God Knows I Left Her By Mistake

You jump when you feel a hand on your shoulder, fingers instinctively moving up your phone and pressing the off button. And, well, doesn’t that look incriminating?

Turning your head upwards and back just a bit gives you a clear view of Courtney Miller, eyebrow up, looking like you’re back in middle school and they just found out your big secret. She wiggles her eyebrows at you, and you’re never going to hear the end of this.

“Court, it’s not like that,” you groan, hanging your head, at the same time as Courtney says, “Got a big date tonight?”

You hook your foot over the leg of your swivel chair and turn it around, facing Courtney. The metallic shimmer of the sequin vest they’re wearing catches on the sunlight streaming in through the window and shines straight in your eyes. You blink a few times, turning in your chair to get a better angle.

Court bites his bottom lip before speaking, like maybe he’s thinking he shouldn’t. “So… Spencer? Is that a thing?”

You could tell them back off and they would. Without a fight or a word of complaint, too. You know this, but there’s something about Courtney that makes you want to spill your heart out each time she wants you to, like you’re an open book, and Court’s just turning to the right page. 

So, you cave. “I—,” you duck your head, “Okay, you can’t tell anyone.” Court gasps, eyes widening dramatically. The sound of a notification from your phone startles both of you, the name ‘Spencer Smosh’ popping up again. You don’t have to turn around to know that Courtney’s smirking.

She giggles. “You have him saved in your phone as Spencer Smosh?” 

You close your eyes and groan, pulling up the text thread without looking. 

“I don’t want to—like, mix him up with another Spencer,” you explain. Courtney chuckles again.

SPENCER SMOSH: Here’s the address btw

SPENCER SMOSH: Oste, 8142 W 3rd St, Los Angeles, CA. View location?

“Ooo!” Court squeals, grabbing the phone out of your hand excitedly. You’ve half a mind to grab it back, but it’s not really worth it. “Ange and I have been to Oste before. It’s so nice! You should probably get a res though, if you don’t already have one.”

The desk chair squeaks as you swivel it around to face Courtney again. They’re doing something on your phone, presumably texting Spencer, and you’re quiet for a beat, patient. Then she looks up, her hazel eyes locking into yours.

“Reservation?” she says, like she’s helping you out.

“Oh—yeah, dude, I know what res means,” Court rolls his eyes, crossing his arms over his chest, “Spencer got the reservation.”

Courtney’s lips tick up, looking incredibly fond. She reaches forward to ruffle your hair just a bit before pulling back, their outstretched arm lingering in the air for a moment too long.

“Okay! Have fun on your date,” she says, wiggling her eyebrows as she walks off.

Your hands fly up to cover your face, and you wonder how concerned everyone would be if you started screaming in the middle of the office. 

“I regret telling you anything!” you call out after her. You pull out your phone and click on Spencer’s name at the top of your text contacts.

At the end of the workday, when you walk out to the parking lot, Spencer's already out there, leaning on the side of his car, head ducked, looking at his phone. He's waiting for you, you realize, and there's something impossibly endearing about that.

"Spence!" you call out across the lot, waving your hands above your head as you close in on him. He looks up at you and bites down on his bottom lip as he smiles.

He waves, hand coming up to his chest as he gestures smally, uncharacteristically shy. The wine red button-up shirt he's wearing is undone on the first two buttons, dressed down with his jean jacket over it. He looks so Spencer it's almost suffocating, but you love everything about it.

"Hey, hey," he slaps a hand on your shoulder awkwardly, lingering just a bit too long as he continues, "You ready to go, hot stuff."

Something simmers inside you at the nickname, low and hot, and part of your brain almost stops working, replaying his words again and again. You have to say something back, something snippy or flirty or even mean because you always do. You're alway flirting with everyone and making jokes that no one gives a shit about, and it's already been too long to respond normally, so you just laugh and hope that it sounds somewhat natural.

"Yeah—uh, yeah, let's go."

You round the car, not looking at him, hand pressing onto the cold metal, the familiar texture grounding you. Unlike most days, when you drive your car into work, you took the bus today. It's a bit of a pain, you have to walk a while to the bus stop that's on the side of a busy road, not a sidewalk in sight, but it's worth it if it means that Spencer will drive you home.

The car unlocks as Spencer opens the driver-side door, and you can hear his soft laughter filling up the space of the car as you get in.

"Jerk," you say, apropos of nothing. He just breathes out a laugh, ducking his head as he adjusts the seat and steering wheel.

It's interesting to get a glimpse into his life like this; his car, a place he undeniably spends a considerable amount of time in each day—thank LA traffic—revealed to you, like you're important enough to exist in a space he lives in. And maybe it's not the important, and maybe it's really not a big deal, but it feels big to you.

"Okay, let's get this freakin' show on the road," Spencer says as he reverses out of the parking spot.

Spencer forgot to make the reservations. It's not a big deal.

He stumbled over his words while talking to the hostess, desperately asking for them to check again if there's a reservation under the name Agnew, throwing you nervous glances out of the corners of his eyes occasionally.

As you're standing beside him, him finally giving up and leading you back to the car outside, you wonder if you would be annoyed if it was some other guy. You think about your old high school boyfriend, how flippant he was; you think about the woman from the dating app years ago. And maybe. Maybe you would be frustrated—maybe you're not really sure—, but you certainly could never be with Spencer.

His eyes are glued to his intertwined hands as you approach the silver Toyota Camry for the second time this evening.

"Ach, I'm—I'm so sorry," he starts, rushing through his words, clearly worried that you'll walk out on him or be upset or something else that could never happen. "I just like—I had no idea. I swear I thought I booked these. Sorry, that was, like, so irresponsible."

It's hard to help laughing just a bit, not really at him per se, but there's something funny about all of this, some sort of joke in here somewhere, and Spencer's eyes follow the sound up to you. He looks confused.

You pull yourself together, not wanting to give Spencer a wrong impression. "Not laughing at you. I'm just so not upset by any of this, Spence. Let's just get take-out or something."

"Oh." His shadows of his eyelashes fan out against his upper cheek as he diverts his gaze down, kicking around a balled up leaf. "Yeah, um," he pauses to clear his throat, "Yeah wanna just, like—get some Italian? Head to my place?"

He waves his hand around, gesturing in the vague direction of his apartment. The hard juxtaposition between his nerves and charms captivate you. You get back in the car.

Spencer insists on opening the door for you. "Mi casa es tu casa, get comfortable, y'know."

For a single straight guy living alone, his apartment is highly stylized; dark red curtains covering the windows on the far side of his living room matching the same deep red on the carpet. There's a good in-between of having empty space on his walls and shelfs and painting as well.

It's so Spencer that it feels familiar instantly, like it's him draped through the whole place, like you've already been here, already been inside this place of him... You immediately stop that train of thought.

"De acuerdo, nena," (Okay, babygirl) you tease, standing timidly in his kitchen like the elephant in the room, and you add, more genuinely, "It's so nice."

The sound of Spencer's laughter fills up the apartment in the same way it filled the car earlier, the same way it fills up the studio during long shoots.

His eyes, trained on you and you only, hold an intense quality when he wants them to be.

"It is nice," he says, still looking at only you. It's meant to be flirtatious, you have enough mind left to understand that.

You try to laugh, try to sound natural, hoping it will dissolve some of the tension, but it sounds stilted and nervous instead. Spencer's gaze is still burning a hole through you, so you focus on anything else.

Like the phone in your pocket, for example. Beverly Groves isn't an area that you're overly familiar with, but you've heard murmurs of a good Italian takeout place called Andre's around at Smosh. You pull up the website without dwelling on how uncharacteristically shaky your fingers are.

"So, um," you falter, eyes flitting over the countless dishes on the menu. "You want the bolognese?"

"Ragù," he corrects.

You decidedly do not look up from you phone. If the shockingly vehement tone in his voice is anything to go off of, you wouldn't be able to meet his eyes anyway; maybe it's a blue-eyed thing, always looking through people rather than at.

"Pardon?"

When Spencer speaks again, his voice comes from closer than before, much closer than before. "Bolognese is a fake word, it's called ragù."

Your response comes fast, tumbling out of your mouth before you can put your safeguards up. "Yeah, whatever, man. I mean—nothing can really be, like, a fake word, all words come from somewhere that comes from nothing, you know? Um, yeah, so you want the bolon-the ragù?" you ramble, stuck between complete mortification and discomposition so thick you can't get through it.

For better or worse, your maundering is cut short with a hand on the side of your face, and did not that Spencer was smooth like that. All of the wires in your brain and body are fried wholeheartedly.

But, in Spencer-typical fashion, he manages to fuck it up.

"Coche dulce," he murmurs, concerningly close to your ear, probably going for heartfelt or sexy, but landing miles from that.

A wide smile forms across your face instantly, and you make eye-contact with him. You're on the verge of bursting into laughter, which must be evident from looking at you face because Spencer seems so confused, and it's honestly endearing.

"You just called me a sweet car?" you say, halfway between a statement and a question. "Was that... on purpose?"

There's a faint red dusting his cheeks that matches the red flush on his ears. He's embarrassed, you realize. And isn't that kind of cute?

"I was, uh," he pauses, moving toward the kitchen sink and turning it on, splashing the water on his hands, "I was trying to, like, call you, um—call you chocherri, maybe? Fuck, I forgot. So much for, like, being suave."

Now you're fairly certain that you're the one blushing.

"Churri or chucheria?" you ask, because it matters a lot in this context, whether he's calling you darling, baby, sweetheart, or a candy.

"What's the difference?"

He's being purposefully ignorant, you know, but you still hit on the back of his head, lightly, teasingly.

"The difference is that they are two different fucking words, viejo."

The sink turns off, and he turns back to you with that same intense look in his eyes that he had earlier, that look that begs your eyes to divert your attention anywhere else. But this time, you don't. You hold the eye-contact because this feels like something bigger than what you thought; it feels like something you'll want to remember years later.

"I meant churri. Good on me for calling my date a fuckin' car."

You bark out a laugh and feel a familiar warmth lying low in your stomach, and you want to do something about it; want to reach out and tug on his soft, dark brown curls; want to grab the hem of his shirt and pull him impossibly closer; want to smash your lips against his and fog up his glasses.

So, you do all at once.

There's a small breathy sound that he makes as your left hand curls deeply into his hair, using the other hand to drag him into you by his shirt. He tastes about the same as you thought, his lips wet from licking them about sixty-five times in the last five minutes; and when you lick your tongue against his, you can get just the absolute faintest hint of Kickstart.

It's a pretty heavy kiss as first as first ones go, and Spencer's the first to pull back, lips glossy, pupils dilated, hair mussed from where your hands were.

"Mmmf," are the first sounds to come out of his mouth. "Damn, wow."

You roll your eyes but still revel in the compliment internally.

"'Damn, wow' as in, 'damn, wow, let's do this again,' or, 'damn, wow, let's go eat now'?" you ask because the clarification is the only thing that matters in the moment.

He breathes out a laugh, and you could stay in this moment forever, Spencer, still in your arms, laughing and blushing and smiling, everything else in the world forgotten in favor of all your thoughts encompassing him and only him.

"Damn, wow, as in lemme get some more of that right now." He doesn't give you time to react or respond before his lips are on yours again, and you savor it even though you know you don't need to because you'll do this again and again and again.

an: this WILL be the em dash to save me

Now, scrolling Ebay for whatever, you stumble across a listing for a used Blu-ray player. Thirty dollars, thirty-five with shipping. A fucking steal. You buy it without thinking.

Two weeks later, it's at your door, thrown into an old cardboard Amazon box. You turn it over in your hands, the cold plastic familiar in your hands. You set it on the coffee table in the living room and vow to set it up later.

Later turns out to be a few weeks. It's practically collecting dust at this point.

Spencer is usually prided on being observant. But, somehow, he misses this, like the only changes in the apartment he'll notice are the big ones. You wonder how many of your things you can bring into the place before he gets his head out of his ass and realizes.

II.

When you moved to LA years ago, you left behind a lot of people. Your parents, your childhood best friend, the only member of your extended family to even marginally leave near you, a long list of teachers and mentors you held near to your heart.

It was worth the sacrifice. It was—and if everything else isn't proof, your relationship with Spencer is—but on days where you know it would be cold and overcast in your hometown and it's just sunny and bland in LA, you miss them so much you can hardly breathe.

At your old apartment, you had polaroid pictures of all your people taped to your closet door. This pictures are still around, tucked into the bottom of a drawer in some end table or nightstand, but maybe if you're going to put up picture here, they deserve an upgrade.

So, you spend a Saturday afternoon scrolling through your 'Friends and Family' album on Photos. And if the tears start rolling as soon as the first picture, it's neither here nor there.

Sitting in the living room, on the battered up secondhand couch, you can hear the lock turn as Spencer opens the door. he comes in looking a little frazzled from game day with friends but not distressed.

He drop his green messenger bag on the floor next to where he took off his shoes, and, usually, you would get after him about just throwing shit on the floor and not putting it away, but you really don't have it in you today.

For all that he's blind to his surroundings, Spencer's not blind to you and immediately senses your change in mood from that morning. You can see the moment when his face softens to something gentle and tender, and it's almost enough to make you feel better. This, you think, is the intimacy of living together. These soft, quiet moments that any bystander would overlook; not a word spoken yet so much communicated.

He walks over to you, socked feet padding on the vinyl-planked floors, stopping just short of the couch.

He lingers without saying anything, staring down past you at your phone, the Photos app still open. His expression changes to something unreadable as he realizes the root of your wistfulness.

"Hey," he says quietly, low enough to not cut through the dim silence that spreads through the room. He moves to sit next to you. "I get it."

And you know that he does, but sometimes it's hard to believe. Spencer Agnew—somewhat well-established in Los Angeles of all places, successful in a producing job, loved by hundreds of thousands, adjusted nicely with a good group of friends and many interests and hobbies—went through a lot of what you went through, a lot of what you're currently going through, when he first moved to this city. Your heart aches as you think of the years he spent in an empty apartment with no friends and seemingly nothing in front of him.

"I get it, and I love you," he says.

You lean into him, easing into the comfort his presence brings.

Two days later, on a sunny Monday morning before you head out to work, you pop by a friends house to use their fancy photo printer. You've chosen around five pictures and swung by a Micheal's earlier on Sunday to grab some small frames.

The shiny surface of the laminated photos seem like they're a beacon of light in your passenger seat, blinding you the whole day.

Later that day, after work, when you put the pictures into the frames, you place them in various different parts of the apartment. One on the living room shelf. One on the TV stand. Two on the nightstand next to your side of the bed. One on your desk. If Spencer notices any of them, he doesn't say anything.

+ I.

As aforementioned, Spencer's couch is shit, and really, that's an understatement. He's had it since he first moved here over ten years ago, and it was old then.

It's stained past saving, scratched everywhere, smells lightly of cat puke, and is the least comfortable thing you have ever sat on. It has to go.

And even Spencer agrees with this. This isn't some evil partner's plot to get rid of their boyfriend's old sentimental sofa that'll end up on Smosh Reads Reddit Stories. Every Friday night when you and him watch a movie or two, he complains about the fucking couch, and you, of course, join right in with him.

The problem is that he won't buy anything new for his apartment. You asked about buying a new couch early into moving in, and his only response was that he absolutely would if it wasn't such a hassle.

So, you do it.

You spend a good few hours scrolling Facebook Marketplace and contacting sellers. Three assholes and one scammer later, you find the perfect one.

It's light brown with darker brown, small floral designs patterning it. The seller specifies that it's a few years old, but there are no issues. And it's just a short drive away in Santa Barbara.

Renting a U-Haul is hell, but it's all worth it when you sit on the couch for the first time. You practically sink into it, and you feel like you're on cloud nine. It's perfect.

Dragging back home is a pain, but the drive is definitely not as bad as getting it up to your fourth floor apartment and getting the old one out. You had to hire a few guys for a nice chunk of change, but they did good work and were polite, so there are worse things, really. The couch fits perfectly with the rest of the living room. It ties the place together well.

That evening, when Spencer comes home from whatever he does all day, his eyes flit past the couch at first, not noticing the new furniture.

"Spence?" you call out, eyebrows raised, and you're starting to think that maybe he won't notice this either.

You're sitting on the chair to the side of the couch, so when his eyes meet yours, they slide past you almost immediately. He makes an exaggerated surprised face and goes to sit down on the new sofa.

"When did you get this?" he asks, eyes closed as he relaxes. "It's so nice. This is amazing. Thank you."

You chuckle and duck your head. "You don't need to thank me, Spencer. It's our place. I liked the couch, so I got it. You sure it's okay?"

Spencer opens his eyes and looks up at you. There's something soft in his expression; the same something that you saw when he first confessed to you, the something you saw on your first date, the something you saw when you told him I love you for the first time. His eyes look wet, like they've started to water.

"I—Fuck, I don't know what to say," he looks down at his hands, laced together, "I guess I was just, like, worried that you would never see it as that. As—as our place. I just mean—I—"

He buries his face in his hands, the tip of his ears a bright red.

"I love you so much I don't even know what to do with myself," he mumbles into his hands, and now you feel your eyes watering as well.

You get up from the chair to sit next to him, the couch shifting under your weight. As you put your arms around him, he leans into you, fully crying. You love him, you love him so much.

The first thing you bring over is a fat stack of records and CDs, hauling over a cute little shelf as well. You tuck them neatly into the corner of the living room. It looks nice, you think. It looks like something you would have in your house.

When, later, Spencer comes home from work, he raises his eyebrows as his eyes move past you on the couch to the shelf. You smile.

“Like it?” you ask. 

He crosses the room, haphazardly setting his backpack on the floor, a light padded thunk sounding as the contact’s made. He kneels down next to the shelf, eyes tracing the names of various singers and bands on the binds. 

He takes a CD out and holds it up. 

“The Band,” he comments. “Nice.”

You can feel yourself start to smile. 

There’s a lot of overlap between you and Spencer’s interests and tastes, whether in music, movies, games, or books, you always seem to be finding out that you’ve seen and heard all of the same stuff.

“Yeah,” you say. “I’ve got some stuff you would like in there, so we can listen to music together sometime.”

The corners of his mouth curl up, and he tilts his head to the side, like a puppy. He looks so fond it makes you sick with how sweet it is.

“I’d love that,” he says. He walks over to the couch, looming over you, but it’s not threatening—could Spencer ever really be?

He leans down and connects your lips, and you both melt into the kiss. It’s sweet how everything endears him, how everything you do makes him so, so fond, and how you both slot into each other in a way you didn’t know was possible, how easy it is to casually take up the other’s space. 

He pulls back. “I love you so much.”

Your heart—just like it did the first time he said it—swoops. You duck your head, wanting to bury yourself in him. 

“Yeah, I love you too,” you mumble. He laughs, like you said something funny, and you really do love him. Maybe you’ve finally found something bigger than yourself. 

part 2 | old soho