I opened my mouth to tell her that I was okay, but that would be a lie.
My head hurt so bad that my eye was twitching, and she knew when that started to happen that I needed a pill—stat.
Otherwise, it’d get out of hand.
“Did I wake you up?” I questioned.
“You didn’t turn off the alarm. You only input half the code, and so when you opened the door, it started going off.” She paused. “Which I could hear through the common wall between the duplexes.”
“Oh, shit,” I murmured, then started to walk through the kitchen door.
Each step I took made my head pound even harder, so it surprised me when she forced me to stop outside the garage door.
“Let me go turn it off…”
I could see the wisdom in her suggestion.
“The alarm company is going to ask you for a code phrase. The phrase is Lumberjacks suck.”
She blinked at me, then nodded.
“Okay.”
Then she pushed through the door.
The sound hit my ears, and I tried hard not to react to the piercing in my skull. But I couldn’t do it any longer. I walked to the trashcan in my garage that I kept for beer cans and threw up.
The act of throwing up made my head hurt more, which only made me throw up more.
It was a vicious cycle and one that I knew I wouldn’t be able to repeat.
I also knew, without a doubt, that I wouldn’t be doing any more extra exertion again.
I now knew better.
***
Henley
“Stupid, obstinate, pig-headed man,” I grumbled.
“I can hear you, you know,” the man that was currently on my shit list said.
“I know damn well you can hear me,” I countered. “The difference is that I don’t care if you can hear me.”
He sighed. “I thought that it was a ruse to get me to stay in bed.”
I rolled my eyes heavenward.
“It wasn’t,” I snapped.
He sighed. “Are you going to be mad at me all day?”
I shrugged. “Maybe.”
He rolled his eyes. “I’m hungry.”
“What do you want?”
I didn’t even have to ask that. He always wanted the same thing. Egg white omelet and fresh fruit on the side. He didn’t even put cheese on the omelet. Just gross egg whites.
And, since I was accommodating, I always gave him what he wanted, even when it grossed me out.
“I think I’ll have some bacon.”
My phone fell from my hand.
“Oh, God,” I whispered. “I’ve broken you, haven’t I?”
He opened one eye and stared at me. “It’s Sunday. I eat bacon on Sundays.”
“You didn’t last Sunday.” he countered.
“I also didn’t have bacon the Sunday before that. This Sunday, I do,” he countered.
I rolled my eyes.
“Whatever.”
Then, without further ado, I finished his breakfast.
I also got a little wild and scrambled him some eggs with the yolks in them.
He ate it all without complaint, which made me even more curious.
“Why do you eat like that?”
I couldn’t help the curious question. I mean, logically I knew the answer of why he ate like he did. He was a professional baseball player, after all.
However, he didn’t have to always eat like that…but he did.
Even a few hours after leaving the hospital, and waking up from a freakin’ coma, he’d asked for whole wheat toast.
I mean, my God, man! You hadn’t had real food in weeks, yet you ask for whole wheat fuckin’ toast?
Nuh-uh. If I woke up from a coma that I’d been in for two weeks like he had, I’d have been requesting powdered donuts, chocolate, chicken fried steak, rolls, and possibly a pizza.
I’d have had them add the pineapples to at least make it somewhat healthy.
But there sure wouldn’t be any whole wheat toast in my future. Whether I was waking up from a coma or not.
I just wasn’t a healthy eater…so sue me.
“Because from sixteen years old until I was twenty, I had to suffer through eating the shittiest food that there is in existence because it was cheap. The moment I was able to afford to eat healthy…I did,” he answered.
I blinked at him in surprise.
In all honesty, I expected just about any other answer in the world…but not that one.
He couldn’t eat healthy when he was younger? How was that even possible?
But I could tell he really didn’t want to talk about it at all, mostly because he turned his back on me and headed for the living room where his recliner was.
When he found the chair and sat the leg prop up, closing his eyes moments later, I knew the subject was closed.
Honestly, that was the most personal answer I’d gotten out of him this entire time we’d been together.
I mean, he knew my entire life story.
Me, on the other hand? I knew nothing about him other than what I’d been able to find on the internet.
He was twenty-nine, six-foot-three, two hundred and twenty pounds, and had a shit ton of tattoos that everyone speculated over, but didn’t actually know anything about.