Uncovered (Dev and Lee Book 4) (32 page)

Chapter 15 – Sick and Tired (Lee)

It’s probably crazy to think that my relationship with Dev was keeping my immune system up. After all, I had colds while we were together. I just can’t remember one this bad, and I say so, often. Frankly, the last three days have been so bad that to call them “crappy” would be putting too positive a spin on them. My throat got progressively worse on Friday, to the point that Hal got me a small bottle of Southern Comfort to help me sleep. I drank half of it and started crying about Dev and locked myself in his office out of embarrassment. But I did sleep, albeit kind of passed out half-on, half-off the air mattress, and woke up with my muzzle open and my tongue lying across his carpet, which was damp and smelled pretty gross. As a reward for one good night of sleep, my throat improved slightly, while my nose, the whole length of my muzzle, started getting warm and congested.

Saturday, I stayed in Hal’s office most of the day blowing my nose and playing a solitaire game on my iPhone and trying hard not to think about football at all. I caught stories about Dev here and there, unavoidable in Chevali, but not in the newspaper when Hal dragged me to Starbucks (God help me, I like their tea), and not on TV, which was generally set to non-football sports or movies.

Sunday I feel more miserable, but well enough to drag my laptop out to the living room and listen to music while Hal goes out for groceries. I leave some money on his counter but he doesn’t take it; he’s as stubbornly fox-proud as I am. It took me two days just to give in to the cold and admit I should be resting and not doing anything. I did send my legal brief to the lawyer, mostly so I wouldn’t have to think about the court case. She e-mailed back Friday night to say it was fine, and that’s the last time I checked my e-mail.

“Doing any better?” Hal asks when he comes back and sees me nestled in a corner of the sofa, tail wrapped around me.

“No,” I say dully.

“Not sleeping for three nights in a row will do that,” Hal reaches into his grocery bag and tosses a canid-strength decongestant onto the couch next to me. I fumble with the box, tearing it across the silhouette of the fox with the glowing red masses in his nose and muzzle, and then scratch with my claws at the foil seal around the pills while he goes to the kitchen and gets me a glass of water.

“I’ve got orange juice,” I say, huddled in my blanket. I reach for a tissue and blow some of the endless supply of crud out of my nose. “How many of these do I take?”

“What’s the box say, genius?” Hal brings the water out into the living room and sets it down next to me. “You should take the pills with water. Gulp orange juice the wrong way and it burns. That’s what my mother told me.”

I peer at the box and rub my watering eyes. “Says two pills every four hours.”

“Then I reckon that’s what you ought to take.”

“If your ass was any smarter, your tail would be a mortarboard tassel,” I grumble, popping two pills into my paw.

“Is that some kinda college wisecrack? They didn’t have them at Whitford where I did my journalism Masters,” he says, with an exaggerated aw-shucks accent.

I toss the pills onto my tongue. They catch in my rough throat, and I gulp water, working at swallowing until they go down. “God, I hope these work,” I say.

“Gal at the pharmacy said they’re the best,” Hal says. He swishes his tail and sits on the other side of the sofa.

I turn away from coverage of some Kanatian arctic fox preparing to compete in the Winter X Games and hold a tissue to my nose again. “Hope you don’t get sick.”

“Oh, I don’t plan on it.” He grins and lifts a paw to scratch his whiskers. “Say, um. You gonna be okay if I head out for dinner tonight?”

“Sure.” I wipe my nose. “I can, uh, walk down to the taco place. Where you going?”

“Just out, you know. With a friend.”

“Okay. You don’t have to tell me who it is.” But from the way he’s acting, I think I know. My ears flick; I make an effort to keep them forward. “You know, just because my relationship is in the toilet doesn’t mean I won’t be happy for you. So what happened?”

“Well, Pol called back.” He flicks his ears back and loses the grin. “Um, she liked the flowers. Said we could go on a date again. Talk about shit.”

“That’s great.” But instead of being happy for him and leaving it at that, I imagine Dev calling me, maybe agreeing to talk about things for a bit. With a small flare of pain, I shake those thoughts free. After all, he’s been in Crystal City for—what, it’s Sunday, so, three days? If he were going to call, he would have. Anyway, if he called right now I would be blowing my nose every five minutes, coughing and miserable, and either I’d be snappish because I’m sick, or he’d feel sorry for me, or something. It’s not the ideal frame of mind to have.

“Thanks for taking care of me,” I tell the swift fox, and he snorts. “I mean it. You can have an evening off. I won’t die or anything. I hope you guys work things out.”

“Yeah, me too. I mean, it’s nice having you around to produce snotty tissues, but I kinda miss someone I can kiss.”

I make kissy-lips at him and try for my husky female voice, but I only get as far as “You can kiss me—” before the rasp in my throat makes me cough, and snot explodes into my paw. I fumble for a tissue as Hal laughs.

“Sexy as that is…I’ll hold out for Pol.”

“Straight guys,” I mumble through the tissue. “No sense of adventure.”

“I got plenty sense of adventure,” Hal says. “If I wanted snot blown on me, I woulda had cubs.”

“Cubs.” I remember Gerrard’s cubs and Fisher and Gena’s older cubs. “Glad I haven’t had to deal with all that.”

“No younger brothers or sisters?”

I shake my head. “You?”

“Older sister. She’s married and lives in Pelagia working for a game company. We talk on holidays. I’ll get you another box of tissues.”

I’ve just pulled the last one out of the box and emptied my nose into it. “The trash is full, too,” I say, dropping the used tissue onto the pile. At his baleful look, I flatten my ears. “I’ll empty it,” I say.

“Nah.” He shakes his head, picking it up.

“When do I need to be out of here by?” I call after him as he takes the can out to the back patio where the big garbage bin is.

He comes back in and drops the emptied can by the couch. “You can stay here. We’re going out to dinner and if we go back somewhere, it’ll be her place. I’ll tell her I have a sick friend staying with me.”

“Should win you sympathy points,” I say.

He winks. “You’ll be useful one way or another.”

“So…” I pause, not sure how to bring this up. “I mean, you still have those differences, right? She still doesn’t want to be second-fiddle to your work?”

“Yeah.” He says it slowly.

“Are you going to be able to talk through that, you think? It’s not going to be too big a thing?”

“Not if we don’t let it.”

I think about that. Is it possible that Dev and I are just letting a little thing spiral out of control? But then again, I mean…what do we really mean to each other? Are we just together because he can’t find anyone else and I’ve lost touch with everyone else? I don’t think so, but it’s really hard to think clearly when you have to blow your nose every two seconds and breathe with your mouth open. Reminds me of a story about a society where everyone has to be the same intellect, so the smart people are handicapped with distractions.

Good lord, us English majors are pretentious when we’re sick. Even non-graduated ones. Apparently a cold is enough to burrow down through two layers of working in the sports world to remind me of esoteric things I read five years ago.

“Hey,” Hal says, “mind if I change the channel? This is only slightly less boring than the actual Winter X Games.”

“Sure.” I sniff, and rub my watering eyes.

He finds an action movie and we watch for a while, because I can’t muster up the energy to do anything else. My nose clears up as the decongestants start to work, and I get a floaty light-headed feeling that makes me a little dizzy and uncomfortable.

Eventually he goes to get ready for his date, and when he comes out in his blazer, shirt, and tie, I look up from my third mindless action movie of the day. The color combination is enough to stir me from the lethargy of the cold and its medication.

“Really?” I say. “That’s what you’re wearing?”

He stops in the middle of adjusting his collar and looks at me. “What?”

“What?” I cough, trying not to laugh. “Um, okay. Let’s start with the blazer. Are you going on a date in 1990?”

He frowns down at the blazer. “What’s wrong with it?”

“Oh, the cut, the stain on the inside of the left sleeve…”

His ears flatten. “You can see that?”

“Oh my god, Hal, please don’t wear that thing. Did you wear it on a date with her before?”

“Once,” he mumbles, starting to slide the blazer off.

“Then you should thank your lucky stars she’s agreeing to see you again.” I blow my nose. “Maybe she thinks she can help make you over or something.”

“Maybe she thinks it’s cute,” he snaps, but he tosses the blazer onto the couch. “Better?”

“Do you have a tie that doesn’t fight with that shirt so much?”

“I have that gator-skin one you got me.” He folds his arms and looks down at his tie.

I shake my head. “You were married, for Fox’s sake. What about that thing you wore the first time you came and met me at the sandwich place?”

He frowns. “I wasn’t wearing a tie then.”

“No, I know. I mean, that shirt. That would go with that tie.”

“I have to go in two minutes.”

I stare at the shirt with what I hope is heavy meaning, but is probably ruined because I have to wipe my nose in the middle of it. “Better to be late and look good than on time looking like that.”

He glares at me, grumbles, and then goes back into his bedroom. Five minutes later he comes out in the other shirt, adjusting the tie. “Now? Can I go?”

It’s kind of cute. The shirt is rumpled, so ideally I’d tell him to press it. I have the feeling he probably fished it out of the dirty clothes pile. And he should have a nice tie pin for his tie, and his fur is a little mussed still. But overall, he’ll do. “Brush your headfur down,” I instruct him. “Then you can go.”

He stomps out the door a moment later, but his tail is wagging, so I feel better about things overall. And his blazer on the couch suggests something I could do to repay his kindness.

I haul my laptop out of the office and look around at some online stores. I check the blazer size and find him a couple nice jackets that will go well with his shirt, but hopefully won’t look too fancy to him.

When I complete the order, I notice that it’s using Dev’s credit card, the one he just pays every month without really looking at the bill. I hesitate. I really should use my own credit card, the one I haven’t touched in ages. So I start to add a new credit card to the site, and then realize that I have no idea whether I changed the address for it. I sit and stare at the computer screen, trying to work it out, and after what seems like not too much time to me, I go back and decide to use Dev’s card, hell with it, and the transaction’s timed out because I was sitting there too long.

I feel miserable on just about every level. I force myself to scrounge for some piece of mail with Hal’s address on it so I can finish the purchase. By the time I’m done, several of my laptop keys have snot on them and I’m not even sure I’ve managed to buy the things right.

Someone is blowing something up on the TV, and it’s about time for me to take another two pills, but I feel so incapable and helpless and like I’ve ruined everything in my life that I don’t want any more medication that makes me feel stupid. The only thing to do is to grab the remainder of the Southern Comfort bottle and retreat into the office with my laptop. I drink the bottle and pull up some of my favorite porn, but I really only enjoy the aesthetic value of the pictures. I don’t get turned on at all.

So I start crying again because I’m sick and I’m never going to feel healthy again, and I haven’t had any sort of sex drive since leaving Dev and I’m starting to worry that maybe I’m completely broken now. And Dev is going to go on to be famous and he’ll find some gay version of Angela or Gena who will just subordinate himself to the football life and the worst part of all of that is that I want desperately to be able to do that, to just close my eyes and hold my breath and sink into domesticity. And I can’t, I can’t. I always end up thrashing for air, fighting, clawing back to the surface and breathing, and it’s not that I don’t want to be in that life at all. It’s just that I need to have my head clear and out of it, and right now my head is just a giant mucus factory and my ears haven’t heard properly in two days and I can’t smell anything and I feel useless.

Of course, drinking half a bottle of Southern Comfort doesn’t do much to make me feel better. In fact, I’m pretty sure that a lot of that stuff I’m thinking is amplified by the alcohol into unreasonable self-pity. So it’s kind of a miserable hour or two, drinking booze that tastes like cough syrup and watching porn I’m not enjoying in the right way and unpicking all the stupidest, worst aspects of my life.

I come close, then, to writing a maudlin e-mail to Dev telling him that I’m leaving him for his own good and he’s better off without me. And by “come close” I mean that I actually open up the e-mail program and start typing it, with some difficulty as my laptop still has snot on the keys and my claws keep skittering across to the wrong letters, and even when I hit the right letters, my brain is sending the wrong words to my fingers. I feel all desperate and noble and self-sacrificing and tragic.

The last thing I remember writing is “your life trajectory is a shining comet and I am Marley’s chains on your tail.” Even drunk, I can work in pretentious literary allusions, although every third word is misspelled and the metaphor is so strained as to be nonexistent. It makes perfect sense to me at the time.

Not so much when I wake up with a familiar tightness in my skull. Not a full-on hangover, but certainly the reminder that they exist. The sun streams through the windows of my temporary bedroom, and Hal is snoring in the room next door. I’m not even disoriented, waking up on the floor of this room full of someone else’s life, not on the fourth day.