“This is humiliating enough. I can manage.” But when he moved closer, she took his hand, and then slung an arm around his waist, staggering the dozen steps up to the front porch. His tee smelled freshly laundered.
He pressed buttons on a keypad while he held her, and the door’s lock clicked open.
The living room reminded her of a shoot for French Vogue, all distressed wood and robin’s egg blue walls. She peered down at the bloodied rag snug around her foot and shuddered. “Please tell me we’re going to a non-white room.”
She limped into an adjacent room, well-furnished in soothing navy tones, and settled onto a sectional. Phoenix propped her foot, dirty rag and all, onto a cushion atop a glass coffee table.
“That fabric probably costs a hundred dollars a yard,” she warned, wondering if his aunt would appreciate them using her silk pillows for triage.
“No doubt,” he answered, unfazed. “I’m going to get some supplies. You okay here for a minute?”
She absorbed the color-blocked spines and photos lining floor-to- ceiling bookcases, the subdued dark video screen, and the sand below a blue sky visible through one of the floor-to-ceiling windows. “More than okay.”
He pushed buttons on a remote control and soft music emerged from the ceiling. He brushed her bare calf. “Anything you need, you say the word.” The warmth of his touch lingered even after he’d left.
Family snapshots and books filled the room’s built-in cabinetry. She studied framed pictures on the table next to her. A younger Phoenix and Caleb, posed in navy jackets on a cruise liner stood with two other teenaged boys. Tanned adults bared teeth in big smiles, behind them a backdrop of palm trees. There was another photo of Phoenix and his family as they slalomed down a ski run, with “Walker” imprinted onto his race cap. The last was Phoenix diving into a large swimming pool, his grace frozen midair for eternity.
His world was opposite hers. Privilege. Money. Vacations to exotic locales. Most of all, a family to share in all that joy.
Phoenix padded in barefoot carrying a metal bowl. Inside were folded cloths and a first aid kit. He also toted a tall tumbler. He placed everything on the table. “This place is stocked for a nuclear war,” he declared, sounding jovial compared to her sudden sorrow.
He glanced at her, and his humor aborted. “What’s wrong? Are you in pain?” He tore open a small white packet. “Ibuprofen,” he explained.
She took the tablets and swallowed them.
“We should’ve gone to the hospital,” he said. “Who am I to play doctor?” He knelt and began to unravel the makeshift bandage.
She tried to upend her grief. He’d been wholly kind. She had no right to fill him with guilt. “It’s not that. It’s just, you grew up with so much. I’m not jealous. But honestly, I had nothing.” She waved toward the books and memorabilia, soft pink seashells and earth-blue pillows. Her throat surprised her by tightening. She was not one to indulge in self-pity.
He studied her. Their gazes connected, more than man to woman, certainly more than colleagues. At an elemental level. “Don’t let the outside fool you. I see you, Orchid Paige. You have heart and talent and smarts that are rare. That isnotnothing.”
Warmth flushed below her cheekbones, and her eyelids pricked with a feeling that wasn’t related to her physical pain.
Phoenix turned his attention to her injury. The tee-shirt bandage, now crimson, had peeled away in a crusted mass and she cringed at the sight. Phoenix laid a clean dishcloth over her plush footrest, which reduced Orchid’s worry for the pillow. “This will be warm,” he said and wrung a thick wet handcloth above the stainless-steel bowl.
His words, generous and offered with no expectation of a response, soothed the ragged edges of her defenses. She was exhausted from too many years of battles with a world that yielded nothing, and yet required her to work for every last crumb. It was her penitence for her parents’ accident.My fault.
She refocused on his gentle care. Could it heal a touch of the little girl buried deep? She studied the whorls of his hair as he worked. That amount of empathy had to be hard-won. He’d grown up without material need, yet he’d also suffered. She observed it in the way he intuited her pain, and the despair in his expression when he spoke of his father.
I see you, too.
She suddenly raised her foot. “You’ll never get stains out of snow white,” she objected.
“In this house, the linens are white.”
“Your aunt’s going to kill you.”
“Nope. She’s going to kill you.” His eyes crinkled with mischief, and
he cradled her foot. She arched it back for him to examine. The warm terry felt comforting against her skin, as he wiped away sand and dried blood. He dipped the fabric in the warm water and went back to work.
“Looks good. I googled it. If it kept bleeding, we’d have to get it checked out. Have you had a tetanus shot in the last ten years?”
“Yes,” she said, even though she was unsure of the answer. If she’d admitted her doubt, he’d probably make her promise a trip to the doctor.
His care reminded her of the time she’d suffered a nosebleed. Both of her parents had crowded into the bathroom with her, her mom demonstrating how to hold the napkin against her nostrils. She was eight then, but the memory was still fresh.
She distracted herself with talk. “Why are you being so nice to me? I ruined your chance to talk with Tammy.”
