AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Are those dogs in raincoats?”
“No, I think they’ve got bathmats strapped to their backs.”
“Damn, look at that one! Did it just bark?”
“Maybe shrews do bark?”
“What the hell is a shrew?”
By the time the end credits rolled, we were curled in a heap, me halfway lying in Izzy’s lap. She was stroking my hair absently, and it felt good. When she reached for the remote, I snatched it up quick.
“I’ll pick the next one. Don’t, uh… don’t stop.”
She went back to petting me and I scrolled through the menu. It still made my head hurt when I tried to focus, so I picked a movie at random and I pressed play. Some romcom came on, some doofy teen thing. Soon we were giggling, and then things got fuzzy, and I could feel myself drifting to sleep. I waited for that fear to come, of slipping off the world, but it didn’t seem possible in Izzy’s arms. She had me. I could sleep. With her, I’d be fine.
“Feels good,” I mumbled, halfway to sleep. “Safe with you, nice…”
“Huh?”
I tried to think of the words to tell her thank you. To tell her about all the time I’d skipped, and how it had scared me, but that was okay now. I was good. She had me.
What came out was a sigh as I found her free hand. I took it and held it and slid into sleep.
CHAPTER 14
IZZY
Spencer’s coach ordered him to take the next three days off; no gym, no training, no stress at all. I took time off too, to stay home and help him. Technically, I was on flex hours, working from home, but I did that while Spencer slept, and while Leon was with him. The rest of the time, it was like a mini-vacation, waking up late, watching daytime TV.
I cooked for Spencer, whatever he wanted, but after the first day, he insisted on helping.
“You’re just in the way,” I said. “You’re spilling the sugar.”
He brushed sugar off the counter. “You know what we should do?”
“What?”
“Marathon that show, the one Leon’ll be on. We can’t fully make fun of him if we haven’t seen it.”
I smacked him. “That’s mean.”
“You know you want to.” He stole a strawberry from my mixing bowl and popped it in his mouth. “Actually, you know what? I don’t want to do that.”
I stroked his arm, sensing him getting antsy. “Well, we don’t have to. You want to go swimming?”
He frowned out at the pool. “I can’t with my stitches.” His shoulders went tense and he blew air out his nose. He found a spot on the counter and scraped it with his nail. “Sorry. I hate this, just sitting around. Knowing the next game’s coming, and I’m missing practice. I can feel myself getting rusty minute by minute. Losing my instincts, losing?—”
“You’re not.”
“You can’t know that.” He jiggled his bad leg. “It feels like, it feels… I can’t even describe it. Like the longer I sit here, the more I go soft. Like I’m learning bad habits through, uh, osmosis.”
I laughed. “You’re absorbing them through your skin?”
“Don’t laugh. I am. Or, I don’t know. It’s like when we were losing, and I couldn’t break through. I was up in my head. Locked in this spiral. I kept overthinking, and if I sit here, just sit, where else can my thoughts go but up in my head?”
I pressed my lips together to keep from laughing again. Spencer’s frustration was real, I could feel it, but where would his thoughts be if not in his head?
“It’s not funny,” he said, though I’d kept my composure.
