And gas.
I reach for my phone and text Emy.
Aulie
I need help.
Emy
I’m getting you groceries, but Jack is in the guest room.
My heart would be in my stomach if it could squeeze in there with all that mess. Jack, the man I professed my love to under the haze of way too many drugs. The man who laughed in return and slept in another room last night, even though he’d stayed with me the previous two. No, I won’t be bothering him today.
Aulie
Cool. It can wait until you’re back.
My phone vibrates with a call in my hand, and Emy’s name lights up on the screen.
“Hello?”
“Are you seriously not going to text him, even though he’s two rooms down and staying home to take care of you?”
Emy’s reading too much into this. Jack moved over to our house a good week ago, and there’s not much to do in Chawton Falls. He’s not here to care for me. He’s just stuck. I know Jack. He’s secretly way nicer than anyone knows, and it’s part of the reason he’s stolen my heart away from me, but he’s also not exactly the caretaker/nurturing type.
“I can wait until you or Gus are back home. It’s fine.”
“Aulie,” Emy says, her frustration escaping in a long sigh after she says my name.
“Emy.”
“Aulie.”
“Hi, I’m Patrick.” Oh, I wonder if SpongeBob is streaming on anything. Maybe I can sneak out and watch some TV on the couch or something.
Or maybe I should stay and work on fair stuff in bed. Yes, there are a lot of things that still need to be done. Frivolous things like SpongeBob can wait.
“I hate you sometimes,” Emy says. I can see her pinching the bridge of her nose in the grocery aisle, an action she usually inspires in me. “Why aren’t you asking Jack for help?”
“I, uhm—I may have told him I love him when I was out of it yesterday, and I don’t feel like dealing with that can of worms. Side note—would I ever feel like dealing with a can of worms?” I shift in bed, wiggling my toes and feeling restless. Between the constant pain in my body, the one in my heart from yesterday, and the one mentally from dealing with the shock of needing surgery, I’m an enormous ball of itchy, fidgety, blech.
“Unlikely, but worms aside—”
“Aww, don’t do that to the worms. I may not want to deal with them, but they—”
“Tu m’emmerdes,” Emy mumbles under her breath. Again, the “you’re annoying me” phrase is usually reserved for my lips only.
“When am I not?”
“Fair. But back to the loving Jack bit, did you mean it?”
I sigh, shifting in bed and trying another position to get comfortable. Nothing seems to ease the tension hanging in my shoulders and pelvic area. I may have to accept that comfort isn’t possible. “Probably? I mean, you know me. Once I love someone, that’s game over for me.” It’s the Desfleurs Family Curse. Platonic or romantic, it’s physically impossible for me not to love with a deep, fiery intensity—despite my wishes to be more frigid. “But it doesn’t matter whether I meant it. It freaked him out, and you know what Jack does when he’s freaked out. He avoids things.” Another sharp pain causes me to inhale sharply and hiss through clenched teeth.
“Was that a wince?”
“No,” I lie through tightened vocal cords.
“Aulie, why haven’t you handled your pain this morning?”
