Page 5 of A Case of You
After dropping Tracey off at the house where she was renting a room from a friend and coworker, he headed home. He was a little surprised to see Nate’s car still parked in the driveway, especially since it’d been nearly two hours since he’d left to help Tracey.
When he walked down the hall, Emma stepped out of the master bedroom and immediately motioned for Brandon to be quiet. Peeking in through the door, he realized Jeff lay sound asleep on the bed while Nate was removing acupuncture needles from him.
Brandon and Emma walked out to the kitchen. “He fell asleep about ten minutes ago,” she told him. “I brought him his evening meds earlier and made him take them. We decided to let him sleep. Nate said it likely meant the treatment helped.”
“Okay, good. I didn’t think Nate would be here this long.”
“Jeff had some massive knots in the backs of his shoulders. Lots of pain there. Nate did another treatment on him with the cups.”
“Ah.”
“Maybe I should think about going into physiotherapy or something instead of criminal justice.”
“Why?”
She hooked a thumb in the general direction of Brandon’s bedroom.
“Honey, we’re grown men. We’re perfectly capable of getting someone to take care of our medical needs. You decide what you want to do based onyou, not us.”
“Well, Grace has been looking at possibly going into sports medicine. She hasn’t made up her mind yet. She’s having fun working with the swim coaches.”
“As long as she’s not a supervillain, I’m sure her parents will be thrilled.”
They returned to the bedroom, where Nate was almost done removing all the needles. After Nate finished packing, Brandon retrieved the blank check from Stuart and helped Nate quietly get all his gear out to the living room so he could pay the man. Brandon motioned for Stuart to remain behind with Jeff, because him climbing off the bed, where he sat next to Jeff, might wake him up.
“I really appreciate this,” Brandon said to Nate once they were out in the living room. “Especially you coming over on such short notice.”
“I meant it when I said he needs to see me regularly so his pain doesn’t get this bad. It wasn’t only from yard work. It’s been building a while. He did this the last time he had a bad flare. He’s not telling you guys how bad his pain really is. He’s hiding it.”
Brandon had suspected that. “I’ll call Cherise in the morning and set up some appointments for him.”
“Excellent. If we can keep ahead of it, it’ll lower his stress levels and help his overall health. Plus, chronic pain like that is fatiguing, which stresses the whole body. Then it’s a cascading effect that keeps snowballing. Before you know it…” He pointed down the hallway and shrugged, his meaning clear.
A crash.
With the bill paid, Brandon helped Nate load his gear while Grace and Emma settled in at the dining room table with their laptops. He could tell they were cruising social media sites.
This wasn’t exactly how Brandon had planned to spend his Tuesday evening, but this kind of disruption sure as hell beat the days when he was wondering what kind of bullshit Pat and Tracey would put him and Emma through next.
He noticed some forms on the table next to Emma. “What are those?”
Her cheeks pinked a little. “College application forms.”
“Oh. Where to?”
She shrugged. “A few places.”
He sighed and looked to Grace, his go-to for information when Emma wasn’t forthcoming.
“USF, UF, FSU, St. Leo’s, and University of Miami. The Florida one, not the Ohio one.”
Brandon refocused on Emma. “And why would that be a secret?”
“It’s not a secret. I don’t know where I want to go yet.”
“Why no out of state schools?”
“Because I don’t know if I want to go to school out of state.”
