Chapter 11
CHAPTER ELEVEN
There will be no cayenne in my smoothie, because I wake up early enough to hide it in the back of the spice cabinet. It hurt my soul when I saw the five and two zeros on my phone, before I remembered why I’d set my alarm so early.
For good measure, I also hide the paprika, chili powder, and red pepper flakes.
I’m not sure what time Lovie gets up, but when I peek in on her and find her in a deep sleep, I’m comfortable leaving a note on the counter and slipping out for a run. My eyes snag on a sleeping Adam in the living room, his mouth relaxed and letting out an occasional soft snore. His feet are hanging off the edge of the couch, and I only feel slightly guilty about taking the bed, before spotting his beloved socks.
Elle’s General Life Rule Number One: never show sympathy for psychopaths.
Three miles and a half hour later, the sun is still only thinking about rising, dew clinging to the grass in fat drops. I barrel through the front door, ready for that smoothie now more than ever.
And when I round the kitchen after slipping off my sneakers, it’s surprisingly there: a perfectly normal-looking green smoothie, right in the center of the island. Adam’s at the stove. I don’t see the blender, so he either already washed and put it away or hid it somewhere to go rancid. Probably under my bed.
“Have a good run?” His voice is casual, as if conversations between us are always this easy. There’s soft music playing from somewhere behind him, maybe on his phone, something old and croony Lovie is bound to recognize.
Stepping up to the island, I peer down into the smoothie. It doesn’t smell like grass, which is hard to do with green drinks. I lift my eyes but not my chin, hoping my dark circles make me extra menacing. “Where’s Lovie?”
Adam is stirring eggs in the jankiest skillet in existence. Lovie’s had that thing for years; the handle is so loose, you have to use two hands to move it or risk dumping the contents on the floor when it inevitably falls off.
“Getting dressed,” he says, sliding bread into the slats of the retro brown toaster. “If she’s not back in a few minutes, would you go check on her? She’s very fond of her privacy.”
“I know the feeling.” I pick up the smoothie and tilt it side to side. Probably there’s no glue in it. Treating it like a grenade, I set it down gingerly and cross my ankles under the island, hollowed out in this spot only. The space is about as wide as a dishwasher, but this house is old enough that can’t have been the intention. When I was little, I would run through the gap as part of my hallway-kitchen-laundry loop. I cried the day I became too tall to fit.
I nod at the green drink. “What’s this?”
His jaw twitches in what I now recognize as amusement. “So, a smoothie is—”
“What are the ingredients , Adam?”
“Apple, banana, spinach, and almond milk. Oh, and some pineapple I found in the back of the freezer, so if it tastes off, that might be why.” He relaxes against the counter, takes a sip from one of Grandpa Bobby’s old fishing mugs. “Or it could be the laxatives.”
My jaw unhinges. “I thought we were in a truce.”
His eyes flash, his tongue catching a drop of coffee on the corner of his mouth. Right where he touched me last night. “I don’t see Lovie, do you?”
Well, someone woke up on the wrong side of the couch this morning.
I take a tentative sip of the smoothie to call his bluff. His expression never wavers. He either has a degree in reverse psychology and I’m going to regret this for the next forty-eight hours, or he’s the worst actor ever and is completely unbothered by my presence.
The smoothie doesn’t taste poisoned—or laced with laxatives. It’s honestly not bad. I miss my shredded coconut and protein powder from home, but this will do for now.
Adam pulls the skillet off the burner as I take a more generous gulp. “Not dying?”
I’m not dying, no. But I am transfixed on his hand, the pan still suspended from the firmly attached handle. I swallow hastily, licking off my green mustache. “How’d you do that?”
“Do what?” He sets the skillet on a waiting trivet.
“The … the handle is loose.”
He shrugs. “I fixed it.”
This guy is from another planet. My brain can’t wrap itself around all the little things he does, seemingly for no reason other than to make things easier on others. Not me, of course, but Lovie.
My ex, Grady, wasn’t necessarily a bad guy. I think that would require him pulling his head from his ass long enough to be anything other than self-absorbed. I can’t count the number of times he made me a smoothie, because it literally never happened. Not once.
And here comes this fucking guy , who makes my grandmother what she thinks are her favorite foods and appeases her by watching her shows.
Today his scrubs match his eyes, a deep navy that brings out his lingering summer tan. It’s a nice color on him. And that material looks soft too, washed the perfect amount of times. I bet the fabric would stretch to accommodate any hands that slipped underneath. His biceps would flex as he pulled it overhead.
Elle , he’d say, gritty and a little undone. Or maybe as a question, a request. Elle, will you take that off for me?
“Elle? Did you hear me?”
I snap back to reality with a harsh blink, and yeah, he just caught me staring at his traps. Because he has those too.
“What?” I say, dazed.
Adam fights a smile. “I asked if you would go check on Lovie.”
I pivot on my socked feet, not bothering with a verbal response because I cannot believe I just eye-fucked Lovie’s nurse. Me being here has nothing to do with me and everything to do with Lovie needing a nurse in the first place.
I knock twice on my grandmother’s bedroom door.
A frustrated sound carries to me. I don’t know if she meant it to grant entrance, but it does.
She’s perched precariously on the side of her bed, trying to work her sock onto one of those shoe contraptions. The other sock is backward, the heel billowing near the bend in her ankle. Her yellow shirt is misbuttoned, her reading glasses are askew, and there might be an actual bird’s nest in her hair.
There’s so much going on, I don’t know where to start. My breath is shallow, shaky. It still shocks me how bad she’s gotten.
When I was in college, I called Lovie once every other day or so, just to check in.
“I’m fine, Ellie,” she’d always say. “Just old.”
Every time, I rushed to correct her. “You’re not old, Lovie.”
But she was then, and she is now. I didn’t realize I was doing her a disservice at the time, denying her something she knew in her brittle bones. I viewed getting old as a bad thing, something that slows you down and steals time, when it’s really just a thing we have to deal with and adjust to. People are born and grow up, then they get old and die. And so many don’t even get to have that honor in the first place.
I don’t know if this is helpful thinking, but it does unstick my feet. I move toward her, and both fear and anger flash in her eyes.
“What are you doing?” She sounds like she looks—a mess.
I place my hand atop hers as she fumbles with the guide tool. “Helping you.”
She snatches her hand away, pulling the helper so fiercely it whacks me in the leg. Hard. “I don’t need help.”
My thigh throbs, but also my head and heart and stomach. My entire body is a bruise. This might be the most uncomfortable feeling in the world for someone like me: knowing you can help but being told you aren’t allowed. My nose burns with the threat of tears, but I won’t let them fall. I have a job to do, dammit.
Ready or not, Hurricane Elle just touched down.
I crouch in front of her, plucking the errant sock from the end of the helper before she notices it’s gone.
When she does, she pulls her arm back like she might strike me with it, but I don’t flinch. I can’t afford to again.
Her toes are cold enough that the slight blue tinge is worrisome. The yellowing nails could use a trim too. The skin is so translucent that the spider veins around her ankles jump out at me like fireworks against a night sky. I guide her toes in gently, but her nails cause a snag or two. She’s getting her Wheel of Fortune with a side of pedicure tonight.
Maybe her outburst used up all her energy, because she doesn’t fight me this time. She’s shaking a little. After I correct the other sock and rebutton her shirt, I find the thickest sweater I can in her closet, which smells like lavender and home. Like love.
Like Lovie.
“Do you want help putting this on?” I ask.
She crosses her arms low on her stomach.
Rolling my eyes, I pull one arm free, slipping my hand through the hole to guide her. Learned my lesson with the socks. Her next arm goes better, and it’s only after her sweater’s on and the shaking has subsided that I move for her hairbrush.
I don’t bother asking this time, and she doesn’t fight me. Instead, she takes to rubbing her knuckles. She spends the longest time on the fourth finger of her left hand. She still wears her wedding ring every single day. The gold is scuffed and scratched, a physical manifestation of sixty years well lived and well loved.
Clearing my throat, I get her on her feet. I nod my chin to the walker in the corner. “Do you want that?”
She scowls.
“Okay, then,” I say. “Let’s go. Breakfast’s ready.”
Neither of us is smiling when we make it to the kitchen. My thigh pulses with every heartbeat, and I rub at it absently as I swipe my smoothie from the counter and sit as far away from Lovie as possible. Which, at a table for four in a house this size, is not far enough.
I know better than to take Lovie’s outbursts personally. In one single day, I’ve seen the damage this horrible disease has done to the person she used to be. She’s always been stubborn—I learned it from her—but this is worse.
And maybe I’m a little mad at her. For hitting me with assistive clothing devices. For thinking I’m in love with Adam. For forgetting who I am in the first place. So I sip my smoothie noisily, chomp too loud on toast because I know it bothers her to hear people chewing. Petty, yes, but it can’t be helped.
Adam just watches us, and I choose to ignore the concern on his face. What he doesn’t realize yet is he’s currently cohabitating with both the Queen and Princess of Cold Shoulder Kingdom.
“What do you want to do today, Lovie?” he asks when forks scrape porcelain.
She snorts down at her plate. “Stay away from her.”
“Her …” Adam trails off. I rub my thigh again, and his face twists. I continue to ignore his worried glances. He blinks hard. “Gardening, maybe?”
Lovie’s head snaps up to bark at him too, but the hostility slips as she sees him for the first time this morning. Literally melts off her face, into something eerily similar to admiration. Her hands come together, and she thumbs her wedding ring again. “You don’t garden, Bobby. Only Lovie does that.” She tilts her head my way. “Maybe she can teach you a thing or two.”
The cherry drops onto this already shitty sundae of a day. Sleep was supposed to fix it. A good night’s sleep fixes everything.
But not this. She’s still stuck in her delusions, in the belief that Adam and I are Lovie and Bobby.
Which means we’re stuck right along with her.