Page 99 of Mad Girl

“That’s sweet,” Bree said, tearing up. “Your sister sounds nice.”

“She is nice,” you said with a smile. “I hope you’ll get to meet her someday.”

Bree smiled back. “I’d like that.”

A week later, the stress of Michael’s absence left me feeling so miserable that I barely noticed how much shittier I felt when I came down with a back-to-school virus.

You had school, so my dad stayed home from work—like he normally did when I was sick—but you rushed upstairs the moment you got home, bearing ibuprofen, water, homemade chicken noodle soup, warm chamomile tea to soothe my sore throat. My dad, much happier now that I was talking to him again, joked you were a better caregiver than he was.

One day, you plopped down on the opposite side of my bed, pulled up Schitt’s Creek on my laptop, and set it on the duvet between us. I pretended not to notice how cute it was that you had my stuffed bunny, Tessy, sprawled out on your chest, your C tattoo winking at me as you stroked her little foot. Or how clingy the thin fabric of your joggers was in certain (shall we say: bulging) places. Or that your t-shirt had ridden up, revealing the sharp V carved into your hip. I might have entertained a little daydream in which I explored that provocative area of your body with my mouth.

Let’s blame it on the sickness—on delirium—but it secretly thrilled me to feel as if someone had taken a razor blade to my throat if it meant I got to have you in my bed. So thrilled, in fact, I wondered how convincingly I could fake my symptoms when they inevitably disappeared.

“What are you doing?” you asked, snapping me out of my reverie. “You haven’t touched your snack.”

I cleared my throat. “Do I look five to you?”

You lifted your eyebrows. “I’m assuming that’s a rhetorical question.”

“Why do all my snacks have faces on them?”

“Because you’re sick.”

“And sick people need celery snails and caterpillars that are too adorable to even eat?” I asked, staring in awe at my snack, which looked more like an art project than food. Snails with cashew heads and candy eyes, cream cheese bodies and cucumber shells. Caterpillars with peanut-butter-filled blueberry bodies, little antennae sticking out of their candy-eyed grape heads.

You smiled. “It’s something my mum did growing up when we were sick or sad. Celery snails and teddy bear toast, banana ghosts and apple turtles, that sort of thing. However crummy I felt, it always made me smile. I thought it might do the same for you.”

It had made me smile. I plucked the littlest snail off my plate—sliced cherry tomato for his shell—and whined, “Why are you so fucking perfect?”

“What?”

“The snail,” I said, even though I hadn’t been talking about the snail at all. “This little guy is perfect.” I looked at you—one arm slung behind your head, bicep also bulging, Tessy still clutched to your chest, your fingers sweeping through the dark waves in your hair. What would it be like, I wondered, to sweep my fingers through your hair again? To be that close to you—always? To have that privilege? “Aren’t you worried I’ll get you sick?”

“Oh, no,” you said confidently. “I don’t get sick.”

“Care to test that theory?” I challenged. “Because I can come over there and stick my tongue in your mouth.”

Your gaze snapped in my direction fast—and I mean comically fast, Casey. Pretty sure I also glimpsed a little fire behind that gaze. “There will be no…sticking of tongues into anyone’s mouth. Just”—you waved your hand at my plate—“eat your snack.” You studied me a second. “You’re looking a bit flushed, like maybe your fever’s come back. Do you feel feverish? Do you feel hot?”

What an interesting question that was.

Did I feel hot? With you in my bed? Wearing those joggers? Which were leaving a whole lot less to my filthy imagination?

Yes. Absolutely. God, yes.

Your eyebrows shot up. “What did you just say?”

I might’ve said that last thing—God, yes—out loud. “Um, nothing. I don’t know.” I clutched my aching head and groaned. “I might be getting worse.”

“I’m beginning to think so, too,” you said, eyeing me suspiciously.

Alas, I was back to normal after a couple of days, and you stopped sitting in bed with me, which was definitely for the best. Those naughty daydreams weren’t delirium, after all. Let’s just leave it at that.

My first day back at school, Greer slinked up to me at tennis practice. “You feeling better, Bancroft? We missed you on the court.” He bumped my arm with his. “Me especially.”

I caught you glancing up from your phone to watch us.

“Feeling just fine,” I said. “But I didn’t miss you at all.”