Page 33 of Midnight Kisses

Retaining a lawyer to draw up contracts and driving them across the city to her house was the absolute least of what I would do to insert myself in this woman’s life and stay there.

“Miles?”

“Contracts.” I pushed them into her arms and stepped over the threshold. “Why didn’t you tell me you were on death’s door?”

“I’m not on deaf’s dawwh.”

Her protest wouldn’t have impressed me even without the snot.

“Have you eaten?” I looked around for the kitchen and went through the door I guessed led there. The house was small but tidy, although the unmistakable 70s decor that didn’t fit Perry marked it as a rental.

“I have soup.” She trailed into her kitchen behind me. “Miles, I don’t know what you think you’re doing?—”

“Looking after you,” I announced, and it didn’t matter that I’d never done anything like this before and wasn’t much ofa caregiver. I knew I could at least improve upon her current situation.

I took off my jacket and laid it over the back of an armchair, then flinched when I turned back to the kitchen and saw the sad little takeout container, sitting on the bench with a spoon next to it. “Don’t tell me that’s your lunch.”

“I like chicken soup.”

“That’s not soup, that’s congealed slop.”

“I was going to heat it.”

“Hot slop, then. Go to bed, Perry. I’ll see if I can salvage your slop.” If I couldn’t, I’d throw it out and order a replacement, taking my chances that she’d be too jacked on cold medicine to notice.

She looked at me like she was going to argue some more, but then her shoulders sank. “Okay. My room’s the third door on the left. Thank you. Just the soup and then I’ll be totally fine. Thank you, Miles.”

“Bed, blondie.”

When I took the salvaged hot soup to Perry’s room, she was propped up on a mountain of pillows, watching something on her laptop.

She barely resembled the bombshell on the chaise I’d first met, yet that stupid muscle —Nerve? Tumour?—in my chest throbbed at the sight of her sitting there, looking all trusting and vulnerable. Her hair was held back with a thick grey band, and she was wrapped in a fluffy dressing gown that might have once been blue, but it had been washed so many times the colour could only be described as pallid. Like her. She wiggled further up the bed, making room for the tray I placed on her lap. Soup procured, contracts delivered, the job was done. I could go. Instead, I lingered.

“What are you watching?”

“Derry Girls.”

“Girls who work in a dairy? Like, a corner store?”

“No, girls from Londonderry. In Ireland. It’s a comedy set in the 90s. Have you never seen it?”

I shook my head.

She gasped. “That’s a travesty! It’s really funny, you’ll like it.”

“Move over then.”

“Miles!” She looked at me like I was a three-headed dog. “I’msick. I’ve got chills. And sweats. And snot.Somuch snot.”

“So? Your bed’s huge and I’m warm. Like a human hot water bottle.”

“You’ll get sick. I’ll give you my bugs.”

I snorted. “You can try. I’ve got the constitution of an ox. I never get sick.”

She rolled her eyes but shuffled over and made space for me next to her. I sat on the covers and leaned back against the headboard, and we watched an episode together. When that finished and the next one autoplayed, I didn’t move. Eventually, she put her laptop on me and curled into my side.

We watched her show all afternoon, and eventually I heated the rest of her soup for her dinner, even stealing a bit for myself. She was too zonked to notice. I didn’t say anything about leaving, and she didn’t ask. Eventually, she fell asleep half on my chest, my arm around her shoulder. She woke once, too hot in her gown and pressed against me as a human-heater, and went to take a shower. When she came back, she still didn’t say anything about being here, just flopped back into bed and threw an arm around me like she’d never left.

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