Page 28 of Last Minute

After spending the rest of the day walking around Boston, admiring how the city changes as the sunlight fades to dusk, Erik and I check into our hotel and make our way to the room with aching feet. I kick my shoes off and crawl onto the bed, sighing in relief as my feet rejoice in being given a break.

“Do you want to finish our Star Wars marathon?” Erik asks from the other side of the room, where he looks unfazed by the miles and miles we walked this afternoon.

“No,” I say as I pull one of the abundant pillows toward me. “I’ll just fall asleep again. Besides, I have a better idea.”

Erik toes off his shoes and sits opposite me on the other bed. “And that is?”

I roll onto my side, propping my head on my hand, and shielding my body with the pillow. “We finish Twenty Questions.”

I make Erik wait for me to get changed into my pajamas before we finish with our final five questions. I spend the time in the bathroom mulling over what questions I want Erik to answer. Now that he’s opened up a little with me, I want the questions to be good, but not so prying and deep that he’ll clam up like he almost did when I asked about his mom yesterday.

Erik has his bed turned down and is setting up the TV, queuing up Star Wars where we left off the other night. “Just in case you change your mind,” Erik says as I pass him, beelining for my bed.

“I won’t change my mind. I’ve thought of some good questions that will have us talking for hours. We won’t even have time to watch tonight.” I throw a wink at Erik, who shakes his head at me, as I climb under the plush covers of my bed.

I settle in and wait and watch as Erik methodically goes about his end of day routine. His watch, wallet, keys, and phone go on the side table between our beds. He places the TV remote next to them, within reach of either bed. He slips his belt out of its loops, curling it up and placing it on top of his duffle bag. But instead of heading into the bathroom to change into pajamas like he has the last few nights, he climbs on top of his bed and sits against the headboard, looking like he did the first morning we were together.

I pull my blanket up to my chin and watch Erik. “It’s your turn to ask a question.”

Erik stares at the wall across from him for a few minutes before he shifts to face me. “If you could only eat one thing for the rest of your life, what would you choose?”

“Potatoes.” The answer flies out of my mouth so fast, Erik’s eyebrows shoot to his hairline. He obviously wasn’t expecting me to have that answer on the tip of my tongue.

I prop my head on my hand. “Potatoes are the best choice. There’s so many ways to eat them.” Erik opens his mouth to rebut, but I cut him off. “Hey, you never said I had to be specific about how I was to eat my chosen food. But if potatoes were the only thing I could eat forever and ever, I could have mashed potatoes, French fries, baked potatoes, potato salad…”

“Okay, Sam Gamgee.” Erik shakes his head, a small smile on his lips. Lips that I look away from as soon as he opens his mouth to answer his own question. “I would choose…cheeseburgers.”

“So American.”

Erik snorts, but his smile grows wider. “Alright, your turn.”

“Favorite place to go?”

“Cranberry Lake.” Eric’s answer comes out of his mouth as quickly as mine did a minute ago. “It was my favorite place to camp with my dad.” The small smile on Erik’s face dims, replaced by a bittersweet frown. My eyes drop from Erik’s face to his forearms and the tattoos that ripple and shift as he fists his hands.

I let silence fall between us instead of immediately giving him my own answer. A moment of silence for a man I’ve never met, but who has influenced the one in front of me in ways I can only begin to imagine. A small ache settles in my chest as I realize I will never meet the man who means so much to Erik. Even if we were on the kind of terms that allowed us to be more than friendly, I will never have that chance.

After a minute, Erik sniffs and rubs a hand across his eyes, and I look away, giving him a modicum of privacy to set himself to rights. “What about you?” he asks, his voice a little rougher than before.

I roll onto my back and look up at the ceiling with a smile on my face. “When I was about eight, my brother snuck me onto the roof of the palace. Bash was fourteen at the time, and he showed me how to climb out of his window onto the trellis that was next to it and up the nine or ten feet to the roof. It was…magical.” I laugh, remembering how terrified I was for the first few feet of the climb, and then how exhilarating it was to stand up there and view the grounds from that vantage point. “I had never seen a view so beautiful. And with just me and Bash up there, it was peaceful.

“I begged him to take me back up there after that first time, but we were caught, of course, two days later. One security guard watching the footage of the right screen at the right time. Mother and Father were furious, but Bash took all the blame—and my half of the punishment to help clean out the gutters.

“Sebastian Edward Atticus Haynes,” I mimic my father’s deep voice and the disappointed tone he used with me and my brother the day he caught us, “if you want to be up there so badly, you should at least do something useful.” I laugh and roll onto my side to find Erik watching me with an amused look on his face. “What?”

“What is it with your family and names?”

“Is this an official question?”

Erik doesn’t hesitate. “Yes.”

“It’s a tradition. We’re given our name, our parent’s name, and our grandparent’s name. Sebastian, his given name. Edward, our father’s name. And Atticus, his father’s name.”

“And what about you?”

“Me, my mother, and my mother’s mother. Eloise Genevieve Wilhelmina.” Erik doesn’t laugh…it’s more like a strangled snort. I crinkle my nose and purse my lips, drawing my face into a playful grimace. “I’ve always thought Bash got the better end of the names in our family.”

“What? Wilhelmina is a great name.” Erik sputters a few more snickers before I put him in his place with a glare.

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