Chapter 14 Skylar #2
“What should I text? I’m not used to talking about women with her.”
“Well, I’m not any woman, am I? I’m your girlfriend, so she’ll expect different.”
He shows me his phone. Skylar felt up for a visit. Taking it easy tonight with chicken soup and a movie.
“Good,” I say.
“Should I add hearts?”
“No. You add hearts when you’re texting me. I mean, your girlfriend.”
He dips his head and sends the picture. Two seconds later, my phone pings, but it’s not the girls wondering where I am.
It’s Pike. He sent me the picture along with a bunch of hearts. “For all intents and purposes, you’re my girlfriend, so if you say to add hearts, I’m adding hearts.”
I reply to the text. I say to wire me a million dollars.
Pike bites his lip in an effort to hide a playful grin. I knew you’d want money. Total gold digger.
You’re full of shit. I add a wink.
So, what movie are we watching?
I glance up. Pike’s still trying—and failing—to suppress a smile.
“You want to watch a movie with me?”
“Why not? After everything, I’d say we’re friends, yeah?”
Friends. It’s true I’m more comfortable with him now, but it’s a strange label for what we are. Besides, I don’t bother with in-person friendships. Not anymore.
But Pike is different, isn’t he? He’s respectful. Kind. Even if he is blackmailing me.
“Unless you’re heading to bed?”
He knows by now that it’s too early for me to even consider sleeping.
I circle a finger around my eyes. “My pressure makes screens hurt, especially with moving pictures.” And because everyone always calls me out on what they believe are inconsistencies, I quickly add, “I know I said I was talking to the girls online—and I was—but with one eye open. To stave off utter boredom.”
I wring my hands. The last time I told Mom my eyes bothered me, she said it was because I spent too much time on my phone.
“We can just hang out,” he says. “I know it can be boring by yourself when you have pain.”
Some of the tension drains from my shoulders. He isn’t questioning me. “What would we do?”
He crosses one ankle over the other and leans back, getting more comfortable in my kitchen than any man ever has. “I can think of a few things.”
Suddenly, I can, too, and I grab a mug so he won’t see my thirsty expression. “L-Like what?” I cough to cover my nerves, then end up choking on my saliva. That’s what I get for my mind going directly in the gutter.
He reaches around me for my electric kettle. His snug gray Henley shows the shape of his body beneath it precisely. Not that I need help remembering the shape of his body.
“When I was recovering from my surgeries, my eyes hurt.” He holds out my tea rack until I pick my go-to, Dandelion Leaf & Root. “First from the concussion, then from the drugs. I wore blue-tinted glasses for a while. Did a little vision therapy. You know.”
I do not. My doctors have never offered me any of that, despite my inquiries.
“When screens bothered me,” he says, “I tried stuff like baking, crafts, listening to audiobooks, and playing board games. Does your pain allow you to do those things?”
I gawk at him. “You bake and do crafts?”
“I said tried. Mostly, I sulked and did PT. Though I can make a mean chocolate chip cookie. Everything else takes too much energy.”
“I love chocolate chip cookies.”
He drops the tea bag in my blue-and-lime-green IIH awareness ribbon mug. “Is that what you want to do? Bake?”
“All I feel like doing is resting. But we could, uh. Talk a little?” I wish Pike’s surprise visit was enough to distract me from my pain, but I learned long ago that I can’t be distracted from it. I can only make time pass more quickly.
He gives me a banana from my tiered fruit basket. I decline.
“No? Enough potassium for today?” he teases.
“No, I took my…my…” My brain trips over the word. “Thingies. That you swallow. Um. From the doctor.”
“Pills?”
“Yes! My pills. I’m a mess today. I found a pair of clean spoons inside my microwave earlier.”
“Well, at least they were clean.”
He makes his way to my sectional, his walk slower than I remember.
Is he still hurting from last weekend? He lowers himself onto the cushions and sprawls out, legs stretching like they own the space.
My thoughts spiral, unbidden, to how he could use those strong thighs, what they’d feel like moving over me.
A slow ache unfurls deep within me as I imagine the weight of him, the power in every flex, the way he could cage me in, hold me steady, make me beg for more.
It’d be such a welcome change from all this pain.
“IIH has a lot of similarities to a TBI,” I say quickly, trying to dislodge the image. “Probably because they can both involve cerebrospinal fluid pressure.”
“I read that too.”
“You…you did?”
“Headache, dizziness, confusion, ringing in the ears, mood changes, problems with focus, blurred vision, fatigue?”
I did mention most of those symptoms, but I’m stunned he remembers. My heart. He pays attention.
“Did you have any permanent damage from your concussion?”
“Nah, I was lucky. The first month was disorienting, but I also had massive amounts of painkillers and nonworking limbs, so that was disorienting all on its own.”
“I never get pain meds,” I say with a long sigh. “And I have pain every day. It’s the level to which it’s tolerable or not that determines how I function.”
“And right now?”
“Right now, I’m at the tail end of a two-day migraine, and my pressure feels sky-high. But I haven’t thrown up in six hours.”
“Can you increase your dosage?”
“Not without knowing my opening pressure. My insurance doesn’t allow early refills, so I can’t experiment on my own.”
He frowns. “I’m guessing Dr. Wharton won’t give you more.”
“Not without another lumbar puncture.”
“Luis’s boyfriend, Cyrus, said one of his friends needed a spinal tap. Apparently, they’re awful.”
“They can be.”
He drags a hand over his scruffy jaw. “They really want to meet you. I feel bad at how genuinely happy they are that I have a girlfriend.”
“Why don’t you tell them it’s fake?”
“At first it was because of Mom. Then Luis invited us to Game Night as his friends were showing up, so now even more people know.”
Game Night is our supposed meet-cute. “It’s at your house? Why aren’t you hanging out with them?”
“I don’t belong there.”
“Why not?”
“Well, I’m a bit of a fraud, aren’t I?” He lifts his cane like, See?
I don’t. “Because…your cane is fake?” What else could he possibly mean?
He shakes his head. “Most of them have lifelong disabilities. Serious health problems. Luis got Epstein-Barr in college and now has ME/CFS. He’s lucky he can work at all. Meanwhile, me, I did this to myself, didn’t I.”
“You crashed on purpose?” The room feels crowded by this revelation.
“No. But I signed up to fly twenty feet in the air off a twenty-two-foot snow ramp. I knew I could get hurt. I’ve gotten hurt before. I still did it.”
“People choose to throw themselves out of airplanes for fun. Most sports entail physical risk.”
“I liked the adrenaline rush.” His eyes travel to the floor. “I was always trying bigger tricks. The one that got me injured was going to be a showstopper.”
“Kind of the point of an Olympic event.”
He passes his cane from one hand to the other, back and forth. “Some of Luis’s friends were bullied for being disabled. I missed a lot of school dynamics, even before getting homeschooled, because I was always boarding or doing gymnastics—”
“Excuse me? Gymnastics?”
The corner of his lip twitches. “I’ve never hung out with anyone who was so uninformed about my career. I did gymnastics to get more flexible. Learn how to flip and spin. Until I got a sponsor, at least.”
I picture him in tight spandex, and my mind explodes. “What does that have to do with the group?”
“I was a privileged S.O.B., just into my sport. And then there’s them. There’s you.” He gestures to me. “Fucking beautiful you, with a condition you didn’t sign up for. How does my presence not rub salt in everyone’s wounds?”
“You think I’m beautiful?”
“That’s what you got out of that?” He rubs his eyebrow. “I said I did the first night we talked.”
“You said pretty.”
“Skylar, you’re the kind of woman who could bring a man to his knees with a single look.”
I snort out a laugh. “You’re still sitting.”
“My knees hurt.”
I laugh again, but it kills my head. He moves my knitting needles aside and holds up a fuzzy throw blanket. Pike is too sweet. I bet it was hard for all those women when he inevitably walked away the following morning.
My gut tightens. It might be hard to walk away when our deal ends.
He tucks me in. “It’s not just your looks, you know. It’s your whole ‘I don’t give a fuck’ attitude. That confidence that’s always there. It’s a turn-on.” He shrugs. “You know. For a lot of guys.”
“And you?”
He nudges my leg. “I think you look like my snowboard.”
I drop my head back against the pillows with a resigned groan. “I do give a fuck, you know. A whole lot of fucks. So don’t be mean to me unless it’s a hot mean.”
He shifts, intrigue passing over his face. “What would you consider hot mean?”
Oh my God.
“All right,” he says with a laugh, his gaze catching on mine as I let out a slow, measured breath, the air between us thickening for a beat. “Understood.” He tweaks my blanket-clad foot. “Can I get you anything?”
“My ice hat, please. It’s in the freezer.” Before he can get to his feet, I place a hand on his shoulder. “Pike, you’re not rubbing salt in my wounds. No one can blame you for pursuing an Olympic sport. You shouldn’t either.”
His gaze stays detached. “I can afford a personal trainer.”
“That doesn’t make you less worthy of having friends. Especially disabled ones.” I also became disabled in adulthood. It was a lonely, frustrating ride until I joined my support group. I can’t imagine having only nondisabled friends.
Pike still looks unconvinced.
Sometimes people want to hear they’re disabled enough.
Like there’s a special club of us who are only accepting members with certain qualities.
We see that in our support group a lot, especially with people who have invisible illness.
But Pike has claimed a disabled identity.
The problem is he thinks he acquired his disability the wrong way.
“Distancing yourself from disabled people with less privilege won’t do anyone any favors,” I say. “It’s only allowing you to avoid whatever uncomfortable feelings you have about that. And it’s isolating you.”
“You’re probably right.” He shoves a hand in his pocket. “I don’t think Luis is inviting me just to be nice.”
“I bet they’d be excited to have a celebrity in their midst.” I tug on his pant leg playfully. “You’ll break some hearts.”
“I’m not that guy anymore.”
“That’s okay,” I say. “I like who you are now.”
When Pike heads to the kitchen, I marvel at how true that is. I really like who he is now.