Date: September 1
Subject: make it work
Can you meet me in Mexico?
*You never responded to my request for more than a couple of days, Skip.
* * *
To: Nick Acevedo
From: Erin Walsh
Date: September 2
Subject: doing the best I can
Yeah, I can meet you in Mexico although a little more specificity would be helpful in scheduling my travel. I know my way around Popocatépetl, Colima, and El Chichón, but I'm fairly certain you're not planning a volcano-inspired getaway. Correct me if I'm wrong.
As for months and years…you know that I'm attached to this program for several months. It's not what you want to hear, but it's not changing. You knew this going in, and I'm sorry that it seems unending right now. I am truly sorry. If that isn't enough, then I think we need to have a different conversation. Please hear me when I say that I don't want a different conversation. I want us to work through the rest of this, and sort it out on the other side. We make things work when they're impossible, remember?
Please stay safe. I miss you, and I can't wait to see you soon, love.
Chapter Thirty
Nick
It washurricane season in the Yucatán, and we went there anyway.
Erin and I found a handful of days after my time in Honduras when she could sneak away from Oxford, and we agreed to spend them on the Mexican island of Cozumel. There were storms brewing on the Atlantic and Pacific sides of Mexico, and they'd either fizzle out over the oceans or slam straight into us.
Cruise ships frequented this peninsula and the surrounding isles, but none were to be seen now; they were taking cover. The island was bracing for impact, but optimistic. The resorts were empty but still open, residents still in their homes. No one was evacuating, but they were boarding up storefronts and lining sandbags around every foundation. Surf watches were posted, and those who approached the beaches were warned to do so at their own peril.
Clouds were hanging low overhead, and moving quickly. The winds whipped off the water and sent gusts of humid air over the mostly undeveloped land. The waves were choppy, and the beaches were littered with the remnants of last night's high tide. Driftwood, seaweed, and shells all covered the shoreline. In some places, odd ocean relics peeked out of the sand and tide. Plastic water bottles, broken surfboards, mate-less flip-flops, sun-bleached tennis balls. It seemed like the sea and the skies were moving into place for a tandem purge, and we were getting front row seats.
My work in the Honduran city of Tegucigalpa had been gut-wrenching. The violence and disease was unending, and I'd lost more patients than I saved. And those who survived, they'd never be the same. My respect for the nurses and doctors who dedicated theirlives—not just a couple of months when their prestigious hospital granted them sabbaticals—to healthcare in conflict-stricken regions doubled, tripled, quadrupled. I didn't know how they did it.
I found myself even more desperate to make a life with Erin. These moments, they really were slipping by while we waited for circumstances and long-overdue reconciliations and all the other bullshit we put between us to fall into some perfect cosmic alignment. I was finished with the distance. Just fuckingfinished. I'd seen too many families ravaged and aching with the loss of their loved ones, and I couldn't comprehend why we were living apart by choice. It was fucking ludicrous. Now, after everything I'd experienced this year, our marriage resembled a flippant, selfish version of love. We were defined by our ability to exist without each other, an ability I'd long ago challenged and championed. I was wrong about that. Marriage wasn't an experiment.
There were too many things I should've done differently, she should've done differently, we both should've done it differently.Better.Our future couldn't be the same as our past, and I was prepared to tell her that.
So those storms, they seemed fitting.
I couldn't believe it when I saw her walk through the gate and straight toward me. It was like a dream, one I'd been having for months, except this dream had me wrapped up in a tight embrace.
"You're supposed to hug me back," she yelled into my chest. "This is going to get real awkward if you don't do something soon. People are going to think I'm accosting you."
I shook my head, snapping out of my disbelief, and shucked her backpack before scooping her off the ground. I was hit with the scent of rosewater and transported back in time to those deceptively simple nights on Cape Cod, when this was new and we were blind to the barriers.
"Skip," I said, sighing into her hair. I wanted to put it all out on the table now, tell her everything, and then make a plan. But I was also a man, one who'd been separated from his wife for longer than was acceptable. "If I don't get you naked in the next ten minutes, I might die."
"Let's not start our island getaway with public indecency," she said, her lips on my neck. "It would be rather unfortunate if we had to spend this time in the local jail, you know."
"Once again, my genius wife has it all figured out." I set her down and nodded in the direction of the sliding glass doors that led out of the airport. I'd arrived last night, and I knew she'd traveled light, with everything stowed in her backpack. I collected it from the ground, and slung it over my shoulder. "This way."
We walked through the terminal, our hands linked and our shoulders brushing, and everything about it was right. None of the unease for her well-being that had chased me while in Honduras lingered here, and as my thumb swirled over her hand, I knew she was safe. Yet another reason we needed to stop living on separate continents—I worried about her too much, and I didn't care whether that was a primitive, paternalistic urge.
"Hey," she murmured, squeezing my hand. I glanced down at her, first with the contemplative frown I'd adopted as we made our way through the terminal and out to the taxi stand, and then with a smile. Her eyebrows arched at that manic switch-up. "I can hear you thinking. Stop it, it's too damn loud."
