“The key under the rock,” he explains. “You didn’t answer my question. Is there anything I can do to help?”
“Just hold me,” I whisper. “I can take more medicine in an hour.”
Without another word, Dalton wraps himself around my body, and I doze off again.
Time is meaningless in my dreams, but the pain in my head manages to manifest itself until it’s so unbearable that it wakes me.
“Medicine?” Dalton whispers, and it takes all that I can manage to nod my head.
He climbs off the bed, and I’m grateful that he doesn’t turn on the lights as he reaches for the bottle on my bedside, offering two pills to me and a glass of water.
I swallow the pills with a groan and fall back onto my pillows. Sleep eludes me this time around, but I find comfort in Dalton’s arms. When the meds kick in, I turn in his arms, resting my face against his chest.
“Do you get headaches often?” he says, keeping his voice low.
“Not really. Last year when I had the flu, I had horrible headaches. Well, everything hurt, actually.”
“I wish I was here then to help you.”
“Oh, you helped,” I snort. “My mom asked yours if you could get my assignments. I was so worried about missing school.”
“Did I?” he asks.
“You brought assignments alright, but they weren’t the ones we’d been given in class.”
He groans, the sound a low rumble in his chest, and it makes me smile against his skin.
“But the teachers took sympathy on me since I never get into trouble or cause problems. They counted the grades, but it was still hell trying to get caught up since I worked on a bunch of stuff that wasn’t required.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s in the past,” I tell him. It’s the best I can manage because I’ll never say, ‘It’s okay.’ That’s a form of forgiveness, and even though I love that I’m resting against him right now, I still don’t know that I’ll ever be able to forgive him for what he’s done.
“I wish there was a way to make it up to you. I feel like we missed so much time that could’ve been spent just like this because I was an asshole. Sorry, I mean a jerk.”
“Then let’s not waste any more time,” I offer.
“What do you mean?”
“Let’s get to know one another. Where do you want to go to college?”
“I haven’t really thought about it. Where do you want to go?”
“Harvard,” I tell him without missing a beat.
“Really?”
“I mean, I don’t think I can afford it, so I’ll probably end up at State.”
“Maybe you’ll get a scholarship,” he muses. “I think I’d like to go to State, too, but I don’t even know what my grades are like.”
“You haven’t checked into that yet?”
He shrugs, and I feel the movement against my own body. “I’ve been a little preoccupied.”
I know he’s talking about me, and I won’t even let myself feel bad about that. I don’t know his exact GPA, but Dalton Payne isn’t some dumb jock. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was a straight-A student like me.
“I think we should make plans to go to the same school,” he whispers.
“Seriously?” I don’t lift my head, but I also don’t manage to disguise my surprise.
College is over a year away, and as often as I think about getting out of this town, it still seems like a lifetime until it happens. Is he thinking about us being together in a year? I inwardly kick myself for wondering if our shelf life would extend past the end of the summer.
“Maybe even think of living off-campus so we can share an apartment or something?”
I want to argue with him, tell him that the idea of living together thrills me and terrifies me at the same time, but thinking about that step right now is a little premature. I don’t do that, though. I keep my mouth closed and let myself wonder what that would look like.
Would we both have jobs? Take some of the same classes? Time together would be hard to find with a heavy class load, and living together would make it easier, but we don’t really have the same desires.
I’d find a library or youth center to volunteer at in my spare time, and he’d probably rush the biggest fraternity on campus, attending parties every weekend. It just wouldn’t work.
“You hate the idea, don’t you?” He wraps his arm tighter around my back, pulling me impossibly closer. “I still have a year to convince you otherwise.”
“We still have to make it through senior year,” I mutter. “I don’t even know what our first day back to school is going to look like much less the last day.”
“Close your eyes,” he urges. “Let me describe it to you.”
I’ve spent most of the last ten years living out my own fantasies in my head, imagining a day when I can walk into a classroom with my head held high rather than with darting eyes wondering which idiot was going to make fun of me or trip me, so I figure I can humor him for a moment.