Take Me to Infinity

“Look who finally decided to show up,” Kandi teased as soon as Autum and James entered the apartment an hour later. “There’s some cold lasagna on the counter. We’ve already eaten, you guys took too long.”

“Oh shut up,” Autum replied, rolling her eyes. She strolled over to the kitchen counter, poking at the pasta in the tray with a fork. “Who made it? If you made it, I’m not eating any of it, just saying.”

“Hey! I’m a great cook!” her roommate declared from the living room.

“You burnt our frozen pizza,” Autum replied dryly.

“It was the pizza’s fault!” Kandi wailed before sitting back down on the couch beside Logan.

“Shoot, I’m hungry,” James muttered and ducked past Autum to grab a plate.

“So, how were surf lessons?” Kandi asked as her friend joined her in the living room, waggling her eyebrows suggestively.

Autum chose to ignore her. “They were awesome. James is a great teacher.”

“Mhm,” Kandi smirked as she flipped through the television channels. She finally settled on some comedian’s stand-up special on Comedy Central.

Autum shot a “shut the fuck up” glance at her best friend before asking, “So what did you guys do today?”

Kandi took in a deep breath before she spoke. Autum knew this was going to be a long, rushed, southern-slurred blur of words flowing from Kandi’s mouth, so she tried to focus. “Well,” she started, another sign that she was about to fire about some insane list with the occasional insignificant detail. “We went to this really cute furniture boutique called Room Service, and I bought a ton of shit for the apartment-“She paused when she noticed Autum glance around the room, trying to approve any new purchases. “They’re still in my car,” she answered before her friend even got the chance to ask. “Then we went out for lunch at this amazing little spot, then we went to all these different little eclectic shops, then we bought these amazing matching sunglasses,” she said, grabbing a pair of Wayfarers off the coffee table and putting them on to demonstrate their style, and Autum nodded in approval. “Then we got our picture draw by an artist on the side of the street, then we went and saw the Hollywood sign, then we came back home.”

“Sounds like a busy day,” Autum commented.

“Oh, it was” She patted Logan’s thigh, “Can you help me get some of the stuff from the car so I can show Autum?”

“Sure,” he replied, heaving a sigh as he rose up from his seat.

“Deuces!” Kandi raised her voice, flashing Autum a misshapen peace sign with her thumb sticking out as she rushed after Logan.

It was after those two left that Autum noticed James, looking comfortable as ever while shoveling down on his lasagna.

“Is that actually any good?” she laughed, glancing towards the plate in his lap.

“Yep, Logan wouldn’t let your bestie ruin dinner. Despite his fetish for hair products, he’s a pretty good cook. Kinda why I keep him around, aside from it being his apartment and all.”

“Nice to know,” Autum said as she pulled her legs up underneath her.

“So did you ever hear back about that job?” James asked, pausing mid-bite to look over at her.

“Not yet, but it’s Sunday and I just had the interview yesterday, so I’m not completely stressing yet,” she answered. Honestly, she was taken aback that he had even remembered.

“Yeah, you’re right.”

“So what is it exactly that you and Logan do? Kandi mentioned something about being on TV, but I figured that was just some lie,” Autum laughed, running her hand through her hair and fluffing it up in the back.

“Yeah, we’re on this show, but it’s not really a big thing. We’re both sort of actors-slash-singers, and that’s how we met. He’s a really cool guy, and we got along well, so I moved into his apartment.”

He noticed the look of amusement that flickered across Autum’s face; she had never been one to mask her emotions well. Brad had told her once that it wasn’t a bad thing, that it made her genuine.

“He really gets under your skin, doesn’t he?” James chuckled. He got up to set his dishes in the sink.

Autum shifted her body towards the kitchen before speaking, “I don’t know.” She let out a sigh. “I know this sounds incredibly cheesy and that I’m going to sound like some psychotic jealous friend, but when me and Kandi moved here together, I thought we’d have a lot more time to just…bond, I guess. I guess I thought it was going to be like, this sleepover that never ended, but I forgot exactly who I was dealing with,” she laughed a little to herself, staring at the beige carpet beneath her feet. “And a second roommate wasn’t exactly part of the bargain.”

James met her gaze as he took a seat beside her on the couch. “I guess I can get where you’re coming from. If you ever just need to get away, you can always come hang out at my place. Logan’s rarely around, and if we’re being completely honest, I get a little lonely.”

“I’m sure you do,” Autum smirked.

James seemed to replay what he’d just said in his mind. “I’m being serious,” he claimed.

Before Autum could reply, she heard a loud bang against the front door. She gave James a questioning look before creeping over to the door. Autum teetered on her tiptoes, trying to look out the peephole. She was able to make out her roommate’s brunette pouf and opened the door.

Kandi came in lugging this humongous zebra-printed chair, leaving Logan to carry the rest of her bags. She made her way, with the chair in tow, into the living room and dropped the chair on the far side of the room. She adjusted it, trying to mirror the distance between the armchair and the couch on the opposite side. When she was finally satisfied, she stood back and admired the chair proudly.

“That is, by far, the ugliest chair I have ever seen in my life,” Autum stated, shooting an accusatory stare toward Logan. He just shrugged, trying to keep out of the matter.

“Aw, come on! It adds flair to this bland room,” Kandi remarked.

Autum started to say something, but Kandi was too busy digging through shopping bags to listen.

“I got you this!” she said, pulling a smaller bag from one of the big bags.

Autum peeked into the bag, her brown eyes glancing back up at Kandi before pulling out the object. It was one of those ridiculous hamburger phones, as seen in Juno.

Autum couldn’t keep from laughing. “What made you think that I needed a hamburger phone?”

“I don’t know,” Kandi said and sighed. “I thought it suited you.”

“It’s great,” Autum rushed. She hadn’t really planned to offend her friend. “Just a little random.”

“Okay, okay, you don’t like it, moving on,” she replied sarcastically. “Look at this, it’s my favorite. Logan got it for me.” Kandi pulled out a California license plate with “KANDI” imprinted on it in huge red letters.

She was one of those people that spent her entire childhood searching for something with her name on it. When everyone else had those flimsy plastic bicycle plates with their names on them, Kandi was jealous. She wanted one of those stupid fake license plates more than anything, but they never had one with her name on it. Autum was lucky enough to find her name on things, s he just had to black out the extra “n” with a Sharpie.

Parents should never be allowed to name their children after soap opera characters. Autum only hoped that she could come back from the dead as often as Autum, Phallisha, and Dawn did.

Growing up, people thought she was a little slow because she left the “n” off of her name. No, she wasn’t dumb, she just knew how to spell her fucking name.

Kandi just got the whole “is Ronald McDonald your dad?” bit over and over again. Kids in their town weren’t very original.

“I just love it when life comes full circle,” Autum replied, shaking her head.

“I know, right?” Kandi laughed.

“What else did you get?”

“Just some stuff for my room,” she said with a shrug. She tried to stifle a yawn, but Autum caught her.

“You should probably go to sleep, you have to work tomorrow,” she said as she leaned back on the couch.

“Yeah, I think I will.”

Kandi got up and walked Logan to the door; he waved goodbye to James and Autum as he stood at the door. Autum could make out Kandi standing in the doorway, the dim light from the hallway glowing in the dark kitchen. She leaned in to say something to him, and he smiled before he left her.

“Night James, night sall,” she mumbled as she drug her feet on the way to her bedroom.

“Goodnight,” they both replied.

Autum glanced over at James awkwardly, wondering why he was still there. She figured it may sound a little rude, but there was no better way to find out than to ask him.

“Why are you still here?” she laughed to ease the awkwardness of the situation.

“Well you don’t have to be anywhere tomorrow, right?” he grinned, and she nodded in response.

He did make a pretty good point.