Wish You Were Her(78)

She leaned forward, as if reading the many emotions in his face.

“I’m fine,” he reiterated. The last thing he wanted was to cause her any discomfort. She would want to be kind and make him feel better, if he broke the dam and told her what he had come to feel. “Don’t worry about me. Do you need some heartier food? Painkillers?”

She smiled at him, in a way she had never smiled at him before. “Will you lie next to me and just talk?”

“Yeah?” he said, almost balking. Lying next to her on a bed, even though he was fully dressed and on top of the covers, still sounded incredibly intimate. “What do you want to talk about?”

“Can you just talk? I like your voice. It’s deep and even and it relaxes me. When—when it’s not yelling about book returns.”

He smiled, despite the small jab. He slid onto the bedspread beside her and she nestled a little closer, shutting her eyes and trying to take a deep breath despite her lungs insisting on shallow ones.

He talked nonsense for her. She pulled him a little closer, her head on her pillow and her hand clutching his black fisherman’s knit. He lay on his back, she on her side. He spoke slowly and softly, deliberately trying to lull her into a state of complete rest. When he knew she was out, he kept talking. He didn’t want his silence to jolt her back into discomfort. He told stories of his first wooden sword at twelve. His favorite Greek mythology facts. The lyrics to “Downtown Train.”

He talked and talked until she was completely at peace.



* * *



When he finally left her to sleep, he went into the kitchen and started to make a note on his phone. Jasper was sitting in the window seat, drawing on a tablet with a stylus. She smiled at him as he entered the room.

“How’s our girl?”

Jonah raised his smartphone, showing her his list in progress. “I’m cooking her dinner.”

Jasper formed an “O” in delighted surprise. “You are, indeed.”

“I’ll make enough for all of us,” he added hastily. “But most of it for her. Maybe a lamb ragu, something that’ll stick to the bones. But I’ll get some bread and eggs and cheese and spinach and stuff, all she has in here are bananas and oatmeal. I can do a veggie omelette or a grilled cheese, if ragu is too heavy right now. And Tylenol, she needs Tylenol.”

Jasper still wore a small smile as she watched him type. “Okay.”

“I don’t know how deliveries will work in this building, it’s pretty airtight and I don’t want randoms knowing she lives here so I’ll go down and get it when it’s here.”

“I’ll keep guard.”

He knew she was teasing but he nodded anyway. “Thanks.”

If she had any opinion about his prepping, she didn’t express it. When the bags of groceries arrived, he fetched them from the lobby and thanked Mohammad for quizzing the delivery driver on entry. He took the brown bags back to the apartment and, after locking the door securely behind him, he got to work.

“Jasper, I know you’re working and I hate to, like, use you, but could you ask her what she would like to eat? I can order in more if nothing here speaks to her.”

Jasper’s smile widened as she obediently rose to her feet, with the grace of an ex-ballerina, and made her way across the apartment to Allegra’s room where Jonah heard her speaking softly. She returned after a few moments.

“She says an omelette sounds amazing but you don’t have to.”

“I do,” Jonah said quietly. “I’m on it.”

“I didn’t know you could cook.”

“I know some basics.”

Jasper sat back down. “Arthur and I are both useless, we go out way too often to eat.”

“My mum’s great at baking but she can’t cook. It’s too unpredictable for her, she likes to say. She likes measuring cups and stuff. I had to learn at twelve how to cook for two when I couldn’t take it anymore.”

There was silence from Jasper as he started to crack eggs into a bowl.

“That can’t have been easy,” she finally said.

He shrugged, focused on cooking for Allegra. “She felt so bad but we couldn’t keep eating overly well done—sorry, burned—lamb chops and brisket.”

Jasper’s phone rang, giving him an excuse to cook in comfortable silence.

“Hey, baby.” She was speaking to Arthur. The endearment was telling enough, and Jonah could hear the low murmurings of the cinema manager on the other end of the line. He threw a quick glance toward Jasper. She was leaning against the kitchen wall, smiling as she listened to whatever Arthur was saying. As her smile grew, Jonah felt a painful pang.

He wanted Allegra to look like Jasper did when he called her. He wanted her to light up and answer on the first ring. He wanted to make her feel as loved as Jasper felt. That intimacy, the quiet luxury of private love.

“I’m off the clock soon, but I’m also Jonah’s ride home,” she told Arthur.

“That’s okay,” Jonah told her, whispering in that way that people did when they were speaking to someone who was already on the phone. “I can get the last bus or something.”

“Uh-huh,” Jasper said, spluttering out a laugh. “Sure. I’m your chaperone as well, young man.”