Full Strength

Twenty Three-Logan 🏒

        The first week of the new year was quiet. I kept swimming, every other day, and I felt like I was getting stronger. It was possible I was just mentally tricking myself, but either way, it felt good. Lillian always stuck to me like glue, prepared for me to slip or to drown. I didn't mind, knowing that she was worried to death just at the sight of me moving around without any help.

        On Thursday, she went to have coffee with her friend Jade. I felt bad; Lillian's social life had been sort of ground to a halt ever since she'd moved in with me. But every time I began to feel guilty, she insisted it was part of the job and not my fault, and that if I blamed myself, she would take away my swimming privileges. It didn't seem like a fair trade, but it effectively ended the argument.

        I spent the afternoon reading. At first, back in October, my idea had been to read. Which felt like one of those things you would say you'd do, then when handed a massive platter of free time, it suddenly seemed to slip your mind. But I'd been at home for months now, and I was running out of things to do. So I'd asked Eve for her favorites and checked them out from the library.

        I managed to get about halfway through a book about a girl who had mysteriously inherited from a wealthy old man before Lillian came home. Part of me was secretly disappointed to be interrupted, but I was glad to see her.

        "How was it?" I asked as she slid off her winter coat.

        "Good!" she said brightly. "You're doing okay?"

        I held up my book. "Yep, just me and my book. Feeling okay, too. And the house didn't blow up in your absence!"

        She fought down a smile, clearly failing. "That's good. Sorry I'm so late though. Are you feeling up to dinner yet?"

        "I guess," I said with a shrug. "You're probably not that hungry."

        "No, I am. I just drank three lattes over four hours," she laughed. "What do you want to eat?"

        "Want to call it a night and get a pizza?" I offered, carefully placing a bookmark in the pages before setting the book on the coffee table.

        "Oh, my gosh, yes, I'm so glad you said that," Lillian groaned, flopping down on the couch next to me. "I didn't want to cook."

        I laughed. "You could've just said so."

        While we waited for the pizza, she talked about her coffee date. Jade, who worked as a vet tech, had taken a vacation after the breakup with her boyfriend, a slimeball named Trevor. She'd gone hiking on the West Coast before returning home with crazy stories, one of which included fighting a snake. Lillian was laughing as she told me everything, despite some of Jade's more unfortunate circumstances.

        "I'm glad you had fun together. Are you going to meet up again soon?" I asked.

        Lillian bit her lip. "I actually wanted to ask you if she could come to one of your games with us," she said hopefully.

        My stomach churned. Lillian had deemed me healthy enough to try to attend one of the Dragons' games this weekend. I would be in a wheelchair, and we'd be sitting up in the private sections. She was obviously coming with me, for both moral and physical support. The idea of going to a game was stressing me out. It'd been so long since I'd been to the arena, and while I felt like a jerk for not being able to support my teammates, now that I was actually going, I was beginning to freeze up.

        "She wouldn't come this weekend," Lillian said quickly. "Maybe next week. Or the next week. Or never, if you don't want her to. But I thought it'd be a fun way to hang out together and that way we could make it more of an outing and not so much like a stressful team thing that you feel obligated to go to. Or-"