by Jamie Shaw
We can be friends again. Someday soon, I hope. I just have to smother these damn sparks inside of me first.
“Alright,” I tell Luke as I boot up my computer. “Half an hour, but then you’re going to bed and going to school tomorrow.”
“Deal,” Luke says before I can change my mind, and we hang up the phone to start chatting in the game. For twenty-three minutes, I almost forget about Mike—right up until his username appears on the right side of my screen.
“Luke, I’ve got to go.”
“But Mike just signed on!”
“Sorry,” I rush to say. “My stomach is hurting.”
“But you promised you’d play for half an hour . . .”
“I love you,” I tell him in a hurry. “We’ll play again soon. Go to school tomorrow.”
I sign off before he can say another word, and then I press my fingers against my stinging eyes.
I miss Mike. I miss his banter and his smile and his humor and his voice. I miss making him laugh over the phone. I miss him wishing me sweet dreams just before I fall asleep.
I crawl under my bedcovers, wondering how long it’s going to take for me to stop feeling this way. If I developed this crush on him in just two and a half weeks, it should only take that long to get rid of it, right? I’m already four days in, so I should only have two weeks left. Just two weeks. That’s not that long . . .
Only, Mike is leaving on tour in eleven days, and he’ll be gone for six weeks. So even if it only takes me two weeks to get over him, I won’t see him again for two months. And I promised myself—no more phone calls, no more private chats. So it will be at least two months until group get-togethers, two months until I can try to be Mike’s friend again . . .
My phone dings with a text, and my screen lights up my dark room as I read it.
Sweet dreams, Hailey.
I close my eyes, imagining Mike thinking of me in this moment, and it reopens the hole in my chest.
Does he know I’m avoiding him? He must. Did he see my name on his screen before I logged off? If he did, I hope my brother told him I have a stomachache. I hope Mike believed him . . .
It feels like my heart is starving, and I don’t know how to fix that, but it warns me that I’m wrong: two weeks isn’t going to be enough.
Not enough to stop falling for Mike Madden.
Chapter 15
Three more days pass, and I stay away from Deadzone. I try not to miss Mike’s “sweet dreams” texts when they stop coming. I do my best to ignore the hollow emptiness in my chest that makes it hard to sleep at night, to breathe at night. And I pretend I don’t care when Dee tells me that Mike has caught the debilitating cold that Kit birthed into the world.
She says Mike is sick—well, more dramatically, she tells me he’s dying. She says no one has heard from him and he’s probably rotting to death on his kitchen floor. And no one else can go help him out because everyone else is still sick or recovering too. She says I should go, but I know it isn’t my place. I’m only a week into Mike-addiction recovery, and I don’t want to fall off the wagon now, not after how difficult these past seven days have been.
Instead, I plead with Danica.
“You should go check on Mike,” I tell her one week after the disaster at the pond, going against my better judgment to try to convince her to do what any good girlfriend would do. “The girls said he’s not feeling well,” I continue while she sits folded up on her bed with pink foam separators wedged between her toes. She concentrates on her glittery silver brush as it swipes over her toenail.
“He’s a big boy,” she counters without looking up at me.
“You’re his girlfriend.”
“So?”
“So, don’t you even care about him?”
Danica scowls up at me. “Of course I care about him. Not that it’s any of your business.” She goes back to pampering her toes, snooty as ever. “I talked to him yesterday.”
“And he sounded okay?”
Her pause tells me more than her mouth ever will. “He said he was fine.”
“In a text?”
I sigh when she can’t even deny it. “Look, Hailey, this music video is shooting in seven days. What do you want me to do, go over there and get sick?”
I just stare at her, because what can I say to that? There are so many things wrong with what she just said, I don’t even know where to start.
When she notices the judgment in my expression, she makes a noise and begins blowing on her toenails. “How about this . . . How about you go over there, and you take him some tissues and some soup and whatever the hell else you think he so desperately needs, okay? Put it in a basket. Like a care basket.” She gazes up at me while still blowing intermittent breaths onto her toes. “I’ll give you the money. Get a can of soup, okay? Throw in some crackers. And a card. Sign it from me.” She begins shaking a black bottle of top coat. “You can even sign it from both of us if you want. You don’t even need to chip in. Just drop it off on his porch.”
“Are you serious?”
At the disdain in my voice, Danica rolls her eyes. “Or you can ring his doorbell and hand it to him and get sick. Whatever makes you feel better, Saint Hailey.”
An hour later, I’m standing on Mike’s porch, on the outskirts of the city, with a woven basket hanging from my hand. Inside it: three cans of soup, one box of tissues, one bottle of nasal spray, one bottle of cold medicine, one card with Danica’s name scrawled in my handwriting.
I think about leaving the basket on the porch.
I frown.
What if he’s really not okay? Someone should check on him.
I lift my hand to the doorbell.
I lower it.
Am I a bad person if I make sure he’s alright?
Am I a bad person if I don’t?
I sigh, take a deep breath, and lift my hand again. A press of the doorbell later, my foot is tap-tap-tapping against the cement stoop as I listen to the faint sound of the bell sounding inside Mike’s modest white house. I wait, and no one answers. I wait some more, and still, no one answers. I think about ringing it again, but instead, I force myself to set the basket on the porch. Maybe this is a sign. Maybe this is the universe telling me to leave.
Or maybe he really is lying facedown on his kitchen floor . . .
“Jesus,” I gasp when Mike’s door finally opens. My hand flies to the neck of his zipped-up hoodie on instinct, and I tug him down as I rise onto my tiptoes to press my other hand against his forehead. He’s dressed in full sick gear—an oversized dark gray hoodie, long black gym shorts, and black ankle socks—and his skin sizzles against my palm. “Mike!” I scold, worry clawing at my chest.
“You probably shouldn’t touch me,” he warns, his voice like gravel.
He’s burning up beneath my hand, but that’s not the reason I pull away.
He’s right. I shouldn’t be touching him. I shouldn’t even be here.
“I don’t want you to catch what I’ve got,” he adds as the autumn chill dries his fever from my skin. He wraps his arms around himself and shivers, the ends of his hair damp with sweat and a wad of tissues bunched in his hand.
“How high is your fever?” I worry.
“I lost my thermometer,” he says through chattering teeth. His eyes are rimmed red with exhaustion, and I wonder when he last slept.
“When was the last time you took your temperature?”
“Th-Thursday?”
My brows knit at the man in front of me, then at the basket sitting on the porch beside me, then at the man in front of me again. Even sick, with days-old scruff and hair that looks like it hasn’t been brushed in years, he makes that spark inside me want to flare to life, but I fight to keep it smothered in my chest.
I should leave. I should give him my basket, make him promise to take the cold medicine, and leave.
Maybe I should help him find his thermometer first, but then I should definitely leave.
I shouldn’t even call to check u
p on him. I shouldn’t even text. That’s Danica’s job. Not mine. I should just leave him here, freezing and sick and alone and . . .
Frowning, I rise onto my tiptoes and press my palm against Mike’s forehead one last time. He doesn’t object this time; he just leans into my palm and lets my skin absorb the heat he’s radiating. I don’t know how high his fever is, but I know it’s high enough that someone should be worried about him, even if that someone is me.
“Let’s go,” I finally decide, pulling my hand away and nudging him back inside his door. I may still have more-than-just-friends feelings for him, but my friend feelings came first, and I’m not about to abandon him when he needs me.
“Huh?”
“Let’s go,” I say again, grabbing the basket from the porch. “I’m not leaving until you’re better.”
Chapter 16
In my twenty-three years on this Earth, my mother has never once made me soup in the microwave. It didn’t matter how hungry I was or how sick I was or how much I just wanted to scarf down lunch so I could run and play outside—she has always, always cooked me soup in a pot.
“Anyone can throw something in the microwave,” she’d lecture as she stirred homemade chicken noodle soup in the cast-iron pot that she got from her mother, who got it from her mother, who probably got it from her mother. I’d be sitting at our unfinished kitchen table, having a staring contest with the smiling ceramic pig who took up residence there and taunted me every time my nose was runny. “When you make something in a pot, you make it with love. And love is going to make you better.”
In Mike’s kitchen, I pour two cans of Campbell’s chicken noodle soup into a pot I found under the stove, I set the burner to medium, and I go back out to the living room to make sure he’s lying down like I ordered him to.
He needs to go to bed, but I want him to eat first.
Actually, he needs to go to the doctor, but I lost that battle within thirty seconds of walking through the front door.
“Are you okay?” I ask, frowning at the shivering man laid out on a big plush couch against the wall. As soon as we came inside, I gave him a dose of cold medicine, I tried and failed to find his thermometer, I grabbed him a blanket, and I ordered him to lie down. Now, he’s wrapped in the navy-blue fleece I found, shivering despite the sweat beaded on his forehead.
Mike tries to answer but ends up coughing instead. I frown harder, find a pillow, and tuck it under his head. Kneeling in front of him, I study the pallor of his face and the circles around his closed eyes. “When was the last time you ate?”
“Yesterday,” he manages to say with his eyes still closed.
“Slept?”
“Body hurts t-too much.”
A violent chill shakes him, and I gnaw on the inside of my lip. I wish he’d let me take him to a doctor, but he’s right: there’s probably no use. The rest of the group—with the exception of me, Dee, and Danica—went through the same symptoms, albeit less severe. This is the worst of it. He needs to sweat it out.
“This is the worst of it,” I say out loud to reassure us both, and Mike nods.
I want to reach out and brush his damp hair from his forehead, or rub his arm, or . . . I don’t know . . . do something to comfort him. But instead, I stand up, walk back to the kitchen, and stir that pot of soup. I stir it, and I stir it, and I will it to make him better.
Only, it doesn’t make him better. Ten minutes after Mike eats the entire bowl, the entire bowl comes back up. He can’t keep down cold medicine. He can’t keep down juice or water or Gatorade. He shivers uncontrollably, sweats through two blankets and three sets of clothes, and refuses to let me take him to the doctor since, when I finally find his thermometer, his temperature “only” reads 102.7.
As the evening wears on and the light streaming through his windows fades, I bring him ice chips and fresh clothes, and I coax him to drink small amounts of water and chicken broth at a time. He watches hockey with his eyes closed, and I sit on the far end of the couch from him, doing my best to narrate all the small things that the sports announcer doesn’t. Together, we listen to his laundry tumble in the dryer, since he was down to his last clean T-shirt and I had a feeling he might soon need another.
“Hailey,” he quietly says sometime after 8 p.m., and I look over at him laid back in the reclined end of the sofa. In the dim light of a single corner lamp, he’s buried under two blankets and surrounded by a fortress of throw pillows. His face is turned toward me, his cheek against the back of the couch and his brown eyes heavy with exhaustion.
“If you’re going to tell me to leave again—” I start, expecting him to tell me for the hundredth time that I don’t have to stay with him. But he cuts me off.
“I’m not.” He pauses to let the argument seep out of me. “I’m not. I want you to stay.”
“Oh,” my tiny voice apologizes. “Then . . . what is it?”
Mike’s weighted gaze lingers on mine, and then it shutters closed. “Nothing.”
“Tell me.”
Thick lashes lift to reveal those big browns again, and the air in the room thickens as the sun sinks below the windowsill. “Why’d you stop playing Deadzone?” he asks in a quiet voice. It molds a lump in my throat, and I contemplate my answer.
“Homework,” I decide after a too-long pause. “I’ve had a lot of homework.”
“Is that why you haven’t responded to any of my texts?”
Unable to find my voice, I nod.
Mike studies me from two cushions away, his gaze threatening to pull the truth from where it’s buried in the pit of my chest. “Do you know how I can tell you’re lying?”
That lump in my throat swells and swells, and I just sit there, staring.
“Your eyes get a little wider, and your lips get a little tighter. Like you’re biting the inside of your bottom lip.”
My teeth immediately release the inside of my bottom lip, and Mike eventually turns away from me. He watches the ceiling like it’s going to crumble down on him. “I feel like a mess.”
Thankful for the change of subject, I say, “I don’t think it’s time for more cold medicine.”
“Cold medicine won’t help,” he replies with a heavy sigh, and then he turns toward me again. “Can I lie down?”
“Do you want me to move?” I ask, planting my feet on the floor as Mike begins to shift out of his blankets.
“No.” He tosses a throw pillow onto my lap, repositioning on the couch until his heavy head pins it there. The protesting springs beneath the cushions drown out the sound of my heart thudding in my ears, and Mike pulls a blanket up to his neck while he continues getting comfortable. With him facing the TV, I sit there with one hand braced on the armrest and the other splayed against the back cushion beside me.
Every muscle in my body has turned to stone while my jackhammer heart threatens to crack me into pieces from within. Even my lungs have turned to granite, threatening to suffocate me while I pretend to watch TV.
“Is this okay?”
“Huh?” I squeak, and Mike turns his head on the pillow to gaze up at me, which is almost certainly how I’m going to die. Those eyes. My heart.
“Is this alright?”
“Yeah,” I manage, and Mike’s eyes linger on my lips before he turns back toward the TV.
I let out a deep breath slowly, slowly.
“Tell me your favorite pizza topping.”
“What?” At the sound of my own squeaky voice, I resist the urge to slap myself. Stop squeaking! There is no reason to squeak!
“You don’t eat meat,” Mike explains. “So what do you like on your pizza?”
I still don’t know what the hell to do with my right hand. Do I put it on his shoulder? His waist? “Um, I like black olives,” I say, cupping my hand on my head like a damn idiot.
When Mike turns to question me, I pretend to be scratching my scalp. “Olives?”
“And banana peppers.” Mike’s brow furrows into a deep V, and I continue scratching my head u
ntil I’m pretty sure he’s going to think I have lice.
“Black olives and banana peppers?”
With no other choice, I rest my hand on his shoulder. “It’s good.”
“We probably shouldn’t talk about this,” he says, facing the TV again.
“Why?” My hand is light as a feather.
“I’ll throw up again.” Mike groans, and I can’t help laughing.
“You shouldn’t knock it until you try it.”
“Hm,” he hums. “Tell me something else.”
“Like what?”
“Are you a vegetarian because you don’t believe in killing animals?”
I stretch the kinks out of my fingers before letting them rest against the blanket covering his arm again. “No, I believe in the humane killing of animals. On my parents’ farm, all of the animals are allowed to roam free and live long lives. I think that’s okay.”
“Why then?”
I can’t help the quiet chuckle that shakes me, and when Mike turns to question it, I say, “Promise you won’t tell Danica.”
He shifts so that he’s lying on his back, and his response comes quick and easy. “I promise.”
With him lying this way, it’s impossible to ignore the fact that Mike Madden has his head on my lap. I am at Mike Madden’s house, on his couch, at nighttime, with his head on my lap. I pretend my heart isn’t drumming louder than his professional-grade drums. It takes me a moment before I remember how to talk.
“When I was fifteen,” I start, hoping I can get through this story without any more unfortunate squeaking, “my family went to Danica’s house for Thanksgiving. We’d always hosted Thanksgiving dinner at my house, since my family could never afford to fly all the way down here to Virginia—” A burning blush creeps across my cheeks, and I wish I hadn’t said that last part. “But that year, my uncle Rick flew us all down, and my aunt Tilly made the turkey.”