okay before I do. Can I call one of your friends?”
She smiled weakly. “I can’t have sex with you today.” The clarification calmed his riled cells somewhat, but he was still confused. And worried. “You want to come up, and I’ll explain?”
Upstairs, she sank immediately onto the sofa. This was the first time he’d been here that she hadn’t offered him something to drink. She was a natural hostess—usually.
“I have endometriosis.” A hint of her old sassy self appeared on her face. “I’m in a lot of pain right now in my…internal sexual regions.”
“Endometriosis,” he echoed. That had something to do with periods, he thought.
She answered his unspoken question. “It’s when the lining of your uterus grows on the outside instead of the inside. On other organs, usually. And whereas in the inside, it, uh, builds up and sheds every month…Is this too much squicky lady talk?”
He shook his head vehemently. “No. Not at all.” To his surprise, he desperately wanted to know what was going on. He wanted to know everything about Elise.
“Yeah, well, so the stuff on the outside thickens and builds up like it would before a period, but then there’s nowhere for it to go. Scar tissue builds up. It hurts. A lot.”
“Can they do anything for it?”
“They have. It’s actually better than it used to be.”
That was hard to imagine. His skepticism must have shown in his face, because she smiled. “Yeah, I’ve had surgery for it, and that helped, at least initially. It seems to be getting worse again now. But it used to be just horrific. For years. Nobody believed me.”
“What?” Okay, that was just dumb. Anyone could see she was in pain, and if this was a milder version of what she’d experienced before? It boggled the mind.
“Yeah, doctors would tell me it was just bad period pain—which I’ve since learned is really common with endo. Then one day in university I was hanging out with my friends when it was really bad. Gia was sort of used to it, because we spent so much time together. But Wendy was so alarmed, she called an ambulance. I tried to talk her out of it, but I’m glad she prevailed, because there was a doctor at the emergency room who finally took it seriously. I got some scans, a diagnosis, and, later, a bunch of my insides hacked out.”
Wow. It was a lot to take in. His heart broke for her, enduring all this pain, at the same time that he was pissed at the people who hadn’t taken her seriously.
“I’m really sorry, Jay.” She sounded so defeated. “I know we were both, uh, primed for this.”
“Sweetheart, don’t be sorry.” He wanted to sling an arm around her, to hold her close, but he wasn’t sure if that would hurt. So he settled for laying a palm lightly against her cheek. There was still the low hum of attraction he always felt around her, but for the most part, his lust had dissipated. It had been replaced by something that was both softer and stronger. “There’s plenty of time.”
“You’ll wait?”
“Uh, yes.”
He would wait forever, he realized with a start.
Wow. But that was a thought to be examined later.
She blew out a breath that seemed like a sigh of relief.
“Did you think it was the day the rugs arrived or nothing?” he asked.
She shrugged.
Maybe it was that her defenses were down because of the pain, but he thought he had seen a flash of vulnerability, of uncertainty, in that shrug. “Nope,” he said. “We’re just going to extend our torture a little more. How long do these bouts usually last?”
“Two or three days.”
“And what would you normally do while you’re not feeling well?” He kind of wanted to march her back to the emergency room and demand relief on her behalf, but of course that wasn’t the correct course of action.
“I’d lay in my bed and watch stupid TV to try to distract myself from the pain.”
“All right, then. You mind company?”
The smile that lit her face changed it, chased away the shadows. She looked like her old self. “I would love company.”
“What’s on?” He followed her into her bedroom. She was sort of shuffling, clearly still in pain, and it damn near killed him to watch.
He’d never been in her bedroom. Like the living room, and like her personal style, it was a mixture of exuberant and restrained. The walls were a bright, almost lime green, but pretty much everything else—lamps, rugs, a