“To be here for you. To love you.” Julian’s eyebrows knit together. “And install a bidet.”
A surprised sound huffs out of me. “What?”
“Can I come in?” Julian lifts the bags. “I’ve brought provisions.”
“I don’t know…” My voice comes out small. “I’m very sick, Julian.”
His soft, gentle smile wraps around my heart. “That doesn’t mean you have to be alone.”
Despite the fear and shame telling me to withdraw, to retreat, to hide this embarrassing version of myself and deny it any exposure to air, I want to believe him. I want to be with him.
And dammit, I’vealwayswanted a bidet.
I let him in.
He bustles to the kitchen, where he begins systematically emptying his bags and arranging the items on my table. Wawa chicken noodle soup and soft pretzels, a heating pad, electrolyte packets, bananas, more of the protein shakes I like, and no less than three types of toilet paper.
“I got you a range from no-nonsense to super soft. I didn’t know what you preferred.” He pulls out the fancy bidet next, then jogs to the car and returns with two sleek oscillating fans with remotes.
“Whatisall this, Julian?”
“I joined the sub-reddit for IBD and read up on people’s must-haves for bad flares.” He winces as my face falls. “The inflammation, your weight loss, the pain in your lower belly… it’s IBD, right?”
“You cracked the case. I have Crohn’s.” I smile ruefully, staring at the fans instead of him, feeling the truth in the words he said outside. It is humbling, to be seen and understood and then, loved anyway. “Why fans?”
“Many people experience hot flashes during bad flares, especially during cramping, so I bought a fan for your bathroom and one for wherever else you’d like it. Maybe by your couch?” He waits for me to answer, and finally I nod, my brain processing all this on a three-second delay. Then he’s off, setting up the fans as directed.
“How are you feeling right now?” He expertly fits the bidet onto the water line next. “Hungry? Crampy? Fatigued?”
“Bewildered, mostly.” I wrap my arms around myself in the doorway, watching him tighten everything with a wrench, my heart included. The sight of tall, handsome Julian, sleeves rolled up and working on mytoiletof all things, is so unexpectedly domestic, it’s like a vision of some happy future I can’t have. But… says who? Me? Or Crohn’s?
“How did you know to do all this? To be here for me in this way?”
“You once said that creature comforts are how you get by. I understand that more now.” Julian stops and pushes his glasses adorably up his nose. “I also know what it’s like when someone lives with chronic pain, and thanks to my mom, I know how to love them through it.”
My throat tightens painfully. “Your dad.”
Julian gives me a small, sad half-smile as he stands, then washes his hands. “When he’d experience a bad pain flare, he’d isolate himself, usually out in our garage or in my parents’ bedroom. I didn’t understand back then. I thought he didn’t want to see me, or didn’t want to work, or some other horseshit reason that made his pain seem like a personal failing, instead of what it really was—this relentless struggle he fought every day, on his own, to try and remain a part of our lives. Mom understood that, and though she couldn’t take his pain away, she did whatever she could to make him feel less alone in it.”
Julian approaches me, his hands cupping my face as he peers down into my eyes. His thumbs brush away the tears collecting on the tops of my cheekbones so gently that more fall.
“You’re going through the same thing, aren’t you? Feeling alone in your pain? Separating yourself from everyone else to spare them the burden of your illness?”
I can’t say anything, the words resolving into a single, choked sob. So, I nod. I nod, and Julian’s arms wrap around me, holding me to him.
“Spare me from nothing, Nomi. Every part of you deserves to be loved, and I want it all. When I imagine the best, happiest version of my own future, all I see is you.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” I whisper into his shoulder. “I wish I’d been brave enough.”
“Tell me now.” He tucks a lock of hair behind my ear. “Tell me everything.”
And so, I do. First at my table, then later, curled on my couch when the cramping hurts too much to sit. I tell him when the symptoms began, how hard high school in Georgia was, how I’d started to improve in Sparrow Nook but took a sharp turn during the most competitive stretch of our debate team season. I told him about going on Hospital-Homebound, and weird Ms. Middlecooks who’d come over with my assignments and proctor tests. I told him how much I missed him, how I wished I could tell him why I’d disappeared.
“It’s very hard to admit you have a shitting disease to the boy you like.”
“Thevery hot guy, you mean,” Julian corrects.
“The extremely intense, underweight, big mouth teenager that I, for some reason, desperately wanted to make out with.”
