Chapter 36 That Wiggling Thing
Thirty-Six
That Wiggling Thing
Beck
“Are you even listening?” Rigsy asks. He's using his authoritative voice—the one he usually saves for intimidating our opponents.
“I’m listening,” I lie. But my ears hurt, along with everything else in my body. I just need Rigsy to leave me alone so I can go back to wallowing in peace.
Until two days ago, I was having the best month of my life—playing great hockey, getting call-ups from the Cougars. That all came to a screeching halt when I started to feel sick. Then I had a positive Covid test. Now the team is leaving on a road trip without me.
“Okay, here's the setup.” Rigsy sounds like he’s so far away. “The pain relievers are on the kitchen counter. There are Popsicles in the freezer. There are four cans of soup in the cupboard and a lot of drinks in the fridge. You know the drill. You’ve had Covid before, right?”
I shake my head, and it’s a huge mistake. Pain wings across my temples.
“Wait, really? You’ve never had Covid? What planet are you from?”
“This one,” I mumble, even though everything feels alien right now. My head is hot, my throat is on fire and even my sheets feel scratchy. “Just go to California, already. Unless you can stop the walls from doing that…wiggling thing. Then do that first.”
“Uh, wiggling thing?” He glances around the room, looking uneasy. “Beck, who you gonna call if you feel worse? Or if you need help?”
“I won’t need help.” I close my eyes to end the conversation. “I just need sleep.”
“Your mom is all the way in Maine. But you could call Forest, right?”
“Sure.” As if I’d ever do that. The last thing he needs is to get sick, and he sure doesn’t need one more person to take care of. “You’ll miss the bus.”
“Okay, okay. I'm going. Call me tonight, though. I need proof of life.”
Just make it stop. “Why are you giving mother hen vibes, dude?”
“Because you seem so…” He bites his lip.
“Sick?” I cough, and my ribs hurt from the violence of it.
“Yeah, man.” He runs a hand through his hair. “Hang in there. Keep that fever down. Drink your ice water. And your next dose of Advil is in one hour.”
“Will do.” My eyes drift closed.
He finally leaves, and I lie very still, conserving my strength. I can’t afford to be sick. The Ice Cats will lose games, and the Cougars will forget my phone number.
I’m not taking that medicine, either. Fever is a natural process. I’m just gonna let the sickness burn right out of me.
Besides, it’s not all bad. I can hear colors now. Red and orange are nice. And the gray of my comforter makes kind of a hum. Blue is too fucking loud, though. “Keep that shit down,” I yell at my bathrobe, where it hangs on the back of my closet door.
It yells louder, and the walls do that shaky thing again. But whatever.
I’d drink the ice water, except it hurts to swallow.
Fuck it. Fuck the whole world.
It’s very dark in my room when I feel a presence. My eyes snap open. “Who’s there?” I croak, but my throat hurts so bad I hardly make a noise. I free my hands from the covers, just in case I need to fight off the bathrobe. After all that yelling, it might be coming for me.
God, it’s heavy, too, because I feel the mattress dip. I make two fists and punch in that direction.
“Whoa, buddy,” says a deep voice. A wonderful voice, actually. My favorite voice.
“Stop it,” I snarl. “You’re not Forest.”
There’s a low chuckle, and two strong hands catch mine. “It’s dark in here, I’ll give you that. It’s me, though. Promise.”
I take a deep breath, and his woodsy scent is right here. But it could still be a trick. “But I didn’t text you.” I think that over. “Did I?”
“No.” Kind fingers push the hair off my forehead, and then he sucks in a breath. “Jesus, you’re hot.”
“I know. That’s why Forest fucks me. I’d be history, otherwise.”
He makes a noise of dismay. “Beck, hon. I mean your temperature. It’s through the roof.”
“Oh. That’s just a fever.”
“Just a fever.” He sighs. “You feel like a Texas sidewalk in July. When’s the last time you had Advil?”
“Whenever Rigsy made me. What are you even doing here?” I ask the stranger who’s imitating Forest. It’s totally not cool that this guy is in my room. Except his hands in my hair feel really nice.
“Got a text from Rigsy,” the guy says. “Told me you were sick, and he left the key under the mat.”
“Oh.” That’s plausible. Or else my delusions are super detailed. Could really go either way.
“Where’s the medicine, Beck?” He uses his dad voice.
“Don’t need it.” I close my eyes as those gentle fingers push the sweaty hair off my forehead. “Fever is a natural process.”
“Okay. Sure. But either you take the stuff, or you come to the ER with me just for a check-in on this natural process. Your call.”
Ugh. No. “Nice of you to stop by, but it’s all good. Now that it’s dark out, I can’t hear the bathrobe yelling at me anymore. I can sleep it off.”
There’s a silence, which hopefully means this guy has decided to see things my way.
But then he speaks again, in another voice.
It’s quiet, but it’s somehow even scarier than the dad voice, if I’m honest. “Beck, I’m going to find the Advil, and you’re going to take it.
Or we go to the urgent care immediately. ”
He gets up and disappears on quiet feet. I drift a little, my brain taking me on a strange tour of my junior high school. I whirl down the corridor toward the nurse’s office.
Becker James, you have a fever, the nurse says.
I turn and run from her, heading for the gymnasium, which is set up for bowling, instead of one of the cool activities like kickball or rock climbing.
“Bowling,” I mutter. “Almost as stupid as square dancing.”
“What’s wrong with bowling?” asks Forest’s voice. “I’m going to need you to sit up and explain.”
God it’s so obvious, so I do sit up to explain. “Gutter balls. Rental shoes. So much bacteria. But mostly there’s no goalie. What the fuck? The pins are just sitting there asking for it.”
Low laughter. And then somehow there are pills in my palm, and my hand is guided toward my mouth. I taste their sweet coatings a second later, and the only obvious solution is to swallow them.
A cold glass of water finds its way into my hand after that, and I take a sip to wash away the nasty taste of the pills. “Ugh. You happy?”
“I will be, once your temperature goes down. You own a thermometer?”
“No? Is that a thing people have?”
He sighs. “I’d feel better if a doctor saw you.”
“You’d feel better, but I wouldn’t.” I flop back onto my sweat-dampened pillow. “And who’s the priority here?”
My visitor lets out another sigh, and his hand finds its way onto my damp forehead again. “Okay. We’ll give it a couple hours.”
“Before what?”
“Before I panic,” he says tightly.
“Nah.” I yawn. “You won’t panic. You’re a stranger. Why would you care?”
The fingers go still on my head. “Beck, I’m not a stranger. Hey. You’re scaring me.”
“Well, you’re certainly not Forest. He wouldn’t be here. He doesn’t love me.”
Stunned silence.
“I mean…” I sigh. “It’s not his job to love me.
It’s nobody’s job. I know this. The problem is that I love him, and that’s not allowed.
I mean—if Forest was super sick, I’d lose my mind.
Like, I can’t even think about it. Not sure what I’d do.
Not supposed to care like that. It’s against the rules.
I cheat all the time, though. It’s not like you can tell.
Hockey rules? Break ’em and the ref is on your ass.
But sex rules are easier. I can love Forest without anyone calling the penalty.
I mean—even when it hurts. It hurts a lot lately. ”
Only silence from fake-Forest. It must not really be him, then. Phew. Because I’m probably not supposed to talk like that. I yawn.
“We’ll sleep now,” comes a whisper. “More drugs in four hours.”
“You can’t sleep in this bed with me,” I argue. “If you were really Forest, you’ll get sick. If you’re not, then that’s just creepy.”
A sigh, and one more brush of those tender fingers. “I’ll be on the couch. Yell if you need me.”
I’d say something back, but I’m back in the middle school gymnasium again, looking for a bowling ball.
My fever finally breaks the next morning, and I wake up suddenly, blinking at my walls, wondering what time it is. I’m damp from sweat and woozy. But my brain works again.
It’s something.
I push myself up to a seated position and take inventory. The house is deeply quiet. Rigsy isn’t back from his road trip yet.
I swing my legs over the edge of the bed. Everything hurts—my spine, my ribs, my fragile pride. The air in my room smells stale, like sickness and regret. But also…cedar?
My head snaps up.
I drag myself to the bathroom, because I feel disgusting. But halfway down the hall I stop short.
There’s a soda can on the kitchen counter. Not a brand that I buy. This one is Spindrift, and the flavor is Nojito.
Forest’s favorite.
My soul detaches from my body. He was here?
I stumble backward like I’ve been punched, and then wander into the living room. That’s where I notice a folded dish towel on the couch. Neatly laid across one of the cushions. As if someone used it as a pillow.
Oh God. He slept here.
Forest.
The couch. The can. The cedar smell in my room.
The memory pokes me in the brain.
“I said I love him,” I whisper, mortified. “Out loud. With my actual mouth.” While sweating like a baked ham and hallucinating about gym class.
I cover my face with both hands. The horror is immediate and all-consuming. How much of my broken heart did I fling at him like a feverish raccoon?
Hurrying back to my room, I grab my phone off the bedside table, where someone has plugged it in for me.
Feeling like I’ve been steamrolled, I open my favorite chatbot and dictate a question. “Help! How can I undo a fever-induced confession of love?”
It thinks for a second. Then:
Based on extensive linguistic analysis, you have several options:
1. Blame it on a dream. Tell him you thought *he* said it first and you were sleep-repeating. Dreams are weird. People forgive dreams.
2. Make it a metaphor. Say you were talking about how much you love his neutral zone play. Romantic miscommunication, classic hockey blunder.
3. Distract with something weirder. Divert attention by revealing your belief in Bigfoot. Or that you eat kiwi fruit like a baked potato. Ideally both.
4. Fake your own death. Bold, but effective. Change your name and your entire personality.
5. Relocate to a distant place, such as Tahiti. Out of sight, out of mind. Also, pina coladas.
“NOT HELPFUL!” I yell before tossing the phone down on the bed. My heart is racing with embarrassment. Unless… Maybe it wasn’t as bad as I thought. Maybe I mumbled it, and Forest couldn’t even understand me.
I pick up the phone again.
Beck
Hey. I hope you’re not going to get sick. You should have stayed away.
For once, Forest immediately starts typing his reply.
Forest
Hey! Look who’s up! I’m glad you’re feeling more lucid. Will you take your temperature? I left a thermometer on your bathroom sink. And some orange juice in your fridge.
I take a deep, shaky breath. He must have spent some serious hours at my house. And I repay him with emotional vomit?
He must have hated that.
Beck
Thank you. But I have to ask. Did I say anything weird last night?
Forest
Isn’t that a loaded question? Weird is a strong word. I heard a lot about your views on bowling.
I groan in the silence of my bedroom. Then I bite the bullet and call him. “Hey,” I say when he answers. “I don’t mean normal weird. I mean…” I take a breath. “Sometimes I get emotional and, uh, clingy when I’m sick. You shouldn’t take it seriously.”
There’s a deep silence on his end of the call, and then I hear a sigh. “Beck,” he says. My heart drops a mile. He’s using his dad voice again, and I brace myself. “It’s all valid…”
Oh God.
“But I’m just not in a place…”
“Stop,” I break in, exasperated. “Just… Don’t, okay? I get it. Promise. So long as I don’t have another fever above 103, we can go back to the way things were, right? With me being the guy who loves bad jokes and your beard, and you pretending not to notice when I’m needy.”
“Beck,” he says, his voice strained. “That genie won’t go back into the bottle.”
Distress shoots through me. “So? What are you saying? Are you trying to tell me we’re done?”
There’s hesitation on the other end of the line.
And, fuck, that pause tells me everything I need to know. “Fine,” I say tightly. “I get it. So I guess this is it. Thank you for not letting me, like, die alone in my own sweat. But I’ll let you get back to your life now.”
Then I actually end the call before I start begging, and I set my phone down with a shaking hand.
Except. Except. I stare at it for a few long minutes, willing it to ring again, with Forest saying, No, Beck, we’re not done. That’s not what I want at all. And then, I need you. And maybe even, I love you.
But it doesn’t happen. The phone remains silent. And the truth starts to sink in: I gave him an out, and that gutless fucker took it.
I’m crushed. Really crushed. But I guess it’s better to know where I stand than to keep waiting for a sign that will never come.