I wince at the sunlight when it opens.
“Hey.”
It’s Marcus. At my front door. Of my house.
“I was just driving by. It’s kind of stupid, actually, but I…You okay, Cartwright? You don’t look so good.”
“It’s just a migraine.” My voice is a dry whisper, and my mouth feels like cotton wool.
Marcus frowns. “It doesn’t look like it’sjustanything.” He sounds almost disapproving. And concerned. “Do you…do you need anything?”
I feel too gross to speak, so I nod. He reaches forward and gently brushes his thumb over my still-wet cheek.
I start crying for real.
“Hey, it’s okay,” he says softly. “Just tell me what you need, and I’ll do it.”
And so what happens is that Marcus Riddick leads me back up the stairs and into my room. My waste basket still smells like the nasty contents of my stomach. In fact, I’m pretty sure it stillcontainsthe nasty contents of my stomach, but Marcus acts like he doesn’t notice.
He disappears for minutes-long stretches, coming back with something new each time.
A cool washcloth for my head. A glass of water from the kitchen. Somehow, he figures out when I took my last pain meds, and he gives me two new tablets. Different than the first ones I took. “I think it’s fine,” he says, reading something off his phone as he holds them out to me. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure it’s fine. It should actually help, taking them together.”
Later, he opens my window and a touch of cold air comes in.
The acrid smell recedes.
I feel marginally more human.
Right around the moment the thought of food no longer revolts me, something smells like burnt toast. But it’s a bowl of noodles he sets down in my lap after he’s helped me sit up. “Something smells burnt,” I tell him.
“Don’t worry about it,” he says.
“You burnedtoast?”
“Don’t worry about it,” he says again. “It’s the fever talking.”
“I don’t have a fever.”
There’s a featherlight grin on his face.
He takes my bowl away when I finish eating, and as I’m falling asleep I ask the question I’m afraid of: “You’re leaving?”
“Do you want me to?” he asks.
“No.”
“Okay,” he says. “I’ll be right back.”
I know the minute I’m feeling better because a few things happen in quick succession. I remember that Marcus ishere. I remember that he is not bad on the eyes, that he called me beautiful. I remember that he has seen my puke.
So I jump out of bed and race for my dresser. I’m hurriedly filling in my eyebrows when I hear him speak.
“Are you serious right now, Cartwright?” he asks from the doorway. “You’re dying and you’re putting on makeup?”
“I’m notdying,” I say, and my voice comes out hoarse. I clear my throat. “I’m not dying. I just look hideous.”
He sighs and sinks into the desk chair beside my bed while I hastily finish my brows. I meet his eyes in the mirror as I dab on some lip balm.
