Chapter 19
19
OPHELIA
R eason number 593 why I’m never going through pregnancy: puking is the absolute fucking worst. And lucky for me, I’ve been doing it all damn day.
I know it’s food poisoning and not something as equally unwanted because I just finished my period two days ago. It came the day after Malcolm came to my office and visited for its standard six day stint. For some women, their period is a monthly burden to disdain and groan about. To me, it’s a welcome reminder of the freedoms I still have. Kids, just like marriage, are for some people but they aren’t for me. While some people might not understand my lack of desire to have kids, they don’t need to because it’s not their life. And I’m happy with the decisions I’ve made.
Except the decision to go to the sushi bar last night with Dale.
My stomach does a flip and gurgles in a way no stomach ever should and I can feel what little remnants are left in my stomach start to rise into my throat. Leaning over the edge of my bed, I hurl into the trash can sitting beside it that has become my best friend over the last twelve hours. When I roll back over onto my back, my ears catch the sound of my front door opening and the lock being turned once it’s closed.
“Ophelia? Hey, are you okay?” He must have heard the tail end of what I can only imagine an exorcism sounding like and comes to kneel by the side of my bed. He glances into the trash can and pinches his nose at the smell before moving it into my bathroom.
“Jesus, I’m gonna go with no. Here, sit up, and drink some of this.” He helps pull me up so I’m sitting and unscrews the cap from a bottle of Pedialyte before handing it to me. I grimace looking at the sugary liquid for fear that I’ll just end up extricating it from my body like I have everything else. “It’ll keep you hydrated, come on, one sip.” He takes my free hand and watches as I take in as much as I can.
“That’s disgusting,” I groan as I set the bottle down on my bedside table. Malcolm scoffs out a laugh and brushes my hair out of my face.
“It’s disgusting, but I’m assuming you’ve emptied your stomach and all your electrolytes which you need to replenish somehow. I’ve puked up enough Gatorade to know that shit’s worse coming back up than it’s going down so I grabbed this instead.”
I wiggle myself back down into my bed and pull the covers back up under my chin. My eyes close and I can feel myself shivering all while my hair is sticking to my neck. After a moment, I feel a bead of sweat fall down the side of my face. Who knew you could feel so bad? I’m going to fucking kill Dale when I see him again, this is all his fault. My bed gives way to a new weight and I feel his hand frame my face.
“I’m going to let you sleep, if you need me I’ll be in the living room, okay?”
“Okay,” I moan as I feel another wave of nausea wash over me. I squeeze my eyes together and pray that I don’t heave all over his lap. I start to breathe deeply in an attempt to settle the rolling feeling in my stomach and can feel myself starting to fall asleep. Before I do, I feel the bed give to his weight again as he leans over and presses a kiss to my forehead. As he does, I feel my heart do a flip that rivals that of the ones happening in my stomach.
* * *
My eyes feel heavy as I blink them open and the image of my room comes into focus. My body is radiating a heat that I’m sure is part of the rising sea levels and a cold sweat has broken out along my neck. I lean over, feeling like my stomach is about to empty itself again, and notice that my small but mighty trash can has been emptied, cleaned, and refilled with a fresh bag. So I didn’t dream that he came over. Or that he kissed me on the forehead and my little traitor of a heart wishes he would do it again . There is a glass of ice water and a small plate with crackers patiently waiting for me on my bedside table that weren’t there when I fell asleep. Pushing myself up in bed, I take a sip of water before cautiously biting into a salty square. When I feel like it’s safe to stand, I pull myself from my bed, bringing my comforter with me and wrapping it around my shoulders before heading for the living room.
“Hey there, sleepy head,” he soothes from the couch. He has an arm along the back of the couch and a leg crossed over his knee. On his face are his signature thick frames and he is holding a book open with his hand.
“What time is it?” I ask as I make my way towards the couch. My voice is groggy and my eyes are hardly open as I cross the living room and lower myself down on one end of the couch. Without telling it to, my brain directs my body to lie down and Malcolm lowers his knee so I can rest my head in his lap. Almost instinctively, he starts to run his hand along my forehead, brushing the sticky hair off my face.
“A little after six. You slept for a solid three hours.” My eyes are closed as I lay on my side with my head in his lap but I can still feel him looking down at me. I will myself to turn my head and crack one eye open to look at the book in his hand and then up at him.
“What are you reading?”
“Something off your bookshelf, it’s not bad. Better than the other book I finished while you were playing Sleeping Beauty,” he teases. I can’t decide if I want to smack the cocky grin off his face or press my lips to it.
“You’ve read one and a half books since I fell asleep?”
“Technically two and a half. I finished my book on Winston Churchill shortly after you conked out and then one more after that. I just started this one.” He shakes the open book at me as I look up at him, stunned.
“Wait.” I furrow my brows and will myself to turn just enough so I could look up at him fully. “You’re reading from my bookshelf?”
“Yeah? Is that a problem?”
“All I have are romance novels. You’ve been out here reading steamy romance books while I was sleeping?” He chuckles and bends over to place a kiss on my forehead. I wish he’d stop doing that.
“I’ve been out here learning from your steamy romance books. Some of these have good stuff in them, maybe if you’re lucky I’ll try some of it out on you.” He gives me a wink and if I had any energy at all I would have slapped his knee. Leave it to him to bring up sex at a time like this.
“Don’t take this personally, but the thought of doing anything other than this right now makes me wanna puke. It’s not you, it’s me,” I attempt to be coy and give him a smirk but I’m pretty sure it comes off more as a grimace. He laughs again and slips a hand under the comforter I have wrapped around me and starts to rub my back.
“How do you feel?”
My eyes flutter shut again and my breath starts to match the rhythm of his hand. “I feel like I don’t think I could throw up again even if I wanted to.”
“Well that’s good. Do you wanna try any food? I got some soup from the store and some bread. Bland things to hopefully soak up whatever is causing you issues.” The sound of real food causes a visceral reaction and I try not to gag.
“Okay, maybe not,” he says again with a soft laugh.
“I think I just want to lay here for a little bit.” I sigh, nestling into his leg. He moves so that he’s closer and my head is tucked safely into the bend where his leg meets his hip. “Tell me something.”
“What do you want to hear?”
“I don’t care. Anything not food. Anything that will distract me from how much I feel like a piece of shit that someone lit on fire and then ran over.”
“That’s a little dramatic, don’t you think?” he sniggers in my direction.
I pinch his leg causing him to cry out and flinch. “You need to be nice to me, I’m sick and probably dying,” I joke.
“You aren’t dying, I wouldn’t let that happen,” he says, grabbing my hand and kissing the back of it.
“Okay, you asked me to tell you something. Let’s see. You know about my friends already so behind them, I guess the next best thing I could tell you about is Marshall.”
“You mentioned him when we got sandwiches. He’s your sponsor?”
“He was—is. Now he’s more of a mentor than anything else. He’s…” his voice trails off and I get the sense that he’s trying to find the right words.
“He’s important to you,” I finish.
“Yeah. He’s the most important person in my life. He watched out for me as I was getting sober and helped me stay clean for the last five years. He would take me to N.A. meetings, got me started at the bar, and connected me with the training center I workout at. He gave me a purpose, a direction, after I nearly imploded my life. I wouldn’t be who I am today if it weren’t for him.”
“He sounds really great.” Without thinking about it, my hand reaches around myself and grabs at his hand which is still rubbing my back. Pulling it forward, I loop his arm under mine so his hand is resting on my stomach as I hold it in mine. Feeling him wrapped around me brings me a sense of comfort I haven’t felt in years.
“He is really great and a major pain in my ass.” He barks out a laugh that’s so contagious I laugh with him. “He busts my balls more than anyone and isn’t afraid to tell me when I’m being an idiot.”
“Hmph, sounds like me,” I say.
“I’ve thought on more than a few occasions how I think you two would get along well.”
“Maybe one day I can meet him,” I say before thinking about what that might mean for us. Do you meet your fuck buddy’s sponsor?
“I think he’d like that. I know I would,” he replies, squeezing my hand a little tighter.
I take a deep breath and push myself up from his lap, the constant wave of nausea dissipating enough to where sitting straight up doesn’t make me double over. “I think I want to try some crackers. Get something in my stomach now while it feels safe.”
“Here, let me.” He stands from the couch and walks into the open kitchen. I pull my legs under me to sit cross-legged on the couch and wrap my blanket closer around my body. As I watch him grab a fresh plate and dump some saltines onto it that he definitely bought for me because I know I didn’t own any before today, I start to wonder if this is what all the fuss is about with relationships. The knowing that even on your hardest days, someone will be there to sit next to you while you throw up or make you a plate of crackers just because they want you to feel better.
Walking back over to the couch, he hands me the plate before sitting down next to me. I take a small bite of one and chew slowly, breathing in and out of my nose and internally praying I don’t feel the sudden need to puke again.
“Tell me something,” he says, leaning against the arm of the couch and propping his head up with his hand. I look up from my plate of crackers and my heart melts because of how he’s looking at me. His dark hair is shaggy and falling around his square face, almost matching the black, rectangle frames around his eyes. The arm holding his head up is flexed and his bicep is stretching the sleeve of his T-shirt. A lazy half smile spreads across his face as the tattoos on his neck, arms, and hands hold untold stories.
“What do you want to hear?” I ask, parroting his words back to him.
“Anything that will make me forget how badly I want to kiss you right now.”
I pinch my smile between my teeth in an attempt to hide how his words impacted me. “I promise you, you don’t want to do that. I’ve done nothing but barf the last fifteen hours.”
“I promise you, I do. This will have to do though.” Then, he leans across the couch, holds my chin between his fingers, and kisses me on the cheek, keeping his lips on my skin for a few seconds longer than necessary. The spot where his lips press into my skin burns at his touch.
Using my free hand, I push him away from me and hope that the flushed feeling in my cheeks can’t be seen as much as it can be felt. “Don’t be dumb.”
“How am I being dumb?” he asks with his head tilted to one side.
“You don’t have to pretend that you like me. I know what we are, I know what this is.”
“And what do you think this is, princess?” His face is a few inches from mine as we sit facing one another on the couch.
“I don’t know, a friends with benefits thing? Just sex, remember?”
“Ophelia, you might think this is ‘just sex’ but I can promise you I’ve never spent the day taking care of someone who I was having ‘just sex’ with.” When my brain can’t think of anything to say, he brings a hand to my cheek and looks at me earnestly. “Why is it so hard for you to believe that I like you so much more than just someone I’m hooking up with?”
I pause before confessing. “Because I’m not that kind of girl.”
“And I’m not that kind of guy, but maybe we can be those types of people together.” And before I can rebuttal or convince myself that that’s not what I want, his hand reaches around my neck to pull me forward and he kisses my cheek again.