21. Quinn
QUINN
RAMEN FROM THE PLACE WITH A WAITLIST
By noon, I had accepted that my body had joined opposing counsel.
I’d gone to work because my survival instincts had been purchased secondhand and didn’t come with instructions. I wore a mask, packed cough drops, drank half a mug of tea, and made it all the way to my desk before Moira looked over the cubicle wall and said, “Absolutely not.”
“I’m fine,” I said.
“You look grayer than Dorothy in Kansas.”
“The beginning of The Wizard of Oz is in sepia, not black and white.”
“Great. You can be pedantic from home.”
Then she had marched me to Helena Wallace, who took one look at me and said, “Go home before you infect my litigators.”
So I went home.
Max was at Avery’s for the day, thank God, which meant I could collapse into bed without feeling guilty about his walk schedule for at least four hours.
I took medicine, put my phone on the pillow beside me, wrapped myself in blankets, and immediately began that terrible sick-person cycle of being too hot, too cold, too sweaty, too dry, too alive, and too aware of my own sinuses.
At some point, I fell asleep, and in my feverish state, I still heard my phone ring.
I slid one hand out from the covers and groped for it blindly.
“Hello?” I croaked, which was unfair to frogs everywhere.
“Quinn.”
My eyes opened.
Rafe?
“Hi,” I said, then coughed so hard I had to turn my face into the pillow. Gorgeous. Alluring. Exactly the sort of siren call men wrote poems about.
“You’re sick.”
“That’s not a question.”
“No.”
“I was going to tell you, but then I got distracted by being mostly liquid.”
“Can I come over?”
My entire body panicked, which was impressive because most of it had recently resigned.
“No,” I said automatically.
There was a pause.
“If you’ll let me, I can pick up Max from Avery,” he said. “I have food for you, medicine, ginger tea, and cough drops. And treats for Max.”
I stared at the dark lump of blankets over my knees. “You called Avery?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I didn’t want you to have to manage your own care while ill.”
Oh.
“You can’t just say things like that to a woman with a fever,” I muttered.
“I’ll take that under advisement.”
“I look terrible.”
“I won’t be there to admire you.”
I coughed again, then gasped for air. “Somehow worse.”
“Let me bring Max and the supplies to you. I can handle his walks and dinner while you stay under the blankets and insult me.”
I closed my eyes.
My apartment wasn’t guest-ready. I wasn’t guest-ready.
My hair was probably doing something terrible.
There were tissues on the nightstand and a mug on the floor.
Rafe’s coat was still hanging over the back of the blue chair because I had never found a dignified way to return it after wearing it around my apartment like a woman in a period drama waiting for news from the war.
But Max would need dinner soon. And I wanted Max here. And I was so tired.
“Okay,” I said quietly.
Rafe’s voice softened by almost nothing. Of course, I heard it anyway. “I’m on my way.”
I told him where I hid the spare key, then spent the next forty minutes pretending I hadn’t just invited Rafe Virelli into my apartment while I looked like a boiled sock.
The lock turned, then the door opened.
Max’s nails clicked across the floor first, quick and familiar, and then his heavy head appeared around my bedroom doorway.
“Hi, baby,” I rasped.
He came straight to the bed and pressed his nose against the blanket.
A moment later, Rafe appeared behind him, carrying two paper bags, a pharmacy bag, and Max’s leash looped neatly over one wrist.
Max put his head on the bed. His eyes searched my face, soft and serious.
“I’m fine.”
He didn’t believe my lies.
Traitor.
Rafe stopped in the doorway to my bedroom. For once, he didn’t look severe. He looked carefully blank, which was worse because I could see the concern he had put behind it.
“You are not fine,” he said.
“I’m fashionably unwell.”
“You look like you have a fever.” He came closer and set the bags on my dresser. “May I?”
I squinted at him. “May you what?”
“Check.”
My stupid heart did something embarrassing, but I nodded.
He sat on the edge of the bed, leaving a careful distance, and placed the back of his fingers against my forehead. His skin was warm.
His jaw tightened.
“Don’t make that face,” I said.
“You’re warm.”
“I’m under seven blankets.”
He stood before I could surrender all dignity and lean into his hand.
“I brought ramen,” he said.
My soul, which had been hovering somewhere near the ceiling, returned to my body. “Packet ramen?”
He looked offended. “No.”
“Oh. Because I have packet ramen.”
“I brought ramen from Yoshiro.”
I blinked. “Yoshiro as in the place with the waiting list?”
“Yes.”
“The place where people post broth pictures like engagement announcements?”
“I wasn’t aware of that practice.”
“That bowl costs more than my electric bill.”
The corner of his mouth moved, but he only said, “Can you sit up?”
I could, barely. He helped without making it feel like a production, fluffing pillows behind me. The ramen was still hot, with extra broth, soft egg, scallions, chicken, and the good kind of noodles, which meant not the kind that came with a silver packet of powdered sodium and hope.
“Eat slowly,” he said.
“You’re not my real dad.”
“That’s fortunate for both of us.”
He left before I could make that worse.
I heard him in my tiny kitchen: water running, the kettle clicking on, a cabinet opening and closing. A few minutes later, he returned with ginger tea in my chipped blue mug, honey stirred in, steam curling above it.
He set it beside the bed, then lined up the cough drops, tissues, medicine, and water on my nightstand as if preparing a siege.
“This is intense,” I said.
“This is basic care.”
The worst part was that he seemed to believe that.
He looked at me then, and for a second the room went quiet.
Max settled on the floor beside the bed, close enough that his back touched the frame.
I ate slowly at first, then less slowly because the broth was warm and perfectly salty.
Rafe sat in the chair near the bed, his suit jacket removed, sleeves rolled once at the cuffs.
“How was work?” I asked, because my brain had clearly not been humbled enough.
“No.”
“No?”
“You’re not asking about work.”
“I’m very invested in the fifth relic.”
“You are feverish and eating soup in bed.”
“Multitasking is a core skill of an intern.”
He gave me a look.
I let my head fall back against the pillow. “Fine. No work.”
“Thank you.”
A few minutes passed as I ate. He sent a text, probably rescheduling an empire. Max crunched his dinner with old-man enthusiasm. My apartment felt different with Rafe in it. Not smaller, exactly. Safer, which was more dangerous.
“You really didn’t have to do this,” I said.
“I know.”
“I would have managed.”
“I know that too.”
“Then why?”
I expected him to say something practical. Max needed walking. The team needed you healthy. Something tidy and professional enough for both of us to survive.
Instead, he said, “Because I wanted to.”
My throat closed. Very inconvenient when already inflamed, because I started coughing again.
When I recovered, I looked down at the ramen. “That’s a lot of emotional pressure to put on a noodle.”
“Eat, Quinn.”
I did.
Later, after I’d taken my medicine and drunk my tea, after an extremely dignified argument where Max refused to leave the bed area and Rafe refused to let me take him out myself, the three of us ended up in my living room.
Rafe fed Max, gave him his supplements, and walked him around the block, while I changed into clean pajamas and relocated to the sofa wrapped in a quilt.
When he returned, Max trotted in, satisfied but tired, and collapsed on his bed with a sigh.
Rafe hung the leash on its hook by the door.
My apartment should not have looked natural around him, but it did.
He glanced at the television. “What were you watching?”
“Nothing. I’m too busy dying.”
“You’re not dying.”
“You don’t know that,” I countered.
“I’m not letting that happen.”
I swallowed and picked up the remote before I could yearn. “We need something low stakes.”
He sat at the far end of the sofa. “What do you usually watch when ill?”
“Comfort movies. Home Alone. Hocus Pocus. The Mummy.”
He frowned. “I haven’t seen any of those.”
I turned my head slowly. He looked back, untroubled.
“You’ve never seen The Mummy?”
“No.”
“The Brendan Fraser Mummy?”
“I don’t know what that distinction means.”
I pressed one hand to my chest. “This is no longer just a cold. This is a cultural emergency.”
“Well, let’s watch that one, then.”
The movie started.
For the first ten minutes, I provided necessary context, which Rafe claimed was unnecessary and then immediately proved false by asking whether the librarian was meant to be competent.
“She is extremely competent,” I said. “She just has a chaos delivery system.”
He looked over at me.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Do not make that comparison.”
“I said nothing.”
“You thought it.”
He grinned. “You have a fever. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I can still detect slander.”
After that, I faded fast.
The medicine pulled at me. The broth had warmed me from the inside. Max snored softly from his bed. Rafe moved beside me, close enough now that my shoulder brushed his arm when I shifted under the quilt. I told myself to move. Professional boundaries. Do not fall asleep on the dragon.
Then his arm adjusted slightly beside me, giving me somewhere steady to land if I needed it.
I needed it.
I let my head rest against his shoulder.
Only for a second, I told myself.
Rafe went very still.
“Is this okay?” I whispered.
His answer came low. “Yes.”
So I stayed.
His shoulder was solid beneath my cheek, his body warm beside mine, and for once I didn’t have to be the person doing every practical thing in the room.
Someone had brought soup. Someone had walked Max.
Someone had known the blue lid from the silver container and not made me explain my life through a fever haze.
I hated how much I wanted that.
I hated that I was falling for him in little humiliating increments: a repaired latch, a dog bowl filled correctly, a dragon warming my arms on a roof, ramen from a restaurant I could never justify, his voice saying because I wanted to as if care didn’t require a defense.
On screen, someone shouted. Music swelled. Max snored louder.
Rafe didn’t move.
My eyes fluttered closed.
The last thing I remembered before sleep took me was his hand resting lightly on the quilt near my knee, not touching me, exactly, but close enough that even unconsciousness seemed to know he was there.