Santa Clarita Diet Season 4

The Girl Next Door

Eric peered into his computer screen, ears perked for the sound effects of a video game. Shuffle to the right. Was that a shadow? No, only his character from a new light mounted to the wall. Go forward...

"Oh! Oh...!" Lisa exclaimed from her bedroom across the hall.

"Oh, fuck," Eric muttered as he adjusted his headphones. Too loud and the game would be too easy. Too quiet and he'd hear how easy his mom was.

The game became slightly louder, but so did Lisa.

"Ooo, I didn't know you were into that! Down there, yeah, that's the spot. Not too -- okay, I'm not nearly as rough as she is. Back off a little bit. No, not totally, come back! Yeah, right there. Yup, yup..."

Eric gave up on his game; occasional sound effects wouldn't cover this up. He opened Spotify and found a playlist he'd made specifically to cancel out that kind of noise. Ensconced in his aural isolation chamber, he turned to reddit: /r/paranormal/ had nothing new and /r/losangeles/ wasn't much better.

Then he felt a thump. Taking off his headphones, he heard laughing. Male laughing. The gentleman caller must have tripped over that little bench at the foot of her bed.

The laugh gave Eric pause. Usually that thump was followed by an exclamation of pain. Even if the gentleman caller laughed it off eventually, that laugh rose from a fading ouch. After a few moments of thought, Eric reasoned that this ouch must have happened while his headphones were still on.

"Are you okay?" Lisa asked.

"I'm fine," her gentleman caller responded, still laughing.

Eric gasped as he recognized Joel's voice. Opening his door by less than an inch, he watched Joel walk away from Lisa's bedroom.

Then Eric tiptoed back to his desk and put his headphones back on. No music. No tabs open. He just needed to think.