He Called My Brain Injury a Hunger Strike, So I Forgot Him novel · Chapter 9 of 24

Chapter 9: Erik's Rule

Erik's POV

She didn't say go, and she didn't say stay.

She stood in the doorway in a long grey T-shirt with her hair wrecked from the pillow, and I waited.

I had told myself in the truck that I would take either answer.

I'd meant it.

Then Leah stepped back from the door and left it open.

"Come in," she said. "I can't be in the dark by myself."

I followed her into the kitchen and sat at the counter where we had eaten pizza.

She filled the kettle and stood with her back to me while it heated.

"I didn't call because I thought you'd say don't come," she said.

"I'd have come anyway."

"Why?"

"I had a younger brother," I said. "He drowned off a boat I built for him, eight years ago in the Columbia."

She turned around.

"The boat was sound. It was a freak squall, and nothing I did mattered. At the funeral everybody asked my mother how she was holding up. Then my father. Then his girlfriend."

"Nobody asked you."

"Not once," I said. "For two years."

The kettle clicked off, and she didn't move.

"The day I found you outside the pharmacy, I was on my way to get a hinge," I said. "You were on the sidewalk. A dozen people stepped right over you without stopping. I couldn't look away."

"Erik."

"I don't need you to be anyone's patient," I said. "I'm saying I know what it is to be walked past."

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