Heating Up the Holidays 3-Story Bundle(45)

“He thinks you’re struggling a lot.”

“Okay.”

Dr. Allen leans forward. “Here’s the thing. The harder you work in therapy now, combined with the aggressive interventions I’m ordering for you, the more likely you’ll stave off progression, but that’s not as important as learning to adapt your life as you live it, and Jenny—”

My cheeks are hot. My nose is burning. “Yeah?”

“You, better than anyone, understand how important adaptation is when you’re evolving. And that’s what you’re doing. You’re evolving; you’re changing. But if you don’t adapt to the change, you’re not going to make it.”

“Change is stressful.”

Dr. Allen laughs. “That’s right. Just ask your E. coli.”

“I’ll try harder, I swear.” I will, too. Maybe I’ll get myself a fedora with a little heart patch to wear during therapy.

As a reminder to adapt, like my friend E. coli.

“Okay.” Dr. Allen stands up. “Good talk.”

“Okay!” I head to the door of her office to grab my coat off the hook, and on the way, I bark my shin painfully against a stool I had no idea was there. While I’m rubbing it, congratulating myself for not swearing in Dr. Allen’s office, she grabs my coat and holds it open to help me into it.

“Give him a chance,” she says.

“Sure. Absolutely.” I zip up and yank my hat down over my ears.

“Adapt.”

“Got it. Make like an E. coli and evolve.” I wave over my shoulder.

The cold air in the courtyard takes my breath away—the light snow is picking up a little, but the wind is, too.

I look straight up into the sky and try to track the journey of a single snowflake as it swoops and spirals toward me, but I keep losing the one that I’ve got in my sights. I look back at the square, one-story brick building on the other side of the courtyard where I’ll spend the next hour adapting.

Then rush home before it’s dark.

I find myself standing in the echoey tiled foyer of the therapy building, and as usual, I do not want to do what Evan wants me to do.

“I could get a blindfold instead.” He’s standing in front of me, his absurdly long arms crossed over his chest, looking at me in some way that is supposed to be stern and serious but is impossible if your eyebrows are always folded in like a basset hound’s and your mouth is always sort of smiling when it’s not and your hair’s always a mess and it all somehow impossibly adds up to a general impression of friendly, laid-back hotness.

What does he need arms that long for, anyway? I guess maybe to go with how big his hands are. His legs are weirdly long, too, how does he even find jeans? Is there a special shelf in the men’s departments where inseams include numbers with ten-power subscripts?

“Jenny?”

“What?” My voice reminds me of the one and only year of my life my mom and I didn’t get along. Jenny at fourteen sounds just like my voice in occupational therapy.

“Are you going to close your eyes?”

“I don’t think so.”

Evan actually closes his eyes, wrinkles them up tight, and brings one of his giant hands up to pinch his forehead. “Did Dr. Allen talk to you?” He keeps his eyes closed.

“Yes.”

“So you get it.” He looks at me, now, unrelenting eye contact meant to appeal to the serious, good girl inside me.

Except, she is not inside me.

She has blown this Popsicle stand because she hates occupational therapy and Evan, by extension.

“Get what?” I have to wince at myself, just a little. Still, I’m impressed with this untapped well of belligerence I seem to have found.

“That what we do here is just as important, probably more important, than vitamin therapy and whatever clinical trials or experimental implants come your way.”

“Actually, the idea of implant things kind of freaks me out.”

As an answer he closes his eyes again.

“It’s just that they’re a little too Geordi La Forge, and if I’m going to be a Next Generation character, I’d have to go with Commander Troi. I’d have to figure out how to get my hair to curl like that, but I think I could work Troi’s cosplay pretty hard.”

He opens his eyes, and I swear he doesn’t, he doesn’t look me over like he’s imagining me in a skintight Federation uniform, but something, somewhere, maybe something really, really bored in my lower brain swears to me that he does.

For some reason known only to that really bored part of my brain, I meet his ridiculously blue eyes again, just after that moment where he didn’t, where he totally did freaking not, check me out, and predictably, this bored and messed-up part of my brain decides to dilate every single capillary in my face until I am sure I am the precise shade of a doomed Federation lackey’s red uniform.

I close my eyes.

“Okay,” Evan says.

Then he goes totally quiet. I wait for him to tell me what to do, he always tells me what to do, he tells me what to do until I want to scream.

“Evan?” My voice echoes in the foyer.

For some reason, I don’t open my eyes. He doesn’t tell me to keep them shut, but I know that’s what I’m supposed to do, of course, to mimic the blindness that’s coming for me.