“I know,” he teased her. “I didn’t even get to show you your room.”
“Room?” she asked, confused.
“For you to stay in when we’re renting out Forest’s Bridge this summer. The place is all set for us. It just needs a range hookup and…all of our stuff. The couch is a pullout for me. I thought you should have the bedroom. It seemed like the gentlemanly thing to do.” He rubbed her back soothingly.
“I keep forgetting we have to leave. I was getting used to the two of us there.”
“You were always planning on leaving eventually, though, right? Wasn’t that the plan?” There was a question in his voice she could just barely detect. A question she didn’t want him to ask, because suddenly, she wasn’t sure how to answer it.
She hummed a noncommittal response.
“Hopefully, we don’t have to wait much more,” he said after a long silence.
“I’m okay to wait,” she responded, warmth spreading into her limbs as his fingers drew lazy circles on her back.
He looked down at her, and she wondered if there were morethings in her life he was hoping she’d wait a little longer for. Right then, she might have considered it.
“It’s not so bad here,” she said, the words feeling truer than they had in a while.
One IV of fluids and a cocktail of pain medications later, Elliot was leading Lainey out the double doors, but this time she was standing upright.
“Give me a second,” she told him, exhausted but hydrated and with the echoes of pain lingering at the edges of her skull. “I need to get a favorable payment plan going, and I think the woman with the puppy scrubs is going to love our story about Waffle and the truck.”
Elliot pretended to be shocked. “You would leverage Waffle like that?”
“I would andhaveleveraged my own grandmother like that. I’ve pretended to be identical twins to get two free consultations with an acupuncturist.”
“Easy, Tom Ripley. I’ve already taken care of this one.”
“Okay…” Her brain couldn’t process the information, but that could’ve been the residual effects of the many pain medications she was on. “How much do you need me to Venmo you?” She pulled her phone from her dress pocket.
He pushed her phone down as he wrapped his arm around her. “It’s handled.”
Handled. She repeated the word over and over in her head until it no longer sounded familiar. “You can’t just pay my urgent care bill. That’s not our arrangement.”
“Counterargument: it’s exactly our arrangement.” He strode them into the dark parking lot. It was late, and the world was quiet. The only movement was the bugs circling the lights.
“Elliot.” She pressed her hand to his chest, stopping him. “When I said I don’t borrow money from Bree, that wasn’t specific to her. I don’t borrow money. Money makes things messy.”
He held up his hand. “Look. I have no doubt that we will sit down and figure out all the ways we can divide up these kinds of costs. But how about, just for tonight, you let me handle it? Don’t worry about how you’repayingto feel better and just focus on feeling better.” He tucked a strand of her sweat-dampened hair behind her ear. “It’s two in the morning, and we have to let Waffle out. I promise we’ll get this sorted, but you don’t have to worry about this tonight.”
She looked up at him, her eyes having adjusted to the dark. She could just barely make out his gentle look behind his glasses. The soft, hopeful edges of his smile.
“Lainey, please,” he begged, fatigued.
She narrowed her gaze. “It’s too much. This goes beyond the arrang—”
“Did you know it’s Grayson’s birthday today?”
Her eyes blinked fast. “Uh, no?”
“Well, it was. And after I did the whole surrogate-uncle thing of watching him put together a puzzle of the Chrysler Building over FaceTime—my gift, naturally—my best friends asked what was going on in my life, and I realized I didn’t have anything I could tell them, because you’re at the center of everything that matters to me. The only thing I wanted to talk about was you. I wanted to so badly my chest hurt, and I don’t want to have to keep it in anymore. I want to tell them about how funny you are and how capable and smart. You’resosmart, Lainey. You’re always ten steps ahead of me. I don’t even try to keep up anymore, I just enjoy it. Because I love watching you figure things out. Ilove the way your forehead creases when you think you might be in over your head and the way you bite your bottom lip just as you realize you’re not. I think about you all the time. I make up reasons to see you and touch you and make you laugh. All I want is to hear you laugh. It’s the perfect sound.”
“Elliot.” It was all she could think to say. What did a person say to something like that?
“I know what I said yesterday—and I know whatyousaid yesterday—but that didn’t feel like ‘just one time’ to me. It felt big. This already means something to me, and I think it always has.” He winced, like whatever was happening in this urgent care parking lot was the greatest agony he’d ever experienced. “Are you…? This isn’t all in my head, is it? This is real for you, too?” Elliot asked, his voice raw and aching.
A beating drum reverberated through her limbs and into her chest. “Of course it’s real for me,” she answered.
