After Hours (InterMix)(105)

For five minutes or more we nursed our worries in silence, my thoughts tugged between Amber, Jack, the uncertainty of how my life might look come morning . . . and Kelly.

Kelly’s nearness. The miracle of his very presence, when there was absolutely no reason for it. And how I’d so meanly diagnosed his callousness as fragility, when even putting himself in this position had to be intensely humbling. And brave. We were just the same. Two powerless people stuck waiting for news we couldn’t affect. Two people who felt too many ways about each other, too soon. How long had I even known him? Three weeks? Felt like months.

He cleared his throat. “How you doing?”

“I’m scared.”

He nodded. “I am, too. But nothing like what you must be feeling.”

And I broke. My face crumpled and tears pooled hot in my eyes before sliding down my cheeks.

“C’mere.”

I twisted my pop’s cap shut and set the bottle beside me, edging closer to Kelly. I expected his arm around my shoulders, but he surprised me. He hauled me sideways onto his lap, like a fireman cradling a rescued child. I let all my stupid, stubborn defenses fall away, and I wept against his neck. He stroked my hair, and when he whispered, “Go on,” I could smell chocolate on his breath.

I cried like I was already in mourning. And maybe I was. Maybe I was grieving the loss the old me, the one who’d gotten so used to acting like she had it together, who’d convinced herself she could fix whatever needed fixing. Kelly’d killed her. He’d struck the first blow when I had to admit I needed him on the ward, another when I submitted to him during sex. Again when I’d called him after my car broke. And this was the deepest and most mortal wound, letting him hold me like a baby and see me this weak and lost. The grief ran deeper still, to realize what I’d had with this man, and to imagine we’d likely wrecked it beyond repair.

When the sobs petered out, I dabbed my nose on the collar of Kelly’s shirt, etiquette be damned. A thick, homely breath rattled out of me, making my shoulders shake.

“Better?”

“My heart hurts. So bad.”

“Mine, too.”

Maybe he meant empathetically, about Jack. Maybe about us. I was too tired to truly care, and there was no room left in my brain for the confusion that guessing would bring. I pressed my face to his neck, damp with my tears, and took comfort for a final minute in how strong he felt. How much I’d miss this access. How much more naked and delicate I felt, when our bodies weren’t touching. And just how he smelled, how steady his pulse was—

The lobby doors shushed open and I pulled my face away. Getting found draped in Kelly’s lap would’ve been humbling if it were a stranger, but far worse was finding Amber standing there. If there was any time she needed her big sister to have her shit together, it was now, yet here I was a tear-streaked mess.

I fumbled to standing, wiping my face and accepting Amber’s hug. The second my arms closed around her skinny shoulders, she lost it, like I’d passed her the baton in a mental-breakdown relay. I rubbed her back and let her sob, fighting every instinct in my being to demand to know what was happening with Jack. Finally she stopped quaking, and I stepped back, smoothing her hair.

“What’s going on, honey?”

“They think it’s s-something called Reye’s Syndrome.” I mentally scanned my nursing school notes but came up blank. “Because I gave him some medicine—” she fell apart all over again, shaking and wheezing.

I steered her to the bench and sat beside her, ignoring my pop bottle as it tumbled to the ground behind us.

I massaged her shoulder. “Breathe slow.”

Kelly wandered a few respectful paces away.

“Oh my God,” she muttered after a minute. “It must’ve had aspirin in it, they decided. It was just kids’ medicine. But he could—” She cut herself off. “It messed him up, and it’s all my fault. It could f*ck his liver up, or his brain . . . I just wanted his fever to go down . . .”

“It’s nobody’s fault, honey.” In my head I was screaming, Did they say he’s going to die?! But she didn’t need to hear that. Didn’t need to hear it even more desperately than I needed to hear the answer. I glanced up, wanting a glimpse of Kelly. For once his arms weren’t locked across his chest. His thumbs were tucked in his front pockets, almost like he was saying, I’m open. Lean on me if you need to.

I waved him over, and he took a seat on Amber’s other side. After a pause, he began to rub her back, slow, soothing strokes that made her entire frame sway, but it seemed to relax her.