Chapter 46
chapter
forty-six
SHAY
The custodian asked if I wanted to call the police. I didn’t remember if we did. I didn’t even remember how I got home.
I spent the next few days in a fugue state.
If I’d had any hope of avoiding a flare-up, it vanished when Graham hit me. I wasn’t sure how many days I spent in bed. Just that when I finally came to, the burnt-yellow glow of late-afternoon sun shone through my curtains.
I remember my sister bringing me food.
I think Calder texted me—
My door slammed open, banging against my lilac wall with a dull thud.
“Are you okay?”
I sat up against my headboard, that simple exertion making me dizzy, and found my intruder through bleary eyes. “Calder?”
Calder stood in my doorway, blue eyes wide, holding a box of doughnuts. His brown-black hair was mussed, like he’d been running his hand through it. There was an indent in the bubblegum-pink cardboard doughnut box from a too tight grip.
“You weren’t answering my messages and I thought—” He broke off. “Has anything happened?” His gaze darted sharply around my bedroom.
“Messages?” I pushed past plates of uneaten food—my sister did bring me meals—and grabbed my phone.
Thirty-seven missed texts. All from Calder.
Are you okay?
I’m trying really hard not to break into your apartment, because I don’t want your sister to filet me.
If you don’t message me back in the next five minutes, I’m coming over.
“Oh,” I said. “I didn’t see these.”
A moment passed in suspension. Calder’s gaze darted around the room, then landed on me. The tension buckled with the force of his exhale.
He bent down next to the bed, eyes locked with mine. The dying afternoon light lit his profile aglow and cast the hollows of his cheeks and the sharp angle of his jaw in shadow.
“Are you okay?” he asked. “You haven’t been to work.”
I laughed. “Stalker.”
Calder didn’t laugh. He brushed my lower lip, concern etching his brow, where the faint traces of Graham’s slap remained bruised into my skin.
I could see the question popping up, and before he could ask it, I said, “I had a flare-up. I’m okay. You can go.”
Having Calder see me like this was already too vulnerable. It felt like my viscera were exposed. I didn’t need to add another layer to that.
His eyes narrowed. “Do you want me to go?”
“I’m not cute,” I said. “I haven’t showered in days.”
Another second passed, his gaze searching mine, and then he kissed my forehead. His lips lingered a moment before he stood.
I didn’t know why I felt such a hollow ache when he left. This was how it was supposed to be. I rubbed my head, still achy and heavy limbed, but able to think, the week coming back.
Get me into your fucking computer.
Why did Graham want in my computer—
“Can I wash your hair?” Calder reappeared in the doorway. Then, as if hearing himself, added, “In a totally not puts the lotion on your skin way.”
I blinked, not computing. “What?”
“You said you haven’t showered in days.”
“That wasn’t me telling you to wash my hair,” I said. “That was a warning.”
He shrugged. “I’m running a bath.”
“You don’t have to—”
He lifted me out of bed and carried me fireman style to the bathroom, setting me down on the edge of the tub. Water filled behind me as he gently undid the buttons of my pajama top.
I stared at him, the room growing thick with steam.
I didn’t understand this—him. I was with Graham for years and he never treated me this well. Technically, I wasn’t even dating Calder. We weren’t anything.
After shimmying out of my pants, Calder helped me into the tub.
He rolled up the sleeves of his black dress shirt. My eyes dropped to the now exposed skin. Black tattoos crawled across the thick, carved muscles of his forearm. A vein throbbed on his hand.
“Is the temperature okay?” he asked, fixing the final sleeve and getting to his knees. He hung his arms over the tub, fingers lightly touching the water.
The temperature was great. Hot, but not scalding, melting away all my aches and pains.
I swallowed and nodded.
A small smile quirked his lip, and he reached behind me for the shampoo.
“You really don’t have to,” I said.
He paused, arm outstretched behind me, our eyes locked. “I want to, Shay.”
Still uncertain. I nodded anyway.
Before nerves could wrap tight around my ribs, Calder’s hands found my scalp, massaging. He lathered shampoo into my hair. Then conditioner.
I closed my eyes, sinking into him.
This isn’t casual to me, Shay. It never was.
His words came back to me as his fingers massaged my temples, my neck, my shoulders. Digging into the muscles, releasing the soreness. The pain I felt from being sick melting away under his touch and the hot bath.
Calder finished, wrapping my hair in a towel.
“Ready?” he asked.
I nodded and he helped me out of the tub, gently tugging me up by my biceps. He kept me pressed against him as he reached for a towel.
“I’m getting you all wet,” I said, noting how his black shirt and pants sucked up the water on my skin. Calder ignored me, wrapping me in a towel and slowly drying me off.
Again I felt a sticky, choking sensation in my throat.
This was too much.
He slid me into a pair of clean pajama pants one foot at a time. Then dropped the matching top over my head. The fabric was warm, like he’d heated them up in the dryer.
Calder smoothed the shirt across my body, making sure it was in place. Then his hands settled on my waist.
We stood there.
My feet bare on the tile. Something tender in his eyes that made the sticky feeling in my throat grow barbs.
He lifted me up into his arms.
“Hey,” I said. “I can walk.”
“I know.”
He carried me out of the bathroom and into the living room, where he’d set up a pillow and fresh blankets. The room looked like it had been cleaned as well.
“Are you doing laundry?” I asked as he set me on the couch, noting the telltale buzzing of our machine. He plugged in a heating pad and turned back to me.
My heart was too full as he placed it on my stomach. Emotion stretched the sides of my heart like an overfilled water balloon about to burst.
Calder settled down next to me, pulling my head into his lap. He traced his fingers in my hair, gently. Calmly. Like this was a normal thing.
“What are you doing?” I asked as he lifted the remote and turned on the TV.
“You said you don’t like being alone when you’re sick.” He settled into the couch, lifting his legs up on the ottoman, still gently massaging my head.
“But…” One of the most frustrating things about fatigue was I could think, but I couldn’t speak.
When I explained I had chronic fatigue to people, they imagined the kind of tired you got before bed. That fatigue would be better—there was an end point. When you were chronically tired, fatigue existed like lead in your body. Even gravity was too heavy.
The closest thing I had to compare was a really bad flu. Your body was exhausted, your mind depleted, you hallucinated.
And even that wasn’t right.
“Don’t waste energy talking,” he said, as if reading my mind.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
His fingers paused in my hair.
I remembered reading something about replacing your sorry with thank you so that you trained your mind not to feel badly for accepting things, but instead grateful. I’d successfully managed that with work emails.
But this?
I didn’t know how to be grateful. I was too ashamed.
“This isn’t what you signed up for. You wanted one night.”
“Yeah,” he said, voice far off. “I did.”
He resumed playing with my hair, navigating the television.
The shame in my stomach acidified at his words.
He must have felt so burdened.
“I should have let you go,” he continued, casually, as he scrolled through my streaming options. “But the problem is I can’t. I’m starting to want things I’m not allowed to want.”
His eyes lowered from the screen to mine, and he pushed a stray strand of hair out of my face, behind my ear.
The air throbbed and undulated between us like on a hot summer day.
“Now,” he said, eyes returning to the television. “I think you said it was a crime I hadn’t seen Gilmore Girls.”