Page 49 of The Cost of Forgetting You

“Will do,” Truett and I reply simultaneously.

It’s the vigor with which I reply that does me in. Roberta has barely taken two steps into the hall when I double over, arm sweeping under the bed for my puke bucket. Truett surges forward from my vanity chair, which he’d pulled over in front of my bed. He scoops up the bowl and hands it to me with seconds to spare. What little water I’ve been able to put down spills from me in violent heaves, while embarrassment heats any place the fever left unscathed.

Truett stands, and I’m certain he’s so disgusted that he’s second-guessing his promise to Roberta. She’s frozen in the hallway, unsure whether to stay or go. My dad’s voice carries unintelligibly from the living room. Truett mutters something to Roberta that I can’t make out over my gasping breaths. She nods, turns, and walks away. Instead of following her, Truett yanks open a couple drawers on my vanity. When he returns to my side, there’s a giant scrunchie around his wrist.

I hold out my hand for it, still too breathless to verbally request the hair tie, but he bypasses my outstretched palm and comes to stand with his knees pressed against my mattress. I turn to look at him, the world tilting as I do, but his hand gently cups my chin and turns me forward, facing away from him.

“Face the bowl; I may owe you an apology, but that doesn’t mean you get to puke on me.”

His hands sweep through my hair. My greasy, sweaty hair. In all the fantasies I entertained as a teenager about Truett doing this, none of them involved me feverish and gross, with mouse-brown locks sticking to various patches of my neck and forehead. He combs those back, gathering my hair in a knot on top of my head, and ties it off with the scrunchie.

“Better?”

I grunt something that’s meant to be gratitude. My gaze drops to the bowl in my lap. Its disgusting contents stare back at me. Before I can dwell on it for too long or get sick again at the sight of it, the bowl is swept away.

“I can clean it,” I mumble.

“You’re sick. I’ll take care of it. A little puke doesn’t scare me, Delilah.”

I absently wipe at my mouth in case there are any remnants of vomit. “So what’s this I hear about an apology?”

The corner of his mouth twitches. “Another time. When you’re feeling better.” He sets the bowl on my vanity. The small top drawer is still open from his search, and he plucks something from it. When he returns to my side, the photograph of us from Halloween is pinched between two fingers. “We really were thick as thieves back then, huh?”

Tears pool along my lash line. I’m entirely too weak to hold them back for long. Not with him standing so close. “Yeah, we were.”

His gaze lifts to mine, clocking the tears within a heartbeat. Of course.

His tongue traces the notches he’s bitten into his bottom lip. In the delirium of my illness, I wonder what it would feel like to do so myself. To sink my teeth into his full bottom lip, then lick the pain away.

I blink, and so does he, like he too had found himself on a train of thought going in the wrong direction.

He taps the photograph once, a breathy laugh escaping his throat; then he does something peculiar. Instead of returning it to the drawer, he tucks it back into the gap it left on my vanity mirror. Like he somehow remembered that’s exactly where it belonged.

The bottle of Advil rattles as he scoops it up and uncaps it, shakes two pills into his palm, and deposits it beside my puke bowl. He holds his hand out, and I open my palm, catching the pills he drops. He hands me the newly refilled glass of water from my bedside table, as though I’d put even a dent in the original contents, and watches intently as I down the meds.

“I’m not tucking them under my tongue, if that’s what you think.” I stick it out to prove my point, regretting it a heartbeat later when I remember how rancid my breath must smell. My cheeks grow hotter, as if the fever wasn’t bad enough.

To his credit, Truett doesn’t seem to notice. He studies his hands, then mine. The distance between them. Or is it me who’s measuring?

Growing up, we were so close I often wondered where Truett ended and I began. It felt like we’d always been two parts of a whole, a continuation of one another. My thoughts would echo in his brain. I’d answer his homework questions before he had to admit he couldn’t work them out. Even now, I find that tether, thin and frayed as it may be, linking my heart to his. Or perhaps I’m imagining it, sick as I am. Wishing it into existence.

“Have you eaten at all?”

I shake my head.

“Thought so. I’ll be right back.”

He disappears, and though it’s what I wished for initially, loneliness crashes around me the moment he does. It’s been so long since I’ve had anyone around to take care of me. I’d almost forgotten how comforting it can be. Mom’s version of helping me when I’m sick is isolating me to my floor of the house, then placing a delivery from whatever restaurant she’s craving at breakfast, lunch, and dinner on the landing for me to crawl out of bed and retrieve.

When he returns a few minutes later with a box of saltine crackers, I’ve already used the bedspread to dry my face. He’s seen enough of me crying since my return. So much for showing him just how much I don’t need him.

I reach for the box of saltines, but he ignores me and plants himself in the chair by my bed. Plastic wrap crinkles around his hand as he retrieves a cracker and holds it out for me. “One at a time. If you eat too fast, you’ll be sick again.”

I roll my eyes, and thank God for rapid-relief gels because the world doesn’t spin too badly when I do.

I pluck the cracker from his fingertips and bring it to my mouth, taking a small nibble of the corner. It’s bland as all get out and I’m not exactly excited by the idea of food right now, but the moment I swallow, I realize how ravenous I actually am.

“You’re probably super dehydrated. When’s the last time you went to the bathroom?”

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