Chapter 7
I messed up. Big time.
My head is pounding. Even the lamplight feels like daggers in my skull. Beside me, my phone vibrates with a string of incoming texts, and I sigh as I swipe them open, squinting against the bright light of the screen.
It’s in my book club group chat with Wren and our friends Finley, Nora, and Alicia.
I was supposed to be heading to Alicia’s house for book club right now—the first one I would have managed to attend in three months—but I had to bail at the last second because of the return of my splitting headache.
Alicia: Pop some Tylenol and get your ass over here. I’ve got margs. If you get drunk, you won’t remember that your head hurts.
Wren: Do you need anything? I can come take care of you.
Finley: Aw man. We will miss you! I’ll drink your margarita in solidarity.
Nora: I’ll have three.
I text back that I don't need anything and that I already took more Tylenol than the bottle recommended before tossing my phone face down on the worn leather sofa. Just looking at the screen feels like there are needles being shoved behind my eyeballs.
I’ve just tucked a faux fur blanket around my legs and pulled a throw pillow over my head to block out the light when I hear the beep, beep, beep of a code being typed into the lock on the front door.
Part of me hopes it’s Jack and another part hopes it’s a serial killer here to put me out of my misery.
The door opens, and someone walks in before stopping just over the threshold. It’s quiet for a long moment, and then, “Stevie?”
So it is Jack. Damn. I think the serial killer would have been better than letting my new roommate find me face down on the couch.
“I’m fine,” I mumble, the words muffled by the pillow. “Just a headache.”
Another moment of silence before the couch dips near my feet. I hear the sound of sneakers being kicked off, thumping softly against the wooden floors.
“Do you need anything?”
I expected a lecture from Dr. Jack about how I must have been working too hard to have my headache return six days after the injury, and I’m pleasantly surprised by the absence of it.
“Just an anvil.”
“How about dinner?”
I tug the pillow down from my face, turning to face him, squinting as the bright colors of sunset pierce my eyes. “Are you making it?”
A soft laugh rockets out of him. He’s wearing blue scrubs like he was the night I met him at the hospital, although these are a dark navy.
It makes the color of his eyes even more intense.
His hair is a mess, like he ran his hands through it over and over again.
Behind him, the setting sun forms a golden halo around him, making him glow in shades of red and orange.
“I was planning to order something for myself. You want me to order you something too?”
I nod, relieved that I don’t have to cook or order for myself for once. Even the simple task of scrolling through the options and placing the order feels like too much tonight.
“How does pizza sound?”
“Pizza’s good.”
“What do you like?” he asks, and kicks his socked feet up on the coffee table.
I shrug. “Anything. But order from Romano’s Kitchen. It’s the only good pizza in town.”
“Romano’s Kitchen it is.” He stands from the couch, and I watch as he walks in tiny circles around the living room as the dial tone rings, faint but loud enough to hear where he’s pressed the phone to his ear.
He places an order for delivery, a large supreme pizza, an order of garlic knots with extra marinara sauce, and two Diet Cokes. When he sits back down, he glances in my direction and finds me staring. “What?”
“That’s my exact order.”
A grin kicks up one side of his mouth. “Really?”
“Well, smaller proportions. But, yes.” I motion toward the path he made. “Do you always pace making phone calls?”
His eyes flick up to where he was just walking, and one shoulder lifts in a shrug. “Mmm, I don’t know. Maybe? I hadn’t noticed.” He glances back at me. “Why?”
I shake my head, unsure how to answer. I haven’t lived with someone since I moved out of my parents’ house.
All these little things—the way he was always washes and dries his moka pot as soon as he’s finished making his coffee, how he dumps his laundry out to fold as soon as the dryer is done instead of throwing it in a hamper and digging out of it until it’s time for another load like I do, how I’m pretty sure he brushes his teeth in the shower because that’s where his toothbrush and toothpaste are—tell me more about him than any conversation would.
It’s weird, feeling like I’m getting to know someone I’ve barely spoken to.
I’m not sure what to make of it.
“I’m going to shower,” he says, pushing up from the couch once more, pausing to grab his shoes from under the coffee table. “Pizza will be here in twenty.”
He comes back out right as a knock sounds on the door, dressed in dark sweats, the hood pulled up over his damp hair and feet bare.
The Tylenol has finally started to kick in so I’m sitting up, reading the paperback I had discarded on the coffee table earlier, my feet tucked beneath the couch cushions and the blanket strewn over my lap.
Jack takes the pizza from a teenager with a mullet and braces and pays him from the wallet he leaves on the table by the door—the only personal item, along with his shoes, in the general living area that indicate he lives here—and brings the boxes, paper plates, napkins, and Cokes to the living room.
“Want to eat here?”
“Works for me.” I don’t tell him that despite being able to sit up, I think standing and walking to the table would feel like someone is hammering a screwdriver into my head.
He passes me a paper plate and opens the pizza box, the room immediately filling with the aroma of garlic and melted cheese. I lift a slice onto my plate, cheese stringing from the box to my plate. Beside me, Jack watches as I pluck the olives off the pizza and discard them in a heap on my plate.
“What are you doing?” he asks.
I glance up, flicking an olive off my fingernail. “Picking off the olives.”
“I thought you said you were fine with everything on it.”
My nose wrinkles. “Except for olives, because they taste like fermented dirt.”
He chortles. “Fermented dirt?”
“Yes, exactly,” I say with a nod.
“Well, I love olives.”
“Everyone is entitled to be wrong sometimes.”
Another laugh tumbles out of him, and I flick my eyes up at the sound of it, catching the tail end of his smile.
He’s usually pretty serious, but his face transforms when he smiles.
It makes him look younger, carefree. I wonder if that’s how I look when I laugh.
I can’t remember the last time I was carefree.
Shaking the thought away, I extend my plate in his direction. “You’re welcome to my olives.”
His smile turns into something softer as he picks them off my plate and places them on his slice. His eyes lift to mine, the blue looking darker in the dim light. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome,” I say. Something about the moment sticks and holds. His gaze is still fixed on mine. My heart picks up its pace in my chest, a steady thump, thump, thump.
I clear my throat and pull my eyes from his, reaching for the remote. “Want to watch something?”
He kicks up his feet on the coffee table. “Sure.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I watch him lift the pizza to his mouth, a long string of melted cheese pulling from his lips to the plate. I blink and focus on the TV, turning it on. An old sitcom is playing, and I don’t bother flipping the channel.
We eat in silence, him passing me the small box of garlic knots when I finish my slice, holding the extra large cup of marinara in between us.
It’s easy, comforting in a way I hadn’t expected after living alone for so long.
Living with my parents was fine. Both of them can be chatty, but we all also valued our alone time.
The house was often quiet in a way we all enjoyed.
I hadn’t realized when I moved out that the silence had changed.
That I would miss sitting in the quiet with someone else.
“So how’d you hurt your head today?” he asks when the episode ends.
I glance over at him, head rolling against the back of the couch. “How’d you know I hurt my head?”
“The anvil comment was a pretty clear giveaway.”
I laugh, pleasantly surprised that it doesn’t send a shooting pain through my skull. When I look back at him, he’s still watching me, hands folded on his stomach and legs stretched out in front of him, eyes focused on me from beneath his hood.
“I tried to work on my Airstream.”
His brows lift, but he doesn’t say anything.
“I know, I know,” I say, lifting my hands. “I pushed myself too hard too fast.”
Still, he says nothing, and I’m grateful to be spared the lecture. No one else in my life would let that go.
I blow out a breath. “I just wanted to try to get as much done as I could before I go back to work. This is our busy season.”
“You’re some kind of tour guide, right?” he asks.
I nod. “Backcountry, so I take people out on hikes in the park and other surrounding areas. Sometimes just day trips, sometimes a few days at a time.”
“Wow,” he says. “Sounds fun.”
“It is,” I tell him and mean it. I may feel overwhelmed in many aspects of my life right now, but I love my job.
I love being outdoors, surrounded by the trees and the creeks, the birds and flowers, the mountains jutting up all around me.
It’s probably the only time I don’t feel like the walls are closing in on me, like my skin is too small for my bones, stretching too tight.
“And I’m excited to go back,” I say. “But it’s also going to limit my time I can work on the Airstream by…a lot.”
He makes a noise in the back of his throat and turns back to the TV. It casts his body in a shade of blue. He’s quiet for a long time, so long that I think the conversation is over. I’m about to stand, head to my bedroom, when he says, “I could help you. Next time we’re off work at the same time.”
I look back at him, surprised at the offer from this person who is basically a stranger.
My roommate who eats my discarded olives.
Who orders me food when I’m too tired to do it for myself.
Maybe I shouldn't be surprised. He’s done nothing but offer me help since we met in a fluorescent lit hospital room a week ago.
“Why?” I ask. He’s already helped me so much. I don’t want him to feel a responsibility that most definitely isn’t his to bear.
He looks back at me. Lifts a muscled shoulder in a shrug. “Why not?”
“Don’t you want to enjoy your time off?”
“Who says that’s not how I enjoy spending my time?”
I pull my knees up to my chest, wrap my arms around them. Examine him in the blue light casting off the television. “Is it?”
He flashes me a quick grin. “No, but I’m always game to learn new things. Plus, I’m pretty handy.”
“Right, the ranch,” I say, and he looks shocked that I remember. Honestly I am, too, considering the circumstances of that night, but for some reason, those few minutes he spent in my room are seared in my memory.
“Yeah, the ranch,” he agrees. “I may not know how to restore an Airstream specifically, but I can mend a fence post with the best of them.”
“You don’t have to help me,” I tell him.
“I know.” He looks back at me, gaze holding mine. In this light, there’s no blue to be found in his eyes. They’re dark as the night sky. “But I don’t mind if you don’t.”
I let out a breath. “No, of course not. I’m grateful for any help.”
A grin tips up one corner of his mouth. “It’s settled then.”
I nod. “Yeah, it’s settled.”