“You’re just you.”
“Can we still get gelato?”
He throws his head back with a roaring laugh before saying, “Yes, Rowan, we can still get your damn gelato.”
•
The sight of the city yesterday pales in comparison to today. The sun is warm and buttery, announcing the presence of the oncoming season, and the sky is a cloudless, shimmering blue. I think this is truly how the city was meant to be seen; it’s otherworldly.
Colt and I walk hand in hand through the streets, each carrying a waffle cone stacked high with delightfully creamy gelato that melts on my tongue every time I taste it.
The man is a saint, putting up with my bajillion-and-one photos – of the city, of him, of the two of us. We stop at a massive sculpture of a middle finger that I can’t remember the name of, and we snap a selfie joining in with a vulgar gesture of our own before moving along.
My hips start to ache after the first mile of walking, and within another half mile, they’re screaming; feeling like they’re being sawed into with a very sharp serrated knife. I hold onto Colt’s hand a little tighter and tell myself to just push through it. We’ve only seen two things – there’s so much of the city left to explore, and this is our last day. If I can just push through it…
“You’re slowing down,” Colt points out, concern in his voice.
“Sorry,” I say, trying and failing to move faster.
Colt stops and turns to look at me. “Come on, we’ll find a place to sit.” Moving until his back is in front of me, he crouches and says, “Hop on.”
“You cannot carry me on your back,” I scoff.
“I don’t think I asked, actually,” he says. “So get on.”
The command in his voice sends a shiver through me and I do as I’m told, wrapping my legs around his waist and my arms around his broad shoulders. He hoists me up like it’s nothing, his arms supporting me beneath my legs – essentially wearing me like a backpack.
He doesn’t complain, doesn’t get winded, remains completely unbothered by my presence as he treks through the city. He doesn’t even seem to care about the handful of people who stop to give us strange looks, something I’ve grown hyper aware of since I started to get sick. I rest my head on his shoulder and let myself soak in the way it feels to have someone care like this, to not hesitate or question for a second that he wanted to help me. To not feel like I’m constantly embarrassing him.
It’s another mile before we find a small café with an empty table at the front of it. As we approach, Colt very gently sets me down right in front of one of the chairs, and points to it, then orders me to sit while he grabs a menu.
We sit – probably longer than we need to, just to eat – and munch on our food, Colt sucking down his thirdespresso of the day, which I make a mental note to give him hell about later.
Where I would normally expect a lecture, complaint, or some sort of embarrassing comment from the person I was walking with, Colt says nothing. He acts as if nothing happened, or if it did, it was completely normal, and I can’t explain why, but it makes me feel so incredibly safe.
By the time we’ve stopped at all of the ‘big ones,’ as Colt calls them, the sun has dipped in the sky, ready to welcome the moon for her night shift, and it’s time to head back to our hotel and start packing. It’s almost time for our bubble to pop, for the real world to come back. Back to work, back to responsibility, back to annoying day-to-day corporate crap.
At least we still have tonight...and the plane ride.
THIRTY-TWO
Rowan
I’ve never known someone who could manage to look stressed out, even in their sleep, until I met Colt Fowler. The man is dead to the world asleep, in a private planethat he owns, flying back from a weekend in Italy, and still has a scrunch to his brow, like he’s waiting for something bad to happen or for someone to screw something up. The same scrunch he wears in almost every meeting and every time I check his stock reports.
I find a blanket in one of the cabinets throughout the plane’s cabin and gently drape it over him before getting myself tucked in, too. There’s something so soothing about the subtle rumbling of a plane and the passing of the sky in the window. If I could, I’d sleep like this every night. If I said that to Colt, he would probably make it possible.
It takes all of ten minutes for me to fall asleep, and I’m not sure how long I stay that way.
When I finally wake up, Colt plops into the seat next to mine to let me know we’re a half hour out from landing, and my heart drops just a little bit knowing that the bubble is about to pop and we’re nearing the border between our fantasy world and the real world, about to cross back over.
•
As Colt and I cross the threshold to the house, we both drop our bags and heave out a sigh in unison that makes Colt chuckle.
“And you call me old,” he teases.
“Oldandgrumpy,” I correct him, then kick off my shoes to drop them into the rack next to the door.
