“I’ll stay here. I’ve got stuff to check on my phone. Let me know when the nausea is better.”
It cost too much to say anything. I drifted, trying to separate myself from the noise and the grinding pain. When I woke, I had no idea how much time had passed, but the hall was completely dark, not even the weak light from the living room windows coming in. It had been close to sunset already when I got home, so it could have been one hour or six that I’d been lying there, but I could sense Will in the exact same spot, a warm, solid presence next to me. The second I shifted to push myself up, he was on his knees, his hands around my shoulders to steady me.
“Hey, champ,” he said in that same quiet voice. “You doing all right?”
“Better,” I croaked. “Not good.”
“You better enough to go change, maybe?”
I nodded and winced. The meds muted the pain, but I could always feel it lying under the veneer of the magic the pills tried to do, waiting to surge back if I let it, if I moved my head the wrong way or even coughed.
“Okay. Get some water down. Drink as much as you can, and then go find some pajamas? Anything but that jacket. I’ve been sitting here for an hour trying to figure out if I could cut you out of it like the EMTs do so you’d be more comfortable.”
I tried to smile. I think I flickered, but he seemed to understand. When I sat up enough to rest my back against the wall, he handed me the water bottle and watched until I’d gotten half of it down. “How’s your stomach?”
“Okay.” The water made my voice easier to use. “I think I can get up, get changed.”
He climbed to his feet and leaned down to offer me his hands. I dropped my head back against the wall and eyed them before shutting him out with my eyelids again. No. Never mind. Too much energy. He leaned over, picked up my hand, and set it on his bicep, wrapping his hand around my upper arm and holding his other hand out for me to repeat the process. “Let me do the work, Hanny.” He braced himself and straightened, letting me counterbalance as he helped me to my feet, not letting go until I stood. When I had it, he let go. “I’d help you change but, uh, that’s maybe . . .”
I waved him off, too numb to be entertained by his embarrassment. “I got it. If I’m not out in ten minutes, I probably died, and it’s definitely better that way.”
“Don’t even joke,” he said, his voice tight. “It was scary to find you in the hall like that.”
I squeezed his arm as an apology and shuffled the few feet left to my bedroom. It took five times longer than it should have, but I managed to shed my work suit on the floor and climb into the sweats and T-shirt sitting on the top of my laundry basket. I rested on the side of the bed for a minute, a slight wave of nausea creeping back up on me.
Will knocked on the door. “You okay?”
I pushed myself up, stupidly proud that I could pull that off. “I’ll survive,” I said, opening the door. He slid his hand under my elbow, giving me a gentle tug to pull me out.
“Come to the living room. I texted Dave, and he said I have to make sure you stay on top of your water intake, that you’ll just go to sleep if I leave. You need to rest on the sofa until you’re at least kind of hydrated again.”
I didn’t bother arguing. He was right. My head was clearing enough to remind me that the meds would be pointless if I didn’t get down all the water I needed. He helped me out to the couch and eased me into my favorite corner before tucking another water bottle into my hand. “Drink this. And while you get that down, I’m going to figure out what you can eat.”
“I don’t want food.”
“You threw up. You need food.”
“Please don’t.”
He crouched in front of me and smoothed my hair out of my face, tucking a strand away that had been sticking to my cheek. “Please do. Please.”
I sighed a giving-in sigh, and he breathed out a matching sigh of relief when I lifted the bottle to drink. He was in the kitchen within seconds, opening the fridge and digging through it. A minute later, he padded back over, and I realized he’d shucked his shoes. I smiled my first smile in hours. “You hate shoes.”
He glanced down at his bare feet. “Yeah. I found a carton of strawberries. Will you eat some mixed into steel-cut oats? I think that will be okay for your stomach, right?”
I nodded and regretted it as a bolt of pain lanced through my eye again. “I’ll eat it,” I said, resting my head against the couch arm before I was stupid enough to rattle my brain again.
He slid his hand beneath my head, and as gently as he might have scooped up a week-old kitten, he lifted my head until it was straight again. “You can’t do that until you drink all of your water.”
“So mean.”
He leaned down and pressed a kiss to my hairline. That burned too, but it was like fire, not the electrical pain that had dropped me to the floor hours before. “Sorry. Gotta be cruel to be kind. Drink. Then rest.”
I drank, wondering if it would cool the tingling spot where his lips had touched me. It didn’t. I didn’t want it to. I closed my eyes and took sips while he puttered in the kitchen. I could tell he was moving slowly and trying hard not to make more noise. I concentrated on my forehead tingle, so glad to feel something good there instead of the dark presence of the migraine.
When Will put a bowl of warm oats in my lap, he peeled the water bottle out of my fingers and tucked them around a spoon. “Eat. I’d feed you, but I think that would create new problems.”
He sat on the other side of the sofa while I scooped up a spoonful of cereal. It was good. I ate half of it, 100 percent more than I thought I would, and set it aside. “Thanks for taking care of me.”
“You’re welcome.”
“What time is it, anyway?”
“Eight thirty.”
“You’ve been here three hours.”
He shrugged. “No big deal. I didn’t have anything to do.”
“You can go. I’ll be okay now. Isn’t there a game on?”
“I recorded it. I’ll watch it later.”
“You can’t skip game seven of the World Series for me.” It was unheard of. Will would miss his own funeral and reanimate to come back to life if it meant watching the Rangers in a game seven for the championship.
“I didn’t skip it. I’ll watch it later.”
Guilt twisted up my insides. “But you could have, I don’t know, at least turned the game on over here.”
“Didn’t want the noise to bother you.”
“You could have watched it with the volume off.”
Will gave me a long stare, then reached over for my bowl, moving slowly but deliberately to set it on my coffee table. He scooted down the sofa, careful not to jostle me. He slid his arm around my shoulders, and again, handling me like a tiny kitten, he nestled my head down next to his neck. “You did good, and you get to rest again.”
I settled against him. I was too tired to resist even if I’d wanted to. But no part of me wanted to.
Once he felt my body relax, he brushed his hand over my hair. “You scared me to death, Hanny. I wasn’t moving until I knew you were okay. I’m glad you feel better, but I can tell you’re still not right. So humor me and let me stay here until you are so I don’t have to stress at my place.”
I sighed and felt bad when my breath raised goose bumps on his skin beneath my cheek. He couldn’t be comfortable, but I was too weak to give him up, and that wasn’t the kind of weakness that hot oats or rest would cure. But the migraine shadow had eroded any chance I had of showing some willpower. “Okay. But at least turn on the game here. If you don’t mind watching with the sound off, you can watch the second half live.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure,” I murmured, already drifting again, fading into the scent that was Will, that unbottleable himness that I couldn’t get enough of.
He leaned forward to get the remote, and when he had the game on, he carefully maneuvered me down until my head rested on a couch pillow in his lap, and h
e slid his fingers into my hair, gripping handfuls of it and pulling with a steady pressure before he let go. “Let me know if this hurts,” he said, his voice low. “I read up while you were sleeping, and this is supposed to stimulate blood flow if you alternate it with massaging wherever the headache is. I’ll stop when it bothers you, so say when.”
Any other day and his touch would have made my skin come alive, sending currents along every nerve in my whole body, connecting it all to his fingertips on my scalp. But this time, it released some other magical substance, the mellow cousin of the endorphins he’d sent rioting through me so many times before, and I dissolved even further, no longer braced against the pain that lurked. It receded with every pull and release of my hair in Will’s hands.
Before long, I could crack my eyes open to watch the game. It was the sixth inning, and we were down by one, but our best hitter was at bat. This was where Will would tense and stare at the TV like it was the only visible thing in the whole universe, yelling if the swings weren’t connecting the way he thought they should, yelling louder if he didn’t like the umpire’s calls. But even when the Rangers’ hitter sent the ball soaring over the far stadium wall, Will didn’t say a word. He didn’t even move, just kept combing his fingers through my hair, not changing his rhythm even as one of the Rangers on base rounded home followed almost immediately by the hitter.
“Will?”
“Mmmm?”
“We scored two runs.”
“You should keep your eyes closed.”
“You should celebrate.”
He let go of my scalp with one hand, the single greatest sacrifice I’d ever made in my life, and pumped his fist. “Yes!” he said, barely more than a whisper.
“That’s it?” I mumbled, too tired to goad him harder. “You can do your home-run dance if you want to. I’m fine. I know it doesn’t feel real unless you do the dance.”
“I’m fine right here,” he said, his hands back to working their magic. “Now stop talking. You’re ruining the game.”
I could only smile. In the midst of a brutal migraine, I was somehow having the best night of my life, lying on a sofa, watching the TV with no sound, and being taken care of by Will.
“You got a few texts while you were out. I slid your phone out of your pocket so it wouldn’t wake you up.”
I blinked in acknowledgment, too afraid to nod, words feeling like too much energy.
“One of the texts was Jay. He was wondering where you are.”
I winced. “We were supposed to watch the game together tonight. I better tell him what’s up.”
“Don’t worry about it. I texted him back and said you were too sick for it.”
Something about that was off somehow, and the sense of a problem that needed solving niggled at me, but it couldn’t work its way through the fog in my brain, so I let it go. It would come to me later.
* * *
Normally when I woke up the day after a migraine, moving through the morning felt like picking my way through spiderwebs, filaments of the headache sticking to me, weird aftereffects like sound halos and the hint of something bad each time I turned my head. But Friday wasn’t like that.
The Rangers had won the World Series. Will had excused himself for a minute the night before, and I’d heard his muffled whoops of joy through my bathroom door before he’d come out again and scooped me up from the couch to carry me down the hallway and tuck me into my bed with stern orders to stay there. He’d made sure my cell phone was beside me but on silent so no texts would bother me, but he made me promise to call him if I needed anything. Then he let himself out, and I’d fallen into the deep dreamless sleep that migraines and pain pills always sent me into.
But there was no migraine hangover this morning. Only pure, crystalline joy. He’d texted to check on me as soon as I’d turned the volume up on my phone. I promised him I was fine. More than fine. I was fantastic, even. Floating, possibly.
Even the exchange I found in my texts between him and Jay didn’t throw me. Jay had texted wondering where I was.
WILL: She can’t come out tonight
JAY: Who is this?
WILL: I’m her friend. She’s not feeling good. She’ll text you later.
JAY: Is she okay?
WILL: If she were okay, she’d be going out.
Since Will was answering from my phone, Jay would have no idea if it was a girl or guy texting him back, which was good. Except that he probably thought it was one of my friends trying to blow him off for me. Especially since Will had been terse to the point of rude. Not awesome. I’d have to straighten it out with Jay later, once I’d gotten to work and settled into my routine.
But I wasn’t the least bit irritated with Will about it. Because he’d cared. So much. And taken good care of me, to boot. And I couldn’t wait to poke my head in and tell him so. He was on his couch with a bowl of cereal.
“Hey,” I said, smiling. A nervous energy jittered through me. We’d moved to different territory last night, but I only knew the landscape we had left, not the one we’d entered.
“Hey.” His answering smile was as soft as his hands had been on my head the night before, not his usual distracted smile when I came by. “How are you feeling?”
“Much better than usual after a migraine. You’re a good nurse.”
“I’m glad. Scare me like that again and you’re grounded forever.”
I didn’t love the big-brotherly joke, but it’s not like habits were going to break overnight. “I have to go to work, but I wanted to prove that I’m healthy again. Bye.”
“Wait. I’m glad you stopped by. I need you to help me pick out a shirt.”
“For what?”
“I have a date from one of the profiles I set up. She definitely seems like the coolest one so far. We were texting last night, and she made me laugh a couple of times. Out loud. I’m kinda stoked, but I don’t know what to wear.”
Everything inside me iced over like Elsa had blown through. I forced a smile and glanced at my watch. “Sorry, I have to leave now, or I’ll be late. I’m sure you’ll pick something fine. Catch you later,” I said, closing the door on his protest.
When I got in my car, I gripped the steering wheel hard enough to turn my knuckles white.
Unbelievable. Un-freaking-believable.
Nothing had changed at all. How many times could I do this—give myself whiplash with my interpretations of his moods and send myself up and down on a roller coaster that was apparently entirely of my own making?
I’d been planning to text Jay an apology for the short texts from the night before then let him down gently about going on another date. I was so sure Will and I were taking some kind of next step. I’d been daydreaming from the second I’d woken up about what it was going to be like when we met up after work, how possibly awkward but awesome it would feel for us to figure out a new way to be around each other.
Such. An. Idiot.
Him.
Even more so, me.
I was willing to drop a handsome, funny, successful guy like Jay—an interested guy, one who wanted to be with me—because Will was nice to me when I had a headache.
A new headache, a stress one this time, started in my temples, and I dropped my head between my clenched hands on the steering wheel. Sophie had been right from the very first conversation: the only way to get Will to look at me differently was to let him know how I felt.
But even if I was willing to do that, the creeping anxiety I’d brushed away since I’d started this experiment billowed into full-blown fear. It would change everything for me to speak up. But not in the way I wanted. If Will was going to fall in love with me, it would have happened by now.
I sat up and called the department director to let him know I’d be taking my first sick day in almost two years. Then I put the car in gear and drove to the grocery store for supplies and to give Will a chance to leave for work before I went back home to figure out how to reconstruct my life. Again.
&nbs
p; * * *
It took the first three miles of my run to stop crying. I spent another five being angry. I ran the last four miles home with my mind blank. Numb, even. Just the slap, slap, slap of my feet on the asphalt or concrete in front of me, counting the lines in the sidewalk or rearranging the letters of street signs I passed into stupid anagrams. Larkspur Avenue became purse rave and naval eke and a dozen other dumb unscrambles. But by the time I got back to my apartment, my head was clear.
I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t stand in Will’s way if he was ready to be married. I had failed over three weeks of my best efforts to make him see me as his one true love. And I’d done him very wrong in trying to manipulate him into it. I’d only succeeded in failing utterly as his friend by keeping him off track from what he wanted.
Will wasn’t my meant-to-be. It was hard to imagine that, but I had to accept it. I had to because there was no changing it. And I had no idea how I’d get myself to being okay with that, but for both of our sanity, I had to find a way to let it go.
So I pulled out the notebook, fresh pens, and two pounds of fruit and whole grain treats I’d picked up from the store—the latter to keep me from drowning myself in the fat/sugar/oil trifecta that had put so much weight on me after my parents died—and I went to work. On myself. On seeing things differently.
I wrote. And I wrote. And I wrote.
Will texted me a few times. I ignored him, finally turning the phone off after the third one. I wrote more, letting every hope and dream and wish come out. It was journaling the way my grief counselor had tried to make me do as a teenager. And it poured out. And over the next three hours, I saw the words shape themselves into a tidal wave of truth that I’d refused to look at, and it crashed down around me. Through the early afternoon, I was awash in a wave of self-recrimination and the evidence of the hundreds of ways I’d been sabotaging my own non-Will relationships for years, even when I’d thought I’d been done dreaming about him.
I took a break for a short nap, residual exhaustion from the migraine that I hadn’t expected. And when I got up from that, my insides were tear soaked and empty, but I looked at the journal through clear eyes, a more honest vision than I’d ever used for looking at my life. And I started a new section, one where I wrote about what I would let into my life by accepting Will’s true role in it, not the one I’d daydreamed about for years.
Always Will Page 13