Embracing Rain

11 - Chance

 1 1 - C H A N C E

I'm downstairs in Noah's kitchen making him another grilled cheese sandwich for dinner when a woman walks into the kitchen and screams. I jump, whirling around to find her looking at me menacingly with her keys held out.

"Who are you?" she demands, clenching her hand tighter. I hold my hands up to assure her I mean no harm and back up out of her punching range. Or, in this case, keying range.

"I'm Chance. Chance Taylor. I'm here for Noah. He's sick and lying in bed upstairs, so I'm making dinner."

She relaxes her arm a little bit, lowering it and loosening her grip on her key, but still stares at me suspiciously. "How come I've never met you before?"

"I just moved here last week. I'm sorry for not asking Noah to tell you I was here. And if you're worried about the dishes, I promise I'll wash the pan when I'm done."

"It's alright," she says, looking a little bit calmer. "I guess someone wouldn't break into my house to make a grilled cheese sandwich, let alone do the dishes afterwards, so I'll trust you."

I smile. "Thanks," I say. "I wouldn't trust someone in my house either. I'll take it up to him in a minute. You should come see him. He was in pretty bad shape when I first got here. He looked like he was about to cry. But he's doing a bit better now."

"How long have you been here?"

I glance down at my watch. "Six hours, about?"

She nods, her eyes widening in surprise. "That's a long time. Thank you so much for coming over. I hadn't realized he was in such bad shape. Let me put my stuff away and then I'll be up to check on him, okay?"

I take the sandwich off the stove, put it on the plate, and head back upstairs. When I enter Noah's room, he blinks up at me sleepily. "Where were you?" he asks. "I woke up and you were gone."

"I made you dinner. Except it's the same thing that you had for lunch because that's the only thing I can cook."

He smiles and lets out a small chuckle. The bags under his eyes are much less pronounced, I notice, now that he's taken two decent naps today. His color is a little bit better, now, too. He looks much less like a ghost. "That's okay. Thanks. Here, come sit down."

I hand him the plate before sitting down on the edge of his bed and feeling his forehead. "I think your fever's gone down a little. That's good. You should probably take more medicine after you eat, though."

"Hey, Noah, how are you feeling?" his mom asks as she walks in the room. When she sees Noah looking up at me without panicking, she breathes a sigh of relief. "Good, you really do know him."

Noah looks at her in confusion. "What do you mean? Of course I know him."

"I freaked out when I came home and saw him in the kitchen because I'd never seen him before, and I didn't know he was going to be over. But then I realized someone wouldn't break into our house to make sandwiches, and he said he knew you, so I figured I'd trust him a little bit. And now I can trust him completely."

Noah shakes his head. "You're weird, mom. But yeah, we only met a few days ago. He just moved here."

While they were talking, I'd gotten out the medicine for Noah. "Here," I say, holding out two pills to him in the palm of my hand. "If you take these now, hopefully it should last long enough so that you still feel better when you go to bed tonight."

"Thanks," he says, using the water I got him earlier to take it. He makes a face. "It hurts to swallow."

"Do you want more hot water? I can go get some for you."