“I remembered you were coming,” I said, leaning against the doorframe. “I promise.”
I startled a little when a palm settled against my forehead. “You don’t have a fever,” Everett said. “How are you feeling?”
“I have a migraine,” I explained. Something about the gentlepressure of his hand against my head seemed to infinitesimally ease the pain there. If I were feeling better, I would have paid attention to all my better judgments, but they didn’t even exist at the moment, and so I leaned into it. “I’m sorry.”
“Why are you apologizing?” Everett asked. His other arm slipped around my shoulders, familiar, taking my weight as I rested against him.
“I didn’t tell you,” I said. “We were supposed to—”
“Hey,” he said. “No apologizing, okay?” He rubbed at my shoulders and I let out a contented sound that quickly morphed into a groan when the vibrations sent a new wave of pain through my entire brain. “Come on.”
I remember Everett directing me back into bed, pulling the blankets up over me. I remember him refilling my water glass and handing me more ibuprofen when I asked for it and checking to make sure I had everything I needed, and I remember him pushing me back down when I sat up, insistent wedo something, that I wouldn’t let this weekend pass us by, that I knew, historically, the migraine would run its course in a few more hours.I’ll be right here, he said, or something like it, as I shut my eyes again, maybeI’m not going anywhere.
It would have horrified me to be like this in front of any other man I’d dated, or slept with, or whatever it was Everett and I did. If I hadn’t set twelve extra alarms to get up and do everything to look as human as possible, to avoid canceling plans, I wouldn’t have let them in the apartment. I would have pretended I wasn’t home and then that I forgot about the date and I would never tell them I felt bad. I wouldn’t let them tuck me into bed with my morning breath and my laundry basket out in the open and then just wander, unchecked, into my apartment.
But as soon as my bedroom door clicked softly closed behind Everett, I started to drift off. I didn’t worry about disappointing him, about being perfect. I felt better with him here. More than that, I realized, I wanted it to be him. Not Laurel or Gabe or Davi. Everett.
I didn’t have time to mull it over. I was asleep before I could consider the why.
When I woke up, my apartment was quiet. The long lines of late afternoon sun slanted in through my blinds. I groaned when I checked my phone; I’d been asleep almost four hours. But it had helped. The headache behind my eye had reduced to a dull pulse, and the nausea that usually accompanied my migraines was gone.
I stood and stretched, wondering if I’d dreamed up Everett altogether. But when I wandered into the living room, there he was, flesh and blood, on my couch. Asleep.
Hovering in my bedroom doorway, I watched him for a minute, the faint rise and fall of his chest, the arm he had crooked above his head, before a light in the kitchen caught my eye. I wandered over, following my nose to a pot on my stove that I lifted the lid on.
“You’re up.”
I jumped at the sound of Everett’s voice, turning to where he was sitting up, eyes sleepy.
“You made me soup?” I asked, lid still in hand.
Everett nodded, rubbing the heels of his hands over his eyes. His hair stuck up a little in the back. “You told me once that Hank used to make you soup when you had a migraine.”
“I did?” I asked. I looked at the pot, at the soup that he’d clearly gone out and gotten ingredients for, made in my kitchen without my help, and back at him. “I don’t remember that.”
Everett’s hands had fallen, and he looked between me and the stove, chewing on his lower lip before he finally said, “I do.”
Something in my chest shifted. I put a hand to the spot, like it was physical, like I might find a new bruise or scar where I felt it, but there was nothing. No permanent reminder of the change, only a certainty in my body that the way I was looking at Everett then was different than how I looked at him before, and I started to worry there wasn’t anything I could do about it.
I swallowed, settled a hand against the counter in an attempt to appear casual. “Can we have some soup?” I asked.
Everett sprang up, came over to me. I watched as he opened cupboards and drawers like he knew where things were, which he must have because he made the soup to begin with.
Having him there, in my small kitchen, felt off-limits, somehow, like I was breaking a rule. Inviting him into my life outside of the trip, something I did with the others but we’d never done with each other. The days at the beach always felt more innocent, like they were some continuation of a version of ourselves we never got to be. But this, having him in my apartment, having him take care of me, the sudden ache in my chest at the sight of him, was new.
He nudged me after I’d been standing there in silence for a minute, eyes stuck on his movements as he navigated my kitchen. “Go sit down,” he told me, and I complied, let myself be taken care of. Everett brought me soup and a blue Gatorade, another thing he remembered, and we ate and turned on the cooking channel and watched Molly Yeh make a hot dish and I was so happy that I almost started crying.
Later, when my headache was almost gone and Everett was washing our dishes, I ducked into the bathroom to take a shower, rinse off the feeling of having lain in bed all day. When I came back out, wrapped in my robe, Everett was sitting at my table, coat on.
“Hey,” he said, glancing up at me. “Feel better?”
“Loads,” I said. I hovered near the end of the table. “Thank you for taking care of me.”
He stood up, reached out, and tucked a damp strand of hair behind my ear. “I liked doing it.”
My lips parted as his hand fell, and I worried that if I didn’t say something then, I never would. I turned to follow his gaze to my front door, and noticed, for the first time, his suitcase sitting there.
“It’s getting late,” Everett said as I looked back at him. “I should probably get going.”
