Chapter 20 Abbie
ABBIE
The first thing I register is his voice, low and steady somewhere above me.
"I'm here. I've got you."
I’m shaking on the bathroom floor at three in the morning. His hand is warm on my back. I called him.
"Don't look at me," I manage between waves of nausea.
"I'm looking at the wall. Very interesting wall. Is that a crack or a design choice?"
"Shut up." But I almost laugh, which is a mistake because laughing makes everything worse and then I'm sick again, and Gray just moves closer, gathering my hair back without a word.
His fingers are gentle at the nape of my neck, holding the tangled mess away from my face, and he doesn't flinch. He doesn't leave.
When the worst of it passes, he hands me a wet cloth. Cold. Perfect.
"Small sips," he says, pressing a glass of water into my shaking hands. "Not big ones."
"I know how to drink water, Grayson."
"You know how to do a lot of things. Doesn't mean you do them."
I press the cloth to my forehead. Four days of nausea, and tonight the fever joined it.
"What time did you leave?" I ask, because I need to think about something other than the way my body is betraying me.
"Doesn't matter."
"Gray."
"I was awake anyway." He settles onto the floor next to me, his back against the tub, long legs stretched out. He's in jeans and a t-shirt that's inside out. He dressed in the dark. He ran. For me.
"You should go to the ER," he says again.
"I'm not going to the hospital for a stomach bug."
"You have a fever."
"A low one."
"Abbie."
"I'm fine. I'll be fine." I'm not entirely sure this is true, but I'm also not going to sit in an emergency room for six hours just to be told to rest and drink fluids.
Gray is quiet for a moment, watching me with those pale eyes that see too much. Then he pulls out his phone.
"What are you doing?"
"Calling a nurse line. We're going to talk to someone who isn't me or you, and if they say ER, we go. If they say home care, you take whatever they recommend and I stay."
I want to argue, but I’m too tired.
"Fine."
He describes my symptoms to the nurse, then passes me the phone. After answering her questions, I agree to follow her home-care advice and seek help if I get worse.
"Follow up with your doctor in two or three days if you're not improving," she says.
I nod even though she can't see me. Gray thanks her and hangs up.
"Happy?" I ask.
"Ecstatic." He's not smiling exactly, but there's a flicker of relief in his expression. "Can you make it to bed?"
"I'm not an invalid."
"That wasn't a no."
I try to stand. My legs give way, and Gray catches me around the waist.
"Don't," I say, but I'm not sure what I'm warning him against. Don't hold me too close. Don't be too kind. Don't make me need you when I'm trying so hard not to.
"I've got you," he says again, and he walks me to bed.
* * *
Day one.
I wake up to the smell of something that might be food. My stomach lurches in warning, but it's a gentler lurch than last night. Progress.
He stirs a pot in my tiny kitchen. His shirt is right-side-out now.
"Tell me you didn't make soup from scratch."
He glances over his shoulder. "Okay. I didn't make soup from scratch."
"Liar."
"You told me to tell you."
I sit up. The fever feels lower, and I haven’t been sick since dawn.
"You know you don't have to stay."
"I know."
"I'm serious, Gray. The worst is over. I haven't thrown up in like four hours, which basically makes me an Olympic athlete at this point."
"That's a low bar."
"It's my bar. I set it. I get to be proud of it."
"Fair enough. Here, broth. Small sips."
"Did you actually make this?"
"From scratch. Me and a chicken carcass. We had a whole moment."
"You're ridiculous."
"You called me."
"I know I called you. That's... that's not the point."
"What is the point?"
"The point is that I'm fine now. Mostly fine. Fine-adjacent. And you don't have to keep sitting there looking at me like I'm going to shatter."
"I'm not looking at you like that."
"You are. You have that face."
"What do you actually need right now? Not what you think you should need, or what you think I want to hear. What do you actually need?"
"I don't know."
"Try."
"I need... I need to not feel like this."
"Like what?"
"Pathetic. Needy. Like I can't handle my own life without calling you at two in the morning."
"You're not pathetic."
"I cried on the bathroom floor. That's pathetic, Gray."
"That's being sick."
"It's embarrassing."
"For who?"
"For me. Obviously for me."
"You threw up for six hours straight. I think you're allowed to cry."
"That's very generous of you."
"I'm a generous guy."
"You're something."
The broth warms my hands.
"Drink the broth."
"I'm drinking it. See? Drinking."
"Good."
"But you slept on my couch."
"I did."
He settles into the chair by my bed and watches me drink.
"That couch is five feet long. You're six foot three." I watch him over the rim of the broth mug, taking inventory of the crick he's pretending not to have.
"I'm aware of my dimensions." He rolls one shoulder, and it pops loud enough that we both hear it. "They hung off the end. It wasn't comfortable. And before you ask, I stayed because you asked me to."
"I was delirious."
"You were scared." He says it gently, no triumph in it, which is somehow worse.
I open my mouth to deny it on reflex, then don't. Lying to Gray has never once worked, and I'm too tired to make it work now. "Fine. Maybe a little."
"A little scared is allowed." He rests a hand on my ankle through the blanket, careful, not assuming anything.
I keep my eyes on the ceiling so I don't have to look at how easy he makes it sound. "This doesn't mean anything, you know. You being here. It's not us reconciling, or whatever this would even be."
"I know."
"I'm just sick, and you happened to pick up your phone."
"I know." He doesn't argue, doesn't flinch, just sits there being maddeningly, immovably fine with all of it. I keep poking at the calm to see if it cracks. It doesn't. That's new, too.
"I'm here because you needed someone," he says. "I'm staying because you haven't told me to go. No hidden agenda. No grand gesture. Just me in this chair, making sure you drink fluids."
There's no good answer to that, so I drink the broth.
I reach for my phone. He passes it to me. "I should check my email."
"You should rest. Whatever's in your inbox will still be there tomorrow."
"That's not comforting."
"It wasn't meant to be. It was meant to be factual." He gestures toward the pillow, leaving the phone in my hand. "You're allowed to be a person who's sick for a day."
"You're very annoying when you're right."
"I'm annoying when I'm wrong, too. It's one of my charms." My eyes are heavy before I can come up with a rebuttal, and I let them close for what I tell myself is only a second.
"How long are you planning to stay?" The question comes out smaller than I mean it to.
"As long as you need."
"And if that's more than one night?"
He looks at me then, steady in a way that used to be reserved for boardrooms. "Then it's more than one night."
I pick at a loose thread on the blanket. "I'm not asking you to stay forever. I'm just asking... I don't even know what I'm asking."
"You're asking whether it's okay to need help for longer than one night." His voice drops, quiet. "It is. Even from me. Especially from me."
My throat tightens, and I blame the fever. "Thank you," I manage. "For the broth. For staying."
"You're welcome."
I turn my face into the pillow so he can't see whatever's happening on it. "Fine," I mumble into the cotton. "You can stay."
* * *
Day two, 4 a.m.
I’m on the bathroom floor again, too tired to move. Gray sits beside me.
"And then she told me the dog was method acting," he's saying. "Like the dog had prepared for this role. Like the dog had studied the source material."
"What source material? It's a commercial for pet insurance."
"That's what I said. She looked at me like I was the unreasonable one."
I laugh, a real laugh that doesn't make me want to throw up afterward. "Your industry is insane."
"Our industry," he corrects. "You're still in it."
"I'm adjacent to it. I'm on the fringes, looking in, judging from a safe distance."
"You founded a company that's becoming one of the most talked about marketing firms in the city. That's not the fringe."
He watches me from his seat against the tub.
"Are you doing PR for my company right now? At four in the morning on my bathroom floor?"
"Is it working?"
"A little bit."
He smiles.
"Your sheets are clean," he says. "When you're ready."
He changed my sheets earlier. He still tucks the corners the same way.
"Five more minutes."
"Take ten."
"Are you always this accommodating or is this a special sick-person privilege?"
"I'm always this accommodating. You just never noticed because you were too busy being healthy and difficult."
"I'm not difficult."
He raises an eyebrow.
"I'm independent," I correct.
"You're difficult and independent. They're not mutually exclusive."
"Says the man who once reorganized my entire kitchen because the glasses were in the wrong cabinet."
"They were in the wrong cabinet. You had to reach over the stove to get them."
"I liked reaching over the stove."
"No one likes reaching over the stove, Abbie. You were just being contrary."
I laugh more easily this time.
"Read me my emails," I say.
"What?"
"My Halo emails. I haven't checked them in two days and I'm starting to spiral about it."
"You're supposed to be resting."
"I'll rest better if I know my business isn't imploding. Please, Gray. Just read them to me. I won't respond to anything. I just need to know what's happening."
He reaches for my phone.
"Password still your birthday?"
"Shut up and read."
He opens my inbox.
"Okay. First one is from someone named Jordan about a deck revision. He says, and I quote, 'Please advise on tone for the sustainability section. Client wants approachable but not folksy.' What does that mean?"
"It means he wants me to tell him exactly what to write so he can take credit for it later."
"Should I be concerned about Jordan?"