Page 130 of Love Felt Like This

“I’ll help out unpaid!”

Beverly smiles for a moment before her phone vibrates. She looks down at it. I want to know who gained her unique attention. But Beverly’s spine straightens when she sees the text. After a silent moment, she locks her phone, then steals a glance at me again. Another smile twitches at the corner of her mouth, but this time it’s uneasy.

She’s anxious?

Why?

Ava wiggles down from Beverly’s lap and hops into mine. She can’t sit still tonight, moving from person to person every few minutes. I lift my quilt to tuck her inside, despite how much she’s heated up from the firepit.

Pudge pads around the fire in his knitted sweater, also looking for a place to settle. Finally, he finds a spot beside Beverly on the edge of the quilt slung over the side of her chair.

“Pudge, no, come on,” she whines. Pudge plops down, taking half the blanket with him.

Without thinking, I lift my quilt and throw half of it into her chair. Her body heat instantly travels to me under the shared blanket. We’re already close, but she scoots her chair closer, crackling it over the rocky pebbles below us.

The arms of the chairs overlap. Her forearm brushes against mine. I want to trace my palm down her sweater, to her delicate wrists, and across her fingers. But all I get is her shoulder and the cable-knit sweater concealing it.

Her phone lights up again. She slides a hand outside the blanket to click her phone off so that the screen goes black.

Who keeps texting her? Everyone she talks to regularly is here.

Or maybe not.

How well do I truly know Beverly?

I know how she looks to the ceiling or heaven above when she thinks about the show. I know how her pink lips twist to the corner of her mouth when she considers an idea, and I know how her brow furrows when she won’t tell me something. It’s as if keeping a secret pains her.

She exhales a cloud of air again, shaking and erratic in the winter cold. She crosses her arms, snaking her hand to her inner elbow. My fingertips nudge hers. Our hands linger together under the blanket, brushing like a whisper only we can hear. Her eyes dart to me, dancing over my face. All I can do is the same—following the green rims around her pupils, tracing their years of life with humor and smiles and everything I haven’t had.

I feel like I’m getting away with something with Beverly.

I always do.

Ava curls into my chest. Her forehead is still hot from when she sat next to the fire, even though she’s been facing away from it for a while now.

Wait…

I touch Ava’s forehead with the back of my hand. She’s burning up. I cup her shoulders, leaning her back to get a look. Her eyelids droop. She’s tired, but the sun has only just set. We’re a few hours out from her bedtime.

I run a thumb across her cheek. There’s a sheen of sweat.

“Hey, munchkin. Are you feeling all right?”

Ava slowly blinks at me, looking like she’s one second away from falling asleep.

And then she lets out an open-mouthed cough, right onto my face.

Chapter Twenty-Three

What Goes Around, Comes Around

Beverly

It snowed in Elk Grove one hour after we discovered Ava’s fever. It was the worst possible timing. The roads become treacherous during snowfall, so traveling down the mountain to get comfort foods or medicine is out of the question.

Poor little Ava is quarantined with Griffin in the garage apartment. Occasionally he’ll trudge through the inches of snow to get food from the kitchen. He ascends the den stairwell, holding back shivers and chattering teeth. After the second venture, I crossed the yard instead and knocked on the door.

“Stay with us,” I said. “Stay in the main house, where we’ve got a kitchen.”