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“What?”
“Your symptoms are…interesting.”
“Please. Just take them.” I shoved the vase in her direction on my way to the bathroom.
“Hey, sorry about last night,” said Knox, who met me in the hallway. I held up one finger and raced past him. When I came out, he was leaning against the wall.
“Sorry,” I muttered.
“Are you feeling any better at all?”
“I thought so, but now, not so much.”
Knox followed me into my room and pulled a chair over when I got back in bed. He leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. “I screwed up.”
“How?”
“Tackle told me the thing about the woman in confidence. I never should’ve mentioned it to you.”
“What your friends do is none of my concern, Knox.”
“He said you asked about his girlfriend.”
“I was making a joke.” I sounded pissy even to myself. I hoped Knox would attribute it to my being sick rather than wonder why talking about Tackle and his girlfriend made me so mad.
I picked up a piece of the dry toast my mother had brought to me. One wouldn’t think eating the equivalent of a roof shingle would taste any good, but I was hungry enough that it did. When that stayed down, I tried some of the chunks of fruit she’d also brought.
Why didn’t I eat more cantaloupe? I mean, God, was there anything better? And the strawberries? Wow. Where had she gotten fruit this good in December?
“Are you okay?”
I opened my eyes, which had been shut in food ecstasy, and studied my brother. “Yeah, why?”
“You look like Tackle and I did after spending a couple of days in the Somalian desert with no food and little water.”
“I was sick.”
“Right. Anyway, if you could forget I said anything about Tackle’s…uh…friend, I’d appreciate it. I guess she isn’t as into him as he was her.”
I was tempted to pick up the bowl of fruit and hurl it at my brother, but only because he was sitting in front of me and Tackle wasn’t. I guess I had my answer as to why he was in such a big hurry to make nice with me. She wasn’t that into him, so he’d get it where he could.
After Knox left, I rested my head against the pillow and thought about last night. Remembering Tackle’s finger on my neck, and then his lips, sent a shudder running through me now like it had then.
“You know you want me again, Sloane. Just as much as I want you,” he’d said. Want him again? No. I wanted him forever. He wasn’t a slice of pizza I wanted another bite of. I wanted to wake up next to him every morning for the rest of my life.
I’d spent plenty of afternoons, when I was a teenager, writing Sloane Sorenson over and over again on a piece of paper that, afterward, I’d rip to shreds. I even came up with names for the children I fantasized we’d have one day. Not names so much as one name. Landry. Whether we had a boy or a girl first, that’s what I’d want to name the baby.
God, how long had it been since I thought about any of that? Silly, childish fantasies—that’s all they were. The reality was, I’d been a “I just almost died and I need to get laid” booty call.
After eating the rest of the fruit and the toast, I decided I felt good enough to take a shower. When I finished, I felt like I needed a nap, so I took one. When I woke again, I could hear voices from downstairs.
I’d heard one in particular often enough that I recognized it immediately. What the hell was Tackle doing here so early? I rolled over and checked the time. Noon? I’d slept another three hours?
“Hey, you awake?” asked Knox, sticking his head in my room.
“If I wasn’t, I would be now.”
“Tackle’s here. We were hoping we could take you out to thank you for picking us up last night.”
