I give her my credit card and ID, and she hands me a set of keys. “You’re in room six. Go out the door and up the stairs. It’s the first door on your right. Now get up there and dry off!”
There is nothing I want to do more. The once-cute sundress I’m wearing is clinging sopping wet to my body and is so infused with sweat that it probably needs to be burned.
And then I remember I have nothing to change into.
I want to sob in frustration.
I want to sob even more when I unlock the door to our room to see it is approximately the size of a closet and contains only one double bed.
“Shit,” I hiss. “It said online it was a double room. I thought that meant two beds.”
Felix does not look any happier than I am.
“I’ll go down and see if they have something else,” he says.
“This was the last room.”
He runs a hand through his hair, which is dripping into his eyes.
“I’ll sleep on the floor,” he says.
I glower at him. “Be serious.”
“I don’t mind.”
“Of course you mind. It’s cement and there’s like one foot of space.” I pause. Take a breath. This is not the thing to freak out about. Not when there are too many others that might literally ruin my life. “It’s fine,” I say tersely. “We can share.”
I refrain from addingjust don’t touch me. I’m pretty sure it’s clear from my tone.
“We should get out of our wet clothes,” Felix says.
“And change into what?”
He groans. “Ah. Right. Probably should have bought some T-shirts when we were charging my phone.”
I hate the idea of exposing even one extra inch of my body to this man, but I cannot remain in this dress.
“I’m going to take a shower,” I say.
“Can you hand me a towel out of the bathroom?” he asks.
I toss him one and close the door. The bathroom is grim, with a flickering fluorescent light and a shower stall that drains into a grate at the center of the room, making the whole floor wet. There’s no shampoo, only one tiny bar of soap, and the water quickly runs from tepid to freezing.
I scrub myself down as fast as humanly possible and attempt to dry off, but the towel is scratchy and miniscule. It barely wraps all the way around my boobs, and I have to drape it askew to keep my bits covered.
When I emerge from the bathroom Felix is sitting on the bed shirtless with his towel wrapped around his waist. For once, the sight does not make me weak at the knees.
His wet clothes are draped over the small window unit, and I put my dress and the bikini I was wearing there too. (Yes—thatbikini. The bright red Jessica Rabbit one I put on this morning because the other suit was dirty. Fuck my life.) Given the humidity, there’s no chance any of the clothes will be dry by morning.
Seeming to read my mind, Felix says if they’re still wet when we wake up, he’ll run out and get us some cheap tourist garb.
This does nothing to remedy the fact that we have nothing to wear to bed tonight.
I slip under the covers in my itchy towel. He disappears into the bathroom and showers. When he comes back he turns off the lights and gets into bed beside me, also wearing a towel. He carefully shifts to the very edge of his side of the bed, which still only leaves a few inches between us.
Being so close to him raises my heart rate.
Not with lust, to be clear.
