Back at his apartment a few hours later, Thorne sank gratefully onto the couch, thrilled to be off his feet. “Movie now?” Dash asked.

“Sure.” Thorne closed his eyes and rested his head on the back of the couch.

“Are you going to fall asleep on me?”

“No, old men like me don’t fall asleep when we sit down, we rest our eyes.”

“Ha!” Dash slapped his thigh and encouraged him to scoot over. “I bet I can find a way to keep you awake.”

Thorne scrubbed a hand over his eyes. “Where do you get this stamina?”

“It’s a job requirement.”

The silence that followed was suffocating. Thorne didn’t know how to respond. From the look on Dash’s face, his words had startled him back to reality like they had Thorne. Had they really forgotten that Dash was there because Thorne had hired him?

Dash grabbed the remote and turned on the TV. “You do have a Netflix subscription, right?”

Thorne nodded. “I don’t know why. I hardly ever use it.”

“Let’s put it to good use now.”

Thorne lay back against the arm of the couch, and Dash stretched half on top of him, using his chest as a pillow. Thorne let his eyes drift shut again as Dash scrolled through movie choices.

“Oooh, Footloose. What about that one? I’ve been wanting to see it again ever since watching Guardians of the Galaxy.”

“What? Why?”

Dash sighed and shook his head. “Does this mean you haven’t seen Guardians of the Galaxy?”

“Um…I don’t even know what it is.”

“Where have you been? Groot? Rocket? Beefed-up Chris Pratt? Seriously?”

“Is it on Netflix?”

“No.”

“We’ll rent it then.” Thorne grabbed the remote. He exited Netflix and clicked on iTunes. He could feel Dash’s impatience as he painstakingly typed in the letters to search for the title.

“You can do that on your phone, you know.”

“Whatever.” The movie popped up on the screen. “See, there it is. Back in the olden days, we had to drive to a video store to get a movie. You kids have it easy.”

“Quit with the old jokes. Anyone that can do what you did last night is nowhere near old.”

Suddenly Thorne didn’t feel quite so tired. “Maybe when this is over, I’ll do it again.”

“Mmm. I like that plan.”

They started the movie. Dash gave a brief explanation, most of which Thorne failed to understand, but eventually he started to get into it. And yeah, Chris Pratt was surely looking fine. But Thorne was more entertained by Dash’s ability to quote the lines and his emotive reactions to everything whether it was sad, funny, or worthy of whoops and cheers.

After an intense scene, Dash caught Thorne staring. “What?”

“You. You’re so…fun to watch.”

“Are you laughing at me?” Dash pouted.

“No, I’m enjoying you.”

“Good. But what about the movie?”