LITMIR.BIZ

       3

      ALEXIS WOKE EARLY in spite of the night’s events, but mostly because Emma was already up and showered, anxious to hit the road.

      “Aren’t you a bowl of sunshine?” Alexis said, yawning. “Did you sleep okay? I mean, after everything?”

      “Slept fine. But I’m sad to report that you still steal the covers. If I hadn’t wrapped myself up like a burrito, you’d have left me with nothing.”

      Alexis laughed softly. “Bad habits are hard to break. Sorry.”

      “It’s okay, I still love you, but I feel bad for whoever you marry. It’s always going to be a battle for the bedding.”

      “True story.” Alexis climbed from the bed, stiff, and still not quite awake. She needed coffee and quick. She swung her legs over the edge of the bed, but as soon as she put pressure on her right foot, she nearly yelped from the shock of pain. Well, if that isn’t a fine way to wake up. She lifted her ankle and grimaced at the black-and-blue bruising and swelling. Crap, this doesn’t bode well. Alexis tried to put some pressure on her ankle, but it was a no go. She bit her lip. “Em? We have a problem.”

      Emma plainly hadn’t heard Alexis. “Can you be ready to hit the road in about an hour? I think the roads should be open by then,” Emma called out from the bathroom where she was doing her hair.

      “Em? Come here a minute,” Alexis said, sinking back down on the bed. When Emma appeared with a concerned frown, Alexis said flatly, “Houston, we have a problem.”

      “What’s wrong?” But just as the question left her mouth, her gaze fastened on the nasty bruising on Alexis’s ankle and she gasped. “Oh my God! Oh no! That looks terrible, Lex. We need to take you to the doctor. It definitely looks worse.”

      Alexis had to agree, but she wasn’t about to ruin Emma’s weekend by spending it in the ER. “It’s the weekend, which means an ER visit, and I cannot afford a bill like that right now. I just paid for all my books for the semester. I’m practically living on ramen noodles at this point. I’ll just have to wait until my regular doctor’s office opens. Besides, what can they do for my foot that I can’t?”

      “What if it’s broken?” Emma fretted.

      “It’s not broken,” Alexis insisted, feeling fairly confident that she was right, but there was a shadow of a doubt that was dogging her. It hurt pretty bad. And the swelling wasn’t helping, either. “I probably just need to ice it.”

      “And elevate it,” Emma added with a fatalistic shake of her head. “There’s no way you can sit in the car for the next two hours.”

      “No. This is not going to ruin our girls’ weekend. I’ve been looking forward to this party for weeks. You know Arnold is going to be crushed if I don’t share a cookie with him. I’ve already promised.”

      Emma’s parents ran a school in Colorado Springs for mentally challenged adults, and Alexis and Emma were planning on surprising Emma’s parents at the annual Christmas bash. They were going to serve dinner on Saturday with a full-fledged girls’ weekend thrown in the mix.

      Alexis enjoyed volunteering at the school. The residents never pretended to be something they weren’t—unlike the guys she seemed to attract like bees to pollen.

      “Arnold will have to take a rain check,” Emma said, then decided, “If you’re not going to go to the hospital, then I’m canceling my trip, too. I can’t leave you alone like this.”

      That was exactly what Alexis didn’t want Emma to do. “No,” Alexis said emphatically. “You are not canceling your trip over this. It’s no big deal. It’s not as if my foot is going to fall off or something. I just need to baby it a little.”

      Emma pointed. “Your foot looks like it was beaten with a bat. If it’s not broken, I’m willing to guess it’s badly sprained.”

      There was no denying her foot looked terrible. So much for her idea of getting a pedicure. “Please don’t cancel on my behalf.”

      “I can’t leave you like this,” Emma said, appalled that Alexis would even suggest it.

      “Seriously, I’ll just putter around the house and watch a movie marathon all day. There’s no need for you to cancel your plans because of this, and I would feel ten times worse if you did.”

      But Emma knew her too well and called her out. “No you won’t. You’ll try to hang lights and bake and decorate the Christmas tree because you can’t stand to sit still. You have the attention span of a gnat and an inability to sit still for any length of time. I’d have to tie you to a chair if I wanted you to stay off that foot.”

      “That’s a little extreme.” Alexis pretended to appear offended. “For your information, I recently took up crocheting and that takes a lot of patience.”

      “You tried it once and then got frustrated and haven’t touched it since.”

      “Okay, fine. Crocheting isn’t my thing. But neither is yoga and you’re the one who told me to find something to help me relax.”

      “Yes, and you’re still looking because you have a hard time being still. So, forgive me if I don’t believe you when you say that you’ll take it easy.”

      Alexis knew Emma was right, but it killed her to think that Emma would cancel over something so dumb. Miserable for ruining her friend’s weekend, she rose on unsteady legs with the intent of hobbling her pathetic self to the kitchen for some coffee, but Emma was already slipping her arm beneath her to help. “I’m sorry,” Alexis said, feeling like doggie poo. “I didn’t mean to ruin our weekend.”

      “It’s okay.”

      But it wasn’t okay. Alexis could hear the sharp disappointment in Emma’s voice even as she tried to hide it with a cheerful smile. That was Emma in a nutshell, always thinking of others before herself and it broke Alexis’s heart that she was the cause of Emma’s disappointment.

      Erik and Layton were in the kitchen getting coffee when Emma and Alexis made their way in.

      Erik frowned. “Lex? Is that ankle still bothering you?” he asked.

      “It hasn’t gotten any better,” she answered glumly as her butt found a dining room chair. Her mood was rapidly plummeting as quickly as the temperature outside. Another storm was coming. “It actually seems to have gotten worse during the night.”

      Layton came forward. “Let me take a look.”

      “It’s fine.”

      But Erik chimed in, saying, “Let Layton take a look, Lex. He’s got paramedic training.”

      Hard to argue with that, seeing as she didn’t want to rush to the hospital. “Fine,” she grumbled, allowing Layton to gently examine her foot. He slowly manipulated her ankle, carefully gauging her reaction. She winced a few times and then yelped when he pressed her foot. Layton nodded and released her foot with care. “Well, I don’t think it’s broken, but you’ve probably got one helluva sprain. If you go to the ER they’ll order an X-ray, which won’t

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