Page 64 of Come Back to Bed
I carry a tray with two bowls of chicken noodle soup into her bedroom and find her doing some weird dance, jumping around with her eyes closed and flapping her arms around. It’s hard not to laugh. I should be irrevocably turned-off by this but I’m not.
“What are you doing?”
Her eyes remain closed. “My skin is prickly!”
“Get back in bed.”
“Youget in bed.”
“Okay. I’ll get into bed with you if you promise to eat. Come on.”
“No—you can’t get sick!”
“I won’t get sick. I got a flu shot.”
“Oh. You shouldn’t get those—but good. I’m glad. But don’t get those.”
“Get back into bed.”
She groans and opens her eyes a bit, squinting at me. “It’s moving too fast!”
“What is?” I brace myself, because I’m afraid she’s going to say “Us. We are.”
“The bed!”
I exhale. Right. The bed is moving too fast. “You need to lie down.”
She wags her finger at me, her other hand on her cocked hip. “You need to stop being so loud to me!”
“I’m not being loud.”
“Your face is screaming rainbows!”
I place the tray at the foot of the bed. “Okay. Down you get.”
She slowly lowers herself back under the covers, gritting her teeth as if she’s getting into a tub of ice water.
“Sit up, you have to eat this soup.”
She sits up. I fluff up the pillows for her to lean against.
“Stop being so nice to me,” she whispers. “It hurts.”
“I’m not going to stop being nice to you.”
“Okay.”
I place the tray on her lap and hand her a spoon, wondering if she’s having some kind of allergic reaction to the Theraflu or if this is just how she is once she’s spent a certain amount of time with a guy. Either way, I’m staying for the entertainment value. She holds the spoon and stares at it, like she’s not sure how to use it.
“Do I need to spoon feed you?”
She frowns at me. “No. It was bending.”
I shake my head. “Eat your soup.”
We both eat our soup on the bed, in silence. When she’s done, I wipe her chin with a paper towel. Her lower lip quivers.
I place the tray on the floor and move beside her, staying on top of the covers. I take her hand in mine. “Now you’re starting to act more like the eighty-year-old Bernadette I expected you to be. Soup in bed.”
