I liked porn. I liked people. Objectively, anyway. I just didn’t want to date any of them because it was like my heart was already taken, and it didn’tmake any sense,but it did.
Elio’s head bobbed. He took out his phone, handing it toJude. Jude took it and typed something into it. Each smile between them had my chest tightening when it shouldn’t. Itshouldn’tbe so fucking hard to watch. It shouldn’t make me feel antsy as he walked back over to me, that lovesick grin I still wasn’t accustomed to stuck on his face while I tried to school my own.
I forced my lips into an excited smile, welcoming him immediately. “So, how’d it go?” Was my voice happy enough? Was it clear enough?
“We have a date on Friday night.” He was beaming. Happy, ethereal, sunshiney.
“Hell yeah, man!” I went in for a high five, shocked at how warm his hand felt against mine. The warmth he radiated sank into my bones, filling me with nothing but heat. Heat I shouldn’t have been feeling.
“You think Moon will let me borrow his car?”
“Is Jude not gonna take you? He has a car of his own.”
Elio shrugged. “I wanted to seem cool, I guess. But yeah, he does. I’ll just wait for him to text me the details and see.”
I nodded along, drinking from my milk carton as an excuse to not say anything more.
I tried to be happy for him. My sunshiney Elio. My radiant ray of everything good in the world. My best friend. My everything. I couldn’t help but wonder if maybe the reason I couldn’t think about dating anyone was because his name was already etched into my heart.
Chapter Sixteen
We hadn’t boughtany new clothes for Elio yet, so I’d picked out one of my shirts that was far too big for him and some basketball shorts. I waited for him to finish getting dressed on the couch, my earbuds finally charged enough to put back into my ears.
The music was low, but so were the whispers. Most of the time, they were intermittent. Today, they seemed to be constant. I was glad they were as calm as they were when I was helping Elio in the bath, but I wasn’t stupid enough to think that’d last.
When he came into the living room, I patted the couch cushion beside me. “Come sit with me, Sunshine.”
His hair was still damp and pushed back, like he’d run his hand over it instead of brushing through it. I took his arm in my hands, wrapping up the wounds there. “Did you take your meds already?”
“No.” The word came out on a hiss, despite my efforts to be gentle.
After pulling the wrap over onto itself, I grabbed the pill bottle and apple slices with a side of peanut butter sitting on the coffee table. “Here, eat this. You can take these after.”
He took the plate almost cautiously. The tips of his fingers grasped the edge, though just barely. A slice of apple tumbled to the side, rolling with the imbalance. It took him a moment, but he eventually held the plate by the bottom with one hand, grabbing a slice with the other. “Apples again?”
“Do you not like them?”
A stray droplet of water fell from his damp hair, dripping down his forehead. I watched it glisten, sparkling against his skin. “No, I like it. Just a theme I’ve noticed.”
I shrugged as he shoveled it into his mouth with the same enthusiasm as the day at the diner. Would he ever feel safe enough to take his time with food? “It’s quick, easy, and it’s a fruit. An apple a day or whatever.”
“Mm, that’s right. I haven’t seen that Devon dude since you started feeding me them. Must have some truth to it.”
When we were younger, he’d get onto me for chewing with my mouth open. Or chewing too fast, too loud, talking with my mouth full—the list went on. He’d always practiced eating etiquette because of his disdain for the noise, yet now he seemed to break all of his own rules.
Just another thing Jude had changed about him.
I waited until he swiped his finger across the plate one last time, scooping up the remaining peanut butter and licking it off. He placed the plate into my hands just as hesitantly as he took it. I offered him the antibiotic and some water, watching him swallow it and hand the glass back to me before ruining the slight peace we’d created.
For just a second, the whisper in my ear got louder. Aharsh breath straight into my eardrum, sending chills down my spine. I ignored it. “What happened before I got home?”
Elio’s body tightened, his muscles visibly tensing right before my eyes. He looked down at his lap, clasping his hands together, wringing them around the other. “I just… when I’m home alone, I’m supposed todo something,you know? We had house rules. A list for me to go through and do.”
I nodded along, trying to push the anger that was swirling in my gut down, down, down, deep into the pits of nothingness.
“I mean, I had shit I was supposed to do while he was home, too. But I’ve done the same thing every day, Cres. I don’t know. I guess I just went back. Back to the house in my mind for a moment. I was restless, so I thought I’d clean up for you, and then suddenly the Pine-Sol smelled like bleach in my mind, and Jude was coming home early, and—” he sighed, a shaky, barely there sound. “I don’t know. It probably sounds crazy, doesn’t it?”
“Sunshine, I may never fully understand what you went through, but I can understand how it affects you. Don’t ever apologize for that. But, you know you need to rest, right?”
