He chuckled, then laughed out loud, and when that laugh transformed into an almost hysterical fit of the giggles, I laughed right along with him. Laughter could be a massive stress reliever, and he needed that right now.
It took him a little while to come out of it, but even after he did, he was still smiling. I put my hand on his, meeting his eyes again. “Think it over, okay?”
He slowly nodded. “I will.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
FOREST
“Wanna do me a favor while you’re out?”
The fact that Nash was asking me that showed he was at least attempting to be normal after dropping the marriage bomb on me. I was more than aware he was going out of his way to seem normal, especially considering he would have never asked me to run an errand like that before all this, but I appreciated it.
Ialsoappreciated that he wasn’t hovering or trying to follow me. He understood I needed space to process everything that had fallen on my shoulders. The weight of it was so heavy that I could barely get out of bed that morning, but I knew I needed to get out of the house.
Instead of setting up my new office, or working on lesson plans, or browsing the library catalog to see what books I could assign that wouldn’t cost my students half their financial aid that semester, I was lying in bed, rotting. I’d counted all the grooves in the ceiling by the end of the first night.
By the second, I’d rolled onto my stomach and counted all the wood grains in the floorboards.
By the third, I’d mentally redecorated the room. Or decorated, I should say. I’d moved my stuff in, but I hadn’t done anything to make the space mine. Nash had told me to go nuts,so I’d hung up a couple of the childhood photos of me, my mom, and my siblings that didn’t trigger terrible memories, but that was it.
By day five of doing little more than eating, sleeping, and passing Nash in the hallway as I moved from the bedroom to the bathroom, I decided maybe I should go out and buy a potted plant. It was such a small task, but it felt almost like climbing a mountain.
My body was reacting poorly to the stress, so my hands were stiff and my glutes felt like they couldn’t decide if they wanted to spasm so stiffly I couldn’t take two steps or give out completely. I also hadn’t eaten anything more complex than the chicken soup Nash made, or the number six, pho hai san, from Pho77 Nash had introduced me to.
But I was getting a little tired of broth and bedrest, like I was some kind of Victorian romance novel duchess who’d spent ten minutes out in the rain and was now bedridden with a fever.
I could hear Nash milling around, so I took the chance to jump in the shower while I decided whether I wanted to humble myself and ask him for a ride or attempt to manage this myself.
This morning didn’t seem so bad. I didn’t feel a seizure coming on, and now that I knew the early warning signs, I felt good about being able to at least find a soft place to land before one happened.
But the fear of going unconscious in public was overwhelming. If I seized or fainted and someone called an ambulance, I would be saddled with another massive pile of hospital bills I couldn’t afford. As it was, I wasn’t sure my last visit to the neurologist and the tests would be covered. I was waiting to hear back from HR about my official end-of-employment date since I’d finished summer session A.
It was all very complicated, and even the hot shower and scrubbing all the dried sweat smell off my body didn’t bringme much comfort. Though putting on fresh clothes did feel amazing. I took my time with my hair, making sure it was all in place and slapping a little product in it to make it stay that way.
I felt human, which was better than the bed goblin I’d been for the last few days. In the mirror, I looked like myself.Like Forest. Nothing about my face had changed since learning about my disorder. It was a little wild that I could navigate the world, almost like my illness was in stealth mode. If it wasn’t for the cane—the cane I was still a little afraid to take with me everywhere—there was no indication I was anything other than a healthy man on his way to his mid-thirties.
I wasn’t sure if that was better or worse.
I found Nash in the kitchen a few minutes later, barefoot, in basketball shorts and a fire station T-shirt he probably got from Dayton. He looked…it was probably wrong to say delicious, but then he reached up and stretched his arms, showing off a strip of skin along his lower abs, and my mouth went dry.
My dick didn’t react to much these days, but I felt it begin to stir.
I whipped my head to the side until I could see him in my periphery, and eventually, he rolled his shoulders back and pulled his shirt down.
“Morning, sunshine.”
I grimaced. “I deserve that.”
He shuffled over and hooked a knuckle under my chin, drawing my gaze to his. “You deserve to have a good day. And you look like you have…plans?” He gave me a slow up-and-down.
I took a breath, prepared for a fight. “I think I’m gonna take the bus and go to the plant nursery over on Milland. You know it?”
He grimaced. “I’m a lot of things, but a plant guy isn’t one of them.” He stuck up his thumb. “Necrotic black. I’ve killed succulents.”
“Well, you can’t be perfect at everything, can you?”
He laughed and shrugged, then grazed a touch down my arm as he dropped his hand. And then came the question of the morning. “Wanna do me a favor while you’re out? Tameron needs this stack of paperwork from the VA that he left here. If the garage is on the way, can you drop it off for him?”
