Chapter 9
morgan
Morgan woke up with a mouth full of cotton, groggy as he eased his legs over the side of the bed. He’d overdone the meds the day before; he knew the signs. The benefit was being pain-free. He could delay the next dose and be further on the way to weaning himself off Percocet completely.
He was going to have to watch what he was doing in future, or end up back in the hospital. And had he really let a perfect stranger help him into bed?
With a shake of his head and a deep sigh, he tightened the brace around his knee and retied the waist of his sweatpants.
The room was chilly, but the furnace was kicking in, and where was his guest?
Had he jimmied the cash register and sallied forth into the snow with a roll of quarters?
Or was he eating his way through the kitchen?
The only way to tell was to go check. So Morgan pulled on a sweatshirt and, barefoot and shivering, stumbled as quietly as he could into the kitchen, which was dark apart from the tiny light over the stove. It was also empty of another human being.
From there he made his way across the landing into the parlor, where a wash of low morning light showed him that Nimble was sleeping on the floor. Cautiously, so as not to wake his guest, Morgan moved forward to make sure.
Yes, Nimble was asleep on the floor, the quilt wrapped around him, as though the couch wasn’t good enough for him. Or maybe it had been too soft.
His hair tumbled across his forehead, and dark lashes rested on lightly freckled cheeks. He was much sweeter like this, not the cocky, self-sure young man who’d stomped his way up the stairs the day before, carrying Morgan’s groceries and basically making himself at home.
Another step forward brought Morgan’s bare toes into contact with hard leather. The boots had been placed neatly side by side, but now Morgan had knocked one over, revealing a spot on the sole where a hole was starting to form, right beneath where the ball of the foot would rest.
No hat, no gloves, and now this? Why would someone live like Nimble was living? It was hard to understand, but then, maybe Morgan didn’t have the fortitude that Nimble had.
Morgan also noticed, just as he was about to turn away, that the sweatpants and T-shirt he’d loaned Nimble were now neatly folded just beyond the pillow where Nimble’s head lay.
Perhaps Nimble felt more comfortable in his own clothes, however worn and thin.
Morgan could understand that last part, even if everything else about Nimble was confusing.
He took a step back to leave Nimble in peace, but then he bumped into the doorjamb and cursed under his breath as the pain in his knee started to wake up. It was less painful than it had been directly after surgery, but it was taking such a damn long time to heal.
“Hey.” Nimble sat up, scrubbing at his eyes, and looked at Morgan. “Everything okay?” he asked, his voice thick with sleep. And soft. Concerned.
Something strung too tight inside Morgan eased. This was okay. At least for now, this was okay.
“I’m sorry,” Morgan said. “I didn’t mean to wake you up. Maybe I could make some coffee.” He paused, then added, “We can bolster ourselves before we check the weather report on how bad the storm is.”
That made it sound like he and Nimble were a team of sorts, which was wrong. He had no team. He was on his own, and Nimble would be on his way as soon as he could be, so there was no point imagining they were anything other than very temporary housemates.
“Bacon and eggs,” Nimble said, standing up, yawning, running his fingers through his hair, and, of all things, raising his T-shirt to scratch his bare belly.
“What? Bacon and eggs?” Morgan looked away, focusing on the window as if he meant to pull the blinds open and had not just been witness to a very personal moment.
“Your groceries,” Nimble said. “I put them away, but don’t you know what you bought?”
“Three old geezers took over my shopping, and it was a whirlwind,” Morgan said. “I’ll start the coffee.”
He turned toward the kitchen with more eagerness than he’d experienced in a while.
He’d been living off airplane food, funeral food, salty snacks, and coffee, along with one memorable pancake breakfast at the Laughing Fork that his lawyer had treated him to.
Otherwise, he’d not felt much like cooking or eating, and now his sweats hung off him and his brace needed tightening because he’d lost muscle around his knee.
Nimble scampered past him into the kitchen and pulled up the blinds behind the sink.
Beyond the window was a relentless white that pushed against the glass as if it wanted him to forget there had ever been a world without snow. But he was tugged from those thoughts when Nimble turned on the water, took a breath, and shoved his head beneath the flow.
Sputtering, he rubbed his face and used his finger to scrub at his teeth. Then, eyes clenched, he stood up and fumbled to shut off the faucet.
Without a word, Morgan reached over, standing close enough to get flecked with cool water as he took a kitchen towel, hopefully clean, and placed it in Nimble’s damp hand.
“There you go,” he said, not expressing his dismay at the amount of water now on the floor—that, or the fact that there was now a vast triangular wet patch on Nimble’s T-shirt, the cotton so thin Morgan could see Nimble’s ribs.
The twitch of his skin, nipples hard from the cold.
“You could have taken another shower, you know.”
“I’ll take you up on that in a bit.”
Morgan turned away and focused on the coffee ritual, glad to have that to think about. Rather than the eyeful Nimble made.
He didn’t check to see what Nimble was doing. Was that foolish? Nimble was a stranger, after all.
But when Morgan did look, Nimble was peering out the window at the storm, pushing his damp, spiky hair back from his forehead. Not awake, but always aware of where he was, slouched against the counter, insouciant, making himself at home.
“Here,” Morgan said, pouring coffee into two white china mugs. “Sugar’s on the table; can you grab the milk from the fridge?”
Nimble hopped to comply, water scattering from his hair and dripping on his skin. He placed the milk near Morgan’s hip with a shiver that he didn’t seem to notice.
Then he went to the farm table, sat down, and dumped spoonful after spoonful of sugar from the blue-and-white bowl into his coffee, so much that it might have turned into coffee-flavored syrup.
He drank it that way, black and sweet, cupping his hands around the mug to warm them, looking at Morgan with happy eyes. “This is the life, eh?” he said, smacking his lips.
“It’s just coffee,” Morgan said, though grousing about it seemed to take more energy than simply enjoying the moment. Morgan sat down as well and doctored his coffee more slowly: a little sugar, some milk. He took a sip. It was hot, which was good on such a cold morning.
“Wait till you try making coffee in an old metal coffee can over a fire in a barrel on a moving train.”
“You never did that,” Morgan scoffed, reminded, with some surprise, how nice it was to have someone to talk to while he woke up.
“Sure did.” Confidence beamed from Nimble’s green eyes. “Can I make those eggs now?”
With a sigh, Morgan made a go-ahead gesture. He wasn't used to eating breakfast these days, though he supposed he should eat.
Nimble whistled softly as he got eggs and bacon out of the fridge and opened the wrapping around the loaf of bread.
If someone had ever told Morgan that he’d be grateful to be stuck inside with a near-perfect stranger during a blizzard, he would have called that person crazy or, at the very least, a liar.
Yet there he was a little while later, having stumbled through a shower and a shave, sitting down to a breakfast of fried eggs, bacon, and toast across the table from Nimble, who might have been a serial killer in his other, train-hopping life, but probably wasn’t.
As they ate, he listened to the wind howl, the snow spitting against the glass, the cold oozing through the single panes, grateful that nobody would be showing up at the store, at least for a while.
Mabel and her dog wouldn’t come by like an army general and her attaché to check on Morgan, judging whether or not he’d gotten the feed and grain up and running like it should be.
He watched Nimble inhale the breakfast that he’d so efficiently and joyfully prepared, pleased that except for the unearthly sounds the storm was making, he could get a little peace and quiet. Less hustle, no bustle, and breakfast made for him by an unlikely cook.
When he’d shown up yesterday, Nimble hadn’t looked like he knew the meaning of hot water and soap, yet there he was, after his own quick shower while Morgan guzzled a second cup of coffee, having cleaned up very well.
Morgan couldn’t stop looking at his freckles, the plane of his jaw, the dimple in his left cheek.
As well, Morgan could see the bones beneath Nimble’s skin, as though he sometimes went without enough to eat—and now that Morgan thought about it, it was so plainly true it made him pause as he chewed a piece of bacon.
There was only one piece left on the serving plate, and he wondered if they should split it.
As if there weren’t more in the fridge, just waiting to be fried up.
“The storm is so loud sometimes,” Nimble said out of the blue.
“The windows are only single-pane.”
This was a conversation he’d had with the geezers and Mabel, but now it felt more personal. More worthy of his attention. Something he could control, rather than just another fact being flung at him.
“After my Uncle Toby died,” Morgan said, “my Aunt Oralee was on her own, and I think she didn’t have enough energy or money to worry about them.”
“She must have been lonely.” Nimble eyed the bacon before his gaze returned to Morgan.