“I’m... his boyfriend,” I force out.
I think the look that crosses her face will probably stay with me forever. When I worried about people finding out about me and Jacob, I’d worried about things like the media fallout, the annoying questions at press conferences, the awkward silences at work. I’d never actually thought about things like this. Blatant disgust from a total stranger.
“Only family may visit,” she repeats, and then closes the door in my face.
I retreat to my hotel room, struggling not to feel completely defeated. I’m not usually a quitter, but this entire day has worn me down.
When I open the door to my room, I’m enveloped by a warm, homey smell. Heather is cooking in the en suite kitchen, while her laptop plays some TV show I don’t recognize. She jumps when she sees me.
“Holy shit, you scared me.” She presses a floury hand to her face. “I just came up to use your kitchen. My room is about a tenth the size of yours.” She waves a spoon to encompass the vast, modern-looking suite. “Let me just pop this in the oven and I’ll get out of your hair.”
“No problem,” I say quietly. After an awkward beat, I step farther into the kitchen. Every gleaming countertop is covered in plates of food—curried chicken and rice, a lasagna, a plate of Rice Krispies squares.
“I got bored,” Heather says, following my gaze. “Please, eat some of it. You look like you had a shitty twenty-four hours.”
I scrub a hand over my face. “Fuck. Have we really only been here a day?”
“Mm-hm.” Heather kneels down to put a tray of cookies in theoven, then briskly begins cleaning up the kitchen. “How’s your boy doing?”
I freeze.Your boy, she said.
“Well?” she says impatiently.
I turn to the counter and pick at a Rice Krispies square, just to have something to do with my hands. “He’s awake,” I say quietly. “But he still looks really bad.”
She pulls a face. “That sucks. Do you want a hug? I’m not really a hugger, but I could give it a shot.”
My mouth twitches. “I’m fine.”
“Thank god,” she says. “That would’ve been awkward as hell.”
As I fight a tiny smile, she waves me away from the counter and motions for me to sit down. She loads a plate full of food and sets it in front of me.
“Eat,” she orders. “I assume you’re running back to the hospital soon?”
“Not for a while, no.”
She raises an eyebrow. “What does that mean?”
I take a bite of chicken. I’m not used to talking to people like this, and if I’m honest, talking about it feels a little too much like whining. Still, I actually like Heather, and Matty’s words about me not talking to people are ringing in my ears. “His family doesn’t want me there. And his nurse right now is definitely not okay with it.”
“Fuck that bitch,” Heather says vehemently. “And his family... well. Have they always been like that?”
“They didn’t know until today.”
“You told them?”
I hesitate. “Jacob sort of... reached for me, I guess, when they were taking his breathing tube out. They all saw.”
“Hm.” Heather sits down opposite me and takes a thoughtful bite of a Rice Krispies square. “That must’ve been hard for them.”
“I guess,” I say skeptically.
“Not just finding out he was dating a guy,” she clarifies. “How would you have felt, if he’d woken up and reached for someone else?”
I open my mouth to argue and then shut it again. I let myself picture it—Jacob coughing out his tube, pale and scared, and then reaching out for his mother or father instead of me. Even in my imagination, I feel a pang of distress.
“Yeah, I guess,” I repeat. “But his father made it pretty clear they want me away from him. He said something like, it’ll be his whole narrative.”
