The Girlfriend (The Boss 2)

“Very good,” Josh said. His brown eyes were ringed with tired shadows.

Downstairs, the kitchen was dark and dead silent. The staff all started arriving at five AM, so I had plenty of time without worrying about being caught in my bathrobe. I located a teacup, filled the kettle that sat on the back of the industrial stove, and lit the burner.

The kitchen was super modern. A wide crescent skylight with white beams supporting the glass lit the room in the daytime, and shades sandwiched between the panes blocked them off during the night, so our next-door neighbors couldn’t see down and in. At night, inset lights illuminated the room with a bright, but indirect, glow.

Even though I wasn’t hungry, I wandered to the refrigerator and opened it. Fully stocked with more fruits and veggies than I thought would be possible for a human to consume in the few short days before they went bad. But then, before chemo, Neil had been drinking shakes made out of huge bunches of kale and bushels of carrots. He’d really embraced the healthy diet Emma had pushed on him, and I was glad. It would not only help him stay as strong as possible through chemotherapy, but it gave him an illusion of control.

Staring at all the produce— all of it scrubbed clean in anti-bacterial dishwashing soap as per Dr. Grant’s orders— an answer I hadn’t even been looking for came to me. The hardest part of Neil’s treatment wouldn’t be the side effects or the transplant or missing work, but his lack of control. He was the master of his own destiny, or he was a shambling mess. There was really no in-between.

I was going to have to be very careful with his feelings. I guess I had known that all along. I’d just never seen it illustrated so literally.

When I came back from the kitchen with his tea, Neil was already showered and dressed in clean pajamas. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, and he couldn’t meet my eyes.

I placed the teacup and saucer on the bedside table. He wouldn’t drink it, but I could keep up the facade. “Feeling better?”

“No. Not at all.” He didn’t look up.

I sat down next to him. “So... you shit yourself. Big deal. I did that once when I was running cross-country in high school. In front of all my teammates.”

He blanched. “Not at a meet, I hope.”

“No, a practice, thank god. But it was still humiliating. For the rest of high school, I was sure everyone thought of me as ‘that girl who shit herself’.” I forced myself to laugh at the memory. “Look, this is going to happen. You’re sick. You’re really, really sick. Nobody’s going to hold it against you if you barf or poop or even just have a cranky day. You have to stop pretending like you’re fine to make other people feel better. You have to stop pretending like you can pretend you’re fine.”

“I haven’t been fine since the hospital,” he admitted quietly. “I’ve been miserable.”

“Then why didn’t you tell me?” I felt like I had been punched in the chest. Here, I’d been acting like everything was fine because I was following his cues. If there had been something else I could have done for him, some way I could have made him comfortable... “Neil, I’m here to help take care of you. You have every right to let me know how sick you’re feeling.”

He grimaced. “I’m frightened, Sophie. And I don’t like it.”

“I know you are. If you need control, boss me around. I’m used to it. You can give me one pointless task a day, and I’ll be all over it.”

“Only one?”

“Don’t push your luck.” I leaned my forehead against his shoulder. “Neil, I love you. I’m going to love you no matter what you do, as long as I don’t have to clean it up. And even if I do, I’ll still love you.”

“I know.” He shook his head. “Ever since we came back from Paris, I’ve been thinking, is this really my life? Is this— I mean feasibly this could be how it all ends for me.”

“It could be.” Somehow saying it felt better than reassuring him that he would be fine. I owed it to him to take his concern seriously. “But if it is, do you want to go out miserable, fighting for control over a situation you can’t change? Or do you want to accept the fact that the people who love you don’t love you because you’re a control freak, but in spite of that?”

He laughed softly, then squinted his eyes shut tight. “Oh, I really don’t feel good. Maybe it would be a good idea if we slept with the waste bin close to the—”

And then he threw up all over both of our laps.