No, stay, live here, spicy sex. Love.
His gaze fell to the turquoise floor. “Sure, I get it.”
And that was it.
I got to my feet, throwing my clothes on top of his. I had only two days, and there wasn’t a minute to spare.
We made love three times that night. Slowly, like time was something we had a lot of, and then quickly, like we would be torn bodily from each other at any second.
In the morning we had sex again, then Mike fried some of the leftover potatoes from dinner and we ate them in bed, stabbing our two forks at one plate. His were drowned in ketchup, mine were as naked as I was.
I didn’t tell Mike that I loved him. And I knew better than to ask if he loved me. It would be reckless. Not to mention manipulative. But in a few years, when I told an anonymized and highly romanticized version of this night to my followers—leaving out my meltdowns and his frustration at not being able to punch his way out of every problem—I would say that as we forked fried potatoes into our mouths, love hung over our heads. Maybe I would say that as he fed me bites from his fork, he whispered, I love you, girl. And in return, I wiped the sauce on his lip with my thumb and whispered back, I love you too, Mike.
In time, if I told that story more than I did the real one, that’s how I would remember it.
So we didn’t need to say it.
CHAPTER 25
MIKE
I drove her to the airport. There was no way I was going to let her drive herself. I took her silly rental car, and Dad followed me in his truck so he could drive me back. Lyssa barely noticed that my dad was following us. She sat silently, staring out the window.
I kept my hands to myself on the drive.
“Do you want to stop at a dairy and get some snacks for the flight?” I asked. I was trying to prolong things, trying to make her talk.
She shook her head.
After a few kilometers, she started fixing her makeup in my rearview mirror and setting up her phone on my dash. I couldn’t follow what she was doing—I was serious about watching the road; the last thing I wanted to do was wrap us around a tree. Or get pulled over by Keri again.
Then she started recording.
“Hi, everyone, welcome back to my channel! This is my last video from Aotearoa New Zealand. I’ve had such an amazing time: the food, the friendly Kiwi people, the landscape—oh my god, the landscape! This truly is the most beautiful place on Earth. I hope you enjoyed this Kiwi adventure. I’m so sad to leave! But all good things come to an end. I still don’t know where I’ll go on my next vacation. Drop your suggestions in the comments, and we can plan my outfits together!”
She filmed the same speech twice more, until she had a take she liked, and then she put away her phone, still without saying a word to me.
It hurt.
Yeah, this was difficult, and maybe I should have been more understanding, but come on. She should have been asking me when I would visit or thanking me for dicking her down so good or for being such a handsome chauffeur.
“Oi, Lyssa? Anything to say?”
She eyed me, eyed the angry set of my mouth and my tight grip on the wheel.
It didn’t matter if she was provoking me like this in a misguided attempt to make this easier for her, for me, or for both of us. It was a bullshit move, and I deserved better.
In an uncharacteristically soft voice she said, “I think we’ve said it all.”
“Right. I’ll just go fuck myself then.”
She winced, but I didn’t take it back. I wanted to shout, I wanted to speed and drive like a fucking man possessed—but I couldn’t, and more than that, I wouldn’t.
There was only one last thing to say, and we said it after she hugged my dad and after I took her carry-on off my shoulder and passed it to her.
“Goodbye, Mike.”
“See ya, mate.”
