“Your bathroom is bigger than my entire apartment,” he said, trailing out of the dim hallway and into the living room. His hair was just as wild as when I’d sent him to shower, and the clothesI’d given him—sweats I usually wore to work out—hung off his slight frame in a way that made my chest ache.
“Did you even wash your hair?” I demanded.
Haz stopped behind the leather sofa, eyes wide beneath the wild mane. “How could I?” he asked. “With eight stitches in my head and only one hand, it seemed like a recipe for disaster.”
I was surprised a little hazard like him even realized when something was a bad idea. It seemed he stumbled through life with no forethought at all.
“I washed the rest of me, though,” he volunteered when I said nothing more. “Even managed to keep my hand dry.”
I didnotfind it adorable in the least the way he held up his bandaged hand, proudly showing off the still-dry dressing.
“Your shower is so nice. The water was hot, and the soap smelled so good.”
Silence stretched between us, and he shifted from foot to foot. When he lowered his arm, the sleeve of the sweatshirt slid over his bandaged hand, concealing it completely from view. “A-are y-you mad?”
I’d learned he had a tendency to stutter when he was nervous, which seemed to be a chronic condition.
“No,” I replied, turning my back so I didn’t give in to the urge to hug him.
I am not a lover but a fighter.
Silence blanketed the room, the only sound the clicking of the gas burner on the stove as I turned it off. Grabbing the handle of the pot I was using, I shifted over to the countertop to a large black bowl.
I didn’t need to look to know Haz was in the same spot, still bouncing from one bare foot to the other.
“Come eat,” I told him, hoping the clear directive would give him something to focus on.
Partway through ladling the soup into the bowl, I turned to glance over my shoulder. He’d come closer but was still in the living room.
“Sit there,” I said, motioning to the island.
I turned back to my task and nearly smiled when the legs of a barstool scraped against the floor as he pulled it out to sit down.
I placed a steaming bowl of chicken noodle soup in front of him, along with a napkin, spoon, and some crackers, then turned away to get a glass of water from the fridge.
When I brought it back, I noted how motionless he was as he stared down at the bowl.
“Do you not like soup?” I asked.
“Where’s yours?”
“I already ate.”
His swallow was so thick I heard from the other side of the island. “Y-you made this for me?”
“It’s from a can,” I deadpanned.
When Haz looked up, his expression wasn’t one I recognized, yet it still had the power to tie my insides into a knot. His green and blue eyes trailed toward the stove where the pot was cooling, the empty can beside it.
“You heated it up and everything,” he said, eyes drifting back to the bowl like it was a bag of money instead of soup with far too much sodium. “There’s even crackers.”
“I’m out of bread,” I found myself confessing as if, suddenly, crackers weren’t good enough. As if I cared.
“No one’s ever made me soup before,” he whispered.
Not even the inner skeptic in me could demand he was lying. His surprise was palpable, and the way it filled the room made it a little hard to breathe.
“Eat before it gets cold.”
