“Guys, I’m gonna grab some towels for us to use as bedding,” Astra said. She was already on her way to the doorway as she spoke, carrying her little push button lamp with her. “There’s some pretty big towels in there, don’t worry,” she said, purposely directing her words at Kevin. Then she strolled out into the hallway and back down the staircase, rambling to herself: “I dunno why they would ever need bath towels in a courthouse, but they’re there. Maybe they confiscated them from some jurors at the door and never gave them back. Maybe there’s drugs on them!”

When she was out of earshot, Kevin stuck out his arm through the doorway and glared at Ruse as if to say ‘see?!’ But Ruse gently pushed his arm back down to his side.

“Are you saying you wouldn’t want a larger blanket?” she asked. “I’ve seen your nest in the store recently, you know. You’ve got the largest My Little Pony comforter that Hasbro offers.”

Kevin glanced away in embarrassment. “Your girlfriend already picked on me, you don’t have to pile on top of it.”

“Not picking on you!” She lied in a sing-song voice. “You have excellent taste, good sir!” She grabbed his hand and led him back to the place in the center of the aisle, and they sat in the dark.

Kevin removed his banjo and set it on top of his folded trench coat in a dusty chair, then placed his fedora on the headstock like a hat rack. He felt now was a good time to just settle down for the night, now that Ruse was finished scolding him.

Or so he thought. “He never let me have friends,” Ruse said, referring to Henry, as Kevin turned back to her. She had her knees pulled up to her chest and was giving him the most serious look, as if trying to catch him off guard. “I’m tired of being afraid to put myself out there, or to let people in…”

“Gomenasai. I’m sorry.”

But Kevin didn’t mean it. It was just a way to stop her from taking more digs at him. If she had just let him have her years ago, he could have helped her heal from this pain already! He was the complete package! She had already put herself out there, and let him in, and he knew that was all she would ever need! So he had nothing to apologize for!

“And…” Ruse’s demeanor eased, “I’m sorry I never let you have the radio on in your car. I’m sorry I never let you play the radio in your shop. I’m sorry it took so long for me to tell you why, and that you had to find out the way you did…”

Kevin simply looked back to the floor, not sure if he could accept this apology. He would have to let the information sit with him for a while, then maybe he would forgive her. The chances were getting slimmer by the hour though, now.

The last remaining embers of the small cooking fire fizzled out as Astra came strolling back in with a tall stack of colorful folded towels with the lamp up top like a halo. She handed a few towels to Ruse first, then Kevin, kept two for herself, then placed the lamp back down on the floor.

“It’ll be dawn pretty soon here, and I assume neither of you have gotten any sleep, so it’s probably time to start counting sheep, haha.”

The laughter was back. Astra was so resilient. It was like she hadn’t just screamed at Kevin ten minutes ago. Or was she just that forgiving of a person that she had already put it behind her? Probably both, Ruse assumed.

Astra laid one of her towels, a regular sized bath towel, down on the floor to act as a sheet. She sat down on the towel, took the hair tie out of her hair, and got to unlacing her dirty Converse.

Ruse placed one of her towels down directly parallel to Astra’s and pulled off her socks. When Astra’s eyes met hers, she played coy and pretended she had no idea what she was doing. Sharing a bed with a cute girl? Initiating cuddles? No sir, not Ruse. The two giggled.

Kevin sighed. He had been doing a lot of sighing the last twelve hours. Losing Ruse to a stranger was taking a toll on him, even more of a toll than being on the run from her sociopath of an ex-boyfriend.

He unfolded one of his towels and realized it was pretty large. Like beach towel sized. So was the one beneath it. He laid it down across the way from the girls and sat on it. It was a fairly good size, he admitted to himself, even if they were brought to him as an insult.

He watched as the girls settled under a few combined towels, Astra’s front against Ruse’s back. They were being playful and giddy as they nestled down together, filling his line of sight with homosexual rudeness.

“Astra-san, how did your parents not figure anything out after seeing all your pins?” Ruse asked her bed mate.

Astra’s backpack with all her different pride pins sat just past her feet. “No internet access,” she replied to Ruse. “And neither of them have more than an elementary school education, so they can’t deduce crap, haha.”

To relieve himself from witnessing this continuing betrayal, Kevin reached out and slammed his fist against the push button light, immediately turning the room pitch black and silent. “Oyasumi!”

* * * * *

About two hours had passed in the dark, musty silence. It had taken only a few minutes for Ruse to fall asleep; she was dead tired from the havoc of the last day, but Astra… Kevin had been watching the two girls though his towel’s fibers, pretending to sleep, monitoring Astra so she wouldn’t try anything sneaky.

But she did. As soon as she assumed he was asleep, she propped herself up on an elbow and took a deep, long whiff of Ruse’s sleeping form. She held the scent briefly, then exhaled in some sort of weird ecstasy and flopped back down and almost immediately started snoring again. And this pissed Kevin off. Ruse was his fragrant little flower. There were many like her, but Ruse was his!

Kevin was very much not into being cucked. Especially not by some dumb queer ten years his junior. Ruse needed somebody her own age. Someone like him. Everything was just wrong about the girls’ budding new ‘relationship’!

As quietly as he could, he shoved off his blanket-towel and got back to his feet. Through the doorway into the courtroom, thin rays of warm purple light were beginning to trickle in. Using that light, he waddled his way over to the trash can and looked down into it, eyeing his phone at the bottom. He knew all along he wasn’t going to leave his stash behind. He leaned over and scooped it out, then turned it on, holding his hand over the speaker so it wouldn’t alert the girls with its startup chime.

The sounds of feminine snoring continued behind him. Success. He turned back around, phone still in his hand, to see the light glimmering on Ruse’s hair twists and earrings. The soft purple glow of twilight absolutely fit with her lavender aesthetic. This was a great opportunity to snap a photo.

And he did. He already had many pictures of Ruse on the device, the majority of them without her consent, so one more wouldn’t hurt. He then turned the phone’s volume off, carried it back to his spot on the carpeted walkway and slipped it into the breast pocket on the inner lining of his trench coat. Sure, this meant they could still be tracked, but he was absolutely not losing his porn. It was all he had while he waited for Ruse to properly repay her debt to him.

But now he would have to come up with an excuse when Ruse noticed his phone was no longer next to hers in the bin. Or would he? He pressed his knuckle against his upper-most chin and rubbed against his scratchy new stubble. Ruse had been acting stupid all day, so maybe she would continue to be stupid into tomorrow. Maybe she would believe his phone was still in there if he just filled up the bin with trash. The courthouse was full of it, after all.

He got to work collecting and crumbling old printed legal paperwork from the nearby courtrooms.