Chapter 20
Everything in her aches and she feels like a swamp gremlin, but still Ramona forces herself to the shower, certain Nick didn’t sign up to witness the result of five days marinating in her own filth.
Her arms hurt too much to wash her hair, so she secures it on top of her head with the biggest claw clip she owns, one in the shape of a cat.
While waiting, she texts, I’m warning you, I don’t look as hot as usual. absolutely hideous. nsfw. nsfLIFE! He doesn’t answer, probably because he’s such an attentive driver that he wouldn’t dare check his phone, even while stopped at a light.
So when she opens the door, trailing a merino blanket behind her, and sees him standing there with earnest, concerned eyes, she nearly melts into a puddle. And only partly because of the fever.
“You’re wrong,” he says, closing the door behind him. “I think you look extremely attractive. Very avant-garde, using a blanket as a cape.”
With a laugh, she gives him the middle finger. “Don’t say anything funny, it hurts my throat to laugh.”
She pulls the blanket tighter around herself. Janet has stalked toward the door, the hair along her spine sticking up.
Nick freezes in place. “I think I’ve upset her.”
“She’s a little territorial,” Ramona explains as the cat hisses at him. She bends down to scritch her behind the ears. “It takes her a while to warm up to new people. And…we haven’t had anyone new in a while.”
“Hi there,” Nick says to Janet. “You’re such a beautiful girl, aren’t you?”
Ramona’s heart twists. “She does love compliments—probably takes after her mother. You can let her sniff you.”
So Nick lowers himself and holds out his hand as Janet inspects him with her tiny pink nose. Deeming him nonthreatening, she heads for her elaborate scratching post in the living room.
Now that he’s inside, Ramona notices Nick’s carrying a full canvas bag, because of course he’s the kind of guy who doesn’t forget to bring his own bags everywhere he goes.
God, it’s bizarre, seeing him in her house like this. He takes in the grandeur like he’s just stepped inside a museum, rendered speechless by the wonders of some foreign world.
“I know it’s…a bit much,” Ramona says with a tinge of embarrassment.
“No, it’s, uh…very spacious.”
She can tell he has a thousand questions, but he must realize now’s not the time to ask. He takes off his shoes and places them neatly at her door, then runs a hand through his hair and down his stubble.
Fuuuuuuck, does he always look this good or is it just that her mind couldn’t fully conjure him during the days she didn’t see him, and now that he’s here in vivid color, she’s on the verge of short-circuiting?
His scruffy jaw and broad shoulders and burgundy button-up over a T-shirt.
New Balances instead of his classroom loafers.
That slutty little earring taunting her.
She wishes she weren’t congested, because she has a feeling his scent might heal her—inhaling him like a whippet, letting all that goodness radiate through her system…
Okay, so her itty-bitty crush on him is still a problem. How could it not be, after what happened at that Westwood apartment? Heat floods her cheeks at the memory, and this time she’s certain it’s not the fever.
Surely him seeing her like this will stamp out any feelings he once had for her, and maybe that’s a good thing.
“Have you eaten today?” he asks.
She shakes her head. “Not much of an appetite. I haven’t been able to keep anything down.”
He upends the bag on a credenza she’s always meant to put shit on but has never gotten around to.
“Then let’s start with meds. I’ve got Tylenol, Tylenol PM, Tylenol Cold and Flu, DayQuil, NyQuil…
I was going to get some of those fizzy tablets that dissolve in water, but I didn’t know if you’re supposed to put them in sparkling water or if that would be too much carbonation, since I’ve only ever seen you drink still water once. I can go back, if you want.”
For a moment she can’t speak. When he texted that he was coming over, she thought maybe he’d just drop off some matzo ball soup from Langer’s. Not the entire cold-and-flu section of CVS.
“You’re this determined for me to not fail your class?” She’s unsteady on her feet, like he could tap her sternum and she’d float away. “You’re going to nurse me back to health just so I can sit there listening to you talk about emotional cognition?”
At that, he cracks a smile. “Actually, this week it’s executive function.”
She selects one of the tablets. Drowsiness May Occur.
That sounds perfect, although as much as she’d like to be knocked out, she also doesn’t want to miss an instant of Nick inside her house.
“No heavy machinery for me,” she says, downing two of the pills and chasing them with the insulated bottle that hasn’t left her side all week. “Cheers.”
The way he’s watching her would make her suspicious if he were anyone else. Almost like…like he genuinely cares. Which is silly—she’s human, he’s human, they have some semblance of a friendship, even if it’s currently on pause. Of course he doesn’t want her to feel like shit.
But she can’t help wondering if there’s something else there, beyond the simple kindness.
If she felt better, she’d offer him a tour, but right now she can only plod over to the second living room, the comfortable one, not the one with the guitar-shaped coffee table. The couch in here was actually made for people to sit on.
“Is there anything else I can do?” he asks as he follows her, picking up the end of her blanket so it doesn’t drag too much cat hair across the floor.
“Read to me from your textbook. I’m sure I’ll pass out right away.”
“You can’t be that sick if you’re still this mean,” he says with mock offense, and as though to contest this, she groan-laughs, coughs, and stumbles over one of Janet’s toys.
“Steady,” he says, helping her to the couch, where she spies the tower of tissue she forgot to clean up. Gross.
She wants to lean into his touch. Wrap herself up in him like a blanket, use his chest as a pillow. She doesn’t understand why he’s still here; he could have easily dropped off the meds and left.
When she gets herself horizontal, she struggles with the blanket for a moment until Nick helps straighten it out. Janet is watching him from the other side of the room, as though one wrong move and she’ll go for his throat.
“I don’t want to get you sick,” she says softly as he takes a seat in the chair opposite her. “Think about all the other students who aren’t complete lost causes like I am.”
“Strong immune system.” He pats his chest. “And if I do? Not the worst thing in the world.”
She’d give him a side-eye if she were capable of it. “Thank you. Seriously,” she says, hoping he knows how grateful she is. “I’ll be fine. I’m sure there are a hundred more interesting things you could be doing right now.”
Even as she says it, she realizes she doesn’t want him to leave. But what else does he intend to do? Watch her while she sleeps to make sure she doesn’t choke on her own spit?
“Well, the Anywhere but Here concert was up next, but I saw that one in person.” He triangles one leg over the other, ankle resting on his knee. “It was surreal, watching you. To have it all preserved in time like that.”
“Time is a bitch.” A cough. “Your niece seems sweet. I’d love to meet her sometime.” And surely that’s the sign she has no idea what she’s saying. Why would she meet this man’s niece when UCLA has essentially forbidden them from having contact outside of class?
“She’d probably lose her mind. I was actually working on getting up the courage to ask if I could bring her in at the end of the quarter, so now you’ve saved me some groveling.
” He glances around the living room. “You don’t have a TV in here?
That’s the only good part of being sick, watching whatever you want with no judgment. ”
She gestures to a remote near him. When he flicks a switch, a screen comes down from the ceiling.
“Ah. Of course.”
After a few more moments of silence, her eyelids get droopy.
“I don’t think you’re going to view me as a sexually viable being after this,” she mumbles.
It must be a curse that she still wants him to find her beautiful.
In the morning, maybe she’ll regret the phrase sexually viable being.
“Not that I’m propositioning you. Or that you’d even accept, if I was.
Just that you’ll never be able to think of me without seeing me as a little blob of fever and used tissues. ”
She can’t keep her eyes open long enough to clock the expression on his face, only the pause before he speaks again. “Looks like those drugs are already working.”
—
Ramona wakes to the sound of the doorbell. The one at her gate, not her front door.
She’s groggy, her head weighing a million pounds. The blinds—did someone close them, or did she do that earlier? And her leaning tower of tissues is gone, too.
The doorbell rings again, and then two more times in rapid succession. Whoever it is isn’t giving up.
And then—a man is in her living room. Nick. How long has she been out?
“If it’s someone here to murder me,” she says, mouth feeling like it’s full of cotton, “tell them to do it quick.”
“Unfortunately, I’d have to put my foot down on that one.” Nick rises from the chair where he’s been…reading a book? That he brought with him? “I can go take care of it, if you let me know how?”
She gropes for her phone on the side table. Checks the security feed. “Fuck.” Too quickly, she pushes to her feet, head going woozy. Nick jumps from the chair to catch her just in time. “Sorry, I just need to handle this. It shouldn’t take long.”
He follows her as she pads to the front door in her T-shirt and sweatpants. She opens the gate, and there in the driveway is a black Mercedes. The blond woman getting out of it has her brows clenched in a tight line, jaw set. Her Prada sneakers hit the ground much harder than they need to.