Page 26 of If All Else Sails
As I’m working to lift and move them up with almost no help from him—all while trying not to jostle his injured foot—I chastise myself. I should have seen this earlier. The flush in his cheeks. The sweating. The constant clench in his jaw.
I can blame my own heat exhaustion for this or maybe the fact that I don’t often allow myself to reallylookat Wyatt.
I’m looking now.
And I feel like I’ve failed him. It makes me doubly irritated because since when did it become my job to oversee Wyatt?
Since today, when I decided to consider taking a paycheck Idowant for a job that I really, reallydon’t. Technically, I guess it was yesterday. The quick glance at my phone before I left my room told me it’s five in the morning.
Once Wyatt’s in bed and my muscles feel like they’re going on strike, I grab ibuprofen from my bag and the rest of my bottled water from the living room. Istillneed to pee, but right now, Wyatt takes precedence over my bladder.
“I’ve got your medicine,” I say. “Up we go.”
Wyatt groans as I lift his hot, heavy head enough that he can take the pills with a swallow of water.
I watch the way his throat moves as he drinks, wishing my observations felt more clinical and less...personal. Somewhere in the last half hour, I became emotionally invested.Fabulous.
When he pulls back slightly, I move the bottle from his lips and guide his head down to the pillow.
“I don’t like this,” I whisper, unsure if he’s already asleep. “I’m concerned.”
He opens one eye. His mouth lifts in the smallest of smiles. “You’re concerned. About me.”
“Only because my brother will take a massive pay cut if you die,” I tell him, though it isn’t true. I mean, yes—the pay cut part is true. But it’s not why I’m concerned.
He releases a soft breath, almost a chuckle, and his eyes flutter closed again. Just when I’m about to slide my hand out from under his head, he cracks his eyes open again.
“So pretty,” he whispers.
I freeze, my mouth dropping open as his eyes drop closed. His head lolls, and I slide my hand from under it, telling myself he doesn’t know what he’s saying. And he certainly won’t remember saying it.
But for just for the tiniest moment, I allow Wyatt’s words to curl around me, to mean something. Even if they don’t.
Chapter7
Rabies on My Mind
Josie
“He’s that bad, huh?”
My brother sounds wide awake and like he’s running on four shots of espresso when I call him. Despite it being just shy of six in the morning.
After leaving Wyatt snoring softly, I finally went to the bathroom and am now multitasking, trying to make a dent in the mountain of dirty dishes in the sink while calling Jacob for advice.
“He’s bad,” I tell him, using the rough side of the sponge to scrape at some unidentifiable food particle at the bottom of a bowl. “And so is the house.”
Wyatt’s murder cottage is thirteen- or maybe fifteen-hundred square feet ofneeds work. Mostly in terms of updating, as the bedrooms and living room are tidy and I detect a faint scent of lemony cleaning spray that suggests a professional might have been here.
But it has signs of aging no amount of cleaning can wipe away. I swear there’s a bit of a slant to the floors. If I dropped a marble, I bet it would roll all the way to the left side of the house, coming to rest against the chipped baseboards.
A strong breeze or a wolf huffing and puffing just might blow the whole thing down.
The bathroom is where things start to go downhill. It’s an homage to mint green and mildew. The classic tiles have come back into fashion—a mix of subway and tiny square floor tiles— but the white porcelain sink has orange water stains, and the faucet is practically crusted over with calcium deposits. There’s a dark ring in the toilet bowl I’m sure bleach can’t even touch. When I sit down to use it, the seat wobbles, almost sending me to the floor.
But the kitchen, a narrow room tacked onto the back of the house like an afterthought, is the first double punch of disrepairplusfilth. It surprises me, given that Wyatt never gave off the messy, uncaring-frat-boy vibe, not even when he was in college. I’m going to give him a pass and chalk the mess up to his injury.
I don’t love cleaning, but I do love mindless tasks as a way to distract myself. And while the other rooms in Wyatt’s house are neat, the kitchen is an epicenter of disaster. There are bags of trash, dirty dishes everywhere, and a table covered in takeout containers and what look to be rolled-up blueprints of some kind.
