Page 98 of On the Ropes
“Okay.” She moved the curtain behind me back an inch and pressed the pills into my hand. I squinted one eye open, read the label, and my head screamed violently.
“It’s them.” I fell back, mouth sour and throat hot. “Two with water.”
She gave me two and a glass of ice-cold water. I sloshed them down with a grimace. I sensed the room get even darker. She added a second ice pack, to the back of my neck, and I could have cried my gratitude.
“Tabitha.” I exhaled through my nose. “Can you…my clothes?”
“They’re probably super uncomfortable, huh?”
I winced but didn’t respond. Lightly, very lightly, Tabitha undressed me. My boots and socks, slowly tugged off. Then her fingers at my belt, the zipper.
“Can you lift a little?” she asked.
I tilted my hips up. She worked fast and then my jeans were off too. I sighed.
“Better?” I heard the smile in her voice.
“Thank you.”
The sheet was pulled up to my chest again.
“What else can I do to help?” she whispered.
“Stay down here with me?” I said, each word like a boulder. Like this, awash in pain, I had nothing to protect my feelings for Tabitha. But nothing to censor them either.
“That’s not even a question,” she said. She was gone for a minute but returned with pillows and more blankets. Her body stretched long next to mine. She arranged herself so that I could lay with my head on her chest and her arms wrapped around my back. She hummed a sound of contentment.
“Am I too heavy?” I asked.
“You’re the perfect blanket,” she replied. A comfort I’d never experienced before moved through me, being held like this. “What else feels good?”
What else felt good? I knew half this block would come running to help if I asked for it. But I usually crawled into bed for a day and didn’t come out.
“I…I don’t know,” I said thickly.
Tabitha stroked her fingers through my hair. Then she very gently rubbed my scalp. I began to relax into her touch, the cool ice, the very beginning of the medicine starting to work.
“Can you keep doing that?” I asked.
“Always, sweetheart,” she whispered. It was too dark. I was in too much fucking pain. My heart shouldn’t have responded to the emotion I swore I heard there.
We lay like that as I grit my teeth through the first worst of it. Her other hand stroked my back in large, soothing circles. She rubbed between my shoulder blades, caressed my temples. My breathing started to sync with hers, the pain ebbing to something sharp but less vomit-inducing.
“Are they always this bad?” she asked.
There was no reason to lie. “Yes. I don’t know how long I’ll have them for. But I’ve had them for three years now. Since the last concussion.”
“And always that fast?”
I nodded.
I felt Tabitha’s lips in my hair. “I was so worried about you. I’ll stay with you all night, if you want?”
“I want,” I whispered.
There were so many different ways to give in, and this was one of them. To give in to Tabitha’s arms around me all night. Her fingers moving through my scalp as I dozed fitfully through the pain. She was up frequently—replacing ice packs, helping me drink water, massaging my neck when my muscles seized up.
Sometime around midnight, the pull of deep sleep was stronger than the migraine. The last thing I remembered was Tabitha tugging a heavy blanket up us both. She resettled her body, holding me close, skin warm and soft. A continual comfort.
In a lot of ways, it wasn’t the best time to realize I was in love with her—head throbbing, passed out on a couch, two days before she left.
But I did realize it. Because I was desperately in love with Tabitha Tyler.
Talk about a sucker punch.
