by Lauren Layne
The freaking flu.
Sometime around three A.M., when I woke up with body-racking chills and my headache had gotten about ten times worse, I realized what had happened.
Andrew had been right.
That sidewalk kiss had consequences more dire than tabloid rumors. Andrew Mulroney had passed his sick-bomb my way.
I should have known when I’d fallen asleep during Enchanted. I never miss Giselle and Robert’s happy ending.
I halfheartedly extend my arm toward the nightstand, where my cellphone sits, wondering if I can talk Marley into coming over and bringing medicine and Gatorade. But my arm drops well before it reaches the phone. It would take way too much energy.
I wonder how Andrew’s feeling this morning. He fell asleep on the couch even before me, but not before I’d forced him to down three of the flavored sparkling waters I’d bought for him. I’d tried for the Gatorade, but he’d grumbled something about artificial flavors and coloring. Typical.
What I wouldn’t give for some of that Gatorade right now. Or the sparkling water.
The soup, on the other hand, sounds nasty. All food does. I don’t think I’ll ever eat again. I’m not even sure I’ll live.
I pull the covers over my head and wait for death.
I’m not certain how much time passes after I brace myself to start seeing the white light, but somewhere through my head-pounding, fever-induced misery, I think I hear a knock.
Yeah, no chance. I can’t even bring myself to lift my head, much less somehow maneuver my body out of my bed.
But my self-protective flight-or-fight instincts are stronger than the flu, because when I hear my front door open, I somehow manage to sit upright in bed, my heart pounding in fear.
A second later, a six-foot-two silhouette appears in my doorway. “You really should lock the deadbolt, Georgiana.”
I groan and flop back down onto the bed. “You.”
“Me,” Andrew says.
“How’d you get in?”
“Convinced Charles you’d asked me to feed your cat.”
“And he believed that I’d let you feed my cat?” I ask. “Everyone who works here knows we hate each other.”
“I love that that’s what you’re incredulous about, and not the fact that I made up a cat you don’t have.” He pauses. “Do you?”
“Allergic,” I mutter.
Andrew’s all the way in my bedroom now, standing beside my bed. It’s mostly pitch-black, but he’s turned on a light from the kitchen, and I can tell he’s wearing a suit, clearly on his way to work.
“No gym clothes,” I say on a croak.
“Not feeling a hundred percent yet,” he says, bending down to set his briefcase against the nightstand, “so I’m not up to bench pressing today. But I’m well enough to catch up on some things at the office.”
“You got your wish,” I say, shivering violently as I roll onto my side.
“Oh yeah?” he murmurs, pulling the sheet and then the comforter up over my shoulder, tucking them under my chin before gingerly sitting on the edge of the bed. “What wish is that?”
“Killing me,” I say. “You said the other day you were going to kill me, and you have. Death by flu, transmitted by kiss.”
“I’m sorry about that,” he says, his tone amused. “Truly. But…pretty good kiss, though.”
I sigh and rub my cheek against the pillow. “Pretty good kiss.”
My head still hurts, my body’s still cold, but somehow I don’t feel quite as bad as I did just a couple minutes ago, and my eyes close. For the first time in hours I feel like I might actually be able to fall asleep.
“Have you taken any medicine?” he asks.
“Hmm?” I pry my eyes back open.
“Something to reduce the fever? Help with the head?”
I try to shake my head, but I’m not really sure I move at all. “Ran out of Tylenol a couple weeks ago. Forgot to replace.”
“Okay, then. I’ll be right back. You need anything else besides pills and that godawful neon-blue liquid you stocked my fridge with?”
“Be grateful. Was trying to take care of you,” I mumble.
“And now it’s my turn to take care of you,” he says, standing.
“You don’t have to.” It comes out like Yu doh haf to.
I feel a brush of warm fingertips against my temple, the touch all too fleeting. “I know.”
I don’t think any time passes, but it must, because when I open my eyes again, Andrew’s back and holding a cup of blue Gatorade on ice.
“You need help sitting up?” he asks.
I shake my head, heaving myself into a somewhat seated position. I brace myself on one arm and reach for the Gatorade with the other. It feels like heaven in my dry throat, and I gulp it.
“Hold on, save some to wash down the pills,” he says, holding out his hand. I try to maneuver my free hand to take them, but I’m too unsteady. Instead I open my mouth and tilt my head back like a baby bird.
I see him shake his head. “Ridiculous,” he says as he gently drops two pills onto my tongue.
I swallow them with the Gatorade and hand the empty glass back to him before letting myself fall back onto the pillows.
“You changed,” I say, watching him through half-closed eyes, struggling to stay awake.
He glances down at his jeans and sweater. “Didn’t have a candy-striper outfit, but I figured this was better than the suit for playing nurse.”
“Nurse Ratched,” I mutter, feeling pretty pleased that I can still banter despite having only two functioning brain cells. “You’re not going to work?”
I see him shrug. “I can catch up on most things from your living room.”
My heart flutters. “You’re staying?”
“Looks like. Any requests, patient?” he asks as he pulls the sheets and comforter back to my chin. I think I feel the pad of his thumb brush unnecessarily along my cheek, but that could be the delirium.
“Yes,” I say.
“Soup?” he asks. “I know a girl who just whipped up some pretty decent homemade stuff.”
“She sounds nice.”
“Nicer than I deserve,” he says quietly.
I smile sleepily. “That’s true. But no, soup wasn’t my request.”
“Tell me.”
I reach out my hand, fumbling around for his. He’s not as emotionally stunted as I thought, because he senses what I want and reaches for my floundering hand.
I squeeze his fingers. “Stay?”
“Sure.” He squeezes back. “Call if you need anything. I’ll be in the living room.”
“No, stay here,” I say, tugging his hand.
He’s silent for a moment. “In your bedroom?”
“Hate being sick,” I whisper. “It’s so lonely.”
“Georgiana—”
“Please. You won’t get sick, you’ve already had this plague.”
“Surely there’s someone I can call. Someone you actually like.”
“Lots of people.”
He winces, and I squeeze his hand harder, deciding to go for broke. “Need you.”
I wonder if that phrase does the same thing for him that it did for me yesterday. It must, because a second later I hear him kick off his shoes and ease his hand away, only to come around to the other side of the bed.
It’s been a long time since someone’s been in this bed beside me, and I immediately roll toward him, curling into him for warmth.
I feel his chest extend under my cheek as he sighs. Then, very slowly, his arms go around me, pulling me close, and I realize that somehow, even sick as I am, this is the happiest I’ve felt in a long, long time.
Georgie
FRIDAY EVENING
My sickness has more or less the same timeline as Andrew’s, and after two days of getting out of bed only to pee and groggily take a very necessary shower, I finally emerge from my death cave sometime around six o’clock on Friday night feeling human again.
There’s n
o sign of Andrew, but I don’t really expect there to be.
I don’t remember much about yesterday, but I know he stayed with me the whole day. Ordered me to drink fluids, have a couple of spoonfuls of soup.
I refused to move long enough for him to change my sheets, but he did come in throughout the day, opening the window for a few minutes at a time to get some much-needed fresh air into the bedroom.
Around three yesterday I was cranky as all heck, tired of being sick but also too tired to be anything else. He turned on the TV in my bedroom and, without asking, put on Enchanted.
I don’t know how he knew it was the only movie I could watch two days in a row without ever getting sick of it, but he knew. Plus I got to see the ending this time. I went to sleep the second the credits started rolling, and when I woke, the TV was off and Andrew was gone.
The loneliness and disappointment were almost…crippling.
So when he stopped by this morning wearing a suit, clearly on his way to work, it had been almost a relief. A reminder that the last thing my life needs is to start relying on a workaholic.
He regretfully told me he needed to check in at the office, at least for a couple of hours, after being gone all week, and I breezily told him I’d be fine.
I take a long-ass shower, and though I’m feeling almost back to almost normal, I don’t feel like blow-drying my hair. I towel-dry it and then pull it into a messy bun on top of my head. My skin looks atrocious, so I put on a facial mask and head into the kitchen, a little surprised and relieved to realize that I’m famished.
The fridge is stocked with plenty of the leftover soup I made for Andrew, and I heat some in the microwave as I scroll through the phone Andrew plugged in for me. I’ve got about a million text messages, and it occurs to me that I missed a lot and yet…nothing at all.
Plenty of people have been checking in. Marley wants to know if I’m dead, my mom tells me she wants to chat and to call her back, my dad unsubtly tells me about a job available at the company that I’d be a great fit for, and everyone wants to know if I’m really dating Andrew or if it’s just tabloid nonsense.
Most curious of all seems to be Hailey. Of all my friends, she’s possibly the nicest, and if I’m reading the tone of these messages right, she seems really hopeful that the Andrew rumors aren’t true. Her last message is especially telling: Would you please call me when you get this? It’s driving me crazy that I may have been flirting with YOUR guy at the party last week!
What should I say to her? Well, yes, you were flirting, but he’s not my guy. Sure, Andrew returned the favor and took care of me when I was sick, but I’d hardly call it romantic. Because kissing me was a mistake.
I decide to rip the Band-Aid off and have the hard conversation with my friend. I pull my soup out of the microwave and stir it halfheartedly to cool it down while I wait for Hailey to pick up, which she does.
“Georgie! Oh my gosh, you’re alive!”
“Barely,” I say, scooping up some soup and blowing. “Sorry for the radio silence, I came down with some nasty bug.”
“Oh, ick. Are you feeling better?”
“Much, thanks.”
“So you’re coming out tonight?!”
“Not that much better. Count me out until next week.”
“Ugh, that sucks. We miss you. Did you hear about Brody and his baby mama?”
“Yup.”
“Ugh, such a pig. You’re lucky you hooked up with one of the nice ones.”
There it is.
I take a slurpy sip of my soup. “Hon, you of all people know not to believe what you read in the tabloids.”
There’s a pause. A hopeful pause, I’m guessing. “Really? But you and Andrew were kissing.”
“That was…” I wave my spoon, trying to think of the right word, and failing. “I’d had too much to drink, and he was annoying me. I was trying to prove a point, he was trying to prove a point—”
“What point, how many molars you have?” she asks teasingly.
“It was more of a battle of wills. And if anyone asks, I totally won. But the point is, we’re not together.”
Another pause. “Okay. Honestly, I’m kind of relieved. I thought maybe you guys were in, like, a secret relationship, and I’d been hitting on him that night and you were mad.”
“Not mad,” I say, taking another spoonful of soup and wishing that this conversation could be over already.
“And you don’t like him?”
I feel a little twinge. If it were Marley, I might tell her the truth: that I like him too much. But though I consider Hailey a good friend, we’re not quite on the spill-your-darkest-secrets level, so instead I deflect.
“Look. You gave him your phone number, right? Has he ever used it? Texted, called, whatever?”
“Well…yeah, he texted, but—”
My heart sinks hard. Like, boulder-in-the-ocean hard. “See?” I say brightly, wincing at how fake I sound. “There you go. He’s never texted me. Never called me.”
She doesn’t pick up on the false brightness of my voice the way Marley would—doesn’t seem to realize that my soul is dying a little.
“Really?” Hailey sounds genuinely surprised. “There’s really nothing there? So if I ask him to be my date at that literacy fundraiser next week…?”
“Go for it,” I say, making a mental note to change my RSVP on that particular fundraiser to hell no.
“Okay, well…thanks, I guess. I mean, it’s a little weird to ask out the guy who was just making out with my friend, but—”
“Hailey,” I interrupt, “I’ve got another call coming in. But seriously, if you like Andrew, I think you guys would be good together.”
The crappy thing is, it’s sort of true. Of the people in my friend group, Hailey’s the most subdued. She parties with the rest of us, but she’s more eager than the rest of us to give up those parties for a life of white wine, early nights, and parent-teacher conferences at the ritziest prep school. She’s friendly, but also a tiny bit shy compared to the rest of us. Pretty, but classy. Funny, but not terribly snarky.
There’s nothing ridiculous about her.
In other words, she’s the dream woman for Andrew Mulroney, Esquire.
“Okay, talk soon!” Hailey says.
I chirp goodbye, and then because I really do have another call coming in…
“Hi, Mom.”
“There you are,” my mother says on the other end of the phone, her tone clearly exasperated. “You’ve been avoiding my calls for two days.”
“I’ve been avoiding everyone’s calls. I’ve had the flu.”
“Oh, dear,” she says, making a tsking sound. “You should have called me.”
Why, so you could tell me which of your latest bronzers would be the most flattering on sallow skin, and remind me of the game-changing powers of your under-eye concealer?
It’s an unfair thought, though. I love that my mom’s got her own thing going on. I just sometimes wish she knew when to turn off the CEO and when to turn on the mom.
“I’m better now,” I say, pushing aside the soup. It’s all I’ve had for two days and I’m sick of it.
“Good! You want to meet me for dinner?”
I wrinkle my nose. Two dinner invitations from her in as many weeks. It’s not unwelcome, just…odd.
“I think I need one more day of sweatpants and reruns,” I say, “But tomorrow sounds great. What kind of food are you and Dad thinking?”
“Oh. I was thinking dinner, just us girls.”
Uh-oh.
Second time in a row, no Dad. I ignore the warning bells.
“Why, what’s Dad up to?”
“Oh, I’m sure he’d love the time to himself to watch the game or whatever.”
Uh-huh. Or whatever is right. I have to bite my tongue to keep from asking which game. I guarantee she has no idea how bummed Dad is that the Yankees got knocked out of the playoffs last week or that he’s vowed to boycott all sports until spring training.
/> “Are you guys okay?” I ask. “You’ve seemed sort of distant lately.”
There’s a delay in her response, and when it does come, it’s vaguely impatient. “We’re fine, Georgie. If you don’t want to have dinner with your mother, you can just say so.”
Ah, the old guilt trip deflection. Classic.
“I’d love to have dinner, Mom. Let me just see how I’m feeling tomorrow after a good night’s sleep, ’kay?”
“All right,” she says, her voice still a bit stiff. “I hope you start to feel better.”
“Thanks.”
When we hang up, I grab a bottle of water out of the fridge and sink onto the bar stool, resting my head in my hands.
I don’t have a headache anymore, but I still feel like I’m trying to operate through a fog. I just don’t know if the fog’s a lingering effect of the sickness or the fact that my personal life’s a super-fat mess.
On top of it all, I feel weak. Hungry for real food, not soup. But I know without looking that the fridge is mostly empty. I heave a sigh and am just reaching for my phone to order something for delivery when I hear a quiet knock at the door.
I start to stand, but before I can move, it opens, and I give a little screech of terror until I see the familiar form of a suit-wearing Andrew.
“Gawd,” I say, slumping back down and putting a hand over my chest. “You scared me. How do you still have a key?”
He stands in the doorway, looking unsure. “I thought you’d still be asleep, I didn’t want you to have to get out of bed to answer the knock. I’ll return it immediately.”
“Return it later,” I say, gesturing him in. “I smell cheese.”
“Thought you might be wanting some real food,” he says, coming into the kitchen and letting my front door shut behind him. “Brought some lasagna for later.”
I’m already diving for the paper bag.
“Or for now,” he amends, watching as I rip it open.
I pull out the foil container and tear off the lid, but I pause when I see him locate both my napkins and silverware in the right drawer on the first try.
“You know your way around my kitchen,” I say.
“Turnabout’s fair play,” he says, handing me a fork and a napkin. “You wasted no time locating everything from my wineglasses to my laundry detergent.”