Page 311 of Ricardo

“Then tell the rest of you to catch up.”

I huff a laugh, even though my eyes sting. “I’ll get right on that.”

“Good.”

For a moment, we are quiet.

Then he says, “We can go when I get out of here.”

My head lifts. “What?”

“To the apartment. We’ll get your stuff.”

“You are currently attached to an IV pole.”

“I said after I get out of here,” he says gruffly. “What do you think? They're going to make me take it home?”

“You’ll still have been shot.”

“I thought that excuse was wearing thin.”

“When you use it,” I say.

“You are going nowhere near my apartment when you leave here.”

He looks offended. “It’s not like we’re entering a war zone. My father would arrange security out of our asses.”

“You got shot in it!”

“Exactly. I know the layout.”

I stare at him.

He stares back, not backing down from the challenge.

“No,” I say. “And that’s final.”

“Fine,” he says. “Then suck it up and do it yourself.”

My mouth falls open, and I realize I went exactly where he wanted me to go.

There he is.

There is my best friend.

The man who held my hair in a rideshare after a donor boat made me seasick. The man who came to Connecticut with no accusations, no demands for an explanation on where I’ve been and how I could cut him out of my life. The man who slept on my couch too many times without me needing to ask because he knew I couldn’t bear to be alone yet.

The man who can tell me to suck it up in a hospital bed after taking a bullet for me.

“Were you always this much of a bastard, or am I just noticing it now?” I ask.

“I nearly died, Jules. You have to be nicer to me,” he says. “Those are the rules.”

“Show me where it says that,” I challenge.

Deliberately, I lift my magazine and continue reading the stupid article blocking his face.

It only lasts a second before my eyes fill.