Chapter Fourteen #2
I squeeze her hand back. After a moment she says, “Three things you can hear. Start with my voice. What else can you hear?”
The rush of the air-conditioning, blowing from the vent overhead. The sound of my own breathing…
Somehow slower. More measured.
I look down, then startle, yanking my hand away so hard, the fingers gripping mine follow for half a second before flinching back.
Felicity was not holding my hand. Those were not her long fingers, not her dark skin. That was a lightly tanned, faintly calloused hand—one I recognize instantly, because I’ve been thinking about it for days.
I lean in, peering through the crack in the door.
Jamie kneels at the threshold of my room, white-knuckled fists pressing into his knees. He has his head down so I can’t see his eyes.
Felicity stands over him, hands braced on either side of the doorframe, Mikey and Andres hovering behind her.
I suck in a breath, jerking away again.
“Bee?” Felicity says. “Do you think you can open the door now?”
“Jamie needs to leave.”
“Blair,” he starts, his voice hard.
“Jamie,” Felicity says quietly.
I close my eyes, listening to his harsh exhale, the sound of him shuffling to his feet.
“Fine,” he says, and I can’t read his tone. I feel out of my body, their voices still distant, like I’m hearing them from the opposite end of a tunnel. Then, suddenly closer, his voice. Speaking only to me. “I’m going to work. Just… don’t do anything. Don’t worry about what I said. Okay?”
I try to reply, but all that comes out is a shaky exhale.
On the other side of the door, he says to the others, “Don’t let her work on anything. Just make sure she rests—”
“We’ll take care of her,” Felicity says.
I wait until I hear the snick of the front door closing behind him. When I’m sure he’s gone, I shuffle to the side and open my door wider.
“Hi,” I say, my voice hoarse.
“Come here,” Felicity says, putting out a hand. “This is going to suck, but I think we need to get you in a cold shower.”
Unfortunately, the cold shower helps. Somewhere between the initial pins-and-needles shock of it on my skin and shivering under the stream, my body relaxes.
My hands finally uncurl completely, my muscles loosening, everything in me going so slack that it takes three tries to get a towel around myself when I’m done.
In my room, Felicity finds me clothes while Mikey sits me down at my desk and brushes my wet hair in slow, soothing strokes.
Andres makes tea, Mikey grabs her weighted blanket, and Felicity puts on an animated show about a bald kid with powers.
They get me settled on the couch, and Mikey sits on the floor next to me while Felicity and Andres take the other end of the sectional.
I watch the show without absorbing anything, even as the others begin to unwind. Andres points out his favorite characters, and Felicity laughs at the jokes, and then Mikey turns to me and says, “I used to get panic attacks too.”
The room goes quiet.
“My anxiety still gets pretty bad sometimes, but I go to therapy now, and I’ve learned some good coping mechanisms. We don’t have to talk about it, but I wanted you to know you’re not alone.” She finds my hand beneath the weighted blanket and squeezes. “We’re here for you anytime, Bee.”
“Always,” Andres says. “Even if you aren’t living here anymore.”
Felicity stretches across the sectional and pats my leg gently.
“And we get it. We’ve all got varying degrees of anxiety, and some of us”—she points at herself—“are clinically depressed. So you never have to feel embarrassed with us, or like it’s too much, or we won’t know how to handle it.
Even if we don’t know what to do, we’re your friends. We’ll help you however we can.”
“Thank you,” I say thickly, the word “friends” lodging straight in my heart.
Eventually, even before we’ve reached the end of the first episode, I drift off. It’s a strange kind of sleeping. It reminds me of when my parents would have people over, and I’d go to sleep with the light filtering under my door and faraway voices drifting into my almost-dreams.
But I know I fall into a deeper sleep eventually, because when I wake up the apartment is dark, and the TV is showing the Are you still watching?
message. I blink, my eyes adjusting, and my gaze snags on a stack of bags of sour candy on the coffee table.
There’s a sticky note on top that says only Blair in Jamie’s neat, blocky handwriting.
I reach for the sour gummy worms but freeze when I catch movement out of the corner of my eye.
“Hey,” Jamie says, his voice rough with sleep. He’s lying on the short end of the sectional, his legs scrunched to fit. He shifts, dragging himself up. “You okay? Do you need something?”
I snag the gummy worms and sit back, holding them up. “You brought me these?”
He nods slowly, glancing toward the TV. He grabs the remote from the coffee table and clicks Yes, starting another episode of the same show that was on when I fell asleep.
“Thanks,” I say quietly, tearing the bag open. I offer him one, but he waves me off. “Why’d you bring so much?”
“I knew you liked sour candy, but I didn’t know your favorite, so I just grabbed a bunch.”
“Sour Patch Watermelons.”
He quirks an eyebrow.
“My favorite,” I say. “Sour Patch Watermelons. What’s yours?”
He yawns, sliding back down on the couch, arm behind his head. He doesn’t have a pillow, just a throw blanket tossed over his legs. “I don’t know. Probably M&Ms.”
“Plain?”
“I guess. Or peanut butter.”
“It has to be peanut butter. They’re clearly the best—”
“Blair.”
I bite off one end of a gummy worm, my heart racing at the quiet, serious way he says my name. I finish off my gummy worm and busy myself searching the bag for another cherry-lemon-flavor. “Hmm?” I say without looking at him.
“Why—” He stops short, clearing his throat quietly. “Why would I trust someone who’s probably burned her taste buds off with Sour Skittles to tell me what the best M&M is?”
I watch him for a moment. I don’t think that’s what he was going to ask, but I’m not brave enough to push him.
I can guess it had something to do with what happened earlier, and I don’t want to talk about it.
I’m still mortified that I let him see me like that.
I’ve seen so little of Jamie all these years, yet he’s seen all the worst parts of me now.
“Sour Skittles?” I say instead. “What am I, a child?” I switch to the other end of the couch, passing him one of my pillows and lying on my stomach so we’re head-to-head.
He’s on his back, and the light from the TV dances along his sharp jaw and cheekbones.
“I got Barnetts Mega Sours for my birthday last year and literally gave myself a tongue blister.”
Jamie cringes, rolling onto his side to face me. “That’s disgusting.”
“Worth it. They’re sour all the way through.”
“How is that even enjoyable?”
“I’ve never thought about it. I just thank god every day that I’m not allergic to red dye forty.” I bite off the end of another gummy worm.
“When was your last allergic reaction?”
“My last major one? You were there.”
“Ah.” He rolls onto his back again. “The bake sale.”
“The bake sale,” I confirm.
Three years ago, I bought a mislabeled bake sale cookie and had to use my EpiPen in the middle of our high school cafeteria while half the school watched.
(After that, bake sales were banned, which somehow became my fault rather than that of the band kids who’d nearly killed me, which everyone made sure to remind me of the next year, when the band was forced to do a car wash in the scorching Florida heat.)
“Where do you keep your EpiPen?”
“In my bag.” I smirk, eyeing him. “Why? Do you think you’ll have to use it on me sometime in the next six weeks?”
“I figured we should know, just in case.”
“The inside pocket without the zipper,” I say. “I like to have easy access to it.”
He nods slowly, his eyes trained on the ceiling. “And if something like today happens again?”
I freeze mid-chew, the gummy worm in my mouth going tasteless. I have to swallow hard to force it down. “Um.”
He turns his head to look at me, his expression half hidden in the dark. I realize how close we are, mere inches separating us. His pupils are blown wide as he watches me, and his unflinching attention sends my nerves vibrating.
I roll onto my back, heart galloping in my chest. When I reach out to set the gummy worms on the coffee table, my hand shakes.
“I don’t know. I guess pretend you don’t notice and leave me alone to get over it.”
“And what if that’s not an option? What if I—” He stops short and exhales. “If it’s like it was today, I don’t think you should be alone.”
I force out a laugh. “Careful, Jamie. It almost sounds like you were worried about me. You don’t have to pretend, okay? Just do nothing. Let me handle it. That’s preferable for both of us, don’t you think?”
A long moment passes before he replies, as though he’s choosing his words carefully. “If that’s what you want.”
“Obviously. And forget whatever you saw today. I don’t need that getting back to Sawyer.”
“Blair—”
“Can we just be quiet? Please? I’m tired.”
I don’t have it in me to badger him into leaving, and I can’t bring myself to retreat to my room yet.
As much as I wish it weren’t Jamie out here with me when my defenses feel so frayed, I also don’t want to be alone.
I’ve spent so much time on my own the last few weeks, it’s nice to have someone on the other end of the couch—even if it has to be him.
“Yeah,” he murmurs. “We can be quiet.”
After a long time, his breathing goes even, and I roll onto my stomach again, moving as carefully as possible so I don’t wake him.
His eyes are closed, his short lashes casting little shadows on his skin.
His black eye has almost faded entirely by now, with only hints of a greenish-yellow bruise remaining.
His cheek is pressed into the pillow, one arm curled beneath it, his hand resting in the inches of space between us.
I shift, sliding my hand from beneath my own pillow so it rests beside his.
I don’t know what I’m thinking—maybe I’m not.
Maybe the adrenaline that fled my body in a rush after my panic attack took some of my good sense with it.
I trace my fingertip along the side of his thumb, and Jamie’s hand twitches in response.
Before I can pull away, his fingers close around mine.
My gaze flicks to his face, but his eyes are still closed. I tell myself he’s sleeping, that it’s only a reflex. But his fingers tangle with mine, tightening briefly, and the way his expression has tensed tells me he’s awake too. He knows exactly what he’s doing.
I press my face into my pillow, squeezing his hand back as something in my chest loosens, a knot coming undone.
I don’t take any time to examine it. I don’t wonder what it means, or why it’s happening now of all times.
I just hold on and pray that if we both pretend to sleep through it, the tectonic plates running beneath the landscape of our relationship will settle on their own.
A minor shift, a small rumble. But not an earthquake—not yet.
Hopefully not ever.