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E. Devereux
Grand Ave
Astoria, OR
I take the stairs up to the seventh floor because I am #evolved and unafraid of exercise. Mostly. There’s a frenetic energy in my veins as I tear down the hall, past JUST KEEP SWIMMING—AND LEARNING! It stops me in my tracks momentarily, only because I could have sworn it said STUDYING instead of LEARNING. Or was it always LEARNING, and my mind warped it because the alliteration would have looked better? Then again, I only closely examined it the night I pepper-sprayed Miles, which might as well have happened in 1998. My memory is playing tricks on me, the same way Miles’s was when I first got stuck.
The need to see him in person is overwhelming. Which is utterly bizarre, because I’ve been spending time with only him for the past day few weeks. And yet there it is: a pulsing need in the center of my heart.
Please don’t let him be asleep, I think as I knock on his door. His roommate, if I recall correctly, should have headed to a party with his long-term girlfriend after hooking up in their room earlier this evening. Please don’t let him be out at a party or finding his one true love and finally getting out of this godforsaken mess.
It takes an eon and a half, but finally, finally, he opens the door a crack. The sight of his face is an instant relief, his messy hair and tired eyes a balm for all the anarchy of the past three days. I hate how nice it is to see him, how badly I want to collapse right into his room as long as he’ll hold me up. I can almost forget about the kiss I don’t remember.
“Barrett?” He runs a hand through his hair, pushing the door wider. “What are you doing here?”
He’s not wearing a shirt.
Miles Kasher-Okamoto is standing in front of me, not wearing a shirt, and suddenly it’s like I’ve never seen a human man before.
“You’re not wearing a shirt,” I blurt out, ever the observant journalist.
He glances down, as though just realizing it. “Oh—just give me a second.” The door closes, and there’s some shuffling around, and a few moments later, he opens it again. “Sorry. I was about to go to sleep. Is everything okay?”
I wave the newspaper in front of his face. “I found these articles about Dr. Devereux in the Washingtonian archives. Miles, she’s real. And she lives in Oregon. We could go find her.”
But Miles doesn’t seem to be processing any of the words I’m saying. “Holy shit.” A hand flies to his mouth, and then he gestures to me. “Your arm. You’re—you’re bleeding.”
His voice has turned completely soft. However angry he was about what I did in his mom’s class—there’s none of that now.
I blink down at the broken mess of skin. “It doesn’t matter,” I say. “What’s one more injury on top of getting hit by a truck? I’ll be as good as new tomorrow.”
“Just in case, we should disinfect it.” Just in case. The past few weeks have been a deluge of just in case. Today is the one day I am certain I don’t want to repeat. He motions for me to sit down in his desk chair, and I am too tired to do anything else, so I hold out my arm. Dr. Devereux can wait until tomorrow, because there is always a tomorrow. And I’ve already memorized the address. “My parents made me get a mini first aid kit for the dorm. I thought it was overkill, but now I’m glad they did.”
He picks it up from his closet as I sink into the chair, then holds up a packet of disinfecting wipes, as though asking permission. I give him a nod, using my other arm to brush messy curls out of my face. I’m a little afraid of what I look like right now, but nothing about me has ever made Miles flinch.
Miles stands next to me, steadying my arm with one hand, a light press of his thumb, while he lowers the wipe with his other. It trembles in his grip, right before it meets my skin, and I wince at the sting.
“Sorry,” he says, pulling back.
“It’s okay. Just keep going.”
He bends over, so gentle as he dabs back and forth, deeply focused, like not even a hurricane could break his concentration. I can’t explain it, but that gentleness makes me feel a little like crying. That storm of a person I was in the newsroom, around campus—she’s foreign to me now. Everything all day, all of yesterday, was too loud, my brain buzzing, buzzing, buzzing. But here… it’s quiet. Peaceful. An oasis in the middle of the chaos my life has become.
I thought I was exhausted. Hopeless. But here in Miles’s room, I suddenly feel wide-awake.
Miles is constant, and not just because he’s stuck here with me. His mere presence has tugged me back into orbit. Even after everything that’s happened… I do trust him. Not just to bandage my arm, but with my secrets. My fears.
That’s the scariest thing of all: that deep down, I understand why he kept the kiss from me. And I know I can forgive him.
With nimble fingers, he tucks the wipe back into its packet before dropping it into the wastebasket, then unwraps a bandage and pats it across my arm. Smooths it down at the edges. I watch his hand, seeing how careful he is with me. This close to him, I can feel the heat from his body, hear the consistent rhythm of his breaths. I can count each of his raven-black eyelashes. All of it makes me a little light-headed.
“Good?” he asks, eyes flicking up to mine, and, dazed, I manage to nod.
So good, I want to tell him. “Thank you. You didn’t have to do that.”
“I would have felt terrible if you woke up with an infection tomorrow.” He leans against his bed, this casual pose that shouldn’t be as appealing as it is. “Are we… okay?”
I swallow hard. Are we? I want to be. “I think so.”
