Page 93 of People We Meet on Vacation

“No.” I scrunch my eyes shut, feeling the tears cutting trails down my cheeks. “It’s real. I’m so sorry.”

“Hey.” He brushes the hair out of my face. “You know I don’t care about that, right? I only care about getting to spend time with you.” His thumb lightly traces the wet streak making its way down the side of my nose, heading it off just before it reaches my top lip. “I’m sorry you don’t feel well, and that you’re missing the ice hotel, but I’m okay right here.”

Every ounce of dignity obliterated by having had this man change my pee-drenched bedding, I reach up for his neck and pull him toward me, and he shifts onto the bed beside me, maneuvering close at the beckoning of my hands. He wraps an arm around my back and draws me into his chest and I slip an arm around his waist too, and we lie there tangled together.

“I can feel your heartbeat,” I tell him.

“I can feel yours,” he says.

“I’m sorry I peed the bed.”

He laughs, squeezes me to him, and right then, my chest aches with how much I love him. I guess I must say something like this aloud, because he murmurs, “That’s probably the fever talking.”

I shake my head, nestle closer, until there are no spaces left between us. His hand moves lightly up into my hair, and a shiver runs down my spine from where his fingers trail along my neck. It feels so good, in a sea of bad feelings, that it makes me arch a little, my hand tightening on his back, and I feel the way his heartbeat speeds, which only makes mine skyrocket to match it. His hand moves to my thigh, wrapping it around his hip, and my fingers twist against him as I bury my mouth against the side of his neck where I feel his pulse thudding urgently beneath it.

“Are you comfortable?” he asks thickly, like our lying like this could just be a matter of alignment, like we’re building up a narrative that protects us from the truth of what’s happening. That even through the fog of being sick, I can feel him wanting me like I want him.

“Mm-hm,” I murmur. “Are you?”

His hand tightens on my thigh, and he nods.

“Yeah,” he says, and we both go very still.

I don’t know how long we lie there, but eventually, the cold medicine wins out over the sparking, alert nerve endings in my body and I fall asleep, only to find him safely on the other side of the bed the next time I wake up.

“You were asking for your mom,” he tells me.

“Whenever I’m sick, I miss her,” I say.

He nods, tucks a strand of hair behind my ear. “Sometimes I do too.”

“Tell me about her?” I ask.

He shifts, lifting himself higher against the headboard. “What do you want to know?”

“Anything,” I whisper. “What you think about when you think about her.”

“Well, I was only six when she died,” he says, smoothing my hair again. I don’t argue or press for more, but eventually, he goes on. “She used to sing to us when she tucked us in at night. And I thought she had a beautiful voice. I mean, like, I would tell kids in my class that she was a singer. Or she would’ve been if she wasn’t a stay-at-home mom or whatever. And you know...” His hand stills in my hair. “My dad couldn’t talk about her. Like, at all. I mean, he still can’t really without breaking down. So growing up my brothers and I didn’t talk about her either. And when I was probably fourteen, fifteen, I went over to Grandma Betty’s house to clean her gutters and mow her lawn and stuff, and she was watching these old home movies of my mom.”

I study his face, the way his full lips curl and his eyes catch the streaks of streetlight coming through my window so that he almost looks lit from within. “We never did that at my house,” he says. “I couldn’t even remember what she sounded like. But we watched this video of her holding me as a baby. Singing this old Amy Grant song.” His eyes cut to me, his smile deepening in one corner. “And her voice was horrible.”

“How horrible are we talking here?” I ask.

“Bad enough that Betty had to turn it off so she didn’t have a heart attack from laughing,” he says. “And you could tell Mom knew she was bad. I mean, you could hear Betty laughing while she filmed, and my mom kept looking over her shoulder with this grin, but she didn’t stop singing. I guess I think about that a lot.”

“She sounds like my kind of lady,” I say.

“For most of my life,” he says, “she’s kind of felt like this boogeyman, you know? Like the biggest part she’s played in my life is just how wrecked my dad was from losing her. How scared he was to have to raise us on his own?”

I nod; makes sense.

“A lot of times, when I think about her, it’s like...” He pauses. “She’s more a cautionary tale than a person. But when I think about that video, I think about why my dad loved her so much. And that feels better. To think about her as a person.”

For a while, we’re quiet. I reach over and fold Alex’s hand in mine. “She must’ve been pretty amazing,” I say, “to make a person like you.”

He squeezes my hand but doesn’t say another word, and eventually I drift back to sleep.

The next two days are a blur, and then I’m on the rise. Not healthy but more awake, lighter, clearer headed.

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