Fowl Play (Tuft Swallow)

23. Kodi

CHAPTER 23

Brian is gone for five minutes before I start to get antsy. The burning smell has already begun to fade away, assuring me that nothing’s on fire. Crisis averted, but without sign of my chiropractor, I decide I’d rather earn my keep than wait around for more torture. His texts earlier mentioned that he was pretty stressed about Medi-Cal, and I’d rather get to work on it than waste the precious time I have before practice.

Slowly, I raise myself from the drop table, feeling weakness in my lower back that wasn’t there before. It’s like I just ran a marathon. All of my muscles are bone-tired, especially in my thighs, which feel like leaden jello. Not wanting to walk or stand more than I have to, I perch onto the fancy-ass office chair that’s tucked under the slim desk against the far wall, and open up the laptop sitting there.

Oh shit, this thing is comfy. Leave it to a chiropractor to have a seat with proper back support, I suppose. I scoot further back and relax into the lounger as the home screen pops right up.

His computer isn’t even password-protected. As soon as the welcome screen clears, I have access to every single icon and document on the man’s laptop. Really?

I’m not just going to have to share my notes with the guy; he needs a whole lesson on HIPAA compliance in the digital age.

“Um, excuse me!” A hand swats me off the keyboard, and I roll back from Brian’s desk. “You can’t just barge onto my computer like that! There are other patient records on there!”

“Yeah, it’s almost like you shouldn’t leave your office with your laptop logged in and a patient in the room.” I roll my eyes. “We’ll fix that later. Regardless, I’m going to be messing around on your laptop anyway. Did you take care of the fire upstairs?”

“There was no fire,” he mutters. I start to turn back to the screen and he swats me again. “Dinner just got a little burnt.”

“You made dinner?” I wasn’t expecting that. A man cooking me dinner?

My stomach does that thing again, and I can hear Lily’s voice in my mind. “He’s gonna fall for you hard. If he hasn’t already.”

“Of course I made dinner. I didn’t know how long you were planning on staying, and you don’t know how terrible I am with computers, so I figured the least I could do is feed you while we go through it all.” He reaches over and unplugs the laptop from its power cable, closing the screen. My shoulders fall back into the seat a bit at his logical explanation, and I try to ignore the twinge of disappointment in my gut. “How do you feel? Is your knee still hurting?”

“Other than the bruises you punched into my legs, and feeling like I weigh about a thousand pounds, I feel good. I think.” I reach my arm across my chest to stretch my shoulder, which I’m noticing feels tight now that I’m sitting. I switch arms to stretch the other side. “My neck is a little stiff, but I’m okay with that.”

“You sure you don’t want me to adjust it?”

No way. I shake my head.

“Stand for me.” He watches me like a hawk as I straighten my legs, and I feel his gaze like a physical thing. I make a concerted effort to distribute my weight evenly across both feet like they told me to do years ago in PT. But as I try to tuck my tailbone, the muscles in the front of my hips tug awkwardly. He shakes his head. “Face down.”

“I thought dinner was ready?”

“Dinner can wait. Face down.”

After twenty more minutes of poking and prodding and cracking (and a fair amount of grunts and cursing on my part), he lets me get back on my feet.

This time when I stand, I don’t feel quite as fatigued as before. My shoulders, in particular, are much looser. Brian even smiles as I walk around the room and get my legs under me again.

He grabs his laptop and we go upstairs, but as I bend to grab my backpack by the landing, he stops me. He puts his laptop on the floor and halts me.

“Wait, set that back down.”

I look over my shoulder at him. “Why?”

“So you can pick it up again the right way.”

I resist rolling my eyes. He shoos me away and demonstrates. “Like this.”

As I watch, he steps over his laptop, bends at both knees in a narrow lunge, and hinges at the hips to grab it from the floor. Then he pulls it into his chest, waiting until his hips are back over his ankles before straightening his legs. He’s acting like his laptop is a 40-pound kettlebell. I blink at him.

“You seriously think I’m going to do that every time I need to pick something up off the floor?”

He raises a solitary eyebrow. “If you want your knee to get better? You should think about it.”

I stare at him, waiting for a punchline. A chuckle. Something to indicate he’s joking. But he doesn’t budge. Just locks eyes with me in some kind of stand-off.

I sigh. Fine. I’ll try it his way. But I’m not going to look as dumb as he did. I’m going to do this gracefully if I’m going to do it at all. “So… how do you start–?”

“Bend both knees like you’re going into a lunge: not super wide, try to keep your hips centered between your legs.” I do. “Good! Now once you have one knee on the ground, pull your backpack towards your center… that’s it. Then lift it with your arms, stand back up…perfect! So much better.”

“I feel like an idiot,” I mutter. I look exactly as dumb as he did when he demonstrated it. Probably dumber. My backpack is clutched to my chest instead of hanging off one shoulder like I usually have it. He puts a hand on my arm.

“You’re very much not an idiot.” The look on his face is unbearably kind. Something resembling pity crosses his eyes, and I feel foolish. Embarrassed. But for some reason, his sympathy doesn’t carry the same sting as the pitying looks I got back when I was first recovering from surgery all those years ago. There’s something else there in the lines at the corners of his eyes, something akin to experience.

He takes a deep breath. “I know how frustrating it can be to do things the right way. To go slow. To ask for help. To trust other people when they tell you you’ve been doing something wrong. Getting better isn’t a battle of will. It’s a matter of dedication, knowhow, and time.”

I feel my face heat.

He’s saying I’ve been doing it wrong, I realize. I don’t go slow. I don’t ask for help. I’m stubborn.

While I did listen to the doctors and physical therapists for a while after my surgery years ago, nothing they said to do got me back to normal. So I went about it my own way instead, the way Coach taught me. Working myself to exhaustion. Pushing through the pain. Assuming that maybe this was just my life now: some people deal with mental illness or diabetes, I deal with chronic pain.

Thinking about Coach has me remembering everything Lily said last night, too. Is everything he taught me… wrong?

Brian’s hand moves to my shoulder, and I realize he’s been rubbing up and down my arm as he talks. His hand feels…different. The same warmth, and comfort, but this time there’s an intimacy there that isn’t usually present in his touch.

It’s nice.

But as soon as I notice it, he removes it, and I snap back to the present and we lock eyes. The look on his face is unreadable. He clears his throat.

“It’s hard, Kodi. Managing a chronic injury is one of the hardest things you can do. But it doesn’t have to stay painful, and you don’t have to do it alone.”

He locks eyes with me for a long moment. Or maybe it’s only a few seconds. I can’t be sure. All I know is that it feels like he’s not just seeing my face, or my pain, but seeing me. All the darkness that’s left over from my injury. My fear that maybe I’ll never get better. The raw, freshly exposed kernel of hope that maybe, with his help, I could.

That, combined with Lily’s words from last night…it’s too much. This isn’t just a few stretches every morning or before I go to bed. They’re asking me to dig deep into everything I’ve ever believed and tear out the foundation.

That’s far too much for me to handle right now, and way too much for Brian to see. Not when I’ve been thinking about his body the way I have, and confusing our arrangement with actual attraction.

The stuff he’s talking about? This isn’t fake boyfriend/girlfriend stuff. This isn’t doctor/patient stuff. These are feelings; this is…real.

I mean, maybe if there were a chance of something actually happening between us. Something more than just a ruse to get his ex back and his business established. If this were real, if our relationship wasn’t just an act we were putting on for the town so I could get treatment and he could make Zeke jealous, then maybe things would be different. Maybe I could let myself be vulnerable around him.

But it isn’t real, I remind myself. No matter what Lily said, no matter what tingles I get in my stomach whenever I think about him leaping to save me with only a towel on or the incredible way his lips feel against mine, Brian’s just a friend. Not even–just my chiropractor. Our “relationship” is an ongoing improvisation–a scene. A limited-run production until the end of the summer, when he can go back to the real love of his life and I can fix my knee and win our town the championship I should have brought home six years ago.

I shake my head, bringing myself back to reality, and to the point of all of this. Of everything Brian and I agreed to, and the role I agreed to play. This isn’t about getting butterflies when Brian touches me, or overcoming some trauma that Lily’s convinced I need to face.

It’s just recovering from my injuries. It’s just yes-and. Take what he says, build on it, and carry on the scene. It doesn’t need to be anything more intimate than that.

It can’t be.

All his talk about doing things the right way, asking for help, taking it slow… it reminds me of the real reason Brian and I are fake-dating. His business needs to thrive, so he can stick around and I can get better. He says I don’t have to recover alone and he’s right: for now, I need him.

But eventually, he’ll go back to Zeke, I’ll go back to being single, and I’ll be healthier for it.

He’s looking at me with a gentle, expectant smile on his face, and the thought of those perfect lips looking at me with disappointment for getting caught up in our little act, or pity for me for catching feelings when I’m supposed to be focusing on my recovery…it’s too much to bear. I know those looks too well. I never want to see them from him.

“Yeah, sure. I know.” The tiniest wrinkle forms in his forehead as I pull away. “Let’s get to work on Medi-Cal. I have to leave for practice in an hour.”