Little Talks: Spoilers

A series of short stories about a relationship starring a fictional couple who live rent free in Scott’s head.

We’ve done our earnest best to make a night out of it but started to flag shortly after arriving at the party.

It’s been a long week for both of us — something she communicates to me with a simple (and to me now unmistakable) look across the crowded room that I catch while attempting to wrap up a conversation with some accountant I’ve just met about how you’ve really got to be careful these days with what you try to write off come tax season.

And I’m grateful.

For her look that says, “It’s about time we get the fresh hell out of here.”

Not the accountant.

Saturday nights are not for small talk about the nuances that go into whether or not you can claim to the government that you do indeed have an at-home office. Great information to have, of course, but kind of a bummer when you’re just trying to forget about things like life administration for a while.

We congregate alone in a corner of the kitchen and plot out our next step. There seem to be two options: A Midwestern goodbye that might take the better part of an hour, during which people will undoubtedly attempt to cajole us into staying longer. (We’re not the life of the party or anything. This just seems to be customary.) Or an Irish Goodbye where we make quick egress and disappear like thieves in the night.

They’re mostly her friends so I let her make the call and am relieved when she goes with the latter. We beat it out of there in stealth mode and head home, where it’s still early enough for us to really enjoy ourselves and eek a little bit out of an evening where we can, if we so choose, stay up past the general bedtimes we adhere to during the week. And we have nowhere we need to be Sunday morning, so we get into our comfortable clothes (I even bust out my kimono) and house slippers with a quickness and reassemble on the couch where we’re more than ready to attack the streaming queue.

Snacks are involved. Because we are far from amateurs when it comes to pretty much any kind of binge and we still know how to party even if it’s not at an actual party. (Any gathering can be a party though if you just believe.)

There’s a certain nuance to the mid- to late-night viewing sesh that we’ve adapted to over the past few months as we’ve gotten to know each other better and better. It changes over time but right now we’re in a groove where we watch an episode of a certain series that only comes out once a week on Sundays (like back in the olden times). It’s pretty intense, maybe even scary, depending on who you ask, and with a lot of moments that surprise or shock you enough that you almost leap out of your seat. Then after that we move on to what we call “a palate cleanser.” Something more light-hearted and hopefully even funny. There are a few hits and plenty of misses — especially when you take into account two people’s tastes and have to find a healthy medium.

Once we’re situated, which mostly means we have enough blankets and pillows pulled out to build a fort if we so choose to do so later in the evening, I grab the remote and search for our semi-scary show.

“Nice,” she says, rubbing her hands together and sitting up rapt on her side of the couch to sit in a criss-cross-apple-sauce position. “I’ve been waiting for this.”

“Me too. And I’ve somehow managed to avoid spoilers all week long.”

“Spending less time on Twitter?”

“Trying. My screen time was way down over the past seven days, according to reports.”

She throws me a high-five, says, “I can’t wait to see what happens.”

“Same.”

I hit play and as always am slightly startled when the TV static noise sounds to remind me that I am, indeed, about to consume an offering from HBO, even though I know it’s coming.

We watch the previous episode recap then skip the intro credits, because with HBO that’s generally a five-minute-long adventure that you really only want to go on once. Though they are always so artfully done.

We’re roughly seven minutes into the one-hour episode when I know beyond a shadow of a doubt.

I notice her bracing herself in the seconds leading up to a jump-scare and then still reacting to them, but in a way more outlandish than usual. Like she’s trying to sell it.

It’s kind of weird to know someone so well that you can anticipate how they’d likely react to something before they do. You just start to be able to intuit if they’re surprised, nonplussed or pretty much anything in between.

I press pause.

“You’ve seen this before,” I say, more of a statement than question.

She shifts uncomfortably and leans over to pluck a carrot from the coffee table, starts chomping on it without even dipping it in hummus. Another tell.

“Okay, like, don’t be mad,” she says after she swallows.

“But.”

“But yes, I watched it. On Tuesday night.”

“I’m not angry. I’m just disappointed.”

“You were gone!”

“I don’t think I’ve ever been here on a Tuesday. You know how we both feel about weeknight sleepovers.”

“True, but it hits different when you’re across the country.”

“How?”

“It’s tough to explain. It’s like I can feel the distance or something.”

“That’s heady.”

She pokes me.

“Don’t make fun.”

I grab a blue raspberry sour straw, start chomping on it.

“So is that what you do when I’m on work trips? Watch our shows without me? While I fall asleep to Forensic Files in a hotel room because I can never figure out how to stream to the TV and my laptop screen is so goddamn small?”

“Guilty. Sometimes. Sometimes I do.”

“This is, just, the ultimate betrayal.”

“I wish I could take it back.”

“Do you?”

“Okay. Not really. To be honest.”

“Wow.”

“But I’ll totally watch it again, if you want.”

“Nah, no need. I already watched it on the plane.”

“You dick.”

“Guilty.”