“Sure.” She turned back to the kitchen to get the thermometer. She squished in beside him on the couch as he sat in the very middle.
“I happen to have this one for your ear,” she said. “I bought it when I took an intro to nursing class in Maryland.”
“You were going to be a nurse?” Trap asked, holding very still as she placed the thermometer in his ear. Or maybe he’d frozen, because she was so close to him and smelled so good—like peaches and cream, and Trap didn’t want to make her life any harder than he already had.
“For a hot second I thought I might like it,” Lila Mae said. “But it turns out I didn’t, and I just took the one class.”
The thermometer beeped, and she pulled it out. “Ninety-nine point one.” She smiled at him, and Trap had never seen a more glorious sight. “That’s normal.”
“Yeah.” He cleared his throat. “I don’t feel too terrible.”
“You’re not dizzy? Lightheaded? Confused?”
“Not really,” he said. “My throat feels better too.”
Lila Mae reached up and brushed his hair back off his forehead again. “Your hair’s still a little bit wet,” she murmured.
Trap allowed himself a moment to drink in her pure beauty, though he couldn’t believe he was thinking about such a thing in a moment like this. Her hair held a reddish tint that he hadn’t noticed before, and her cheeks seemed flushed.
Of all things, he wondered if this could be a dinner date, him wearing only his underwear and her feeding him cubes of watermelon and monitoring his health. And if so, could he kiss her good-night later?
“You should lie back,” she whispered. “You’re supposed to have your legs elevated while you recover.”
“My temperature’s already down,” he said.
Lila Mae simply looked at him again, and Trap hadn’t had a lot of girlfriends in his life, but it sure seemed like she was trying to tell him something with only her eyes.
Her hair wafted about in the fan, and Trap reached up and slid his fingers through it along the side of her face, tucking it back behind her ear. “Listen, Lila Mae?—”
Bang, bang, bang, bang!
“Two Cents delivery,” a man called.
Both Trap and Lila Mae jumped, and she hopped to her feet, rounded the corner of the couch, and pulled open the door, the moment between them completely shattered.
Trap ran his hands through his hair, finding it damp as Lila Mae collected the items she’d ordered from the delivery arm of Two Cents.
“This place is pretty hard to find,” the man said. “But you gave great directions.”
“I hope it was okay,” Lila Mae said, and Trap realized that she really wanted to please people.
“Yeah, I came right to it,” the man said. “But without the directions, I would’ve gone to the house.”
“Thank you so much,” Lila Mae said, the brown paper bag in her hand crinkling as she gripped it.
“Sure,” the man said, and Trap looked over his shoulder to find him looking at him. “Everything okay?”
“Just fine,” Trap said, though it shouldn’t be. Somehow him sitting there, practically naked, on Lila Mae’s couchwasokay, and the man nodded at Trap, smiled at Lila Mae, and turned to leave.
She closed the door behind him and immediately sat back down on the couch. “Okay, I think you should drink first, and try fruit second.” She handed him a light green sports drink from the bag. “And if things go well, I made some hamburger Spanish rice, and you can have some of that in an hour or so.”
“Hamburger Spanish rice?” he said, his interest piqued. “That sounds good.”
“I add corn and black beans to it,” she said. “It’s a one-pot meal, which works out really great for my tiny house.” She smiled at him, looking lovely in the golden evening light.
Trap leaned forward and pressed his cheek to hers, as that felt like the most natural thing to do. At the same time, his brain screamed to him to be rational and not take this act of kindness as something more than it was.
“Thank you, Lila Mae,” he whispered, because he honestly had no idea how long he’d have been passed out in the stable if she hadn’t come and found him.
