This time there's shuffling beyond the door.
"What do you want?" she asks. She sounds miserable, her voice nasally and deep.
In case she's looking through the peephole in the door, I lift the containerin my hand.
"I brought you soup, it's still hot," I say, then hold up the grocery bag in my other hand. "And if you eat that, I have other provisions."
The cold bites at my nose while I wait.
The door opens.
"What kind of soup?" she asks, letting me in and closing the door behind me.
Love.
I fucking love her.
Because somehow underneath the mess of hair falling out of the tie that's supposed to be holding it up, the too big T-shirt she's wearing, and the miserable frown on her face…she's still beautiful.
She's a sick little gremlin, but she's mine.
Except she isn't.
Not really.
She flops onto the couch in the T-shirt I've been missing since Baltimore and buries herself beneath a blanket.
"When's the last time you took any meds?" I ask, walking past her to the small kitchen.
She groans but doesn't answer me.
I put one of the sports drinks I brought her in the fridge, along with a Red Bull. Then grab the spoon I find in the dish strainer on the counter and bring it and the soup to the couch.
"Eat," I say. "Even if it's only the broth." I put a sports drink on the coffee table in front of her.
"You shouldn't be here," she says, narrowing her eyes but sitting up to take the soup from me. "Everything hurts. Why does strep throat as an adult feel like the fucking flu?" She whimpers. "Ow."
"If I was going to get it I would've already, and besides you're no longer contagious right?"
She nods and lifts the spoon to her lips but doesn't eat it. Instead, she side eyes me.
"Who made this?" she asks.
"I did."
Her expression is unreadable, but she takes a bite. And then another.
"Stop watching me eat you fucking weirdo," she says, exchanging the bowl in her hands for the sports drink. "Why are you here anyway?"
"You're sick," I say, sitting beside her.
"Your point?" she asks.
"Who takes care of you when you're sick, Storm Cloud?"
"I do," she says.
"Not anymore."
