Tightrope

You Can't Pause the Vampire Diaries

Since Knight had no life, due to his current circumstances of being confined to my quarters, he had decided to constantly annoy me with his presence. We lay on our stomachs on my bed, our sides touching, much to my annoyance. Because Knight thought it was necessary to hit me in the arm, with force, every time he got scared. And Knight was a wuss.

"Quickly, download episode seven!" Knight demanded, tapping my arm incessantly.

"I am!"

"Well, hurry!"

After the crazy whirlwind of events at the group picnic yesterday, it was good to spend Saturday decompressing at home with Knight before my clear-Hartley-from-my-traitorous-brain date. Thankfully, I had the next two weeks off school to keep him entertained; he seemed about ready to start tearing pillows up when I was off being educated to garner my attention. He really was like a new puppy that you had to leave with toys.

Ten minutes into the episode—the only thing getting Knight through life, it seemed—Jace barged into the room and interrupted the marathon of a lifetime. "Hey, guys, what are you up to?"

Transfixed on the screen, Knight and I muttered, "Shut up, Hartley," in perfect unison. "Who even let you in?" I added.

"Liv." He came around to stand beside the bed, peering over our shoulders. I tried to ignore the feeling that diffused within me at his close proximity, mentally squashing it with a spiked heel of a Prada heel. "Is that... the Vampire Diaries?"

"Also goes by the greatest show of all time," said Knight. "I would straight up die for like 50% of these people. Mostly Katherine. And Caroline."

Without taking my eyes of the screen—unwilling to miss Caroline bone down with Klaus, one of the greatest moments in television history—I threw a pillow at Jace. "What part of shut up Hartley did you fail to comprehend?"

"Um, the part when a pause button hadn't been invented."

I looked up at him and gasped. "You can't pause The Vampire Diaries."

Knight nodded, still looking at the screen. "You can't pause The Vampire Diaries."

"Oh, did Netflix remove the pause button on Damon Salvatore's behalf? That seems like an interesting financial choice."

I shoved at his legs. "Oh, go away Hartley. Isn't there some hole you can go and fall into?"

Hartley sat down on the edge of the bed, clearly intrigued by Katherine's general gloriousness and badassery, but trying to pretend he was a cultured man who liked critically acclaimed indie films and had opinions about the current state of the economy. "I thought we were friends now."

"I tell all of my friends to go die in holes. Knight, go die in a hole."

"Can I finish the episode first?"

"Of course, I'm not a sociopath," I said. Then I smiled up at Jace. "See?"

"The kindness just radiates," he said, gesturing around me as if feeling a warm aura of sweetness, generosity and generally non-sociopathic tendencies.

I grinned.

"I don't know if you completely forgot, but we were supposed to work on our project tonight," said Jace.

"Sunday was project day," I corrected. "It is Saturday."

"No, you changed the date," said Jace, pulling out his phone and reading the text from the screen. "Hey H Man. Can't do Sunday, I'm throwing a party. By the way, I guess you're invited. Bring me a present." He looked up at me. "It's not even your birthday! And, for all that is good in the world, please never again call me H Man."