Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 75289 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 376(@200wpm)___ 301(@250wpm)___ 251(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75289 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 376(@200wpm)___ 301(@250wpm)___ 251(@300wpm)
I dial myself right the shit back in. I’m basically frantic. I came running out here like a wild man. Her eyes are wide and shiny, and she’s more than a little bit taken aback. She’s worried about me.
I shake my head, raking a hand too roughly through my hair. “It won’t. It’ll be my fault if I let you go back to Harrisburg without telling you that since you’ve been here, I’ve unexpectedly become…I…I think I might be…happy.”
She snorts and crosses her arms. “You want to find more half-drowned maids, endure more cooking disasters, and more nearly dying in the shower because it’s been waxed with furniture polish? More of me almost burning your house down?”
She might be sassy, passing this off as humor so we can get through it, but I can see the burning question in the depths of her eyes.
“Yes,” I grind, the words a painful lump in my throat.
I think it might be emotion. All the sensations I can’t even label because I wasn’t taught to give names to them.
“Yes.” My voice has some strength this time. “Yes, I want more. I want to be hugged. By you. I want chicken soup. I want you to try and cure headaches by touching my feet like feet aren’t actually the creepiest part of the body. You’re good, and you’re kind. You make parts of me that never did much of any living at all feel alive. You look at me without judgment or expectation. I want to just be me, a person, not the one who needs to fix the entire world for everyone.”
Her eyes well up with tears, and mine aren’t all that stable. The world swims, and I know I’m getting close to unmanning myself. I can practically see both my parents cringing and asking me where the ever-loving goodness I came from and for what reason on earth they were cursed with me as a son. “I want to be a man and not a dollar, or a suit, or a car, or a house,” I continue. To them, I’m an unmanageable liability. “I want to be okay with hurting because I have been. And just for once, I want to have someone ask me if I’m going to be okay. You do that. You ask. You listen.”
She’s frozen. I’m frozen. Until I can get my legs to react and take one faltering step forward, which is basically right into her. She tilts her face up, her lips parted, her breath irregular. I fit my hand under her chin like it was made to rest there, tilting her face up further.
I shouldn’t do this. Everything about this is taboo.
But without further ado, I set about probably ruining both of our lives with honesty. “I want to kiss you so badly, but this damn virus is still lingering off and on, and I don’t want to make you sick and—”
She arches up, wraps her arms around my neck, and slants her mouth over mine.
It’s the softest brush of her lips, almost chaste, and it’s so shocking that I don’t even have time to respond before she pulls back. She cups my face tenderly, looking completely unphased while I’m reeling.
“You’re right. You’re not feeling well, and you’ve barely eaten in days. Let’s go inside. I’ll get you some soup, and you can take a nap. If that migraine doesn’t go away by tomorrow, I’ll need to call someone and—”
I kiss her. It’s also just a brush of my lips against her sweet ones. Also chaste. She’s the one who remains frozen this time. Surprised. My face does something funny when I pull away, and it makes my cheeks hurt.
“You’re smiling, Warrick,” she says in amazement.
Oh! Is that what’s happening? I touch my cheek.
“You have dimples. They’re adorable.”
“What the fuck? I…I don’t know. About any of this.”
Her eyes glisten, full of emotions and questions. It’s messy. It’s something I should be running from, but I want to stay. I want to stay. Right. Here. “I don’t know either. Is that okay?”
“I want it to be.”
I feel like I’m in another fever dream as she takes my hand and leads me back inside. She sits me down at the island counter, gets me a bowl of soup, and asks me to eat. So I do. It’s delicious. I want to tell her that, but all the words seem trapped inside me now. My head is still aching, and it’s coming back, the roar of pain, the black edges closing in and moving off, closing back.
The pain doesn’t shove off after I’ve eaten something. Instead, it makes the soup churn in my stomach, but it settles the second Amalphia coaxes me up to my room. She pulls back the blankets, and I get into bed with zero grace.
Closing my eyes feels a little bit better. Her hand caresses my forehead, pushing back a strand of hair. It’s a slick glide. I didn’t realize I was sweating.