Page 110 of Lovesick
I consider airing a grievance, but my nerves seem to have the strength of a Molotov cocktail, counting on me to spontaneously combust on the spot. “I didn’t want to give MU a new gossip column.”
When I look into the blue wellsprings of Knox’s eyes, the pith of calm in them seems transferable.
“Don’t worry, everyone’s in total support of you guys. And if they aren’t, they can answer to the Mustangs.”
A growl condenses in Harlan’s chest. “That’s right. You mess with Merit, you mess with all of us.”
I wrap my arms around my teammates and pull them into my sides for a hug. “Thanks, guys.”
Knox, surprisingly, doesn’t sock me in the jaw for touching him. “We’re always going to be here for you, Cap.”
No more poised quills. No more potential crossfire. No more insults made of shrapnel. I haven’t felt this incredible in a long time. Like, no-longer-need-to-take-a-Xanax-daily incredible. This is unprecedented.
“Was I at least covert about my crush?” I ask.
Knox licks over his canine like a well-fed predator, grins, then pats me on the chest. “Sure, buddy.”
30
NEW HORIZONS
MERIT
Ithought for sure MU would shun me like a witch during the 1600s after that horrendous failure of a fundraiser, but no one has. It’s a good thing the auction had a no-phones policy—I haven’t seen a single video floating around the interwebs about my embarrassing fall.
I know this is going to sound crazy after all the stress I’ve put myself through, but this time away from dance has shown me that it’s more harmful to push and push andpushthan it is to take a break every once in a while.
The doctor said that the key to a quick recovery would consist of switching my medication and limiting my stress. Now, instead of taking amiodarone, I’m experimenting with flecainide. It’s an antiarrhythmic agent that blocks certain electrical signals to my heart—those which cause irregular beats. He also advised that I should continue to exercise regularly, eat healthy, and refrain from recreational substances. I realized I was pushing myself so hard because I thought I had something to prove to the world, but the only validation that mattered was my own.
The hospital kept me for a few extra days after my incident,just to monitor my vitals. Irelyn visited me daily, and Harlan, Sutton, and Foster snuck in whenever they had free time. They even brought me a surfeit of get-well gifts ranging from chocolates to bouquets to heart-shaped balloons.
Crew—even though he had a full schedule on top of hockey practice—was by my side the entire time. He brought me my makeup work, slid me my favorite bran muffin and blueberry and banana smoothie from the café on campus, spent endless hours regaling me with stories about his day, and even bought me the cutest little opossum stuffie, along with a stack of newly released romance books.
But my favorite part was when he would just…hold me. No talking, no room for a teeming cesspool of worry. A quiet kind of love, expressed through the unspoken conversation between our bodies.
It’s my first day back, and I have a meeting with Mrs. Burke, so it’s safe to say that the nerves are grinding my confidence like a mortar pounding against the basalt basin of a pestle. I have no idea what she’s going to say. I may have slipped unscathed from public scrutiny, but I don’t even know if she’ll want me as her teaching assistant next year after my one-woman travesty.
Irelyn, with her fashionable raincoat and Jimmy Choo boots, walks beside me for emotional support. She has thirty minutes before she has to get to her next class, and she knew that I’d be a mess. I’m also happy to report that my family—after much convincing—has allowed me to move back in with my best friend.
The wooly storm clouds overhead are tumefied with the promise of rain, the evidence from the night’s previous storm exhibited in overflowing drains and old pipes regurgitating excess runoff. The ground is covered in wet leaves, their thin, vascularized bodies stuck to the slippery asphalt, and the hem of the sky has assumed a permanent, dreary shade of slow-burning charcoal.
“I don’t know if I can do this,” I mutter beneath my breath.
She circumvents a puddle. “Don’t think like that, Mer. You’re working yourself up. Everything is going to be alright.”
Anxiety tight-fists my stomach as I step into the lecture hall—ten minutes before the next class is supposed to start—with my binder hugged to my chest for support. Mrs. Burke looks deep in concentration, her tortoiseshell glasses flush against the bridge of her nose. My best friend idles by a shadowed row of seats, briefly hanging on to my worry for me.
Muscles rankled and tongue thickening in my mouth, my heart rumbles in my chest like a cloven-hooved stampede. Putting one foot in front of the other seems to be out of my wheelhouse at the moment.
“Mrs. Burke?” I squeak out into the emptiness of the room.
Her head of voluminous hair whips up to pinpoint my meek voice as instant relief darts across her expression, her impassive grimace transmuting into a smile. I’m kind of surprised that she isn’t glaring daggers at me.
“Oh, Merit! How are you doing?” she asks, abandoning her work to heel-clack over to me, and catching me off guard when she wrangles me into a hug. She smells like vanilla and hazelnut, and her gingham sweater is unequivocally soft.
“I’m okay,” I say, patting her back a bit awkwardly.
My stewing worry, however, seems to be retreating into the dungeon depths from which it crawled. A mindless, shapeless, bone-thin creature held back by corroded chains, completely blind, moving purely on sound and theker-thumpof my heart. It has no jurisdiction here in the light.
