The Lifeguard Hates You (Completed)

June Chapter 8

Something went down at Fablehaven. I know it the second Rory gets back. She has an attitude all of a sudden and when I ask her about her day down there she doesn't look me in the eye. I'm too busy dying to pester her about it though.

I slept through my shift this morning, having apparently caught the cold that Rory was originally coming down with and seemingly beat. My throat hurts, my nose is stuffed, my head is pounding and I'm too fuzzy and tired to argue with her or try to get her to tell me what happened at Fablehaven to make her so mad. That and I honestly couldn't care less.

I'm curled up on the sofa surrounded by tissue boxes and used bunched up wads of tissue when I realize Rory's hovering around me. I've been dozing up until this point and I half sense the movement over me. I've barely managed to open my eyes a crack when I realize she's cleaning up my mess. She's put a new mug of tea in front of me, she's swept the tissues into the waste basket and she's covered me in a blanket. I'm going to assume I was shivering uncontrollably again.

She's moving slowly and tentatively as if she's expecting me to bolt up and push her away at any second. And let's be honest I probably would if I had the energy to do so. I'm too tired to move so I let her do whatever it is she's doing, even when she softly brushes my hair back, which she does not need to do cause my hair is too short to be in my eyes or my face.

I manage to grumble out a: "What are you doing?" and the soft stroking stops.

I hear her whisper: "Sorry," and then I don't sense her near me anymore. Apparently my body likes having her soothing presence near-by for as soon as she's gone all the aches and pains come back full force. I'm wide awake now, even though I don't want to be.

I force myself to sit up and look at what she's left for me. A new box of tissues, including a fresh tissue in my hand, a mug of my favourite green tea, I don't have to taste it to know that she's made it exactly the way I like it, the TV remote is right beside me even though she's muted my current show probably to let me rest, and a plate of plain toast with a light spreading of butter.

"Do you want soup?" she asks from the kitchen. "I could make some for you."

Turning is agony but I force myself to do it. She's standing at the kitchen island making her own cup of tea, spooning way too many spoonfuls of sugar into her massive mug. That's a perk of living with Rory, she likes big mugs and she's fine with me using hers so long as I wash them.

My throat is thick and scratchy so when I talk I croak. All I can get out is: "Yes," and she nods and goes to our cupboards.

"Any particular flavour?" I shrug and she nods again pulling out a packet I can't see and going about making the soup. I guess I doze a bit because when I come to again the soups on the stove boiling and she's standing above me. She's got a hand on my forehead and she's wincing.

"You should be in bed," she says. "You going to take tomorrow off? I could cover for you."

I know tomorrow's her day off, she's got a pile of books topped with a to-do list three pages long that she's been looking forward to all week. Not to mention I slept through my shift today which means I needed to make it up. I shake my head even though it feels like I'm shaking loose my brain while I do it. I can tell she wants to argue with me by the way her lips twitch but she doesn't which I'm grateful for. I don't think I'm up to arguing honestly, my voice hurts too much for screaming at the moment.

"What happened at Fablehaven?" I ask her again but it hurts and I end up having a coughing fit. I vaguely remember asking her this when she came home in a bad mood and yelled at me for having not cleaned up any of my mess. She hadn't realized I was sick yet.

Rory was smiling before I asked that question, now she's not. She looks away from me when she says: "Nothing, honest, I was just thinking about some things, that's all."

It must have been big if it put her in that bad of a mood. I'm scowling at her and I guess she can tell that I want to call bullshit on the whole nothing happened, or that I might ask her what she was thinking about even though we both know I wouldn't bother. Still as she goes back to the kitchen to stir the soup she actually tells me what's wrong.

"I just don't think it's fair that you and Shawn and Candy all assume I'm going to do all the work all the time. I mean, this week alone I've filled in for Shawn three times and Candy twice. And you've got my schedule jam filled with teaching, and exercise classes and permits to the point where I don't get time off anymore. I'm tired, and I'm over worked and I really don't like kids!"

I didn't know she didn't like kids. This is honestly news to me. She's so good with them, she's always smiling around them and it always looks like everyone involved is having fun, including her. I could have guessed she was overworked, she works as much as I do after all.

"Sometimes it feels like you guys only put up with me because you can get me to do all the stuff you don't want to do," she says in a hushed whisper.

I know what she's looking for. She wants me to say that we appreciate her, that we do want her around. But I've never actually wanted her around and most of the time she annoys me and I can't really speak for Candy and Shawn... in fact I can't really speak at all. After a long silence where I say nothing Rory eventually sighs.

She says nothing else to me as she finishes with the soup and serves it to me. She's extra careful not to touch me as she hands me the bowl and she doesn't look me in the eye again. She spends the rest of the night in her room. At some point, once I'm done eating and everything is washed and left to dry, I drag my tired body back into bed.

It's not until my lights are out and I'm half asleep that I hear Rory crying in her room. I know I should go check on her, but I don't move, I stay in my bed like the coward I am and ignore the soft sobs that are coming from her room.

When I wake up the next morning I find that she's smeared Vics vapo-rub all over my chest and under my nose at some point last night. That means I can breathe better and my chest isn't as heavy and I'm not as breathless. She's left me a mug of tea which I know is cold and I plan to reheat it because for some reason the tea she makes just tastes so much better than mine. I can tell by how bright it is that I've slept through my morning shift again and I don't have to look to know that Rory has taken my keys and this means she's probably taken my shift for the whole day. She probably even did the opening procedures again which she hasn't technically been trained to do but she's shadowed me so often she knows all the codes to the alarms and all the tricks and tasks she has to do.

I sigh knowing that whatever is on her to-do list I'm going to have to do to make up for her being nice enough to take care of me. It's been a long time since anyone has taken care of me, I forgot how much I liked it. I roll over and get myself comfortable again. I'll get started on all of that later.