At the news, Violet left my side by the kitchen counter and went to sit on one of the dining chairs, with a loud sigh that was overdramatic even for her.

"He is so fucking stupid."

I nodded in agreement and spoke just as softly, "Funny thing- I once told him that. Word for word."

She pulled her legs up to hug them against her chest, while I stayed at the counter to stir the bag of chamomile in the cup meant for Harry. It was a quiet Saturday evening with some tea and a mango-scented candle in our cozy kitchen, and I'd just gotten to telling her about his moving, so we were naturally going to talk shit about him. "I'm a nurse."

"Yes, you are."

"And he's sick."

"Yes, he is."

"And the most obvious choice for him is to go live with a sports major?"

I couldn't blame her for the thought process—especially after we spent a small chunk of last night helping Harry clean up after throwing up, and held him while he wobbled from the bathroom back to my room.

It might have been just another day for Violet, but seeing him in that state left my mind blank. I couldn't begin to comprehend his leaving now that I knew, firsthand, what state his therapy left him in.

"I think he'll feel better if he's sharing the rent, or whatever," I responded with the most neutral, objective thought my brain could assemble. Dissociation appeared to be the key. "And his roommate would be a good friend. And it's a place where his ex can't find him, so..."

Violet nodded but then started shaking her head, "Should've charged him for rent when I had the chance."

"Yeah, but you wouldn't have."

"No, but I should've." Tea-sipping break for both of us. "You okay with all of that?"

"Hm?" I looked up from the soothing twinkle of the candle on the dining table, feeling its effect evaporate as soon as Violet's question got to my brain. Dissociate. Dissociate. "Yeah, why wouldn't I be?"

"You know." At my unchanging face, she slightly tilted her head and gave me a knowing look; it got her nowhere, as I chose to have no idea what she was talking about.

"It's his choice."

"Staying could also be his choice. If someone were to point him in the right direction."

I smiled at the idea that I could say the word and he would stay; the reality was, sadly, more complicated than that. Rather than get lost in wishful thinking, I shook my head, "I'm gonna bring him his tea. Before it gets cold."

Violet agreed with a hum as I rinsed my cup and placed it in the dishwasher, leaving the kitchen afterward. One thing I was thankful for was that I trusted her deductive skills to bring her to the right conclusion—we were on the same side. I agreed with her to the point where my heart ached; not a single fiber of my being wanted him out of our apartment.

And another thing to go on my Thanksgiving list was how she knew when to leave things alone.

Knocking on the door of my bedroom resulted in no answer. I softly pushed it open, and from the hallway light that was seeping into the room I could see Harry lying on his side, eyes closed, though I knew he was awake as he'd asked me for tea some fifteen minutes earlier.

I closed the door as gently as I could, eyes adjusting to the nightlight that weakly illuminated the room. My soft slippers made no noise across the floor as I walked over to set the cup on the nightstand, assessing him on my way; blanket covering him up to his midriff, he wasn't sweaty, but he still looked pale, not far from matching the white T-shirt he wore. His arm was uncomfortably hanging from my bed, probably meaning that he dozed off from exhaustion. My heart ached some more.

"Hey," I whispered, "I brought you your tea."

It took him a couple of seconds, but he swallowed and whispered back, "Thank you."

"You need anything else?" He shook his head. "Alright, I'll come and check up on you in an hour, okay?"

He didn't reply, he didn't even open his eyes at any point, but as I stood in front of him, his limp hand that hung from the bed came back to life, reaching for my leg. "Stay."

"Sorry, what?"

"Stay. Please."

The heartache amplified tenfold. My lips parted and I felt my skin burn and go cold at the same time. "Don't you wanna..." I swallowed thickly, hoping the spit would put out the fire in my ribcage, "Rest? You need rest."

The grip his cold hand had on my thigh became tighter as he tried pulling me toward him, but his hand slipped from my jeans, making him sigh loudly; I continued to stare at him with utter confusion and a whole lot of anxiety, trying not to lose my goddamn mind.

"Evie." His groggy voice came through, though the rest of him didn't have the strength to move. I waited for him to speak again, but nothing came—the only clue as to what he wanted was his hand, blindly reaching into the air until it found mine and held onto it. A quiet prayer. My hand and my name.

"Uh..." Sweat collected on my palms as his thumb pressed into my knuckles, conveying everything he couldn't say into a touch; I cleared my throat and looked around the room, "Alright, let me get a chair and-"

My attention was drawn to movement beside me—his hand slipped from mine as he turned from his side onto his back, farther from me, so there was now... space between us. For exactly one person.

Harry, now on his back, looked at me with half-lidded eyes. The pleading look, though silencing my brain altogether, set my body into motion; I first sat next to him, but upon realizing that it felt awkward and like I was observing him, I readjusted in my seat so I could, God help me, lie down next to him.

An utter out-of-body experience. My memory foam topper and microfiber pillow never felt so foreign. I was too aware of everything—the warm spot I lay in, brushing my skin against his shirt, how he smelled. I stayed on my side to avoid physical contact, but that meant I could count the freckles on his nose under the warm tabletop light, and even see how his hair had grown a couple of millimeters from the buzz cut he'd had for months.

He began adjusting the yellow blanket and I took note of his hand, the bones that stretched his skin prominent in subtle lighting. I reached down to help him with the blanket, shifting to pull it from under my legs; it wasn't long before he was satisfied with how the blanket lay over him, and his hand moved to mine.

Dissociation crumbled into a mere string of letters. Separation of mind and heart obliterated.

Holding my breath, I lifted my gaze to his face—unchanged. Eyes still closed, brows and lips relaxed, there was no indication that he was doing something out of the ordinary while his fingers prodded between mine so his hand was spooning mine.

Which checked out, since this didn't seem to be so much out of the ordinary for him anymore. I began breathing again but still had yet to move any part of my body.

In the aftermath of my gap year between high school and university, the reason behind his insistence on holding my hand wasn't a door I was ready to open yet. Progress was evident as nothing from my past could stop me from wanting or reciprocating his touch, but I couldn't possibly allow myself to entertain the idea of something bigger, beyond rolling my eyes at Violet's well-meant teasing.

I could, however, use it for extortion.

Heart rate picking up again after the idea came to me, I yanked my hand from his hold as soon as I felt his hand relax. Harry inhaled, and I pressed down on his hand with my finger. To hell with dissociation. "I will stay and hold your hand," I said in a voice quieter than the pulsating that had reached my ears, "if you stay."

Nothing happened for a moment, but then, while I stared at his face to pick up any muscle twitch that could point to an emotion, his gave me the best of them all—a smile. "Getting me at my weakest, Evelyn?"

The record-long sentence since this morning had him coughing, but the squeeze in my chest could only focus on the sound of his voice. So I couldn't open the door yet. Didn't mean there wasn't something of my own behind them.

"Remember when I said I can offer the nagging pass? This is the nagging."

"And..." He turned his head toward mine, foreheads almost touching and my breathing stopping again. "Mine is caring, so... I want to give you your life back."

The new proximity had his breath fanning my lips with every word he spoke; ignoring my brain's best wishes to focus solely on that, I replied, "We said you'd be here until the end of your therapy. You can't go back on your word now."

"So agreeing at the hospital was just for show?"

"I never formally agreed."

"Can I bribe you with anything?"

"I'd rather have you."

Aware of the absence of alive, Harry took a deep breath and gulped; he nuzzled his forehead against mine, breaking the barrier of almost, the tip of his nose against mine. Had he been at a different angle...

"Evie."

The plea was something else. Desperate—either for reassurance or for an end to be put to this. I chose to believe it was the former. "I mean it," I said, pushing further, and even with his closed eyes I could sense the struggle going on in his head. "I swear. Even if you weren't here, it'd be..."

I swallowed, my eyes stinging with tears at my next words, "You, and then everything else."

Another inhale was his only reaction, and the silence was overwhelming. His eyelashes, his relaxed body, his motionless hands, nothing showed any sign of anything. Before I could hope that he wasn't possibly getting frustrated with me or that I'd said too much, his hand twisted around so it could capture mine again.

"Then I'm yours."

My grasp on his hand became infinitely tighter. The door was rattling, but I could finally be at peace.

○○○

"Where were you?"

Violet's voice was more jarring than the daylight that made me squint my eyes as I entered the kitchen. "Huh? I was sleeping. Just rolled out of the couch."

"You know... you know what I mean."

I rubbed my eyes until I could properly look at her; dressed in work clothes, she sat cross-legged at the table, sipping on her coffee before she had to leave for her shift, with a smile that let me know I was about to get crushed like a roach. Of course I knew. "Good morning to you too."

"Oh, it's good, alright," she chuckled, biting her lip while she watched me walk to the coffee pot. "So, how come you weren't sleeping when I got up to go to the bathroom?"

"I was checking up on Harry."

"All three times that I got up?"

He was already staying with us, so there was no reason for me to lose my composure over the interrogation. There was also no reason to not tell her what really went on, but I liked Violet with her head near spontaneous combustion. I merely shrugged, "You should probably check your bladder."

"You should check your bed for a blondie. And I don't mean the dessert."

"You should check your mouth and get it removed."

Before she could take a breath to continue stacking suggestions, the door to my left was pushed open—in came Harry, in the sweatpants and T-shirt pajama combo, brows furrowed while his eyes darted from me to Violet.

I was inclined to carry the relief and happiness I felt at the sight of him looking better than yesterday to my grave.

"Morning," he croaked, and we both greeted him back. I was pretty proud of my cool tone and how I nonchalantly went back to making my coffee, but then his entire body stood in front of the fridge as I went to grab the milk, every ounce of cool evaporating from my body.

My eyes raked up from my normal eye level—his collarbones—to his face. The blue eyes just barely let me concentrate on my words. "You feeling alright?" I asked, crossing my arms over my chest.

"Yeah, I was just..." He lifted the cup that had seemingly just materialized right then and there, "Throwing this out."

He stretched his arm out to pour the tea from last night into the sink beside us, his stomach touching my crossed forearms; I'd have thanked the lord that Violet couldn't see my face, but I felt that she knew me well enough to correctly estimate how red I was. The tea. The tea I'd brought him before I disappeared from the rest of the apartment for a five-hour nap. The tea that had me sneaking out of my own room at four in the morning, after I woke up with my nose mashed into the very shirt that currently hung from his shoulders right in front of me. The chamomile tea.

I looked at the liquid, while he looked at me; for all of last night's clinginess, the morning felt like eye contact would turn me to dust. "Since it went cold and all."

"Yep." I nodded in response, "Yep. Got it. Understandable."

"Yeah."

He left the cup in the sink and turned around to stroll out of the kitchen. At this point, seeing that he looked significantly better than the previous two days, I knew it would be Violet taking my peace away from me for the rest of the day, rather than Harry. But that was okay. It was established that I'd trade my peace for some things.

"I knew I didn't have to get my mouth removed."

I finally got the milk from the fridge, for the start of a beautiful day. "Then shut it, Violet."

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