Her fingers ran down the sleeve.
“Well, I’d say it’s pretty much ruined,” Nicole said. She pursed her lips together and looked up at me again. “Let’s get it off, okay?”
“Okay.” My head was still pounding as I stared at her, unmoving.
Nicole took a deep breath and sighed, then reached up and unbuttoned my sweater. She pushed it off my shoulders and hung it on a hook next to her father’s police jacket. She pulled at the knot of my tie, loosened it, and I bent my head down so she could loop it over and off. She tossed it over the same hook as the jacket. Her fingers brushed over the front of my button-down shirt once, and then she began to release the buttons one at a time.
“You’re freezing,” Nicole said quietly as she finished with the last button. Her fingers pushed my shirt open. I couldn’t do anything but watch her hands in seemingly slow motion, trailing up my chest and easing my shirt off my shoulders and down my arms.
“Come on upstairs. The towels are up there, and I’ll find you something else to put on.”
I followed her blindly up a flight of stairs to a small landing. There were three doors—two leading to bedrooms and one to a bathroom. She grabbed two towels from the cabinet under the bathroom sink and placed them on the counter.
“Dry yourself off a bit, okay?”
“Okay.”
She walked into one of the bedrooms and left me in the bathroom. I dried my chest and arms a bit, but I started shivering anyway. I used the towel to rub my hair, but it just flopped back over my forehead again. Nicole walked back in holding a plain white T-shirt and a pair of sweatpants.
“These should work, I think,” she said. “I can put your other stuff in the dryer, but I’m not sure there’s any hope for the sweater. Go ahead and put these on, and I’ll see what I can do.”
“Okay.”
She looked up at me again.
“Thomas?”
“Yeah?”
“Can you get yourself changed, or do you need help?”
Her words finally penetrated, and I glanced down at the towel still in my hand and the clothes she had placed on the counter.
“I can do it,” I replied quietly.
She nodded and closed the bathroom door.
I pulled the button of my Dockers open and dropped the zipper. I had a hard time getting the wet fabric down my legs but managed to do it without falling over. I yanked the sweats and T-shirt on, but the sweats were falling off my hips. I found a drawstring inside and tightened it a bit. I picked up my wet pants and boxers but wasn’t really sure what I should do with them. I didn’t want them dripping all over the place, so I just hung them over the edge of the bathtub. I opened the bathroom door and wandered out to the little hallway.
I glanced into one of the rooms and knew right away it was Nicole’s. I recognized the window because of the little desk and chair right under it. There was an old desktop computer with a CRT monitor sitting on top of it. On the other side of the window, where I wouldn’t have been able to see from the outside, was a full-sized bed with a blue comforter over it, a dresser with a lamp, and a nightstand containing an MP3 player, and a stack of dystopian-themed books.
“Thomas?”
My head kept pounding, and I couldn’t bring myself to answer. I felt her come up beside me, and her hand touched my elbow.
“Geez, Thomas—you’re absolutely freezing,” Nicole said as her hand brushed up and down my arm. “Your skin feels like ice.”
She looked me up and down, and her voice softened.
“Come here,” she said as she took me by the hand and led me to the edge of her bed. She pulled back the comforter and the sheet under it and placed her palm on my shoulder blade, pushing me forward. “Get in.”
“In your bed?” I asked.
“You need to warm up,” she said, “and you look like you’re about to fall over.”
I didn’t have any energy to argue with her even if I had been so inclined. Once my head made contact with her pillow, and I was completely encompassed by her scent, there was no way I was going to protest. I inhaled deeply as my eyes closed and my body sank into the warmth of the blankets Nicole pulled over me.
“My mom died today,” I heard myself say and then corrected myself. “I mean…on this day.”