Emery [bxb]

29

I pick Emery up in my crappy truck. He's sniffling from a cold and bundled up tightly against the fall weather.

He tells me he's leaving to a music consortium thing for a few months and he'll really miss me.

"Is Aly coming," I ask. Emery frowns as I slide my palm around his neck, thumbing at the hickey.

"Yes," he says and I'm so pissed that I stop speaking altogether.

I go home after school, put myself through one hell of a workout and then spend the rest of the day studying for the only courses I enjoy: biology and chemistry. Science is the only subject that interests me. I ignore Emery's texts.

I'm tossing and turning my way through a fitful sleep, a horrible storm raging outside, when I hear a noise at my window. Once I've established the pelting pattern can't possibly be natural, I get out of bed.

The wind is howling, sheets of rain sleeting down. There's Emery, huddled in the cold rain while sick, arms wrapped around his shivering form, windswept curls plastered to his forehead.

I pull him inside, strip him out of his clothes, shove him into the shower and run the water just shy of scalding.

We don't talk until he's bundled in two of my mom's fluffiest bathrobes, cradling a hot chocolate between his red fingers.

I gently kiss his forehead.

"You've got a fever," I frown, and proceed to rant for seven lightyears about how stupid he is.

"You're the stupid one, Brandon," he scowls, and proceeds to tell me that the 'hickey' was just an abrasion from practising the violin too much.