“I’ll go pick you up some meds, okay?”
Her swollen eyes flickered open, and her brow furrowed. “You’ll come back?”
He nodded. “Yeah, of course. I’ll leave it on the—”
“And then you’ll stay?” she said.
He stared down at her. Everything he saw when he looked at Nora, it was still a problem: his weaknesses, his past, his fear for how he figured he was destined to turn out, if he let himself get too close to her.
But he knew she didn’t meanstay forever. He knew she meantfor now, for while she felt like this, for the term of that silent deal they’d made only a moment ago. And he figured that was safe enough. He figured he was strong enough for that.
One night, and then he’d go back to normal.
“Yeah,” he said, bending down and tucking the blanket around her, barely stopping himself from setting his lips against her brow.Not that, he warned himself, before straightening again. “I’ll stay.”
Chapter 9
The first time Nora woke up, he was in her kitchen.
He’d been to the pharmacy, a small white paper bag tipped on its side on the counter, but he’d also stopped by the grocery, picking up a small crate of clementines and a loaf of bread and three different kinds of ready-made soup, one of which she found him heating on the stovetop. When she shuffled into the kitchen, she could tell by the notch between his eyebrows and the tense set of his jaw that she looked about as good as she felt (which was to say: hideous!), and so when he set the bottle of Tylenol in front of her and uncapped her new prescription decongestant, she took it with the full glass of water he said she had to drink and she didn’t complain at all. She ate a bowl of soup, and they talked about her work and his, anything that wouldn’t get them talking about the building. When she’d finished eating, Will had pointed her back to the couch and told her to put something entertaining on TV for them to watch, but she’d fallen asleep again before he’d finished clearing plates.
The second time, he was out in the hallway.
It was mostly dark in the living room, a soft glow from the light left on above the oven, and when Nora first sat up, sweaty from her obviously broken fever, she thought at first—with no small sense of wholly unjustified disappointment—that he’d gone. But when she’d rubbed at her eyes and brought more of her senses back online, she’d heard the familiar sound of Jonah’s absurdly loud TV and noticed that the soft glow wasn’t only from the oven light; it was also coming through the narrow crack of Nora’s partially open front door. She’d hauled herself up from the couch, leaving behind the now too-warm blanket, and tiptoed toward it, peeking out to see Will’s broad back as he leaned against Jonah’s open doorway, the light from that huge TV flashing as Jonah shouted at him about the guy on first base. She could’ve stood and watched like that for a long time—Will watching baseball with one of Nora’s favorite people in the world, a member of this family she’d been trying so hard to get him to recognize—but when she reached up to scratch her head she made contact with the sweaty, sticking-up side of her hair, and so instead she crept into her bathroom to shower and brush her teeth. When she came out, dressed in a fresh set of pajamas, her wet hair twisted into a loose bun on top of her head, he was back inside again, folding up the blanket she’d left behind and looking like he was getting ready to leave.
The third time, he was in her bed.
It took her a few sleepy seconds to remember how he’d ended up there, and once she did, she squeezed her eyes shut in embarrassment. It’d started with his insistence on her taking another dose of Tylenol and drinking another full glass of water (the whole thing! He was so bossy about water. She didnotreflect on how bossy he might be in other contexts; she didnot!), and then a pretty effective scolding (no other contexts,none!) when she suggested she might go catch up on some of the work she’d missed during the day. She’d sighed and agreed that yes, she was, in fact, pretty tired, but maybe she’d sleep on the couch, because she had to change the sheets on her bed, and the couch was fine anyway, and—
And he’d said, “Okay, let’s go change them,” and marched past her, and five minutes later they were smoothing clean linens across the mattress and not making eye contact, but it was all fine; she’d get in bed and he’d go, and that was fine and good and normal; it was silly that she’d asked him to stay before.
But then—ohGod, this was the embarrassing part—she’d asked him to stay again. She’d crawled into her cool, perfect bed and curled onto her side and asked him if he’d heard from Sally about the kittens, and he’d shown her his phone, three videos of the newly named Quincy and Francis happily exploring a cat tree and a small scratching post, and then she’d gotten sleepy again,realsleepy, talking-nonsense sleepy, and she’d said, “Sit right there for a minute,” and pointed to her mattress, and then she’d held his phone close to her face and watched the videos again, maybe even twice, feeling a little wistful about her stupid late-developing cat allergy, but not wistful enough, she guessed, to keep from falling asleep again.
It was still pitch dark, so maybe it hadn’t been all that long, but judging by how rested she felt, and judging by how dry her hair was, she’d been out for a while. She even had a mean crick in her neck, which was weird, because her pillows were usually. . .
Oh no. Oh no no no.
She was not sleeping on her pillow.
She was sleeping on Will Sterling’s lap.
Her cheek on his thigh, rising and falling slightly from the long, even breaths that suggested Will had fallen asleep, too, sitting up in the same position she last remembered seeing him in, his back against her headboard, one of his feet still on the floor.
She gently—so, so gently—pulled her cheek away, and with mortifying clarity realized that it was damp.
Because she’ddrooledon him.
Please don’t wake up, she thought.
“Hey,” he said, his voice low and rough, because of course she’d fall asleep on the lightest sleeper alive.
Please don’t notice your leg, she thought.
He unfolded his crossed arms and set a hand on his drooled-upon thigh, and Nora put her face in her hands and groaned.
He chuckled. “Hey, now. Two nights ago a kitten crawled out of a hamper, peed on my torso, and screamed in my face. This is nothing.” He shifted, rolled his neck. “How’re you feeling?”
That was nice, how he did that. How he moved right on, from the humiliating thing. Probably she ought to take back what she’d said about his bedside manner. On the scale of things, theI’ve seen worseapproach worked pretty well, actually.
