Inside the apartment, I kick off my boots, take the six steps to his couch, and flop over the side.

“Oh shit, yes,” I groan. “Sofa all to myself. Quiet. So much better than my place. Why did we do that? Socializing. Bleh.”

“Revenge, Beatrice!” Jamie says. “Hmm.” He peers around the apartment as if he’s looking for something.

“Doing okay there, big guy?”

He frowns. “I need my phone.”

“To order pizza?”

“Not yet. Good pizza takes time. Deciding whether or not to order good pizza takes even more time.”

“You are delightfully strange.”

“Likewise,” he says. Removing his glasses, Jamie sets them on the kitchen counter, then he starts emptying his pockets. “Aha!” He lifts his phone, which glows with an unread message. “I needed my phone to stop buzzing. With a message from my roommate.” He squints. “Saying he’s not coming after all. Tell me something I don’t know, Jean-Claude.”

I blow a raspberry. “We didn’t miss him anyway. Though it was kind of weird he wasn’t there tonight. He’s always there.”

Dropping his phone on the counter with very un-Jamie-like carelessness, he says, “He was sulking about something. He does that when he doesn’t get his way.”

“What does he have to be mad about? How didn’t he get his way?”

“Who knows.” Jamie wanders into the kitchen. “Your sister looked like she’d been crying when I showed up. I imagine they had a disagreement, which generally means Jean-Claude didn’t get exactly what he wanted and blew his top.”

Unease prickles my spine. Why wouldn’t Jules tell me that?

“Want something to drink?” Jamie asks.

I’m about to dig further into the Jean-Claude thing, but his ass hijacks my brain when he crouches and pets the sleeping zombie cats on their little beds next to the window.

“Bea?” he asks, snapping me out of it.

“What? A drink? Yep. Sure.”

“What have we here? Liquor?” Jamie opens the freezer door, then slams it shut. “Nope. No liquor there.”

I stare over his shoulder, processing what I just saw in the jam-packed freezer. “James, what on earth was in there? Are you preparing for the end-times? Are you a secret survivalist?”

He won’t look at me. “You weren’t supposed to see that.”

“Well, now you have to tell me.”

“Let’s have tea,” Jamie says. “At first I was thinking tequila, but given how my stomach feels, that’s not such a good idea.”

I slip off the sofa and sneak behind him toward the freezer. Just as I’m about to open it, his hand lands on the door, holding it shut. I stare up at Jamie, pinned between him and the refrigerator. “What’s in the freezer?” I ask.

“It’s . . .” Glancing away, he stares at the floor. “It’s soup.”

“Okay? Well, there’s no shame in bulk soup making.”

Eyes still on the floor, he says, quieter, “For you.”