now im just using this earpiece that only works in both ears at a certain angle

[angryborzois]

i should really get actual headphones

[devnny]

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

JTRM — THE “R” STANDS FOR RECOVERING!

PREVIOUSLY.

yall im fuck im UFUC im N 💞💗😭💕💖

ITS DEVI LOVING HOURS EVERYBUDDY.....

The twin blades of some well-used craft scissors gleamed as much as they could with the speckles of paint and glue that clung to their surface, as Johnny lifted them up to the extended section of hair above his forehead. His free hand plucked up the pointed tip of the tuft and stretched the hair out fully, then clipped it short with one snip of the scissors. He copied the motion with his other ‘antennae’, and watched the black tendrils fall to the kitchen floor. Poo, he’d need to sweep this up. Devi didn’t accept messy floors the way he did.

His fist gripped another patch of his hair and he sheared away chunks of it at random lengths, as he always did. Johnny had decided after Devi complained that it was his ‘mop’ of messy hair that had disturbed her from her sleep a couple of days ago, that it would need to be cut. It was long overdue, anyway. He hadn’t given himself a haircut since he went partially bald on his return from Hell.

The harsh ring of Devi’s phone interrupted his trimming, and he gave it an aggravated scowl. The phone always seemed to go off when Devi was sleeping – people are so inconsiderate. He set the scissors down on the counter and moved to answer the phone in her place.

Johnny plunked the phone off its rest, and placed it to his ear. Before he could even say ‘hello’, a man’s voice burst to life on the other end.

“DEVI!” The man said in a lively voice. “Devi, baby, why you not call me, hm? You want me to be dead, yes? You like to worry me?”

Johnny’s frown returned with a vengeance.

“Uh.” He grunted out, trying to gather an articulate thing to say from the strings of suspicious words in his head. The man on the other end went quiet a moment, realizing the person he was speaking to was likely not Devi.

“Who is this?” He asked accusingly.

“This is Johnny.” Johnny replied in an irritated tone.

“What—why are you answering her phone, ‘Johnny’-man? WHERE is Devi!?”

Johnny looked at the earpiece with a snarl, then set it back against his head.

“Devi is sleeping. And I live here.” He wanted to add ‘temporarily’, but didn’t feel like this caller needed to know that much. There was an aghast gasp in reply.

“PUT HER ON THE PHONE RIGHT NOW.” The man demanded.

“She’s sleeping—who are you to demand her attention?” Johnny glowered resentfully.

“I am her FATHER.”

Johnny’s mouth disappeared, and he stared wide-eyed at the phone. Her father? He had forgotten all about the fact that most people… have families. He even knew that Devi had a dad; she mentioned him off-handedly a few times when they would talk at the bookstore. But she hadn’t mention him again the whole time he had lived here! He couldn’t be blamed for forgetting the possibility that her family would call for her, could he?

“Oh.” He replied, his voice back to a casual level. “Uh, yes. Okay. I will go get her.”

He set the phone down on the kitchen table and hurried to Devi’s room. With a nervous swallow, he turned the doorknob, and finding it unlocked, made his way inside. Johnny crouched slightly at the side of her bed, watching her sleep for a moment with a guilty expression. He hated to wake her if she needed to rest, especially when he’d already interrupted her sleep once this week.

One of his fingers popped out of his fist to poke at her shoulder a few times.

“Devi, Devi… Devi wake up.” He whispered. “Um, please.”

Her body shifted a little, and she groggily opened one eye to squint at him.

“Nny…” She croaked. “What?”

Johnny looked to the side nervously.

“Your dad is on the phone for you.”

Devi’s eyes opened immediately, and her mouth flattened in mild panic.

“WHAT?” She gasped as she sat up. “He—oh my God, you didn’t answer, did you?”

What a stupid question, she immediately thought, since obviously Johnny would have had to in order to know her father had called. Johnny’s impish smile confirmed that fear, and she groaned in distress before flinging the covers off and rushing to the phone.

--

Devi held her face in her hands on the couch, her hair sticking out every which way from sleep.

“Why, why, whyyy did you tell him you lived here…” She lamented in overexaggerated anguish, and Johnny pouted shamefully beside her.

“GOD.” Her hands shot down limply, and she frowned at the wall. She hadn’t gotten chewed out like that since she was a teenager – well, as ‘chewed out’ as she could get with her dad being as soft as he was. He was never one for discipline and yelling; his scolding was more akin to him being over-protective, and ranting about if she was being safe, and guilting her for hiding things from him.

Devi sighed tiredly; at least she had managed to convince him that Johnny was just a temporary roommate, a friend down on his luck with nowhere to go. That was true, at least, if not a major understatement.

“Whatever. I’m going back to bed.” She paused. “…Did you cut your hair?”

--

SOME TIME AFTER:

She was certain now that Meat’s plans were to push Johnny incessantly toward the desire for her touch – there was just no way it could be anything else. After a week or two with more observation, Devi had awoken to find Johnny in her bed a few more times; never as tightly cuddled against her as the first instance, but curled up in a little paranoid ball near her all the same.

Each time he would express having nodded off only to be met with gruesome figments of his own imagination – or maybe not of his own imagination, really. She had ‘caught’ him bundling up beside her the last time, but had remained quiet, her stare undetected by the wary maniac. Devi was angry with him, to some degree, for allowing this routine to continue so blindly. Couldn’t he see what Meat was pressuring him into doing? With all his lamenting about how touch-repulsed he was, and how he loathed the Reverend for trying to force him to partake in it, he didn’t notice that he was being coerced to find comfort in the spot beside her?

But mostly, she was angry with herself.

Devi was furious with herself every time she stopped to think about how Johnny’s close proximity didn’t bother her in the slightest. She hated that the shift of her mattress caused by his knees while he crawled along her comforter only filled her with the mild irritation of being woken up, and not panic-stricken dread that he was approaching her supposed-sleeping form. She hated that him laying only a foot away from her sparked not a single concern in her entire being, and that her mind could easily drift back to sleep while he rested beside her, if she let it.

She completely trusted, whether it was wise or not, that he would do nothing nefarious to her, murder or otherwise, while she was defenseless – and it was completely MORONIC.

This was a man known to be unhinged when emotionally compromised, and there he was, in her bed, actively trying ease his burdened psyche, and still her brain sent her body no distress signals. No natural reflex to run from him, or lash out and demand he get the Hell away from her. She had never allowed any man to live with her, and she certainly had never let anyone sleep in her bed. And yet Johnny had worked his way so casually into both situations, with neither Devi nor himself intent on this being the outcome.

It made her near-nauseous with anger. Anger at her own emotions, for letting someone get this close.

Emotional softness, physical tenderness, codependence, domesticity – all were things Devi had eagerly sworn off of around the time of her minor mental deterioration during and after her bout with Sickness… and Johnny.

The reminder made her want to rip her hair out in frustration. Johnny was one of the leading factors in her acceptance that she would never share her life with anyone, and yet she was currently doing just that, with him! It was maddening!

This had to stop, she decided. She needed to pull away, build her boundaries again.

But she only remembered that pledge when she would fall into a comfortable moment with him – each time their interactions got too playful, or too warm – and it scorched her insides that she only noticed after it was already happening. Devi would stop, readjust, cut the mood short, and reel it in to a more respectable level, but that just left the previous lightheartedness floating around aimlessly in the air with nowhere to go, and left Johnny wondering what he’d done to screw up the conversation this time.

AND TONIGHT:

The evening had been lovely so far – Johnny thought so, anyway. Devi had given him a small painting lesson at his request, and it was fun. Part of his arm seemed to recognize the feeling of a brush in his grasp, and after Devi corrected the way he held it, the movements felt almost natural. His artistic skill was still not on par with his old paintings, but painting anything at this point was thrilling.

Devi kept her distance, mentoring from afar, but her delight showed through the more Johnny went on. She commented on his subject – a detached rabbit head – with a morbid snicker, and Johnny joked that he could call it a self-portrait. Devi warned him, with a teasing tone, to be wary of self-portraits.

Then she brought a hand up to his chin, and thumbed away a speck of black paint that had managed to find its way onto his face. Johnny felt his chest flutter as she did, but the delight was short-lived. With twisting heartache, he watched her pupils tense in realization, and her fingers immediately whipped away from him, leaving her arm tense at her side instead. He tried to hold in his dejected frown, but thought he must not have done a good enough job, as Devi’s mouth smeared into an uncomfortable scowl as she turned away from him.

Dammit! What had he done now? No matter how hard he thought about it, every time Devi grew distant these days, he couldn’t decipher which of his actions had upset her.

“Devi—” He said hurriedly, seeing her make a move for the doorway. “Devi, wait, what’s wrong?”

Devi stopped abruptly and winced her eyes at the floor before turning to face him again.

“Nothing is wrong, Nny.” She stated flatly. “I’m just going to get a drink.”

“That’s not what I’m… referring to!” He pressed, and walked closer to her. “You’ve been acting so, eh… strange, lately…”

“Strange?” Devi glared at him, and he flinched, regretting his phrasing.

“I don’t mean like, in a BAD way! It’s just that… well…” Johnny scuffed his boot on the floor and sighed. He didn’t like commenting about her behavior, he would rather just get to the root of the problem, which was usually himself.

“Devi what did I do to upset you?”

“Nothing. I’m not upset.”

“But you—urgh.” Johnny groaned. “We were just—talking, laughing, a second ago! And then, you—”

Devi scoffed in annoyance, cutting him off.

“I’m not upset, just drop it.” She spoke tightly, and walked out of the room before he could have a chance to refute her. Johnny’s mouth squirmed uncomfortably.

He wouldn’t ever brag about his prowess in interacting with other human beings, but he was pretty damn confident that he knew Devi, at least. And she definitely was upset. It was very strange for Devi to be unhappy with him and not tell him loudly and pointedly why. Unable to let his worries go, he followed her to the kitchen, catching her just as she was reentering the living room.

“Devi, just tell me, please! I don’t care if it’s some little, miniscule thing!” Johnny insisted, wondering if maybe it was so seemingly-insignificant that she felt embarrassed to bring it up. “I just don’t want to upset you, but I can’t avoid doing whatever it is unless you tell me!”

Devi’s scowl returned, and her head felt hot in response to his defiance. That idiot had no idea what he was asking.

“I’m NOT upset!” She insisted again, angrier this time.

“Yes you are!” Johnny frowned back at her.

“Well NOW I am, because you’re annoying!” Devi growled and moved to walk around him. Johnny reacted by stepping in front of her, a move that surprised them both, and only served to enrage Devi further.

“Devi, please!” He urged her. “PLEASE, tell me what I’m doing wrong! I just want us to be friends again, like before…!”

His words made her face hot, and she barred her teeth at him.

“Well I DON’T!” Devi leaned into his face to yell at him before rearing away again. “I don’t want to be friends – I don’t even want to like you! I don’t want to like ANYONE!”

With a loud grunt, she stormed past him, but couldn’t keep the rest of her rant from spilling out of her mouth.

“You moron, don’t you GET IT? You don’t want to ‘upset’ me—I don’t care! I don’t fucking care!! There is no relationship here, there is no blossoming friendship or whatever-the-fuck! You CAN’T upset me like… like we’re so CLOSE.” She seethed, and Johnny shrunk back in hurt confusion.

Devi took a step toward him and continued her tirade relentlessly.

“I’m not ‘close’ with anyone, and I’m never going to be! All my attempts in my entire life to share myself with another person have ended in complete fucking catastrophe! I am never going to make the mistake of TRUSTING someone again. You don’t want to upset me? Then leave me the HELL ALONE! I’m better off that way!”

Devi took in a few haggard breaths, and watched Johnny’s wounded expression with a venomous stare. She hated him so much for doing this to her – for putting her in this situation. He couldn’t just leave it be, could he? Couldn’t drop the topic when she told him to.

All of this was his fault anyway! His for being enjoyable; his fault for tricking her, again, into thinking of him as someone worth trusting. Well, he wasn’t! She knew that, and it was absolutely absurd to think otherwise! Devi outright refused to leave herself open to being victimized again; she needed to make that very clear.

“I can’t ever have companionship, and that’s YOUR FUCKING FAULT!” Her expression pained through her anger, and she threw an accusing finger in his direction.

“You and every other fucking asshole that somehow persuaded my stupid ass into giving them a chance! I have absolutely ZERO trust in other people because of what you did to me! I’m never letting anyone get that close again, I’m never going to give someone enough room to hurt me—I’m not going to let you DO THAT TO ME AGAIN, NNY!”

Her scream trailed out on the last thread of air in her lungs, and she stopped again to pant raggedly for a moment. Johnny stared at her with his wrists cross meekly, eyes wide in horrified sadness.

“Devi…” He whispered. For a moment, Devi thought the devastation in his voice was for himself, until she felt a sensation on her jaw and instinctively went to rub it away.

It was only then did she recognize that the feeling was wet, and looked to the base of her palm in shock to see the smudged remains of a tear there.

Her stomach sank in realization.

She cried? Cried one single, shitty little tear? Her lips trembled into a miserable sneer. Oh, Hell no. She was not about to cry over this, and definitely not in front of someone else, especially not Johnny. Devi could feel the weight of another tear brimming on her eyelashes, and she immediately turned and retreated to her room.

Johnny reached a hand out, but couldn’t say anything before the door shut. His mouth closed into a near-invisible line, and his posture sagged pitifully. With a sigh, his head dropped as low as his shoulders.

What had he done? Why had he tried to argue the point with her? It wasn’t like he had any right to her thoughts or feelings. If she didn’t want to share what was distressing her, she didn’t have to. But he did push her, and he must have pushed her too far this time, enough to make her… cry.

His innards churned in pulsating rhythm with the painful goosebumps on his arms and back, and he thought that he might actually be ill, which would be very inopportune right now, since the apartment’s only bathroom was currently inaccessible.

“You should go check on her, Johnny.” A voice whispered in the back of his head, and Johnny couldn’t decipher if it was his own, or Meat’s.

“No.” He answered. “She’s… crying. She wants to be alone.”

“You would let her cry alone? After she held you as you wept on her?”

Johnny stared at the floor, a new ripple of guilt cascading over his already aching skin.

It was true that Devi was his emotional crutch, but he needed one. Devi didn’t. She was self-sufficient, she was stronger than he was. She could easily comfort herself when she needed it, he assumed… but he now wasn’t sure. What if she could, but it would be nice to have someone there to ease her pain? Would she even want to be comforted by the person responsible for the hurt she was feeling, though?

He shuddered out a nervous exhale, and began inching toward her door. The feeling in his stomach was so insistent that he go to her, even if she just responded with more yelling and hurling anything on hand at his head. If there was even one sliver of an iota that Devi needed him, he wanted her to know he was readily available to do whatever it took to console her.

--

Devi stood over her sink, blotting away at the persistent wetness that continued to drip past her eyelids. The wad of tissues in her hand has been doubled twice, and was almost soaked through.

“Stop… fucking crying!” She hissed a whisper at herself, glaring at the pinkish tinge in the whites of her eyes from the reflection that greeted her in the mirror. She hated crying; it was such a pointless expulsion of emotion, in her opinion. It was proof that her screws had come undone too far, and all the things that she kept bolted up inside where seeping through the cracks. Repulsive.

That’s what she needed to do – she needed to keep the screws in. She needed to wind them back up as tight as they would go, and make sure all this weepy, sappy shit stayed securely locked away, where it belonged. Devi moved her attention from the faucet back to the mirror of the medicine cabinet, and frowned despondently at her tired, sad eyes.

God, she hadn’t cried in such a long time. Not since her first ordeal with Johnny, actually.

The memory of her panic returned to her briefly; her back against the door of her old apartment, her voice shaking as she tried to speak to the police over the phone, coming down from the adrenaline as she hung up, and the realization that the man she had grown to adore had just tried to kill her. That gut-wrenching devastation that there would be no more days spent talking with him, and that their relationship would not only not be progressing further, but that their relationship in its entirety was gone.

She had cried so hard, there against her door, sitting with her nose to her knees, miserable and deflated, trying as best she could to separate the meek, cynical dork she cared so much about from the crazed, wild-looking man that had intended to stab her to death.

Another line of tears filled the bottom lid of her eyes, and she trembled out another scowl to combat the pain. It was getting difficult to keep her fire going, and that startled her. Her anger was all she had to shield herself from her other feelings. Feelings like sadness, or fear.

Devi’s lips twitched weakly as they fell into a small frown, and she left the sink to sit on her bed.

That’s what this all boiled down to – this was because she was afraid. Vulnerability was something that she no longer trusted, and she had grown so comfortable in the idea that she had expelled the need for it out of her body like the pus from an offensive little zit. She didn’t want to come to terms with the fact that if she wasn’t uneasy with Johnny being in her space, that meant that she wasn’t the independent, self-reliant person she believed she was, and that she was still unfortunately receptive to her body’s craving for emotional and physical intimacy.

She lifted her tissue lump up to her face again, and smudged away another unyielding droplet.

The door creaked open as she did, and Devi tensed slightly at the sudden interruption. She was grateful that her back was to the door, and made no move to look behind her. It wasn’t like there was any need to guess who was there.

Johnny sulked at her weak form as he hovered near the doorframe. Her figure looked so small and un-Devi-like, all slack and closed-in like that. He could tell from the slight movements of her shoulder and what minimal view of her hands that he had, that she was blotting her eyes, and another strong resurgence of guilt overcame him.

He had never seen Devi cry. He was confident that he must have brought her to tears in the past, long ago, when he betrayed her confidence in him the way he had, but he had never had to see it firsthand. Johnny felt smothering fear at having to face the consequences for his callous badgering, but still urged himself to persist, even if he desperately didn’t want the memory of her tear-stained face.

He left the safety of the door’s threshold and walked quietly to the side of Devi’s bed. Devi turned her face further away from him as he stopped at her side, and Johnny pouted more. He almost wished that she would just yell at him, curse at him or beat him with her fists or some blunt object – that would be easier to bear than her tormenting silence. Unsure of what to say or do, he took a seat beside her on the mattress, and sat with his hands clasped between his legs.

Devi glanced at him without offering him a view of her face, and smiled weakly with an inaudible sigh of a laugh. He was always so cautious with her. She appreciated that he offered her full sovereignty of her space, unless he was otherwise invited into it – the incident of waking her up as a sobbing mess withheld, of course. Johnny had been like that from the start; keeping his distance, either out of fear or respect for her. It was what had made her so comfortable around him to begin with.

She lowered her head again, shaking it softly with a sigh. Johnny turned his attention to her abruptly, afraid that he’d upset her further with his presence, but from what he could see, her demeanor hadn’t changed.

He desperately wanted to apologize, to tell her that he was sorry for pushing her into talking to him, that he was selfish for demanding it, and more importantly than anything, that he was so deeply sorry for damaging her trust the way he had, but no matter how he tried, the words clogged inside his throat, unable to arrange themselves in a presentable, meaningful fashion.

“Y’know what’s stupid, Nny?” Devi spoke suddenly, jolting Johnny away from his thoughts of jumbled apologies. He stared at her eyes, but they were focused on the floor, not him.

“…Hm?” He replied nervously, afraid to say more. Devi exhaled slowly before she continued.

“I’ve dated… a lot of shitty guys.” She started. “I mean, fuck, one of them was literally shitty. Shit all over himself during dinner. I told you about him, I think. Another guy that I met at a club or whatever, in college, burst into fucking flames after things went south. It’s always been some stupid crap like that.”

She moved the heels of her shoes off of the bed’s metal side railing and set them on the floor, crossing her arms over her lap.

“The first guy I ever dated was in high school, and he fucking crashed his car trying to get me to screw him, and we were stuck in there for like twelve hours before someone found us. The last one was a zombie. An actual, brain-eating, walking dead, zombie.”

Devi stared blankly at the floor while she spoke, and Johnny shifted uncomfortably beside her.

“And even with all of those idiots tallied, even with all the garbage I’d dealt with at that point, nothing, and I mean nothing, hurt me… the way you did, when you turned like that.” She kept the confession quiet. Johnny’s mouth parted slightly as he watched her with wide, remorseful eyes.

“I was so gutted.” Devi added, lifting her shoulders up more. “It completely tore me up inside, that you would do that to me. You, the guy I thought… I don’t know—I liked you. I really liked you. I thought my crappy dates were all over with by the time we got back to your house and you still hadn’t even tried to allude to wanting things to get… physical.”

She paused for a moment.

“I think you might’ve broke my heart, Nny.”

Johnny’s eyes, long since centered on her carpet, bent up painfully the more she talked. His eyebrows arched downward fully at her last comment, and the guilt in his chest reached new heights, threatening to release itself in the form of tears. He sucked in a whimpering breath, but again couldn’t say anything before Devi resumed talking.

“And… you know what’s, even stupider?” She asked him again, with a downtrodden laugh in the back of her throat. Johnny adjusted his leg, and moved his palms to rest flat on the sheets, too anxious to respond otherwise.

“After all of that, after everything we’ve been through – with the attempted murder, and then me accidentally killing you, and… and you giving me a head-parasite, and you trying to murder me again, and then… all the fighting and screaming, and failing plans to help you regain control of your brain, and ALL of the other stupid shit that got us to this point,” Devi hesitated, then lifted her arm, and set her hand over his.

“…I still like you best.” She finished with a small smile, and gave his hand a squeeze. Johnny’s eyes popped back open to their normal round shape, and he stared at her in shock.

He couldn’t have possibly heard that right, he thought, but his doubt was distracted by Devi’s hand kneading against the back of his own. He stared down at where they were connected, and couldn’t believe that after all the things she had just told him, that she would extend such a tender offer. With a nervous hike of his shoulders, he flipped his hand around, and closed his fingers around hers as she did the same.

Johnny could see the slight curve of her mouth, and smiled hesitantly himself.

It felt so wonderful, her palm against his. He had been so worried that her explosive rant less than fifteen minutes prior had marked a definitive end to any pleasant interactions between them, let alone any touching. The flexing of Devi’s digits against the side of his hand soothed his remaining worries, and he tried to mimic the massaging movements with the tips of his fingers as best he could.

Devi surprised him even further when she made a quick scoot closer, and gingerly rested her head against his shoulder. Johnny thought his entire skeleton had jumped out of his body at the sudden contact of her cheek against him, but after a quick breath and a few erratic heart palpitations, he was assured that no part of his physical form had blown off.

He realized slowly, as Devi’s thumb dragged hypnotically across his skin, how symbolic the gesture was. After all of her admissions settled with him, Johnny came to the tentative conclusion that all of her gnashing and belligerent comments previously were just a mask, made to cover what she didn’t want seen by others. Like the claws of a wounded animal, swinging and scratching to ward off this next potential predator, in hopes of surviving the injuries already sustained, her words shot out like a defense mechanism, sharp and erratic from fear.

Fear because… she did trust him.

It excited him through his disbelief to imagine that Devi would, genuinely, want to share herself with him again, unprotected by barriers built from cruel words or standoffish behavior. Johnny wanted more desperately than ever to ease her concerns, and offer himself as the comfort she needed, just as she offered herself to him, begrudgingly or not.

Devi hummed a long sigh through her nose, and Johnny’s eyes drifted to watch her, though his only view of her was her hair. A long, easy smile grew across his face, and whether from lack of judgement or eagerness to reciprocate, tilted his head, and rested his ear on her crown. Devi only replied with another sigh and slight shift of her body.

This was absolutely the stupidest thing she’s ever done, she admitted to herself without reservation. Just as bewildered as Johnny was, Devi too couldn’t quite wrap her mind around what sense it made to like Johnny best out of every dipshit she’d ever taken a liking to. Sure there was more common interests between the two of them than most of her prospective partners, and maybe their personalities bounced off of each other’s better than hers did with most other people, but it was still ridiculous.

He was a dramatic, overly-sensitive, insecure, clingy, lit powder keg full of violence and destruction – what could outweigh that? Did she have some pitiful hope that the Johnny she ‘knew’ was inside the jumbled-up mess of a man that the wall-thing left behind, or, was it because of how eagerly he tried to please her and obey her instructions despite every atom in his body pulling him in the opposite direction? She was too drained to even try to debate it.

Johnny turned his face against her hair slightly to speak.

“I’m so sorry, Devi.” He said softly, remorse evident despite the contentment in his voice. “I would never want to… drive you to tears. You’re so wonderful.”

A quiet, airy laugh burst past her lips, and Devi hid her face further into his shirt while she finished with a snicker. He was so embarrassing.

They stayed perched on the end of her bed for a few minutes longer, resting in the same position while Devi gathered herself. She took as much comfort as she could from the grip of his hand as it cradled hers, and from the timid, hesitant nuzzling of his cheekbone on the top of her head, which might have just been the result of two bodies breathing together and not anything decisive on his part. She almost hoped it wasn’t intentional, because the idea of being cuddled was too sappy for words.

That thought pushed her to get up, and she waved her hands flippantly with a blush on her cheeks, palming and brushing away any remaining dampness under her eyes.

“Okay—okay, enough of that…!” Devi spoke with a laugh in reference to her tearful outburst, looking off awkwardly as she did.

Johnny stayed seated, watching her regain her composure with an adoring smile. He clasped his hands in his lap again, reveling in the warm, buzzy feeling that had replaced the nervous knots in his stomach; she was so charming, and sweet, and she liked him, still! Nothing on Earth could make him happier!

Devi listed her irises back to him, trying to save face in the wake of her embarrassingly vulnerable moment.

“You want to, um, watch a movie?” Her arms crossed awkwardly. “Maybe? Heh—or, something?”

Johnny nodded with a wide smile and an eager “Okay!”, then popped up into a standing position in front of her. Devi sputtered out another embarrassed laugh from the shine in his stare, and started shoving him toward the living room.

“Go, go—shut up, don’t laugh!” The light tone of her voice betrayed her demanding words, and Johnny gagged back giggles the entire way to the couch.

--

NEXT.