Just go to your room, Adair. You’re done here.
“You got that for me?” she asked quietly.
I nodded hesitantly, then pushed my hair out of myface, not really sure if that was the correct answer based on her tone.
She stared at the containers for several long moments, and then her chin started to wobble.
Oh no.
Her eyes flicked from the soup to me, then back to the soup, and she gritted her teeth.
“Hey,” I said, approaching her cautiously. “What is it? What do you need?”
She balled her hands into fists by her side and swallowed thickly.
“I don’t know. Everything.”
“We can put the soup in the fridge for later,” I said. “No pressure here. It’ll keep.”
I moved to take the soup to the fridge, but she grasped my forearm, halting me.
“I just want… him,” she whispered, dropping her hold on me to gesture across the house to her bedroom doorway.
“Him who?” I asked, taken aback. Was there some guy in her bedroom right now, waiting here for her while she went through all of that with her dad? And whatever else was going on with her life?
“My bed,” she said with a tired laugh, as if that explained it.
Bafflement shook hands with relief and my heart clenched as if it’d just escaped that sinkhole that I’d been desperate for only minutes ago.
“Your bed is a ‘he’?”
“Yep.” Her lip twitched again, like she was completely aware of how ridiculous it sounded but kept talking anyway.
Maybe Cole was haunting us both.
“I dunno. I can’t explain it.” She threw up her hands,but the gesture was half-hearted. “I know I sound so dumb. I do. I just love sleeping, Adair. Like, really, really love it.” Her glistening eyes met mine. “Being in a bed in general, really. It’s my favorite hobby outside of dancing. And this is the first bed I’ve had in….” She trailed off, her eyes widening in horror. Maybe at what she’d almost admitted.Hadadmitted.
I couldn’t have that. Couldn’t bear her feeling self-conscious about opening up with me.
I gripped her upper arm gently and met her gaze. “Indigo Girl, I need you to be real with me, okay?” She nodded, not questioning the nickname that slipped out as I leaned in and asked her in a hushed tone, “Is my bed a dude too? Is there a way for me to check?”
The snort of laughter that came out of her shocked us both so much that we jumped, and then we laughed together.
It hadn’t even been that funny, but it felt like it, in a way that only things can when you were tired like this—stretched thin and completely off your routine.
Her laugh faded fast, and that made me damn sad.
“Thank you for that,” she said seriously, her voice almost hoarse as she wiped under her eyes. “And for your help with Dad. I hope whatever he said didn’t scare your sister.”
Delly had been a little taken aback when Mr. Sewell went from a quirky, placid guy to yelling, but she was okay. We’d done our due diligence preparing this past month, ever since we got hired on to work at Live Oak for the summer, and she knew the facts and realities of memory disease on paper and now in practice.
There was also the truth that neither of us were strangers to yelling, but that was a whole other thing.
“Your dad is, well….” I paused, looking for the correctword. Ireland’s expression instantly hardened, as if she was bracing for something shitty, so I hurried on. “He’s hilarious, Ireland,” I said honestly. “Asking Pops about his demons when they first met was one thing, but then the thing about Georgia’s state flower, calling it invasive as fuck?”
Her eyes flicked to my mouth before moving to my eyes.
“It was iconic, really,” I continued, not sure what that was about. “Maybe the best state-specific burn I’ve ever heard.”
