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“And did you?” Mina asked, before pulling the sandwiches off the heat. She’d gotten lost in the conversation and had left their dinner on the pan too long. They weren’t burned yet, thank God.
“Push Dennis to move?” The knife chopped off the pointed bottoms of the carrots. “No. I don’t want my best friend to move. Or my sister.”
She got a paring knife out and cut the sandwiches into triangles, then pushed the two halves of the sandwiches apart to make room for a nice pile of carrot sticks. Only when she set the plates on the counter next to Levi and the cutting board did she realize that they were having this stressful conversation, and it was okay. She wasn’t worried about him walking out of her house, of saying that she was too stressful or too much work or talked too much. They would talk through their problems and eat their dinner and—if she weren’t sick—they might go up to her bedroom and make love.
Was this love?
As if they had made grilled cheese sandwiches together for years, Levi scooped up the carrot sticks he’d cut and plopped them on the plates. He took a plate in each hand, turning to follow her. When they sat down, he sighed, and she looked up from her plate.
“I did some thinking while you were sick.”
Her heart froze, icing around the panic about their relationship that the fever had brought on. Only, maybe it wasn’t that he had this strange fetish about caring for sick people. Maybe, like he’d said when they’d first met, he’d been in a relationship with one person who’d had a chronic illness, and he didn’t want to do it again.
Her rational mind pointed out that all he’d said was that he did some thinking, but she was too tired and too sore, and her nose was too stuffed up to pay attention to rationality.
“Nothing to be panicked about,” he said, and she realized that her knuckles had turned white as she gripped her plate. “I realized spending time with you was nice, and that neither of us had to be perfect for it to be nice. That the time itself mattered.”
“Oh.” The ice that had formed around her fears cracked and melted away. She’d been an idiot. A sick, frightened idiot. “That was really nice.”
He nodded. “You’re a good way to end a day of work.”
She smiled, sniffed, then smiled again. As they ate their dinner, and in between fits of coughing, Mina talked about the escapades of daytime television.
She was going to assign those courtroom dramas as a drawing exercise at one of her drink and draws. That would be funny.
* * *
MINA TOOK THE plate Levi had rinsed and put it in the dishwasher. Then she turned to him and said, “I need food in the house for tomorrow.” She felt better, but not well enough to stand and teach a class just yet. She’d return to work next week. “Something that’s not soup.”
“You also need to get out of the house.”
The truth of his words hit immediately. Being sick with the flu hadn’t been the only reason she’d latched on to her fears. Being stuck in the house, and her existence shrinking to what Levi was able to give her, had warped her understanding of the world. Shockingly, it had taken only a couple of days.
“Yes.” Her body tensed, and if she could have dashed out of the house, she would have.
“Go change. I’ll finish cleaning up and take you to the grocery store.”
She went upstairs and found a pair of jeans. But they were not the forgiving pajama pants she’d been wearing all week. Not only did they feel stiff as she put them on, but the rougher fabric tingled her skin. Remains of the fever, probably. Even before her diagnosis, fevers had seemed to linger in her bones. Still, she didn’t lose her breath trying to get them on, and her fingers worked well enough to button them, so that was all a plus. She’d make it through a trip to the grocery store, and Levi wouldn’t even have to carry her.
“This was a good idea,” Mina said for the fifth time on the drive to the store. She would have been bouncing in her seat except that she wanted to save that energy for shopping. Between making dinner and getting pants on, she’d had enough activity for the day to fall asleep as soon as she got home.
