Page 24 of Give In To Love
Sorry to hear that. Want me to bring you some soup after class?
I’m not hungry. I’m just going to try to sleep it off
Ok. Let me know if you change your mind
*thumbs-up emoji*
I stared at the screen for a moment longer, then put my phone away and did my best to focus on the lecture.
The rest of the day dragged on. I’d subbed out my Thursday night dance classes for the next several weeks so I could attendRentrehearsals, but I still had to participate in said rehearsals before I could get back to the dorm to check on Jimmy. Then, around four o’clock, I got a notice that the theater building was closed due to a plumbing emergency. Rehearsal was relocated to the music building and ended earlier at eight instead of ten. Which meant that at eight oh seven, I was currently on my way back to the dorm with two cups of instant noodles that I’d purchased at the C-store just before they’d closed.
I entered the dorm, taking care to move quietly in case Jimmy was sleeping. The overhead light was off, but he’d left the desk lamp on, casting a soft glow over the room. I set my backpack down and put the noodle cups on my dresser, then stepped over to the bed where Jimmy was curled into a ball, his back to me. He was buried in blankets pulled all the way up to his chin, and when I peered over to see if he was awake or asleep, I saw he had a book open and appeared to be reading. I sat gently on the edge of the bed and must have startled him because he scrambled onto one elbow, yanking out an earbud as he looked at me with wide eyes.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you,” I said, hands out in front of me placatingly.
“I didn’t hear you come in. I thought you weren’t done until ten.”
“We finished early. It’s a long story.” I waved a hand in front of me dismissively. “How are you feeling?”
He dropped his eyes. “Oh. Um. Okay, I guess.”
“I brought you some soup. It’s just instant noodles, but I figured you probably didn’t want anything heavier. Do you want me to heat it up?”
“You didn’t have to do that.”
“I wanted to,” I said with a soft smile. I stopped myself from addingtake care of youto the end of the sentence because that seemed like a little much. I was still working on the intensity thing. “Do you want chicken or beef?” I asked, standing to grab the noodle cups off my dresser.
“I’m not…” He huffed out a breath, and I turned back to look at him. “I’m not sick. Or at least not physically.”
I sat back down, waiting for him to explain, though I had a feeling I knew what he was going to say.
“I’m just having a bad day. Like not a regular person bad day. A bad day, anxiety-wise.” He fiddled with the edge of the blanket, refusing to look at me, though the color had begun to rise up his neck and into his cheeks.
Carefully, I scooted closer, pulling his hand in mine. He didn’t resist, though he still wouldn’t look at me.
“What triggered it?”
“Nothing. It just sneaks up on me sometimes.” He shrugged his shoulders. “Most of the time, I can feel it coming, or the trigger will be super obvious, but every so often, I just wake up feeling… I don’t know how to describe it.”
“That’s okay. You don’t have to explain it to me. I was just curious.”
He looked at me then. His brown eyes were almost black in the dim light. “I want to though. I want you to understand.”
“Okay.”
He ran his free hand through his messy curls while I stroked the back of his other hand with my thumb. “It’s like…there’s this weight on my chest and… You know that lump you get in the back of your throat when you’re about to cry?”
I nodded, swallowing compulsively.
“It kind of feels like that. Like there’s a lump sitting at the base of my throat. And sometimes, it feels like I could start crying at any moment, and other times, it’s just the lump and the weight on my chest. Usually, the best thing I can do is push through. Keep the routine. Do my best to focus on something else and hope a distraction will do the trick. But sometimes, it’s bad enough that I know nothing will help other than giving myself permission to rest. To shut everything else out and hide from the world.”
“I take it today was a hide-from-the-world day?”
“Yeah. I’m sorry.”
My heart cracked a little at that and I couldn’t help but scoot closer, turning so we were sitting side by side with my arm around him. I pulled him close to me until his head rested on my chest. “Aw, sunshine. Why would you be sorry?”
“I don’t know. I just feel bad that I left you hanging today. And that I told you I was sick when I wasn’t.”
