Chapter 11 #3
“People who just had a heart attack can do that,” I pointed out, but Nolan only shrugged.
“Do you want to go eat?”
Yeah, pretty much always, but I also asked questions about his father’s care, his prognosis, and his medicine. “When does he get to leave?”
“Tomorrow. He says that this was nothing and the doctor did use the word ‘mild’ when we discussed it. It’s still a goddamn heart attack, though. He also said that I shouldn’t have come, but then he remembered that I don’t have anything better to do.”
“You have better things to do than sit in a hospital room so someone can be mean to you!” I retorted. I wished it had been me instead. My feelings never got hurt but his clearly were.
“This is my own fault,” he told me. “First of all, I shouldn’t have driven downstate—I shouldn’t have made you drive me. I shouldn’t have expected my father to want me here. He believes that my life is meaningless because I have nothing to fill it. And you were right.”
“Really, I was? About what?”
“I need to do something. I used to spend my days drinking, figuring out how to drink more, and flying off to drink somewhere else. That was so time-consuming.” He did the bitter smile, which I hated. “Baking multiple loaves of bread and going on multiple runs isn’t enough.”
“Can we still run together, though?”
“Absolutely. This place looks good,” he said, pointing. We turned into the parking lot of a restaurant.
His mother didn’t make it to the hospital for the night visiting period either, but now I was thinking that his dad deserved to lie there alone.
She was still at work when we got to their house after dinner.
The housekeeper let us in and showed us to our room.
It was a very nice one, but just as all-white as the rest of this house.
“Was this yours when you lived here?” I asked, looking around.
“No, I used to be at the end of the hall from my parents. My bedroom is now my mom’s upstairs home office, in case she wakes up but doesn’t want to have to go downstairs to work.
They sleep in separate bedrooms,” he explained.
“This is a new guest area that was formerly my mom’s secondary downstairs home office.
It’s smaller and less convenient than her primary downstairs home office.
She let me know that she was sacrificing it for our use. ”
“Holy bells, how many offices does one person need? Or is it just showing off?”
“I would say that it’s both. She enjoys telling people that she has three separate work areas here because she’s so busy. Two, now.” He looked at the bed. “I was thinking about what you said about our relationship.”
“What did you think?”
“At rehab, they warned us to take at least a year before we started seeing someone. But this wouldn’t be romantic.”
“Exactly,” I said, nodding. “It would be just what we have now, except we’d call it something more formal.”
“And you’d stop worrying about money and what you owe me.”
“And you could trust that I’ll be around if you need me. You can stop saying ‘I don’t care.’”
“I do care,” Nolan told me. “I didn’t want you to go anywhere. Obviously, I have no idea of how to form bonds with people.”
“You form great bonds,” I said. “You made me like you a lot and want to be friends. I even liked you that first night, when you said your name was Nnnn-ooo-lll-aaa-nnn.”
“Why did I say it like that?” he wondered.
“I called you ‘bud’ and you were trying to help me out. I thought you were polite and I was so glad that you weren’t a revenant.”
“You have low standards.”
“I know,” I said. “I always have. In fourth grade, my PE teacher announced to the class that I was a fast runner. It made my year. And if a guy told me that I was pretty?” I fanned myself and whistled. “I was his forever. My mom and Patchouli are gorgeous. They used to be,” I amended.
“Do they look like you?”
“They look like each other. I must take after Ron whoever, the guy who’s not on my birth certificate. You look a lot like your dad, too,” I commented.
“I have the Whittaker features. We’re all pretty similar.”
Which must have meant that there were a lot of handsome guys in his family, because Nolan sure was.
He didn’t have the gaunt look anymore (thanks to bread and running) and his features had always been so…
appealing. Not only to me, if I was to judge by how the host and waitress at the restaurant had just looked him over.
He got that all the time, wherever we were.
“I’m tired,” he said. “I guess it’s stress.
” He carried his bag into the white bathroom and while he was there, I changed into the PJs I had brought.
They were his old clothes, a T-shirt that was too tight on him since he’d also been lifting, and sweatpants that he’d said I could have because I liked them, even though they were a foot too long.
My wardrobe had grown a lot because Cadence had also given me a bag of her clothes.
She was also taller and a lot curvier (lucky), but she’d thought that maybe I could find something in there.
He came out of the bathroom and I scooted in, brushing my teeth really well and in the style that had recently been recommended to me by the dentist I’d seen—so now, there were x-ray records of my mouth. No matter if there happened to be bears in my future, I could be identified.
Nolan was in bed when I finished, reading a book that Cadence had recommended from the library and wearing a little frown.
I slid in next to him. Well, not really “next to him” because this bed was like his up north: huge, a king-size, the kind I hated to change because you had to run miles around the mattress.
I also hated folding these sheets when they came out of the dryer, but I could admit now that it was pretty fun to lie in something this size.
Unfortunately, it was pretty hard, more like sleeping on pavement.
I wiggled, trying to find a comfortable position, but froze when he sighed.
“Sorry I disturbed your reading.”
“No, it’s not you. I’m not really paying attention to this,” he said.
“Are you worried about your dad?” I asked.
“Less now that I’ve seen him and he acted just as he always does.” He looked at the library sticker on the cover of his book and then he looked over at me. “How would you explain our new relationship to other people? What would you tell Cadence about us?”
“I would have to say it gently,” I answered.
Then I remembered that he was still clueless about her feelings toward him and hurried past the need to be gentle.
“I’ll say that you and I are going to have a different kind of thing.
Not a romance, not sex. Just us like we were before, but settled. Secure and stable.”
“Settled, secure, stable. Those are three words that have never applied to me in the past.” He smiled. “It sounds nice.”
“Doesn’t it? I love that idea. We can be like Bert and Ernie, friends who complement each other. Did I use that word right?”
“Absolutely.” He put down the book. “I’m glad I came to make sure that my dad was all right, even if he didn’t want me here. I’m very, very glad that you came with me.”
My presence was probably a distraction that helped keep him from the temptation of drinking under stress, and I was very, very glad about that, too. “Do you think it’s chilly in here?” I asked. It was, for sure.
“My mom likes to keep it cold. I imagine it’s so that the ice around her heart doesn’t melt.” He got up and I watched as he walked, shirtless and in boxers, to the closet. He’d gotten back into the habit of having his hair cut all the time, and he really looked very nice. The whole package.
“Should I do something more to myself?” I asked him.
Nolan unfolded a blanket and flapped it over me. “What do you mean? What would you do?”
“Like, if your mom and other people are going to think that we’re together, I won’t wear my Cum and Go shirt anymore. I did take some lessons at beauty school and I could try to make myself more glamorous. Slightly more.” Reaching actual glamour would be difficult.
“You don’t need to do that.” He slid back into the bed, far away from where I was under my new blanket. “You’re fine the way you are. I liked your braids today.”
“My sister used to practice braiding on my head like I was a cosmetology mannequin and I picked it up some skills, too. Do you actually think that I’m fine?”
“No.” He reached over and clicked off the light. “I actually think that you’re beautiful.”