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Zeke shifts his gaze and scratches his chin, insecurity washing over his shoulders, weighing them down slightly.
“I’m just here,” he mumbles with a half-hearted lift of one shoulder.
It’s an odd statement steeped in a history I am instantly curious about. That loneliness touches his features again. The loneliness that calls to me.
“Comic relief, I guess,” he continues, and smiles like the conversation is over. “So, what do you think? I promise you’re safe here. I’m a totally normal dude.”
“That’s something that a serial killer would say,” I tease him, and he hops up onto the counter.
Even if I were in danger here, I’m already in trouble, so I’m not sure which is worse, anyway. Stay here and die of embarrassment, or take my chances going home.
“Hmm, well, I’m definitely not a serial killer. I went hunting once with my brothers and shot a deer. I cried for days. I was like, fifteen.” He gets a goofy look on his face like he again said something he didn’t mean to.
I burst out laughing because he does not seem like the kind of guy who cries or tells a practical stranger about it.
“I’ve never told anyone that before,” he continues, and I finally step out from the bathroom. Exhaustion pulls at me out of nowhere, and guilt zips along my nerves, shutting them down. I tip into the wall, slamming my hand against it for support.
Zeke is off the counter and in front of me in three strides. He grips my elbows and steadies me. “Nova, what’s wrong?”
He helps me to the couch, and I sink into it. “I’m fine. I suck with balance. It’s part of my condition.”
The words fall out, or maybe they were tugged out, but the fact that he told me something about himself that no one else knew… I feel guilty keeping the truth from him.
“Your condition?” he asks, sitting next to me, his warm concern wrapping me up. This guy is not the cocky player I flirted with a few months ago.
“I have multiple sclerosis.” I force the words out.
He blinks rapidly like he’s repeating my phrase in morse code. “You have what?”
“MS.”
“Isn’t that like, an old person thing?” he asks, and I’m intrigued by all the different ways he can emote through his eyebrows. They move as if on their own, showing various levels of confusion.
“No. It’s an anyone thing. Pediatric MS is quite rare, but I had a brain infection that almost killed me when I was a kid. It damaged the myelin coating on my nerves, and when I was fourteen, I lost feeling in my legs. I was diagnosed when I was fifteen. I control it with diet, exercise, and medication. I’ve gone off the meds at my doctor’s approval to be sure it doesn’t affect the baby.”
He keeps blinking, worry building up in his eyes. I can tell, of all those four thousand scenarios he spiralled into earlier, this wasn’t one of them.
“The baby is fine,” I assure him, emphasizing my point with waving hands. “MS actually tends to go into remission during pregnancy. I think I’m just feeling some effects of going off medication. I have shit balance to begin with.” I try to make light of it, to keep it bubbly, but I’m also familiar with this conversation.
When people learn about my MS, that’s all they see in me, at least for a while. People don’t really understand how wide-ranging MS is for those who have it. There are some commonalities like fatigue and numbness, but everyone experiences it differently. Mine is completely manageable.
“So, you’ll be safe?” He laces his fingers together, and I can’t stop staring at them.
“I’m safe. Everything is completely normal with the baby.” I harden my voice to make sure he understands that part.
“And how do you feel? You have been feeling okay?” He’s digging deep, grasping for questions, for reassurance. I can sense it in the tense way he holds himself.
I relax into the couch, prying my attention away from his thick fingers with a permanent layer of grease and oil under the nails. “I feel fine. When I’m not feeling like I’m going to barf, I’m mostly just hungry and horny.”
He chokes on air, and I burst out laughing.
He wanted to be involved. He wanted to know how I felt. This is the truth of it.
“Hungry and horny?” he asks with a light chuckle, wiping his palms down his thighs.
“Yeah, because of the hormone surge, all I literally want to do is eat and fuck.”
“Well, based on that logic, I’ve been pregnant since I was thirteen.” He grins, and a tiny bit of that cocky bastard thing he had going on in the shop peeks through.
It’s fucking irresistible.
His girlfriend overtakes my mind and puts me in my place immediately.
I have to resist it.
