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I wasn’tthatstupid. I’d turned it off the minute I got off the Tube. I should probably tell my parents where I was, but I didn’t trust them not to fall for some smarmy phone call from Lewis asking them if they knew of my whereabouts.
I needed a breather. A clean break. A temporary one, no doubt, but I would have to at least try.
“What’s funny?” he asked, staring at me again. My pathetic body curled into some kind of position where everything didn’t hurt so much.
“Have you got…” My head was swimming. “Painkillers.”
“Already in my hand.” He held out two tablets to me. I took them from him. He walked off and returned with a bottle of water, then helped me move up enough to swallow them. My mouth felt like sandpaper.
He covered me with a blanket. It smelled weird but in a nice way. Comforting. Homey. Perhaps it smelled of him. What did I know? I didn’t make a habit of sniffing people.
The next thing I remembered was coming round in a haze of pain and shouting out. I had no idea what I had been dreaming, but it hadn’t been good, as I was briefly paralysed with fear, only to realise he’d left the light on for me, and at first I thought I was alone, but then his head popped up in the space where the coffee table had been, since for some reason he was lying on the floor next to the sofa.
“You okay?” he asked.
I lay back down, tried to breathe. My nightmares were never-ending and I didn’t understand why he hadn’t just left me alone.
“You need more painkillers?”
He didn’t even wait for an answer, just got up and grabbed a blister pack off the floor, unscrewed the cap on the bottle of water and held it out to me.
I couldn’t move, so, as he had last time, he sat me up and held on to my stupid limbs as he gently put the tablets in my mouth and made me sip the water.
“You’ve had less than four hours’ sleep, but you need these. And Iamtaking you to hospital in the morning.”
I couldn’t say anything back, my head was too cloudy to even function, and he was too close, making himself a space on the sofa next to me. I lay my head on his chest.
What on earth was going on? I didn’t even protest.
“I have no idea what happened to you last night, but the nightmares? You’ll have them for a while. Trust me. I…”
He stopped and breathed, the jersey of his threadbare tracksuit soft against my cheek. Why the hell was he holding me like this?
“What happened to you then?” I asked, hoping it would distract me from the pain for a while or put me back to sleep. I was so bloody tired.
“It’s a long story,” he said quietly. “And one I will probably tell you one day, but not now. I don’t know why I even told you that much.”
It made me smile. He was as tired as me, all shallow breaths as he sank further into the sofa.
He was the weirdest bloke I’d ever met, but for now?
I was strangely grateful he was there.
When I woke the next time, it was daylight, there was bright light in my face and Mabel was sitting on the edge of the sofa with a phone in their hand.
“Okay, sunshine,” they said, ripping the blanket off me. “Enough of this nonsense. I’ve just sent our delightful host to work. You and I are off on an outing.”
Oh, for heaven’s sake.
“You don’t even know me!”
I had all the standard answers. All the usual stuff that was handy for getting people to back off. I may not have asked the universe for half of my life, but going on outings with Mabel when I couldn’t even open my left eye? Yeah. Swelling was a bitch.
They tutted at me. “I need to know if you can walk down the stairs to a taxi or if I will have to carry you.”
My one functioning eye was slowly adjusting to the light, and the person sitting on the sofa—it was Mabel, yet not. I’d never seen them without make-up. Even when they dressed in a sharp suit, they wore eyeliner. Perfect foundation.
This Mabel was less than perfect in a hoodie and jeans, but somehow…
