Page 104 of Maybe You

He’s obsessed with documentaries about the history of British monarchs and has a crazy number of factoids about all those events that took place hundreds of years ago. He can solve the Rubik’s cube in under nine seconds, and he’s adorably proud of that fact. He has an endless supply of dirty jokes stored in his brain, and sometimes he can’t properly tell me the joke because he’s already laughing so hard about it.

I know that with each passing day, I’m falling more hopelessly in love with him.

The only thing I don’t know is if there’s even a remote possibility that he feels the same.

It’s because I catch a cold that the real world starts making its way back in.

My nose is running like it’s trying to liquefy into snot, I have an annoying, dull headache in my temples, and I’m running a fever. It’s highly annoying.

It sneaks up on me on a random Wednesday afternoon. It starts with feeling cold, even though it’s already over seventy degrees outside and the sun is blazing in the sky. By the time I finish my last class of the day, I’m sneezing and my eyes are watering so much that Sutton, who’s waiting for me on the steps of the building, takes one look at me, drags me to the street, and flags down a cab.

Once in his place, he makes me go to bed, despite my protests. I call out from work, and the rest of the evening is a blur of sneezing and feeling pathetic while Sutton makes me chicken soup from scratch.

Thursday follows in the same vein.

On Friday, I start to feel more human again, even if my voice is barely more than a whisper due to the persistent sore throat, and my nose is so blocked it might as well be filled with cement. Sutton is out, trying to score me some nasal spray so I can use my nose for its intended purpose again.

I’m on the couch, doing my best to concentrate on linear systems and catching up on everything I missed while I was out of school, when there’s a knock on the door.

I look up and frown, but then I drag myself off the couch and head to the hallway.

I flick the lock and pull the door open.

“Did you forget your key…”

My voice dies when I see who it is.

On a scale of one to ten, just how awkward is it when you open the door dressed in boxer shorts and a sweatshirt that don’t belong to you, in an apartment where you don’t live, and then come face to face with your boss? The answer, by the way, is at least ten thousand and counting.

“Uh… hi?” I rasp in my barely audible voice.

I’m not sure if it counts as a silver lining that Quinn looks about as gob smacked at me being here as I feel about facing him.

“Wren,” he finally says after a painfully long moment of staring at me with wide eyes. “Hello,” he adds. “This is a bit of a surprise.”

“I’m…”

A barrage of excuses about why I’m here fly through my head. All useless. I really don’t know how to talk myself out of this one. Unless I tell Quinn Sutton hired me to clean his apartment? In which case I’m also a hella unprofessional employee, seeing that I’m in my underwear and most likely look like I haven’t showered in two days. Which is a lie. I haven’t showered in three.

It gets even worse when Quinn takes me in, because I realize he’s taking in my scar collection, which is blatantly on display on my legs right now. The only tiny silver lining is that he doesn’t act all shocked and freaked out. Instead, something like understanding dawns on his face.

I swallow, which hurts, and step aside.

“Would you like to come in?” I croak.

He sends me a funny look and takes a step inside.

I point to my throat and say, “A cold,” as an explanation.

He nods, takes off his shoes, and heads toward the living room. For an insane second, I debate taking off and then pretending this never happened until Quinn is sure he hallucinated me. Then my reasonable side takes over, and I follow him instead.

Once in the living room, we both stand awkwardly opposite each other, neither of us seeming sure how to proceed.

“So,” Quinn eventually says. “You and Sutton.”

This is a terrible remake of the same conversation Sutton had with Remy while I was eavesdropping. If this is the kind of punishment that follows, I’ll never do it again. Lesson learned.

Quinn drags his fingers through his hair.

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