And his cheek was twitching. The bastard. God, she’d missed him. Even now, the light from her window was hitting him just right to make him look like a fucking angel. Just when she could have pretended that she’d almost forgotten what he’d looked like. How warm his expression was when he looked at her. How everything felt somehow lighter.
She showed Nate to the living room where she gestured towards the couch. He took the offered seat but not before he threw a puzzled glance around him.
“Uh, Mads? Are you moving?”
And that’s when Maddy realized the absolute chaos her apartment was in. She followed his gaze as if she needed a reminder of how completely in shambles everything was around her.
There were books literally everywhere, littering the floor, covering every flat surface in small towers that stood precariously in defiance of gravity. She wouldn’t be surprised if there were some in the fridge or the bathroom counter. And it wasn’t just the books.
There were unopened boxes of things she had ordered but hadn’t had time to open due to work and before she got sick. There were paint buckets, along with all manner of tools right in the middle of her living room, and more than half of her furniture was definitely not where it was supposed to be.
“I’m redecorating.” Or at least she had been, before that infernal cold had knocked her out.
Nate’s small smile threatened to knock her out for a completely different reason.
“You want some help?”
Maybe Maddy had never woken up that morning. Maybe she’d been flung into a parallel dimension where things like that happened, like Nate remembering everything and offering to help her redecorate. It could happen.
“Where did you go, Mads?” Nate’s soft voice brought her back to the present, to the reality that was apparently happening.
She swallowed the sudden lump of emotion and nodded her head.
“I would really like some help.”
The flash of Nate’s grin was too much for her exhausted state.
“Then you have it. Now sit your ass down. I’ll go check where the hell I dropped that soup and I’ll be back in a minute.”
Maddy plopped down on the padded cushion of the couch and watched Nate wander back to the hallway, and a few seconds later move to the kitchen. Several clanking noises followed, punctuating whatever he was doing in there, before he returned with a bowl and a spoon.
“Eat this and then we’ll talk.”
Maddy took the bowl from him almost robotically, not sure how her day had turned out like this. She peered inside and the smell of warm chicken soup filled her nostrils, making the earlier lump in her throat swell to twice its size.
She scooped up a spoonful of soup, the thick liquid a balm to her sore throat.
One spoonful turned into two, which turned to several more, until her spoon scraped the empty bottom of the bowl.
The buzzer sounded for the second time that day slightly startling her before she remembered the food she had ordered herself.
“It’s the food I’d ordered.”
“Stay. I’ll get it.” And he did just that while she sat there watching the bottom of the bowl as if it would reveal the mysteries of the universe.
She didn’t even realize when Nate returned.
All she did was look up at him and say, “Thank you, Nate.” She didn’t know what she was thanking him for. Answering the door. Bringing her soup. Being there right now. She didn’t know.
He smiled. “Anytime, Mads.”
***
After the initial shock had somewhat subsided and Maddy had regained some of the strength the cold had sucked away from her thanks to Nate’s soup, she was more than ready to find out how any of this was possible.
They were sitting on opposite ends of the couch and Nate was giving her a weary look, like he was almost afraid that if he did or said something wrong she’d come to her senses and throw him out.
She could still hear his earlier apology in her ears. But the truth was that he had nothing to apologize for. What he did or didn’t remember wasn’t something he could control. It could as easily have happened to her, or even to both of them.
