“How do you feel?” I asked her. She took a step forward, unsteady, then another before she started to fall again. I rushed over, grabbing her by the waist, steadying her by wrapping my arm around her. She looked up at my face as I led her over to the couch, laying her down there.

“I made soup last night. I’ll warm some up.”

“You made soup?” she asked with a small, amused smile on her face. “All by yourself?”

“Yes, all by myself,” I said, beaming at her. “Stay here. I’m going to warm some up.”

“Okay,” she said, and I left her behind to go into the kitchen, taking the soup out of the refrigerator and heating it on the stove. I hurried it out to her, setting it in front of her and handing her a spoon. She looked at it skeptically, and I had to laugh.

“Just eat it,” I said.

“What—what kind of soup is it supposed to be?”

“It’s chicken and dumplings,” I said to her, sitting next to her. She lifted a spoonful of it to her face, smelling it. I watched as she blew on it, and couldn’t help but smile as she took a sip of it. She swallowed, keeping her face even and blank.

“What do you think?” I asked her. She looked away from me, and I saw that her body was shaking.

“Ali?” I asked, my brow furrowed. I heard her giggling and she turned toward me, covering her mouth with her hand.

“What is it?” I asked her.

“This is so—this is so bad,” she said between giggles, putting her spoon down, laughter pouring out of her. I started to laugh, too, at the look on her face, and within seconds we had both dissolved into hysterics. I wiped tears from my eyes after a moment.

“Listen, I had the same thought last night,” I said to her. She laughed again.

“And you gave it to me anyway?”

I shrugged. “I thought it would help.”

“Thank you,” she said softly, then looked down at the bowl. “Do I—are you going to make me eat the rest of it?”

“No,” I said, pushing it away from her. “I’ll get you take-out or something.”

“I can do it,” she said, standing up, going for her phone. I took her wrist and pulled her back down, and she looked up at me with an eyebrow raised.

“You’re not doing anything but sitting on this couch for a couple of days,” I told her.

“No, I have to go to work—” she said, but I cut her off by putting my hand up.

“I found your partner in your phone. Melissa. I called her to tell her what happened, and she said that you need to take a couple of days off.”

“You did that?” she asked. I nodded. She settled back into the couch then.

“So what now?”

“I’m going to hang out here for the next couple of days and wait on you hand and foot.”

“Why?” she asked with a curious smile on her lips. I shrugged, not answering, standing up instead.

“Do you like Chinese food?”

“Yes,” she said.

“I’m going to go next door and grab the menu. I’ll be right back.”

“Okay,” she said, looking up at me in surprise. I ran into my apartment and got the menu, and when I got back we ordered dinner. She sat cross-legged on the couch, propped up by pillows that I had slipped behind her, staring at me with an interested look in her eye.

“What kind of movies do you like to watch?” I asked her, picking up the remote and turning on the TV.

“Horror movies,” she said.

I laughed, looking over at her. “You’re joking,” I said.

“No, really. I love horror movies.”

“Really?” I asked. “And yet the closet seemed to freak you out.”

“That’s because I was trapped in there with a monster,” she said.

I laughed. “But you don’t mind monsters on TV,” I said.

“Nope.”

“So you want to watch a horror movie?” I asked her doubtfully.

She laughed. “Are you scared, Tyler?”

“No,” I said, though the truth was that horror movies had always freaked me out. I didn’t want to show that around her though, so I switched over to the movie app and scrolled through the horror section until she saw one that sounded interesting, an old 70s slasher called Black Christmas.

“This is my favorite Christmas movie,” she said, settling back into the couch as I started it.

“That’s pretty grim, Ali,” I said.

She shrugged. “It’s the only one without all the stupid music,” she said.

“What are you, the Grinch?”

She nodded, grinning as the doorbell rang. I got the food and brought it over to her, sitting next to her on the couch while it played. It was dark and creepy, not my type of movie at all, but I found that I enjoyed it just sitting next to her.

“Have you ever seen that before?” she asked afterward.

I shook my head. “I haven’t seen most of those old horror movies,” I said.

“But you’ve seen like, Halloween, though, right?”

“Nope,” I said.

Her mouth dropped open and she gaped at me. “How many days did you say I have off?” she asked.

“Your partner said two. But if you need more—”

“We’re having a marathon,” she said decidedly.

“A horror movie marathon?” I asked.

She nodded, an enthusiastic smile on her face. “God, there’s so much you’re missing out on. Have you ever seen any Wes Craven? John Carpenter?”

“No,” I said. “I haven’t even heard of them.”

She gave a low, disbelieving whistle. Despite the fact that it ordinarily wouldn’t sound fun to me to watch a bunch of horror movies non-stop, I found myself getting caught up in her excitement, looking forward to experiencing them with her for the first time.

“So what are we going to watch first?” I asked her, settling into the couch. For the next two days, we watched a series of horror movies, spending all day on the couch staring at the screen. All of it was horrifying, and yet I found myself caught up in the excitement of it, grinning at how much Ali was clearly enjoying herself. Between movies, we would talk—I found out a few things about her, that she was young, only twenty-five and already having opened up an extremely successful restaurant. She was proud of her cooking and her accomplishments, and she radiated that every time she talked about them, beaming at me while I listened to her.

The night before she was supposed to go back to work we were having dinner together, curled up on the couch eating pizza from the box and drinking bottles of lukewarm root beer that the pizza man had brought for us. I didn’t care at that moment how bad it tasted—I wanted to drag out my time with her, knowing that I would be going back to my apartment when we were done.

“Hey, Tyler,” she said after a moment of quiet. I looked at her and she met my eye. “I’m—I’m really sorry for how rude I was to you before I got to know you.”

“I’m sorry, too,” I said to her. “I was an asshole. I know that.”

“You were,” she said with a sly smile. “But so was I.”

“So what do you think?” I asked her, putting my hand forward, offering it to her. “Friends?”

She took my hand, her soft palm slipping against mine, and I could swear that I felt electricity flowing through my body.

“Friends,” she said with a bright smile. I wanted to kiss her then, and felt overwhelmed with the urge. But I resisted, not wanting to ruin it, not wanting to risk jeopardizing the friendship we had built over the past couple of days.

“I’d better get back to my apartment,” I said. “Hopefully, Trixie hasn’t torn it apart.”

“Did you let her stay there?”

“Yeah,” I said, standing up. “I’m hoping that I’m not going to regret that.”

“Thank you again for staying with me,” she said, looking up at my face. “I appreciate it.”

“It was fun,” I said. “I learned a lot.”

She grinned. “Good,” she said. “Who directed Halloween?”

“John Carpenter,” I said. She nodded, a satisfied look on her face. I was tempted again to kiss her but didn’t, instead telling her goodnight and leaving, going back to my blessedly empty apartment. I had told my sister what I was doing, taking care of Ali, and she had teased me relentlessly about it, about the fact that I continued to deny that I had any feelings for my neighbor. That fact was getting harder and harder to deny though, especially whenever I climbed into my own bed for the first time in days, my mind filled with thoughts of her, as usual.

I fell asleep and found myself in a dream of her. She was naked, her skin perfect and soft, naturally golden. Her body was spread out in my bed, naked, her breasts full, nipples pink and hard. In the dream, I took one of her breasts into my mouth, tasted her nipple while my finger traveled over the soft curve of her belly, down between her legs. Her pussy was soaking wet, and I felt my cock grow hard as I started to stroke her swollen lower lips, teasing her, sucking on her nipples.

I spent the rest of the night like that, not quite getting to go all the way with her in my dream, always getting stopped before I could slip inside of her. I woke up sweating, hard as a rock, and shook my head. There was no way to deny it anymore, not even to myself—I was desperate to touch Ali, to fuck her, to make her come, and there was nothing that I could do to change that.