Once I had her in fresh clothes, I tucked her legs under the blanket. It was only when I noticed the bracelet did I remember that she didn’t sleep with it on. Wanting her to be comfortable, I slipped it off her wrist and placed it on the nightstand.
I grabbed two wet cloths from the bathroom and ran them under cold water. When I returned, she hadn’t moved, but she sucked in a sharp breath when I pressed the cloth to her forehead.
I don’t know how much time passed, but the first cloth warmed and I replaced it with the second one. Avery turned onto her side, wrapping her arm around mine. It was like she was holding me there, but the girl was in a fevered state and was delusional. She didn’t know what she was doing. Several times, she murmured things I couldn’t understand. At one point, she smiled, and my chest tightened.
“I miss that,” I said hoarsely.
She wiggled closer, and I smoothed the wet towel to her cheek. As the smile faded from her lips, the knots in my chest eased.
Brittany returned, and between the two of us, we coaxed flu meds and water down Avery’s throat. It wasn’t pretty. A sick Avery made for an extremely disagreeable Avery.
“I’m going to open the windows and air out the funk. Clean up the kitchen and stuff.” Brittany hovered by the door. “You don’t have to stay, you know, if you don’t want to.”
I shouldn’t stay. I’d done my good deed for the day, and if Avery woke up and saw me here, she’d probably accuse me of being a creeper. Biting the inside of my cheek as yet another soft whimper reached my ears, I turned to her. Under the rapidly warming cloth, her brow was pinched in discomfort. Her body was still curled toward me and that one arm was still wrapped around mine.
Adjusting the cloth, I knew I wasn’t going anywhere. “I’ll stay.”
Nineteen
I only knew that Avery was feeling better because she had stopped by the apartment. I wasn’t sure why she had and I wasn’t willing to find out. I told Ollie to tell her I wasn’t there. In a moment of rare seriousness, he’d asked if I was being serious.
I was.
The afternoon I’d spent with her while she’d been sick hadn’t done a damn good thing for me. All it had done was stir up shit I didn’t want to deal with.
Once the semester started, I spotted her all over campus. I wanted to talk to her, to see how she was doing, but there would’ve been no point. At least none I could see, but it was on Friday when it happened—when I couldn’t avoid her.
I was crossing the street, heading toward Knutti, when I heard my name shouted in a hoarse, barely recognizable voice. That was why I stopped and turned around.
Avery hurried up the steep hill, coughing so hard her entire body trembled with the force. Concerned, I shoved my hands into my hoodie to keep myself from acting like some kind of white knight and sweeping her into my arms.
Out of breath, she stopped in front of me. Her face was pale still, but her cheeks were flushed. The shadows were still under her eyes and the sweater she wore enveloped her.
“Sorry.” Her voice was horrible sounding. “Need a second.”
“You sound terrible.”
“Yeah, it’s the Black Death and it never goes away.” She cleared her throat and then swallowed before she lifted her chin.
Our gazes met, and I thought . . . I thought I saw something in her eyes. A mirror of what I felt, but there was a good chance the case of beer I drank the night before was still lingering in my veins.
I looked away, grinding my jaw. “I’ve got to get to class, so . . . ?”