Dear Roomie (Rookie Rebels #5) - Kate Meader Page 0,42
But Reid had appeared so pale. Migraines were debilitating for some people, and it was strange to see the usually robust rock of an athlete looking like he’d been clobbered with a hockey stick.
He was laid out on the bed, positioned on his stomach, with Bucky by his side. He looked peaceful and untroubled. And hot, of course, as in unbearably handsome.
Bucky hopped off the bed and rushed by her, as if he’d seen a mouse. So highly-strung.
“What’s wrong?” A sleepy voice called out.
“Nothing. Go back to sleep.”
He raised his head. “Is Bucky okay?”
“He’s fine. He just ran out like he was chasing something.” She backed into the shadows. “Sorry, I’ll leave you alone.”
“Kennedy,” he murmured, his voice sleep-rusty. He patted the bed. “Come here.”
“I should let you rest. Give me a shout if you need anything.”
“I thought you had to go out.”
She stepped inside. “Class was canceled. I’ll be on hand to look after things.”
His eyes fluttered closed, then opened again. “My head hurts.”
“It does?” She moved forward quickly, laying her palm on his forehead. Not clammy or feverish. “More than before?”
“No, the same.” He grasped her wrist. “Stay and talk to me. But not too loud.”
“It would be better if you slept.” But she might feel better if she talked to him. Make sure he wasn’t delirious or unusually groggy or even nauseous. She had no idea why she felt such anxiety.
Her mom used to get migraines. Sometimes they’d be cooking together and they would strike her like a two-by-four. Kennedy had always felt so helpless, hating to see someone she loved in pain and desperate to do anything to relieve it.
She sat on the edge of the bed, though Reid still held her wrist. He moved his thumb over her pulse point and stroked. Her heartbeat reacted predictably.
“Talk to me, roomie,” he murmured.
“You’re sick.”
“I want to hear your voice. Tell me something no one else knows about you.”
What a curious request. She thought about it for a moment, digging into her repertoire. “I can recall the plot of every Columbo episode. Just name the actor-murderer and I remember how the deed was done. Assuming you know your Columbo.” Columbo had been her dad’s favorite TV show. The man had a killer Peter Falk impression.
“I remember some of them. Mr. Spock was in one, I think.”
“Ooh, Leonard Nimoy! A particularly deadly episode with three murders. Dissolving suture, tire iron to the head, forced drug overdose.”
“Dick Van Dyke?”
“Fake-kidnaps his nagging wife than shoots her.”
“Damn, that’s quite the talent. I can’t think of any more Columbo episodes.”
She was impressed he even remembered those. Not everyone was as tapped into the seventies TV oeuvre as Kennedy. Those afternoons after school, watching reruns with her dad, were among her most cherished memories. They would hang in the den while he expounded on why Barney Miller was the most underrated sitcom ever or how the true stars of Starsky & Hutch were Antonio Fargas and the car. Benjamin Clark had opinions, kind of like Reid.
“Everyone’s got a hidden talent,” she said, putting those memories back in their box. “What’s yours?”
He frowned, or maybe it was his hurting head getting the best of him. “I’m only good at hockey.”
“That’s not true. You’re amazing with Bucky. Your vegetable chopping skills are coming along by leaps and bounds. And no one, I mean no one, can wither like you can.”
“Wither?”
“The withering look. The one that makes someone want to shrivel up and die.” Really it was an incinerate-all-panties look but she couldn’t say that.
“I should use that in the games. Wither the competition.”
Incinerate all jock straps? It could work.
She thought of something that might resonate more. “If you were a superhero, what powers would you have?”
“Telepathy.”
“Because?”
“I usually can tell what my opponents are thinking, but I’d like to know for sure. It’d give me an advantage on the ice.”
Sounded awful. “I’d hate to know what other people are thinking. You’d have to be really thick-skinned and not care that someone called you a bitch because you drove too close to her side mirror or that so-and-so you thought was your friend hates you for a reason you can’t fathom.”
His eyebrow clearly disapproved of her weakness. “I don’t care what people think of me, but I’d like to know why someone hates me. All stuff I can use.”
Of course Reid would see the benefit of that. “Okay, your turn.”
“What’s one thing that people wouldn’t believe is true about you?”