Page 20 of Gap Control (Lewiston Forge #3)

Chapter seventeen

TJ

S omewhere between the second sneeze and the third time I wiped my nose on the inside of my sleeve, I decided I wasn't sick. "It's just dry air." That sounded more convincing in my head than it did out loud, given that my voice came out like gravel soaked in NyQuil.

Mason looked up from the kitchen with the world's most skeptical face and a steaming mug in his hand. "Uh-huh."

"I don't need that." I pointed at the mug like it was radioactive.

"It's tea."

"Right."

"It's only ginger and lemon."

"So is floor cleaner."

He walked it over anyway. I tried to glare at him, but my sinuses were staging a mutiny. My eyes watered. My skull felt two sizes too heavy, and my arms like wet pasta.

Despite all that, I still had my pride. And my shimmery hoodie.

"I'm going to skate. Coach'll need me for line drills. I'll wear a hoodie under my gear."

Mason stared. "Tell me all the ways that sentence makes sense."

I pushed myself up off the couch. "You don't understand. If I skip morning skate, the entire team falls apart. Like a Jenga tower, only sweatier."

"Uh-huh."

I got as far as lacing one skate before I stood, and the room decided it wanted to be a carnival ride. I blinked. The walls swayed left. My knees buckled.

Mason caught me mid-tilt. "Okay, hero." He gently tugged the skate off and set it aside. "You're benched."

"That's insulting. I'm a first-line forward."

"Fine. We'll put you on the injured reserve."

He helped me shuffle back to the couch and tucked a blanket around me. It smelled like fabric softener and Mason.

I closed my eyes. "This doesn't mean I'm officially sick."

"Sure. You're officially aggressively horizontal."

Mason tucked the blanket tighter around me, treating me like a flight risk.

"Don't smother me.".

"You're smothering yourself with attitude." He walked off toward the kitchen.

I let my head sink back against the arm of the couch. The cushions felt firmer than usual. The furniture was judging me for being pathetic.

Mason returned a minute later, arms full—tea, obviously, but also a bottle of electrolyte water, a thermometer, and a tub of menthol rub smelling of eucalyptus.

I narrowed my eyes. "Do you think I'm a koala and live in one of those trees?"

"It's Vicks. You're supposed to rub it on your chest."

"Oh good, we're doing old-lady cures now."

"I don't see you making any other suggestions."

"I have one." He handed me a thermometer. "Let me die in peace."

Mason ignored the comment as he uncapped it.

I gave him a suspicious look. "We're not doing this the real way, are we?"

"No, TJ. We're not eighties cartoon characters. Under the tongue, please."

I sighed, but obeyed.

While I held it in place, Mason opened his sketchbook and started a quick pencil line, head down, focused.

The scratch of a pencil on paper was the only sound for a few minutes, rhythmic and unhurried, like he'd done this beside me a hundred times before.

I watched him through watery eyes, heard the thermometer beep, and handed it over.

"100.7. Low-grade. You'll live."

"Tragic."

He didn't laugh. He reached over and gently pressed the back of his fingers to my forehead. His touch was soft, reassuring.

I held still.

"You don't have to perform for me, you know," he said.

I blinked.

"I know you like being the strong one, but it's okay to take some downtime when you're sick."

"That's surprisingly romantic for someone trying to feed me ginger-lemon tea."

Mason smiled. "I don't know how to do all this caretaking stuff, but I'm good at soup."

"You got a trophy for that?"

"No, but I'm about to."

I stared at the ceiling. Everything felt loose and unmoored. My usual filters melted away from my feverish head.

"I was eight," I heard myself say. "When I learned that making people laugh was more important than being honest."

Mason froze.

"My dad got hurt at work. Back injury. Couldn't run the press for months, maybe longer. Workers' comp was a joke."

The words continued to roll out of my mouth, fever-loose and too honest. "He disappeared. I mean, we could see him, but he wasn't there. Slept all day. Wouldn't talk to us. Mom cried when she thought I wasn't looking."

Mason set down the thermometer.

"This one morning before school, I was reading the back of a Lucky Charms box in a stupid voice. I don't even know why, but he laughed. A long, loud laugh. First time in weeks."

My throat was raw.

"Mom looked at me like I'd performed a miracle."

I turned my head toward Mason. I couldn't decode his expression.

"So, I kept trying to do it again, every day. I'd come home from school and perform. Tell him about the weird kid in my class, or do impressions of teachers. Anything. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes he'd smile, or even talk to us at dinner."

The room was too quiet as I continued.

"And when it didn't work? When I couldn't make him laugh? He'd go back to bed, back to being gone. So, I got better at it. Funnier, but more desperate at the same time."

Mason reached under the blanket to grab my hand.

"I started doing it everywhere. At school. With the neighborhood kids. Even entertaining grocery store clerks. Anyone who looked sad or tired or disappointed. What if I could fix them? What if I were good enough?"

"TJ—" Mason gripped my hand tightly.

"He tried to kill himself when I was twelve." The words came out flat, matter-of-fact. "Pills. Mom found him. I remember thinking, in the ambulance, that I should have been funnier that morning. Should have tried harder."

Mason leaned in close.

"He got help. Therapy, medication, the works. He got better, mostly, but the weird thing was that I couldn't stop. Even when nobody needed fixing, I kept doing it. What if they did need it and I wasn't ready?"

I closed my eyes.

"That's why this is hard for me. Someone taking care of me when I'm sick. I'm supposed to make sure everyone else is okay."

We were both silent.

Mason spoke up in a quiet voice. "You were eight."

"Yeah."

"That wasn't your job."

"But I was good at it. Felt like it was."

"It wasn't." His voice was firm. "And it's not now."

***

Mason left for the arena just after five, gear slung over one shoulder and soup instructions left on the counter. He was great playing the role of my extremely attractive roommate in a sitcom pilot.

"You good?" He lingered by the door, and I worried he might skip the game if I blinked too slowly.

"I'm good," I rasped. "Go forth and score goals."

He hesitated. "I can stay."

I shook my head. "Don't you dare. Go wreck their defense and come back sweaty and victorious."

He kissed my forehead, and then he was gone, leaving the place too quiet and smelling vaguely of ginger and eucalyptus.

I lasted twenty minutes before I opened the team group chat.

TJ: Official update: still dying. Mason has abandoned me for hockey. He's probably flirting with a ref right now.

Immediately:

Brady: What flavor of dying are we talking?

Monroe: Is this dramatic TJ or actual medical TJ?

TJ: Both. I am a medical drama. Season 3. Very emotional.

Lambert: Pics or you're faking.

TJ: [phone pic sent of me under a pile of blankets with my nose red and a mug full of Mason's suspicious tea)

Monroe: You look like a diseased marshmallow.

Next, because God loves chaos:

Coach Mac: Focus up. Game starts in twenty.

Monroe: YES COACH.

Lambert: SORRY COACH.

TJ: I'm not even there, and I still feel benched.

By the second period, updates rolled in.

Monroe: Mason nearly checked a guy into the bench.

Brady: Pretty sure he's playing angry.

Lambert: Is this what happens when you take away his TJ??

Monroe: He's a menace. A grief-powered menace.

TJ: ?? I trained him well.

I was mid-scroll, half-asleep and 60% full of soup, when I heard the apartment door unlock. A gust of cold air came in with Mason, teasing my feverish face.

He stepped inside, cheeks pink and hair damp from a post-game shower.

"How's the patient?"

"Dramatic and underappreciated," I croaked. "How's the ice assassin?"

His expression read fond exasperation. "We won. Barely."

I held out a hand. "Come. Tell me all about your glorious battle."

"You mean the one where I nearly got a penalty for slashing and Monroe accidentally skated into the ref?"

"Yes. I need to hear about all the important moments."

He kicked off his boots, dropped his gear bag with a thud, and settled on the edge of the couch, rubbing his hands together to warm them.

"You didn't watch?"

"I was too busy surviving. Also, I didn't know the remote was under my spine until halfway through the third."

"You missed a decent game."

"Lucky for me, I have a live-in play-by-play announcer." I nudged him with my foot. "Walk me through it, but do it sexy."

Mason rolled his eyes and started talking.

Puck drops. First-period nerves. One clumsy shift and one perfect pass. With Lambert, they almost connected on a shorty in the second. Monroe got a goal and forgot how to celebrate, skated into the boards. Classic Forge chaos.

As he continued, I chimed in occasionally with commentary of my own.

"Oh yeah, that's where you deked left and baited the guy into chasing you wide."

Mason paused and tilted his head. "That's precisely what I did."

I grinned. "I may be sick, but I'm still psychic."

"You didn't see it."

"Nope."

"But you knew?"

"You're not that hard to read."

He looked at me like I'd said something scandalous, but sweet. He opened his mouth and then closed it again.

He kissed my cheek. "Fine. So, what else did I do?"

"You tried to body-check someone and missed by about two feet, but you played it off like you meant to pivot instead."

"…that did happen."

"Like I said. Psychic."

He shook his head, smiling. "You're a menace."

"You say that like it's a bad thing."

"No, accurate."

Mason disappeared into the kitchen to warm up whatever soup was left, which gave me enough time to retrieve my masterpiece from beneath the couch cushion where I'd hidden it like contraband.

I'd started it while he was gone. Half-delirious and blanket-wrapped, Sharpie in one hand and tissue in the other. At some point, I spilled tea on the edge. It added character.

When he returned, holding a bowl and a spoon, I sat up straighter.

"Well? Feeling stronger?"

"Strong enough to return fire." I handed him the paper.

He looked at it, blinked, and then stared.

"You made me a comic strip."

"I made you art. Behold: Hot Hockey Nurse Boyfriend Saves the Day. "

It was three glorious panels of stick-figure excellence:

Panel one: a very muscular Mason—labelled YOU—wielding a hockey stick against a swarm of cartoon germs wearing tiny frowny faces.

Panel two: sickly me in a blanket cocoon labeled ME, eyes replaced with swirls, saying "ugh."

Panel three: Mason spoon-feeding soup into my mouth while lasers shoot from his eyes at the word INFLUENZA.

He laughed so hard he nearly dropped the bowl.

"I can't believe—"

"Shhh," I said. "Let the art speak."

"You gave me laser eyes."

"They are emotionally true."

He kept laughing, but then he was quiet. He folded the comic carefully, smoothing one edge.

Without comment, he slipped it into the front pocket of his bag.

I blinked. "You're keeping that?"

"Obviously. I need proof."

"Of what?"

He looked at me—really looked—and the air between us shifted.

"That I didn't imagine this. You. The art. The part where I like you more than I should admit."

I opened my mouth, ready with a joke, but I thought better of it.

Instead, I said, "Yeah, well. You deserved it."

He didn't say anything. Just leaned and brushed a hand over the side of my face. No kiss or joke. Just that.

And somehow, it meant more than either.