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I find myself staring before she snaps at me, and I direct my attention to her. She has some mismatched chairs around a table that looks like it came out of an old diner. She points to one of the chairs, and I meander my way over, wincing at the stabbing pain in my rib cage.
“Sit.”
Bossy.
As I sit down, the chair squeaks, and Sage positions herself between my legs, tilting my head back and taking a look at my nose. When she makes a pained expression, I know the diagnosis.
“I have good news and I have bad news,” she mumbles quietly.
“Let me guess. It’s broken.”
“Afraid so.” When she pinches the bridge, it hurts so bad I flinch, yanking my head out of her grasp.
“So, what’s the good news?” I ask. My eyes are tearing up from the pain in my nose.
“I’ve done this before.”
“Done what?” I barely get the words out before her fingers are back on my face, and she’s popping the cartilage back in place. She might as well have torn my nose straight off my face for how bad it hurts.
“Fuck!” I shout as I grab my face.
Sage steps away from where I’m sitting, and by the time I blink the moisture out of my eyes, she’s roughly tilting my head back again and wiping it clean with a warm, wet washcloth.
I stare up at her, feeling a good deal more sober than I was at the club.
“You enjoyed that, didn’t you?”
“Mm-hmm,” she replies with a flat expression.
“I was an asshole at the club,” I confess.
“You’re all assholes.”
At that, I nod. She’s right. We are all assholes.
“Where did you learn how to do that?” I ask as she presses on the cut on my cheek, which stings as she does it.
She responds with a shrug. “My stepdad taught me when I was a kid because he had a habit of running his mouth and getting punched for it.”
Well, that’s depressing.
“Where was your mother?”
“Half the time, she was the one who did it,” she replies with a snicker.
Thinking about her mother instantly makes me think of mine. She would never lay a hand on my father. And yet, with what I know now…she should.
Nausea builds in my stomach, and pity for my mother makes me want to throw up. Does she know what he’s up to every night?
Definitely not.
Sage’s hands drift away from my face, and she pulls up a chair to face me. And as my gaze trails to her face, not bothering to hide the melancholia I’m feeling inside, she doesn’t say a thing. Instead of a snarky, sarcastic comment, she just shows me a sympathetic expression and rests her hand on my knee.
It’s so strange how comforting and unexpected that is. Not a single word. Not a lecture or a line of questions. No lies or words of wisdom. Just empathy and her presence.
“I have a butterfly bandage for your cheek. Stay here.”
When she stands up and disappears into the bathroom on the other side of the apartment, my eyes follow her. I try to find the warmth toward her I felt the last time I saw her, but it’s gone. In its place is only bitterness and resentment, and it goes both ways.
