"I'm fine."
"You're not."
"I'm comfortable."
"I'm just going to get more cold medicine," I promise, sliding out from beneath him. I curse my shitty nursing skills all the way to the kitchen, where I grab the cold medicine, a glass and bowl full of cold water, and a washcloth.
"Here," I say so that he'll sit up when I get back. Standing in front of the couch, I hand him a measuring cap full of blue medicine, and then I give him a glass of water. He drinks it down and stares up at me, waiting until I sit back down in my seat at the end of the couch.
Two seconds later, his head is in my lap again. No pillow. Just his cheek and his scruff and his breath against my jeans.
My trembling hand dips the washcloth into the bowl I set on the side table. I wring it out one-handed and gently place it against Mike's forehead. "Does that feel okay?"
His arm wraps around my legs, his fingers tucking beneath my thigh. I couldn't wiggle out from under him now even if I tried. "Yeah."
My whole body aches from how tense my muscles are, but still, I brush that washcloth over Mike's forehead again and again, slowly and softly. I comb his damp hair away from his forehead with the fingers of one hand and follow it with the cold washcloth I hold like a lifeline in the other. "You should be in bed."
Mike's fingers slide a little further beneath my jeans, his hold on my legs growing even snugger. "I should be right here."
"Danica wouldn't like this," I blurt, because my heart is pounding and my blood is rushing and Mike's cheek is on my legs.
"Danica isn't here."
I freeze with the washcloth against his temple, and Mike turns his chin to look up at me. "It's fine." At my doubtful expression, he swears, "It's fine. Trust me . . . It's going to be fine."
I don't know if I believe him, but when he turns away from me again, I run the washcloth over his forehead. I let him hold me, and I take care of him, even though in my heart, I know none of this is fine.
Danica should be taking care of him.
She is who he should be holding.
I shouldn't have these feelings.
"I'm not her, Mike."
"I know," he says. "Trust me. I know."
Chapter 17
"I stayed because I had to," I tell the bobble-head zombie gnashing at me from my dashboard. "He was so sick. You should have seen him, Danica."
The bobble head nods furiously as I drive over a railroad track, its level of crazy a good match for my cousin's.
"Why didn't I call you?" My thumbs pick at my steering wheel as I try to brainstorm a good answer. "Because I didn't want you to get worried and come over and end up getting sick and having to miss the music video. I know how important it is to you."
I release the inside of my lip between my teeth, remembering what Mike said about my tell.
"Of course nothing happened. I'm your cousin, Danica. God."
The zombie judges me in silence.
"I swear! All he did was shiver and throw up all night. I wanted to take him to the doctor's, that way I wouldn't have to hang there all night, but he wouldn't let me."
I frown in the rearview mirror when I realize I'm chewing my lip again. My dark eyebrows turn in, and my bottom lip pushes out. Unbrushed curls remind me of hours spent sleeping on Mike's couch-his head on my lap, his arms around my legs.
"I'm not lying," I say to my reflection, and then I tell the zombie, "I have nothing to feel guilty about."
He nods at me, I nod back, and I reluctantly turn left into the parking lot of the apartment I share with Danica.
I concentrate on my lip as I walk up the entryway stairs, as I turn the doorknob, as I cautiously step inside. And when Danica leaps off the couch and flies at me, I nearly throw my arms up to protect myself.
"Which color?" she asks as I flinch, thrusting a nail polish bottle in my face. "For the music video. This one, or this one?"
I stare at two identical shades of hot pink and then up into my taller cousin's dark eyes. Thrown off by her nonviolent greeting, I jam my foot far, far down into my throat. "Don't you want to know where I was?"
Danica stands with the bottles still held in the air, her eyebrow lifting into a skyward arch. "Weren't you at the dog shelter?"
"I stayed with Mike," I confess, and when her face twists with some emotion that hasn't fully formed yet, I admonish, "He was really sick, Dani."
I wasn't expecting this-this anger that's come over me-but it works to my advantage, because instead of breaking a nail polish bottle against the wall and stabbing my eye out with it, she lowers the bottles and asks with only a slight amount of skepticism, "Like how sick?"
"Like sweating uncontrollably and throwing up all night."
Her face wrinkles. "Ew."
"Yeah."
"How is he now?"
"Better," I answer, my hard tone softening. "His fever broke. His throat is still scratchy and he's still really weak and exhausted from being sick for so long, but he should be fine in a couple days."
Danica considers me like a viper considers a mouse, eyes attentive and muscles tight. My tiny heart races and races as I wonder if she's going to strike, or if she's going to let me live in her aquarium to play with another day.
"Well, thanks for doing that for me," she finally says, and my brain short-circuits. Did Danica seriously just thank me for spending the night with her boyfriend? "Did you tell him the basket was from me?" she asks.
I nod.
"Did he like it?"
I nod again, and she smiles.
"Good. Now pick a color."
I lift a random hand, point to a random bottle, and listen to Danica spend the next few minutes explaining why that color is horrible. She decides to go with the other, identical shade of pink, and I eventually escape to my room, where I plop down on the edge of my bed and stare at a pale indigo wall.
I'm Alice in Wonderland, shrinking to two inches tall as I try to solve riddles and believe impossible things.
Mike is in love with Danica, but he clings to me in his sleep.
Danica hates me, but she thanks me when I take care of her boyfriend.
I'm a good person, but my heart pounds every time I see my cousin's boyfriend. Or hear my cousin's boyfriend. Or think of my cousin's boyfriend.
I squeeze my eyes shut and inhale a deep breath, trying to clear the caterpillar's smoke from my head. I'm thinking of Red Queens and singing flowers and houses of cards-when my door flies open and the knob smashes the doorstopper right through the wall.
Danica stands there, her face a twisted mask of rage. "YOU LYING FUCKING SLUT!"
I gape at her.
"What the fuck did you do over there last night?!"
My heart hurtles over an impossible beat before careening onto its face. "What?" squeaks my dormouse voice.
"Don't sit there playing innocent, you whore! What the fuck is this?!"
She shoves her phone in my face, and I read two texts with Mike's name at the top.
I tried. It's over.
Please tell Hailey she forgot her phone.
When I stare wide-eyed up at Danica, all of her delicate features are painted a deep, furious red. "I-"
"You fucked him!"
"I didn't!" I argue. I'd stand up to defend myself, but Danica is practically on top of me.
"You are such a fucking liar! You've wanted him since the day you saw him! Admit it, you bitch!"
"There's nothing to admit!" I scream as I stand up, forcing Danica back. "I didn't sleep with your fucking boyfriend!"
"Then why is he breaking up with me?" she shouts back at me, her hands curling into fists at her sides. I should take them as a warning, but adrenaline is exploding through my veins.
"Maybe because you don't fucking love him? Maybe because you're a self-centered bitch who only cares about yourself!"
Danica's mouth drops open like it's about to come unhinged and swallow me whole. My body tenses in anticipation of the blow she's about to deal me, but instead of punching me, she walks over to my desk.
"Get the fuck out of my house," she orders, pushing my computer over with all of her might. It flies off the desktop and crashes onto the floor, taking my half-finished midterm exam files with it.
I stare at the computer and then at Danica, tears welling in my eyes.
"Are you fucking deaf?" she asks, grabbing a framed picture of my family from the desk and launching it at the wall behind me. The glass shatters into a million pieces behind my back. "Get the fuck out!" Danica screams, grabbing the side of my flimsy desk and flipping the entire thing over. A leg breaks off of it as it crashes onto the floor, taking my textbooks and folders with it. Papers scatter all over the hardwood, and I drop to my knees to collect them.