Page 87 of Code Word
Luke pouted again. “Stay here,” he said before disappearing out of the room.
I inspected my knee. It wasn’t bruised or swollen; it just wasn’t good. I’d had a fucked knee for years and surgery to repair the tendon. The rest and physical therapy that followed had healed it, but it was never one hundred percent again. Still, the pain was gone.
Until now.
It didn’t feel like a tear, incomplete or otherwise. I knew what that was like. This felt like more of an overextension or a strain at the wrong angle or something.
Luke came back with Alma. Not what I was expecting, butshe looked at me, at my knee and the ice pack, and made a sad face. “I have ointment,” she said before she was gone.
Luke sat back down beside me. “I didn’t know what else to do,” he said quietly. “And she’s like a mom, and moms know what to do. Should we get you to a hospital or something? I feel terrible.”
“Luke, babe, it’s fine. It’s just sprained or something. I don’t think it’s torn or anything.”
His eyes met mine. “Babe?” He was slow to smile. “Did you just call me babe?”
“Nope. Are you feeling okay? I’ve never called anyone that in my life. Did you hit your head or something?” I put the ice pack on his head.
“You totally fucking did,” he said with a laugh, putting the ice pack back on my knee.
“Here,” Alma said, holding up a small jar. “Ointment.” She handed it to Luke. “Rub it in. The smell is not good but it will help.”
“Thank you,” we both said at the same time.
“Okay,” she said with a smile. “I’ll come see you in the morning.”
We both waited until she was gone. “She’s just at the front of the house?”
Luke nodded. “Yeah. It’s like an annex or something. There’s a door. She told me to knock if I ever needed anything.”
“Dude,” I said. “We made out on this couch! We made each other come on this couch.”
“Yeah, but she wasn’t here then.”
“I was gonna make it happen again just now when I said the rest of me works just fine,” I said.
“Dude? I thought I was babe.”
I sighed.
“And past tense? ‘Was gonna make it happen again.’ So that means we’re not—” He shrugged. “—testing theories?”
“Not with Alma on the other side of the door. It’d be like doing it in your mom’s house. Ew.”
He snorted. “I’ve fantasized about that, just so you know.”
I stared at him. “At your mom’s house?”
He laughed. “Not like that. Don’t make it sound weird.”
“I didn’t make this weird. Believe me.”
He snorted. “No, when we were younger, hanging out at my folks’ place or yours. In our rooms, like we used to do all the time. I used to picture us wrestling over something and falling on the bed. You’d look at me, at my lips, then you’d kiss me...”
That stopped me in my tracks. “You did?”
He’d really wanted this for so long. Years and years.
He nodded.
