“How beautiful you are. How lucky I feel to be here with you anywhere, even this trash motel.”
She smiles. “You think I’m beautiful, huh?”
“Is that really a question? Yes, I’ve always thought you were the most beautiful girl there is.”
Her cheeks flush, and she swallows. “I didn’t know that.”
I move toward her and sit down, facing her. “I should’ve told you so long ago.”
“Would’ve made me a lot less…abrasive where you’re concerned.” She bites the inside of her lip as she tries to hold back her smile.
“We’ve had plenty to say to each other, haven’t we?”
She snorts. “You could say that.”
The heater lets out a loud wail, and we look at each other in horror.
When it dies, I yell, “Noooo.”
I move toward the head of the bed and hold out my arms. She moves into them, and I pull the blanket over us.
“Unbelievable,” I mutter. “I want to make out with you so fucking bad, but I’m too worried you’ll get frostbite if I trail my tongue…anywhere.”
She gets the giggles, and I’m laughing in the next second too.
“We’re just trying to survive,” I say dramatically.
She burrows her face into my neck. “It’s pretty fun…and hilarious. Our own little adventure. And do we really wantmemories of our first time doing…anything”—she peeks up at me, her cheeks flushing—“in this room?”
“I’d do…anything with you…anywhere. But you’re right. I’ve gotta have it be more special for you than this.”
“Wherever we are is special…but I think we’d better preserve our body heat.” She holds on tightly to me.
“Here, let’s lie back.” I lift her and slide us both down on the bed, making sure that our heads are on my pillows and nothing gross. We lie there facing each other, our bodies locked together, and then I pull the blanket over our heads. “Our own little adventure in our very own little fort,” I say.
Electricity hums under my skin when she closes that last inch and kisses me. She makes a small sound that ends me. My body is on board with doing all of this right here, right now, but then I feel how cold her hand is when she hooks it behind my neck, and then I notice how icy her nose is.
I force myself to pull back and take her hands in mine, trying to warm them up. “You’re freezing.”
“I’m fine,” she says.
“Let me call and see if they have more blankets.”
She wrinkles her nose. “Okay.”
I hurry out of the blanket and smile when she pops her head out.
“Brr,” she says.
I call the front desk, and a woman answers this time. “So sorry your heater’s not working, sir,” she says when I tell her what’s going on. “I’ll come take a look and bring more blankets.”
“Oh, thank you,” I say, surprised.
There’s a knock on the door a few minutes later, and I open it to a woman almost as tall as me. She’s wearing a sweater, no coat, no gloves. She hands me a pile of blankets.
“I’m Birgitta. Let me see if I can get that heater running,” she says.
“Thank you,” I say, opening the door wider.
