20. Georgie
CHAPTER TWENTY
GEORGIE
In the morning, I feel a great deal of relief.
No fever, no chills, no more burning hot, searing and stinging pain.
This tells me that after two days of debilitation, maybe just maybe, the worst of it is over.
But there can only be two reasons for that great relief, and if it’s the second reason, I need to move fast. White hot panic washes over me, a feeling I can’t settle until I know for sure.
I shift under the deadweight of a sleeping Noah’s arms; I press gentle fingers to the tip of my tailbone, and they pull away wet and a deep red colour just as I suspected it would. It is reason two.
I throw myself out of bed in an instant, trying not to be disruptive for Noah. But the moment I move, he’s blinking awake and patting the bed to find me. His hand nears the still fresh stain on my sheets. I gasp, shaking my head and waving my hands, “Stop, don’t-”
Noah blinks blearily at me, confused. But he stops patting, and looks down to see why he can’t in the first place. All he sees is dark red staining, and it’s not as large a spot as I’ve had in the past, but it sure is enough to notice. I can only imagine what he’s thinking.
His cheeks go pink, but he looks back up at me to reassure me, “It’s okay,”
“It’s not,” I say, making sure to keep my back facing the window so he won’t see where the drainage has come from.
The other flares haven’t broken yet, and I’m actually grateful to only have to deal with one at a time, but this means that while this one is draining and being a pain in my ass—quite literally—the others are festering and getting ready to blow.
Noah climbs out of my bed and begins pulling off the sheets.
I gawk, making a strangled noise as he does it, but he ignores my protests and continues to undress my bed.
“It happens, Georgie. Sienna used to have it happen all the time. I’m not afraid of stuff like this if you think that’s a reason I would leave.”
Oh god, he thinks it’s my period.
“Noah, it’s not-” I don’t know what to say.
How do I tell him that this is not my period or anything other than HS? My heart breaks at his innocence, breaks at the thought that I will have to shatter the illusion that I am perfect, as if that was ever what he thought of me.
“Can I run these through the laundry for you? Or is this an apartment without an in-home laundry unit?” He says thoughtfully, and God he’s too nice and not at all disgusted, and it makes me feel so much worse.
“Just leave it. I’ve got it. Sorry I—” I mumble.
I can’t meet his gaze; I have to scurry away before I break my composure.
I race into the bathroom before he can stop me, resting my back against the door and calming the heavy beating of my heart in my chest. I know I only have a few moments before Noah is going to check in on me, and when I see myself in the mirror, I can see that I look as frantic as I feel.
“Georgie,” His voice is on the other side of the door, I can see the shadow his figure makes.
“Go away,” I whisper to myself, then clear my throat and say out loud so he can hear, “I’m just… getting cleaned up; I’ll be out in a few minutes.”
“Okay.” He says back.
I stay under the spray of the water for as long as I can.
I let it rain down my body and wash away the grossness, the fear, the embarrassment I feel.
I tend to the wounds I can with antibacterial soap to put my mind at ease, even though it doesn’t help all that much with getting rid of the wounds, just keeping them clean.
I wash every inch I can, just to avoid getting out of here.
I should’ve told him last night when I felt confident to get it over with, it would’ve made it much easier now to explain this.
But he calmed my nerves last night and told me it didn’t matter.
But it did matter, it does matter, and though he says he doesn’t care, he might.
Everything we have right now is too good, too fragile, too new, too…
everything. Noah has never given me an indication that he’ll walk away from this, in fact he’s done quite the opposite.
But I’ve had people in the past tell me the same thing, and the only one to stick around was Franny, so look where that got me.
The thing is, I don’t want to lose him yet.
“Georgie?” His voice startles me out of my thoughts.
“Coming,” I tell him, looking in the reflection one more time.
My dark hair is brushed and slicked back, just touching my shoulders from the grow-out from the pixie cut I had a few years ago.
My face is make-up free; my eyes are wide with fear but lack the bags under them for the first time in days.
Everything about me looks normal until you look underneath all the facade, the clothes.
I look down at myself in my oversized beach towel.
It hugs my curves but is certainly enough coverage.
Fuck it, if I am about to tell him, I might as well show him.
Before I lose the nerve again, I hold tight to the knot of my towel, and I go to find Noah.
I find him at my wall unit looking at my vinyl collection—no. He’s reorganizing them. In fact, my living room looks, even smells way better than it did before. Everything is tidy in its place and looks nicer than it ever has.
“Hey, so I’m just wondering what sort of system you used to organize these because it was something out of—oh.
” Noah’s reaction is instantaneous; his hands stop flipping and moving around the records, his eyes widen, his lips part, and he gawks.
I want to take that as a good sign, but the clutch on my towel is white-knuckled.
“Hi.” I let out in a breathless voice, the smile tugging at my lips.
“Shit, Georgie. You’re gorgeous… and very underdressed.”
“Is that a bad thing?” I say, taking a step closer to him. I see him shift in his crouched position, adjusting the weight on each leg and swallowing hard enough to see his Adam’s apple bob.
“No. Not at all.” He says, voice deep, raspier than before. Breaking his composure.
I take another step forward, this time standing with my knee bent so he sees more thigh, just a peek. I watch his eyes flicker down, then back to my eyes. He licks his lips, swallowing again. His cheeks have gone a delicious shade of pink. “Did you clean my house?”
“I—” He looks around, his cheeks turning darker, a whole new shade of embarrassment.
He scratches the back of his head, rubs the back of his neck, “I um… I sort of clean when I sit still for too long… I’m sorry I should have asked, but I knew where everything was, and I didn’t change anything except the records because the order was a disaster—”
“If you’d like to know,” I step closer, “I had it organized by my favourites.”
“Shit, and I just put them all by artist, I’m sorry—”
I kiss him to shut him up, cupping his cheeks in my hand, relishing in the sweet sigh he releases as he melts into my touch, lets me hold him where I want him, lets me kiss him how I want to kiss him.
He’s tall, yet he is the perfect height to kiss.
I feel myself going to tiptoes, but I feel as if I’m flying.
His lips are soft, his mouth inviting, and it would be so easy to let myself lose the nerve again just by kissing him until I can’t breathe.
But I have to pull away, keep composure.
Tell him everything and see how it all turns out.
“Can we talk?” I murmur softly, feeling his back go ramrod straight. He pulls back, lips still pink from our kiss, eyes searching for answers he won’t find unless he talks to me.
“This isn’t one of those ‘break my heart’ kind of talks, is it?”
“I don’t think so,” I say, tilting my head toward the couch. “Sit with me?”
He nods, rising from his crouch and holding my hand until we settle.
He twists his fingers around mine nervously, as if he’s expecting me to tell him something he won’t want to hear.
Maybe he won't want to hear this, but he needs to. It’s eating away at me, and he has to know all of me if he really wants this to work.
Just like I need to learn everything about him.
“I want to reopen the conversation we tucked away last night,” I tell him, and he visibly relaxes.
“Oh my God,” he clutches his stomach with the hand that’s not in mine. His face is pale in comparison to earlier, and I realize just how nervous he was. We really need to work on communication. “I thought—”
“You thought the worst, I know. Jumping to the most awful conclusion right off the bat is my go-to too. I’m sorry, I should have worded it better.”
He lets out a breath, “I’m okay. Are you okay?”
“I am. Mostly, but I do have something I need to tell you, because it’s a big part of my life and I can’t lie about it forever, especially if we want to continue this,” I gesture between us.
He smiles, “I absolutely do.”
“Okay, then I am going to reiterate what I said last night. No holding back. Full transparency. No judgement. Questions are encouraged and not dumb, even if you think they are. You tell me what you’re thinking, regardless of if you think it will hurt my feelings. Yes?”
He squeezes my hand in reassurance, and it’s then I realize I’m shaking slightly. He nods. “Yes.”
This is it. I suck in a large breath, nodding to myself, and then I let it go.
I tell him everything. How when I was younger, I had a spot appear under my right arm in my armpit.
How the spot turned into a bump, and the bump hurt.
A lot. Like the worst pain of my life. It looked like a pimple but felt like a hot poker inside.
I told him how my mom had no idea what it was, how she was concerned when another one came up beside the first.