“Hey,” the cabbie called, leaning out the driver’s window.
“Right, sorry.” I fumbled for my card, tipping too much like it could absolve me of guilt for another line I was about to cross. My pulse beat hard and fast against my ribs.
The cab drove off.
I slid a hand under Finn’s elbow. “Come on, let’s get you inside.”
He made a noise, slurred and low, that might have been words. Thanks, maybe, or asking me not to fuss. He didn’t pull away, though. So I slipped an arm around his waist, his weight settling into me as we moved toward his building. His cheek bumped my shoulder.
“’M fine,” he muttered, apropos of nothing.
“Sure.” I tightened my hold on him, opening the chipped-glass door to the lobby. “And I’m the Easter Bunny.”
His chuckle sounded like it hurt on the way out, words barely coherent. “Long ears.”
“Whatever you say.” Innuendo? Might have been. If so, it must be the kind that resonated better with a feverish brain. Inside, the building smelled like over-bleached floors that couldn’t entirely mask something old and a little stale. Down the hallway, a TV was playing too loud.
“What floor?” I asked him.
He blinked as though it took great effort. “Five.”
I steered us toward the elevator and pressed the button. The doors groaned open like they had better things to do on a Saturday night, which, tough luck. I shuffled us inside and pressed 5 while Finn rested most of his weight on me, head on my shoulder. Sweat beaded along his hairline as the elevator juddered upward.
Palm against his forehead—too warm, breath slightly too quick and shallow. Flu, probably. Not hallucination-level bad, but he shouldn’t be alone.
“Do you live with someone?” I asked. It felt strange that I didn’t already know this when I’d gathered all these other details about him—the way a real smile pressed dimples into his cheeks and that he had an unfortunate habit of reheating coffee gone cold, how he clasped his own elbow when a parent consult got to him, that his go-to treats from the vending machine were subpar lemon bars, that New York had yet to feel like home, and how badly he wanted to make his dad proud. Scraps and tells I’d written down between cases, as if that could trick my brain into letting them go.
“Two roommates,” he mumbled.
“Either of them nice enough to bring you tea and check your temperature?”
“Think so, yeah. If they’re home.”
“Good.” It was more than what I’d had last time I’d gotten really sick—Shane stopping by every couple of days with soup and meds, keeping a safe distance because for all his many wonderful qualities, he was strangely anxious about germs. And yet he worked with small kids, go figure.
The elevator stopped with a little jolt, the door sliding open. I caught Finn again as he stumbled slightly, half-distracted by fumbling for his keyring that came with a tiny Red Sox bottle opener. When he failed to fit the key in the lock twice, his fingerstoo unsteady, I covered his hand with mine to help. Justified concern, intimacy excused by circumstances.
Together, we got the door open. A cluttered hallway opening into a small but clearly well-loved living room that housed a secondhand couch with a fleece blanket tossed over it. Light spilled from a nearby doorway. Kitchen?
“Sam?” a voice called just as I kneeled to get Finn’s shoes off—another intimacy I could defend, even if it was just to myself. Slumped back against the wall, he watched me through a feverish haze, cheeks pink.
Before I could rise again, a guy in a hoodie poked his head into the hallway. Reddish-blond curls, cereal bowl in hand, he seemed to split-second assess the picture we made and started to grin.
“Not what it looks like,” I told him quickly, just this side of too rushed. “He’s sick. Bad flu. I brought him home from the hospital.”
“Hiya, Neil,” Finn managed, the words raspy.
“Jesus, man.” The guy—Neil, apparently—sobered immediately. He set down his bowl and came closer, already reaching out to help. “You look like shit.”
“Feel like shit, too,” Finn mumbled.
“And yet you kept insisting you were fine.” I toed off my own shoes, stood, and helped Finn out of my coat before slinging my arm back around his middle. “Come on. Let’s get you horizontal.”
“Thought you’d never ask.” Finn’s quick, tired laugh came out scrapy, barely awake, but hey, sense of humor—still intact. Promising.
“Not into necrophilia, babe.” I got him moving with effort, Neil grasping one of Finn’s elbows to steady his other side.
“You a friend?” Neil asked, his tone layered with faint suspicion. I wondered what Finn had told him—if anything.
