“You don’t have to?—”
“Beth.” I stop her in the hallway, my hand now in hers. “Let me make you something.”
She looks at me for a long beat, and I watch the war inside her—the part that wants to sayI’m fine, I don’t need help, I’ve been handling this alone for years, and I don’t need you to rescue meversus the part of her that is so tired of handling it alone that the thought of someone simply making her something to eat is enough to make her eyes fill again.
“Okay,” she whispers.
I make her eggs. Nothing fancy—scrambled, with toast and butter and the hot sauce from her nearly empty fridge. She sits on the counter, like she always does, except tonight her legs are still, and she’s quiet in a way that she never is. She watches me move around her kitchen like I belong there, and I realize, I do. I belong in this kitchen, making this woman eggs at five o’clock on a Friday afternoon because her body spent the week tearing her apart, and she forgot to feed herself.
When I hand her the plate, her fingers brush against mine, and she holds on for a second longer than necessary.
“Thank you,” she says, and it’s not about the eggs.
“Always,” I reply, and it’s not about the eggs, either.
She doesn’t ask me to stay, and I don’t ask if I can. I just do. We fall asleep wrapped up in one another, and it’s the first night in a long time I don’t spend any time staring at a ceiling, contemplating my life.
CHAPTER 39
YOU. THIS IS THE TEN PERCENT.
BILLIE
I wake up on Saturday morning to the sound of Peter in my kitchen. For a disorienting moment, I forget I spent the last several days feeling like my body was trying to digest itself from the inside out.
Before he got here, Neve had come to bring me food, check on me, and sit with me while we watched reality TV. She doesn’t track my cycle, but she always knows when something is off. Instead of trying to change my mood, she just shows up.
The PMDD wave broke yesterday—I could feel it receding, the way you can feel a fever lifting even before the thermometer confirms it. The heaviness in my chest loosened. The fog behind my eyes thinned.
Finally, it was my chance to recover, and I went from barely being able to stand upright to crying into this man’s chest and eating scrambled eggs on my counter, and now I’m lying in bed, listening to him open and close my cabinets like he’s solving a puzzle, and I feel—okay. Not great. Not a hundred percent. But human again.
I slip into the bathroom for a quick shower that turns into me standing under the hot water for ten straight minutes and then morphs into an everything shower because I need the reset. When I step out, he’s still in the kitchen.
“You don’t have a single clean pan,” he calls.
“There’s a system,” I call back.
“The system is chaos.”
“And yet it works.” When I shuffle down the hall, he’s standing at the stove in his boxers and my oldest, most disgusting T-shirt—the one with the faded Cameron Construction logo I’ve had since the year I took over the company. He looks so absurdly at home in my kitchen that my heart does cartwheels.
“Coffee’s ready,” he says without turning around. “Also, you need groceries. I’m making eggs again because eggs are all you have.”
“I have hot sauce.”
“You have hot sauce.” He turns now, spatula in hand, and gives me a look that’s somewhere between exasperated and fond. “Good morning.”
“Morning.” I take the coffee he’s already poured—in my favorite mug, the chipped blue one that saysbad bitch juice, because of course he knows which one is my favorite—and lean against the counter. “I feel better. In case you’re wondering, but too polite to ask.”
“I was definitely going to ask.”
“I know. That’s why I beat you to it.” I take a sip and close my eyes. He makes coffee stronger than I do, which I didn’t think was possible. “The worst of it passes once I get my period. Yesterday was the tail end. Today, I’ll probably start to feel like myself again. My period will be gone by tomorrow or Monday. And then I get about two weeks before the whole thing starts over.”
He’s quiet for a moment, plating the eggs. “Every month?”
“Every month.” I say it matter-of-factly, because it is a fact. It’s the most boring, predictable fact of my life.
“How have I not noticed this before? I’ve been here for two months, I?—”
