I continued giving him cooking lessons on top of my experimentation, and he was getting better. Everett was a smart guy, and I always held that cooking itself wasn’t all that difficult if you followed directions well and had any sort of coordination for your knife skills.
Creating new recipes was an art, and it separated chefs from cooks, but anyone could cook. Everett was proving me right, slowly gaining confidence and making some really good meals with me at his side.
We were solid. It was a unique feeling and one I thought I would question all the time but didn’t. I had never really experienced the rhythm and comfort of a relationship that stuck, but things with Everett were like that. We had routines and quirks, and there were little things we learned the other liked and did them.
The safety of knowing the other person was there, knowing Everett could help me with something on a high shelf, or that I could walk the dog for him if he was otherwise occupied, it made our bond stronger. Surer.
But then, while at work one day a few weeks later, I felt queasy and lightheaded. I texted him to let him know I was going to go back to my apartment that night and try to sleep it off. The next morning, I was throwing up and dizzy.
I was sick. Really, unbelievably sick. Enough to warrant thinking about having him pick me up and take me to the ER that first night.
I held off though, partially because I didn’t want to infect him. When it stuck around the next day, I called Rebecca, mortified to ask her to come in and help cover my shifts. She was more than happy to help, and between her and Mom, I got my shifts covered for the rest of the week. Of course, getting Mom to agree wasn’t terribly hard. She was having a harder time adjusting to being around Dad twenty-four seven than she thought she would. Taking an afternoon to work at the diner was a respite from that for her.
But it also came with a lecture that I needed to take better care of myself. That I needed to get in to see a doctor to find out what was going on. That I ought to call Dad’s general practitioner and get an appointment.
In the end, I did. She was right. I needed to have someone tell me what was going on after two days straight of feeling like I was going to vomit my stomach out in one whole lurch. She gave me the number and I set up an appointment for Friday.
In the meantime, I withdrew.
Thinking about Dad, I suddenly started worrying that what was going on was much deeper than a cold or flu. What if Dad’s health problems were genetic? What if I had them too? What if I ended up sitting in an easy chair, staring blankly at the television while a dozen medications worked together to make me blank while they tried to keep my body alive? I was still young, but Dad started seeing signs of his illnesses just a few years after my age. I was a kid when he found out.
It was a lot of weight to carry on my shoulders. I woke up each morning, still sick and worrying that it was something worse. I stopped even responding to Everett. The last thing I wanted was him around in case it was something he could catch, or to have him help my pathetic ass and be stuck with me. I didn’t want him to be with me because he felt guilty. It would even be worse if he left me then.
I could only imagine the world of hurt I would go through if I was actually sick. Both the physical and the emotional damage would be intense. We would probably have to sell the diner, which would kill my dad. Hell, it might kill me. To know that I had left everything I knew in Chicago, come down here, and finally found peace and love only to have it snatched away was terrifying. So, I withdrew.
I kept the curtains closed and ordered groceries delivered to my doorstep. What little I needed, that was. I could barely keep anything down, and what I could keep down was mostly bread and crackers.
I asked Finn to drop off bread in the mornings after they were baked, since we had started fresh-baking bread every day. Loyally, either he or Tony dropped off whole basketfuls each day, and I would pick at them. They also dropped off some of Tony’s Nona’s soup, which was supposed to be a cure all for any number of ills. In truth, it did settle my stomach some when I could get it in, but that was rare.