Amelia Allen feels stuck.
To an outsider, her life must look beautiful. She has a steady job, a relationship, and several years of her twenties left to figure out what more she wants out of life. But nothing is as shimmery as it appears from the su...
"You can't tell me you don't think her voice is just a little bit annoying."
"I can, actually, and that's exactly what I'm doing."
Through her phone screen, Amelia watched Henry's lips curl into a grin. "Are we having our first fight right now?" he teased.
"Over Grey's Anatomy? Absolutely the hell not. It's not a fight if one person was obviously losing to begin with."
"So you're admitting I'm right, then?"
Amelia covered her face with her free hand. "Don't make me actually get worked up about this, Henry," she smiled through her fingers.
Their laughter tapered off as he stifled a small cough. She moved her hand so she could look at him again. "You feeling any better?" she murmured.
Henry nodded. The whole reason she'd miraculously been able to convince him to watch the first episode of Grey's in the first place was because he'd been feeling under the weather for the past couple of days and decided to stay home from work today to try to shake it off. He was clearly still in bed right now, propped up against his headboard and a whole barricade of pillows. A frayed and faded AC/DC tee hung off his lean frame, the sort of shirt that probably should have been tossed out ages ago but had likely been around long enough to hold sentimental value at this point.
"Yeah, I'm back to feeling almost normal."
Amelia asked hopefully, "Does that mean you can still come over for dinner tomorrow?"
"I wouldn't miss it," he promised. "That is, as long as you're fine with the risk that I actually have a cold and it isn't just stress getting to me."
"Catching a cold and knowing that you didn't literally stress yourself into being sick doesn't sound so bad."
"It's not as uncommon as you think for stress to make you sick," he pointed out. "Our minds sort of like to screw our bodies over in every way possible."
"When it rains, it storms," she sighed. "Since you're much closer to being a doctor than I am, I'll trust you on this one."
"That's the only reason you trust me? I'm flattered."
"I wish you were here in person so that I could throw this pillow at you."
Henry pretended to shield himself from her by lifting an arm in front of his face; Amelia was grinning again as she shook her head.
"Dinner tomorrow," she repeated. "Don't be late and don't strain yourself trying to help me with the cooking—it's the least you can do after not letting me bring you any medicine."
In reality, Henry probably could have come down with tuberculosis and still cook better than Amelia did on her best day, but she was so stubborn to make something that didn't taste like it had come out of Shrek's swamp that she'd already asked her mom for some of the fool-proof comfort recipes that she used to conjure up when Amelia was sick. Except she hadn't mentioned the whole part where she had a boyfriend who wasn't officially her boyfriend yet, and her mom would have had a conniption and insisted on coming to take care of her if she said that she was the one who was sick, so she threw Nat under the bus instead. It was a forgivable crime.
"It's not like I couldn't find any medicine at that pharmacy I conveniently happen to work at."
Amelia narrowed her eyes. "I'm cooking," she said firmly. "...Unless I burn something. Then I'll forfeit my chef duties, deal?"
He laughed. "Alright, deal."
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