Page 96 of Business Casual
“What else do you need?”
“M’okay,” she mumbles, halfway to unconscious already, tugging the blankets until they’re over her shoulders. She’s so different like this, a dulled version of her usual bursting brightness. All of her edges soft and weary.
I sit on her bed and watch her as she falls into an uneasy sleep, her face still pinched and her shoulders hunched. I brush my fingertips over her forehead, and I rearrange her blankets until she’s tucked just the way she likes, then stand and pick up the pieces of herself she must have unwrapped as she came into the room. I fold her chunky sweater and drape it over the back of a chair. I collect a black skirt and set it on the dresser. I find her thigh-high tight things sticking out from beneath her comforter and tug them free. I grab an extra blanket and tuck it around her curtains, something like satisfaction in my chest when she lets out a grateful sigh at the added darkness. I go to leave, but her voice holds me at the door.
“Do you think—” she whispers, slurred and slow. She releases a deep breath and her fingers twitch on top of the blankets. “Do you think you could stay?”
I trace her form in the middle of her bed, her hand in the place I just was. Resolve tightens my jaw. I’ve never had someone to take care of before. I’m not sure I’ll be any good at it, but I’m going to do my best. For Nova.
“Yeah, of course.” I watch her for another second, a lump in my throat. I try to swallow around it, but the feeling shoves deeper. That fist around my heart tug, tug, tugs. “I’ll stay as long as you want me to, Nova girl.”
?She sleeps forhours, until the sun is burning orange through the window above her kitchen sink. I left briefly to grab my computer and some things from the grocery store—pocketing her not-so-secretplanter key while I was at it—but for the most part, I’ve been here. Sitting in her kitchen, waiting.
I hear movement upstairs. The soft thud of feet moving across her bedroom and the whine of the squeaky hinges on her bathroom door. Her stairs creak as she makes her way down and then Nova appears in the doorway of her kitchen, the back of her hand trying to contain her yawn and a fluffy pink robe wrapped around her middle.
She looks comfortable. Cozy. I’ve never seen this robe before, three sizes too big and perpetually slipping down one shoulder. I wonder where she’s been keeping it.
“How’re you feeling?”
She answers with a shriek, her eyes snapping open and her back hitting the frame of the door. She reaches for the closest projectile, a small wooden figure of a cat that I’d bet my nonexistent Rolex Beckett whittled on his back porch. She whips it across the kitchen, and it smacks me in the middle of my forehead.
We stare at each other across the length of her kitchen, her palm pressed flat to her chest.
“You’re still here,” she breathes.
I frown and rub my fingertips against what I’m sure will be an impressive bruise. I guess I should be thankful she didn’t hit my eye. “You asked me to stay.”
“I did?”
I nod. “Yeah.”
I mean, I left, but that was to get her some fruit and Gatorade. I don’t know what she likes when she has a migraine. I wanted her to have options.
She keeps staring at me, like she’s trying to piece together why I’m sitting at her kitchen table with my laptop and the rest of the peanut butter pretzels. She has lines from her pillow on her cheek and her hair is an absolute mess. She passes her hand over it like that’ll do anything to help, and I have to duck my face behind my laptop screen to hide my grin. Fuck, she’s adorable. Even as she shuffles her way tothe sink, still silent, reaching for a glass and filling it from the tap, shooting glances at me out of the corner of her eye like I can’t see exactly what she’s doing.
“I thought that was a dream,” she says after another extended beat of silence.
“Oh. I, uh—” Does she want me to leave? Have I overstepped, staying here in the kitchen? Stealing her key? I go to twist my wristwatch that isn’t there. An old nervous habit. “I can leave,” I offer.
She shakes her head. “No.”
All right. “I cut up some fruit for you. It’s in the fridge.” I stare hard at the top of my computer. I don’t know why, but I thought cantaloupe would be a good idea. She probably doesn’t even like cantaloupe. Is this how you take care of someone? I have no idea. “Didn’t know if you’d be hungry or not,” I tack on lamely.
When I look up, she’s studying me with her back pressed against the sink, one arm wrapped around her middle.
She still doesn’t say anything.
“What?” I ask.
“You cut up fruit?”
It’s a question that doesn’t sound like a question. “Yes?”
I won’t tell her that I also started a load of towels and rearranged her magazine collection. Or that I bought her a pumpkin and put it on her front step because it looked festive. I know she’s been too busy to put up her decorations. I was about another hour away from carving the damn thing.
She takes a sip of her water. “What sort of fruit?”
“What?”
