Read Offensive Behavior (Sidelined #1) for Free Online

shoes
off, set the alarm on her phone for seven and crashed on his big ugly sofa. If
he was sick again she’d hear him and if he was no better, she’d insist he call
someone.
    When
her alarm peeped she woke to a wild sense of where the hell am I? She had a
stiff neck from no pillow and she was starving. He had home-cooked Indian food
in his refrigerator but she couldn’t fathom curried anything for breakfast. She
padded into his room. He slept soundly, but he’d obviously woken at some point
because he’d drunk a good deal of the water she’d left. He wasn’t so pale under
his beard scruff. He’d live. She was done here.
    She
hoped she’d seen the last of his god-awful handsome face, his judgmental scowl
that was kind of hot, and his surprisingly muscular body. And if she ever heard
his imperious I know better tone again it would also be too soon.
    She let
herself out and wondered if he’d remember she was ever there.

 
    FIVE
     
    Reid woke with a sour taste in his mouth, a churning gut and a vague
suspicion there was someone in the apartment with him. He was burning up, thirsty;
either the whole room had entered another dimension, one that pulsed, or it was
his head. He pushed upright and then he remembered. Lux put him in a cab. She’d
gotten him home. Holy shit , he’d just about hurled all over her. He closed
his eyes as the world tilted.
    “Lux. Hey,
anyone there?” What day was it? It was day, that much he could tell, through
eyes that didn’t want to open. “Anyone.” He listened. Silence.
    He
pushed the bed coverings away and got himself upright. Made it to the bathroom,
where a glance in the mirror confirmed that notion about the other dimension. He
looked like he’d been slammed by a time machine, and pulled backward kicking
and screaming through a black hole.
    He was
pale, sweating, smudges under his eyes that didn’t rub off, hair doing its best
electric shock. He smelled foul too, body odor and alcohol and what the heck
happened to his hand? A vague recollection of tripping, going down on his hands
and knees. Yup, knees felt bruised.
    A
shower improved things. Toothpaste. Water guzzled. But that was the extent of
it. He made it back to bed and next thing he knew there was definitely someone
in the apartment. In the kitchen to be precise.
    Was Lux
still here? He’d told her to go, but she’d flipped him off, was that a memory
or a dream? It was dark again. Had she been asleep all day? He hauled himself
upright and rubbed his hands through his hair, then made the long, knee
trembling, stumbling trek to the kitchen. It wasn’t Lux’s pert, squeezable
backside poked out of his refrigerator.
    “Dev.”
    Dev
straightened, knocking his head on a shelf and making the condiments in the door
rattle. “Month of Sundays. What are you doing here? You’re not meant to be
here.”
    Because
Dev was more comfortable sneaking food into the kitchen when Reid wasn’t home than
he was being acknowledged for doing it. Reid fumbled for the kitchen stool and
sat.
    “Cripes,
what happened to your hand? What happened to you?”
    “Food
poisoning.”
    Dev’s
head tilted hard right. “No way. Unless you messed up with the rice. Did you
cook it like I showed you?”
    “Not
from your food.” A good portion of which Reid threw out, because he wasn’t
hungry when he was drunk.
    Dev
flashed his perfect teeth. “Well, then, that’s okay.”
    “I
could be dying and you’re happy it’s not from your food.”
    Dev made
a circular motion around his face, then his smile was replaced by a grimace. “Stop
eating bad food, Reid. Why do you think I cook for you? “
    Doing
nice things for people was how Dev lived. It was his thing, alongside being the
kind of software engineer who could smell a bug before it was programmed.
    “Because
I’m a philistine who wouldn’t know a well-cooked meal if it tried to eat me,
and you’re trying to hold on to a friendship that only existed through work.” Reid
coughed.
    Dev