Page 79 of Whiskey Shivers

“You eat lunch yet?” I asked, and she checked her watch.

“Shit,” she muttered softly.

I had to chuckle. “I thought so.”

I pulled a tinfoil wrapped Shrimp Po’ boy from the brown paper sack I’d carried in from our favorite place. She stared at it a second and then looked up at me.

“You… I could kiss you,” she declared and started unraveling the sandwich.

“I’ll take a raincheck on that tonight; I’ll tell you what.” I pulled up a drink thing of sweet tea and put it on her desk and slid a straw to her.

The look of gratitude in her blue eyes made the effort of having this delivered from across town worth it.

“Have to keep my girl fed,” I said quietly. “Can’t have her wasting away on me.”

She smiled from behind her sandwich as she chewed and winked at me. We were keeping our relationship on the down low when it came to the school for now.

We ate in silence and she looked up at me finally and asked me, “Do you really think I can do this?”

I looked at her and the worry in her eyes and the fear etched in every line of her being? I could read her like a book…

“I think you can do anything you put your mind to, baby,” I told her. “Now as fordo you think I’ll be disappointed if you can’t? No. No, I wouldn’t. You’re not built like me – you feel and are passionate and are all softness and light; everything that’s wonderful in this world. The shit that’s happened here would take a toll on anybody but if there’s anyone in this school that can handle it and work through it, it’s you. I don’t reckon it’s gonna be easy – but I believe you can.”

“Thanks for the pep talk,” she said. “I needed it. Everybody, for the most part has been so nice – just a couple of students that are trying to get a rise… I think it’s the other faculty that’s bothering me the most. They’re treating me like I have leprosy or the plague or something.”

“That more ‘n anything is what chaps my ass. You’ve already been through so much and that on top of it is some bullshit.”

She snorted delicately. “I don’t disagree with you there,” she said, and then followed up with a soft, “I just wish I knew why.”

“It’s because you’re suing,” I said, swallowing the bite of Po’boy I was talking around the moment before. “Some of them are pissy thinkin’ it’s going to affect the budget and their bottom line – like they wouldn’t have been hollerin’ for a fuckin’ lawyer themselves the second they came out of anesthesia.” I didn’t care that my tone was derisive. Fuck these motherfuckers for making anything harder on her in the absolute slightest. Self-serving sons of a bitches.

“I hadn’t thought of that,” she said and looked a little stunned like she’d been hit by a revelation. “I was hoping things would be different, you know?”

“How do you mean?” I asked.

“I don’t know… justdifferent,you know?”

“No,” I said and set my Po’boy down and wiped my mouth with a napkin.

“I think you just haven’t really caught up to the fact thatyou’redifferent. A thing like that, whether you remember the details or not, fundamentally changes a person. You may not remember the sordid details as it happened but you still went through a hell of a thing with a long recovery; mending broken bones and some deep physical trauma to your body changes you too. I think the thing that’s bothering you is that you’ve been so deeply changed by your experience you deeply feel like everything’s changed and the fact that all these people are wandering around like nothing has—”

“Yeah.” She perked up. “It’s like living in the twilight zone. I mean, I’m back and people are glad but at the same time it’s like I never left except for the silent shunning by the faculty and everyone has this false brightness or… whatever.”

“Alternate timeline?” I asked with a smile.

“Another dimension,” she said, and it held enough unhappiness despite her smile that I ached to hold her.

We sat in silence for a bit and I asked her quietly, “So, what do you wanna do tonight when we get home?” I was asking in a bid to distract her from her first day back struggles but instead of keeping it G or PG like I expected her to do, she dipped her chin, gave me a crook of a mischievous smile and with a sultry look and a raised eyebrow, and asked me, “What do you think?”

I laughed, outright then and shook my head and said, “My darlin’, I do believe you are insatiable.”

“For you?” she asked innocently. “Always.”

I bowed my head smiling to myself, and dare I say? The woman somehow found the right combination to makemeblush.

CHAPTERTHIRTY-THREE

Corliss…

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