Page 91 of Without a Clue

Steam blows up in his face as he looks down at the little feast.

I can see immediately from his reaction that it was a good call.

“You missed dinner to watch me sleep, so . . .”

“This is great.” He says it like I slaved away for hours.

“I mean . . . let’s be honest. I only made a call—”

“You mixed the dressings,” he murmurs, looking at the two tiny silver cups beside the salad, which for the record is sitting beside the biggest steak I maybe have ever seen (when you say you want a steak as big as a stop sign . . . they really follow through).

I shrug. “I know you like the blue cheese and the honey mustard mixed, so. There you go.”

“Aren’t you going to eat?”

I wave him off. “My stomach’s too upset. It’ll settle down by breakfast. So here’s what I’m thinking . . . I have a part two for my thank-you-for-sticking-with-me-while-I’m-down-and-out plan.”

“You don’t need to thank me for being with you, Pip.”

But I shush him, and for the next twenty minutes I go over my notes.

And the hour after that, we brainstorm.

After my third yawn, Nash stops me. Puts a hand over mine as I’m in mid-type.

“Pip, I think we’ve done enough for one night. This is amazing. But it’s probably time we called it a night.”

“This is what I have to offer you, Nash. You’ve said it yourself. It’s not much, it’s just my brain, but here it is. It’s the least I can do for all you’ve done for me.”

He frowns. “What have I done for you? Nothing.”

“Not true. You’re here,” I say, “insisting on keeping me safe.”

He tilts his head. “Not exactly a sacrifice, Pip.”

“On the floor,” I add. “Which, by the way, the staff saw and freaked out and apologized a hundred times as though they were responsible and brought in a cot.”

I point over to a little folded-up cot in the corner. “They were very upset.”

He shakes his head. “Again. All that is just being with you. Not a sacrifice. The opposite of a sacrifice.”

“And you . . . helped me when I had a migraine. You gave me medicine.”

Nash’s face is starting to look a little disbelieving. “You do realize these are things average people do for one another. Total strangers, in fact.”

“And you . . .” I venture, fishing in my brain. “You just . . . you’re you, okay? Just let me do something nice in return and get over it. I can’t take you looking out for me without doing something in return, and seeing as how I can’t exactly look over your life with incredible strength and the ability to knock down a door with my bare hands—”

“Do you think I do that? Just go around knocking down doors with my bare hands?”

I shrug. “I mean. That’s what you were doing on that lady’s T-shirt today, so dare I question it? If it’s on a T-shirt?

“The point is,” I continue, “this is what I’ve got. This is all I can contribute. So let me contribute it.”

The unspoken words sit there.

The reality as I tell him: I fear you are superior to me in every way, and I need to feel a little less like that right now. Please.

Nash shakes his head.