"Will you just go home already?"

Mara's words came out slightly garbled before she pulled a tissue from the newly opened box on my desk and blew her nose. She sounded even worse than I did, and that was the second box of tissues I'd gone through since this morning. Derek sat in the chair across from my desk, his nose red and his eyes watery.

"You two can go," I shooed them away.

"Come on, you are literally the last person here," Derek chirped up, his voice raspy. "We're all sick, okay? Nobody's gonna judge you for cutting out early. Half the team didn't even come in today."

The moment we'd all come back from Notre Dame, it was as if the plague had descended upon the football complex. By Monday, we were all suffering the consequences of running around in the cold and the rain with reckless abandon for a victory, and so all activities had been made voluntary for the day while everyone recovered.

I halfheartedly nodded, still fixated on the edited files from the weekend's game I was moving to my hard drive. I hadn't seen Reid since we returned to Clemson, and I couldn't stop myself from wondering if he was holed up sick in his room recovering, or busying himself here like I was to avoid being alone with our thoughts.

"He's downstairs getting his knee taped, in case you were wondering," Derek responded to the thoughts ricocheting in my brain as if they were cartoonish, dizzying stars circling my head.

"I didn't ask," I replied curtly, hyper-fixating on the blue downloading bar on my screen as it inched its way to completion.

"Can you just do us all a favor and try talking to him?" Mara chimed in after blowing her nose again. "It's painful watching you two basically reenacting Romeo and Juliet, pining and longing for each other across football fields of forbidden desire."

I shot her a deadpanned look over my laptop. "I know you've taken basic English Lit so I don't feel like I need to remind you how Romeo and Juliet ends."

"Exactly!" She threw her hands up. "Except I might be the one that tragically passes if I have to watch any more of this."

"Don't be dramatic," I huffed. "Derek, tell her."

"Don't look at me." Derek held up his hands and shook his head. "This is girl talk. I'm not involved. And I hated English Lit."

Mara put her hand on Derek's shoulder, and even though it was such an innocent, simple gesture, I couldn't bear to look at it for more than a moment. These were my friends, and I wanted them to be happy, but all it did was remind me of my own shortcomings.

"Just...don't stay here too long," Mara offered me a soft smile. "I know maybe you feel like you need to punish yourself or something, but you don't."

I returned her smile. "I know. I'm fine, really. Feel better guys."

Derek got up out of the chair with a groan. "I'll take care of her, don't worry."

"You better," I warned him. "I need my wingwoman in full form by this weekend."

Mara giggled through all her coughs and sniffles all the way out the door as Derek led her away, and it forced me to shake away any resentment. Their happiness did make me happy, and I had to remind myself that that mattered.

Eventually, I did as Mara told me to and stopped punishing myself, even if it was only because I had nothing left to do. I took the box of tissues with me, feeling like my brain was basically leaking out of my skull through my nose. I made it down to the lobby without seeing anyone else, and I breathed out a sigh of relief as I made it to the doors.

The moment I touched the cool metal of the door handle, I heard footsteps behind me. I didn't know why I even bothered turning around. I knew it was him, even just from the sound of his gait alone. I seized up, unable to even push myself through the door.

"Hey," he greeted me in his own raspy sick voice, reaching over me and pushing the door open. He gestured for me to walk out first, and I had to duck under his arm to do so before he followed me out. It was a dull and overcast afternoon, coating everything in a gray haze. The walk from the doors down the stone path to the edge of the parking lot felt like a mile, and a crisp breeze made us instinctually inch closer to each other.

It was hard not to believe that maybe there was just a reason we were walking out of the building at the same time. O, I am fortune's fool, indeed.

"How's your knee?" I asked him, gesturing down to the black tape expertly wrapped around it.

"Fine," he blew out a quick breath. "It's fine. Just a mild sprain. I'll be fine."

"So you'll be fine?" I asked with a faint smirk, hoping the teasing would dissipate the awkwardness.

He mirrored my smirk and shook his head. "Yeah, I'll be fine."

I wondered if he was only talking about his knee, or something else. I wondered if we were walking to our cars slowly on purpose. I wondered if he felt the gravitational pull that I did, or if he'd found a way to jettison himself out of orbit like a comet that only came once every 120 years.

"I'm going home and making some soup," I blurted out, stopping abruptly before we reached the parking lot. "I mean...if you want some."

Reid pinched his lips into a thin line, nodding contemplatively. "Bribing me with food, huh?"

I made a sour face and shook my head. "No, no. I mean, sort of but...it's good for...being sick and whatnot."

Reid sniffed and rubbed at his nose with the back of his hand. "Okay, yeah, I'd...I'd like that. I am in fact sick and whatnot."

"Good." My smile morphed into something more genuine. "I mean, not good that you're sick. I'm sick too. But I'd like to think my soup is a pretty good cure-all."

"Knowing how you cook, I believe it." He gently nudged me in the arm with his elbow.

We exchanged another smile, less awkward than before, before agreeing to reconvene at my place. I played Hole's Live Through This album, watching his orange truck follow me in the rear view mirror and letting myself breathe a little. Maybe he was still in my orbit, after all.

"Where's Bree?" Reid asked, kicking his sneakers off at the door as I led him inside my apartment.

"She's at Lana's quarantining from me since she has a bunch of tests to study for." I told him as I flicked a few of the lights on. I'd spent most of the day yesterday on the couch, my crocheted blanket casually discarded on the cushions and half-drank tea mugs and tissues decorating the coffee table. I quickly scurried over to collect them and dump them in the sink.

"Sorry. You can just..." I gestured outwards to the open living room and kitchen. "Hang wherever."

Reid decided the barstool at the kitchen island was where he wanted to be, with a full view of the way I fluttered back and forth from the sink to the cabinets to the fridge and back as I gathered up what I needed for soup making. I didn't like being watched when I cooked, but somehow despite everything Reid and I had been feeling the last few weeks, I was still more comfortable with him than anyone else.

"You know, this sounds dumb, but I don't think she likes me very much." Reid looked down at his hands when he spoke.

"Who, Bree?" I asked (even though I knew) as I filled up my biggest heavy-bottomed pot with chicken stock. He nodded in response.

"She doesn't dislike you. She just thinks you could be..." I paused and waved my paring knife in the air while I searched for the right words. "...hindering me on my potential career path."

He coughed. "Oh."

I continued to dice a few carrots and celery stalks, waiting and hoping for Reid to say something else so I didn't have to, and risk saying the wrong thing again. I added the vegetables to the stock along with a rind of parmesan, stirring and stirring more than I probably should have.

"I do understand, you know," he finally said, his voice soft. "It's just...I look at you, and I guess I don't think very clearly."

It took a moment for his words to really set in, and in that moment I added the pastina to the soup and turned it down to a simmer, forcing myself to turn and look at Reid.

"Anyway, I felt like an asshole for reacting the way I did," he continued, rubbing at the calluses on the inside of his hand. "And I'm sorry."

"I could have handled it better too. I kind of just panicked when I should have just talked to you," I admitted. "Besides, you really have become one of my best friends, and I don't want to lose that."

"Me either. I'm more comfortable with you than like, anyone else." When he smiled at me, bright and beaming like the glittering ion trail of his comet that had come back into my orbit, I knew exactly what he meant by being unable to think clearly. I'd all but short circuited.

"Which is why I'm actually happy you hooked up with someone," I croaked out as I turned back around to tend to the soup. "Really I am."

Happy may not have been my ideal word choice, but admitting the opposite was not an option.

"What?" he chuckled. "What are you talking about?"

"Your neck is covered in hickeys." I glanced over my shoulder and gestured in his general direction with my spoon.

Reid clapped his hand over the bruises. "I got drilled with a football in practice last Thursday. You were there, you don't remember?"

I'd been very actively trying to avoid looking in his direction at that time, so no, I did not remember.

It was my turn to say, "Oh."

A coy smirk worked its way onto Reid's face. "Feel better now?"

"I don't know what you mean," I grumbled and went back to stirring the soup.

"Okay, sure," he chuckled. I heard him get up out of the stool and felt the hairs on my arms stand up in anticipation as he got closer. I could feel his breath on my skin as he reached beside me and picked up the pastina box. "Are these little stars?"

"It's pastina," I told him. "My dad is half-Italian, and so this is my grandmother's recipe on the Italian side. It's literally been nicknamed Italian Penicillin. And it's done by the way, so get me two bowls out of that cabinet."

He did as I asked him too, and I breathed out a quick sigh of relief.

"You know, we never did finish that season of the baking show," he told me as I dished out our soup. "I mean, I just wanna know who wins. It'll bother me if I don't."

"If you really wanted to know, you could have just googled it," I replied with a grin. "I think you like watching it, you just won't admit it."

"Oh shut up," he nudged me, mirroring my grin.

Friends probably didn't make each other cold-curing soup or cuddle on the couch watching Bake Off and fall asleep spooning with their clothes on, but this was how it had to be. I knew it, and he knew it. Maybe one day whatever feeling this was would just fade, and Reid's comet would pass.

━━━━━━

okay for now? are we okay?? any predictions for the next 11 chapters?

by the way, i make pastina regularly, it is genuinely the best food cure-all.