It was Wednesday, just a few days before the wedding. Tomorrow, Taylor and Anika were coming up to Cousins, and so were Josh, Redbird, and my brother. The boys were going to have their so-called bachelor night, and Taylor and Anika and I were just going to hang by the pool. Between Denise Coletti and Taylor, the wedding was pretty much ready to go. The food had been ordered—lobster rolls and shrimp cocktail. We had Christmas lights for the deck and yard. Conrad was going to play a song on the guitar when I walked out with my dad. I was going to wear the jewelry Susannah had left me; I was going to do my own hair and makeup.
Everything was coming together, but I still couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something I’d forgotten.
I was vacuuming the living room when Conrad pushed open the sliding door. He’d been surfing all morning. I turned off the vacuum cleaner. “What’s wrong?” I asked him. He looked pale, and his hair was dripping in his eyes.
“Wipeout,” he said. “I got cut by my fin.”
“Bad?”
“Nah, not too bad.” I watched him limp over to the bathroom, and I ran over. He was sitting on the sill of the tub, and blood was soaking through his towel and running down his leg. I felt woozy for a split second.
“It’s already stopped bleeding,” Conrad said, and his face was as white as the marble counter. He looked like he was going to pass out. “Looks worse than it is.”
“Keep putting pressure on it,” I said. “I’m gonna get some stuff to clean it.”
It must have really hurt, because he obeyed me. When I came back with hydrogen peroxide and gauze and Bactine, he was still sitting there in the same position, his leg in the tub.
I sat down next to him and straddled the sill, facing him. “Let go,” I told him.
“I’m fine,” he said. “I’ll do it.”
“No, you’re not fine,” I said.
Then he let go of the towel, and I pressed down on it. He winced.
“Sorry,” I said. I held it for a few minutes, and then I peeled the bloody towel away from his leg. The cut was a few inches long and skinny. It wasn’t bleeding as heavily, so I went ahead and started to pour hydrogen peroxide on the wound.
“Ow!” he yelped.
“Don’t be such a baby, it’s barely a scratch,” I lied. I was wondering if he was going to need stitches.
Conrad leaned in closer to me, his head just barely resting on my shoulder as I cleaned. I could feel him breathing in and out, could feel each sharp intake of breath every time I touched the cut.
When the cut was clean, it looked a lot better. I dabbed Bactine on it and then wrapped his calf in gauze. Then I patted his knee. “See? All better.”
He lifted his head up and said, “Thank you.”
“Sure,” I said.
There was this moment between us then, of us just looking at each other, holding each other’s gaze. My breath quickened. If I leaned forward just a little, we would be kissing. I knew I should move away, but I couldn’t.
“Belly?” I could feel his breath on my neck.
“Yeah?”
“Will you help me stand up? I’m going to go upstairs and take a nap.”
“You’ve lost a lot of blood,” I said, and my voice vibrated off the bathroom tiles. “I don’t think you’re supposed to sleep.”
He smiled weakly. “That’s with concussions.”
I scrambled up and then pulled him up next to me. “Can you walk?” I asked.
“I’ll manage,” he said, limping away from me, his hand on the wall.
My T-shirt was damp from his head on my shoulder. Mechanically, I started cleaning up the mess, and my heart was pounding out of my chest. What just happened? What did I almost do? This time wasn’t like with the peaches. This time it was all me.
Conrad slept right through dinnertime, and I wondered if I should bring him some food but decided against it. Instead I heated up one of the frozen pizzas I’d bought, and then I spent the rest of the night cleaning the downstairs. I was relieved that everybody would be here tomorrow. It wouldn’t be just me and him anymore. Once Jeremiah was here, everything would go back to normal.
