Page 73 of Three Pucking Words
Does she mean…?
Wetting my lips, I go to ask when she moves the blankets back in the spot beside her in an invitation.
And despite myself, I don’t think twice before my feet are moving in that direction.
I ignore the fact that she’s a furnace who might actually melt my skin off if she could and settle in beside her fully clothed. We don’t touch. I don’t crowd her space. We simply lay side by side until she drifts off to sleep again.
Watching her with a small smile, I soak in her comfort and let myself close my eyes too.
It’s the best damn sleep I get in I don’t know how long.
*
I’m not foreignto the idea of taking care of someone when they’re sick or bribing them to take medicine when necessary. With Gemma, all it takes is a new stuffed animal to get her to swallow a dose of cough syrup. I’m at a minor disadvantage with Honor, because something tells me a Squishmallow isn’t going to convince her to swallow the horse-sized liquid capsule I bring into her room every six hours along with a cup of bone broth for protein since she won’t eat anything else.
However, my arsenal isn’tcompletelyempty.
On day three of playing nurse, after going to practice, showering, and dropping by the bakery that Sylvia gets Honor’s favorite cannoli from, I come back with a white bag that smells like cinnamon and sugar to find Honor sitting on the couch in the living room.
“Look who’s alive,” I greet, locking the front door behind me and toeing off my shoes beside the haphazardly discarded pair belonging to Honor.
She seems confused as I drop the bag onto the coffee table. “What are you doing here?” Her voice is less raspy than it was, and she’s gained a little more color on her face.
It’s the same question she always asks me.
“I told you I’d be back when I left this morning,” I remind her. I believe her response to that was muffled gibberish into her pillow and a tiny bit of drool that was oddly cute.
Sylvia saw me pull out from the side driveway attached to the guest house and waved, and I didn’t fail to notice the way her eyes gleamed as she called out “good morning” to me as if to emphasize that I’ve been here all night. I surmised that Coach didn’t know that, because he didn’t pull me into his office andthreaten to cut off an important appendage or tell me not to hurt his daughter. Practice had gone by smoothly, without so much as a raised voice from Erikson or any of the others, so it made for an easy escape.
Her eyes drop to the bag before coming back to me. “You didn’t have to come back. I’ve managed to keep myself alive this long.”
That seems like a loaded statement. “I don’t know about you, but I’ve always liked when people took care of me when I was sick. My mom used to comb her fingers through my hair or rub my back to lull me to sleep. It was comforting.”
I have an unsettling desire to comfort her. To run my fingers through her hair as her head rests in my lap until she falls asleep on me. To rub small circles over her back until her body eases into a blissful state where she’s completely at peace. I do neither of those things.
“My mother wasn’t like that,” she murmurs, voice barely a notch above a whisper. “She wasn’t a very affectionate person.”
I’m tempted to ask about her father growing up, but I already know there’s lingering tension between them. Did she have any affection from her parents as a child? Coach doesn’t exactly strike me as the hugs before bedtime type.
Instead, I ask the other question on my mind. The one I have no real right to know. “What type of motherwasshe then?”
Honor thinks about, the small frown on her face growing. “The number of times she tried soothing me usually involved a glass of wine or sip of blackberry brandy to ‘calm my nerves’,” she tells me, seeing my wide-eyed expression. “Needless to say, that was long before alcohol consumption was legal for me. It’s really a wonder I never formed a preadolescent drinking problem.”
That isn’t what I expected her to say. I figured she would tell me that her mother was more a verbal soother—that she readHonor stories at bedtime or opted for her daughter’s favorite movie. But she’d mentioned her mother’s drinking habits before, so I’m also not entirely surprised that it influenced Honor’s lack of interest in following in her footsteps.
“I guess my mother figured if she could self-sooth with booze to make herself feel better, she’d try it with me,” Honor adds, shrugging like it’s no big deal. “I vaguely remember her giving me blackberry brandy whenever I’d have a cough, or vodka if my throat hurt. When I struggled to sleep, it was red wine.”
There is no way her father knows about this. If he did, he would have put a stop to it.Right?
“If you haven’t figured it out, she has a drinking problem. I’m pretty sure she had one when she was pregnant with me. Which, who knows. Maybe that’s the reason I have medical issues. I’m sure there’s a science behind it.”
One thing is clear. Honor has kept this in long enough to sound casual about it. Has she told anybody about her mother’s alcoholism? “Does your dad know?”
As I suspected, she shakes her head. “No. And before you judge me, I considered telling him when it was happening. But I wasn’t close with either of my parents, so I didn’t think it would matter. At least if I lived with my mom, I’d be closer to Mila. It was easier to be alone or with my best friend and her family rather than adjusting to my father’s life in a new area and a new school with people I’ve never been around before.”
Her childhood would have been different. It would have beenbetter. But I get it. “Do you talk to your mom at all?”
Again, her head moves back and forth. “She texted me not that long ago to tell I was making a big mistake getting divorced. Which is ironic, because she also told me I was making a big mistake getting married in the first place.”
