“Fuck,” I whisper.
Our breaths mingle. I shudder.
“You said it,” Layla whispers back.
We both close our eyes and listen to each other’s breaths as we catch our breath and our hearts begin to slow.
“You.” My voice is haggard. I shake my head from side to side. “You wreck me, Layla. You really do.”
I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing, but I decide not to think too much of it. Instead, I focus on the look on her face as she traces the line of my jaw, on her soothing touch instead of the terrifying sense of feeling completely undone. I don’t move or break eye contact until her finger touches my lips, swiping meditatively back and forth over the bottom one. She seems as entranced as I am. Small mercies.
I exhale through my nose, and then, because I can’t not do it, cup her face with one hand and kiss her again, savoring every dip and valley of her lips, tasting deeply, slowly, exquisitely. It’s not a kiss that says I need to fuck you. It’s a kiss that says I love you. Te amo. However you say it in Portuguese. It doesn’t matter; it’s all the same thing.
My eyes shut. It’s almost too much to bear.
I’m just about to tell her what I’m feeling when the sound of a few Japanese tourists crushing through the park ruins the moment. We break the kiss. Suddenly the air is heavy—sweat beads around my collarbone. I swipe off my hat and wipe the sweat before replacing it with the bill to the front. Layla stares at me hard, her chest rises and falls with each breath. The moment might be over, but the tension between us still crackles.
The chatter of the tourists dies away as they finish taking pictures of the quaint little building, unaware of where we stand in the shadows. Then a few of them scream when a loud clap of thunder sounds from the sky. A spring storm, right on time.
I glance through the trees, now bristling in a bit of heavy wind.
“It’s going to rain,” Layla says.
She’s right. The dark alcove of what used to be an old dairy might be enough to shelter us, but if the wind blows anything sideways, we’ll get soaked.
Another clap of thunder. I look up to the sky, and hold her tighter. “We need to find a cab.”
* * *
Layla
Fat drops of warm rain splatter on my bare shoulder by the time we exit the park somewhere by Lincoln Center. The wind has picked up some more—now the sky is covered more with low-lying gray clouds that are nearly black. It’s a typical spring storm in New York—the kind that sweeps in on a warm day and leaves just as quickly. Another clap of thunder sounds, and as if some god turns a key, the clouds open and it starts to absolutely pour.
“Come on!” Nico yells.
The light turns on Amsterdam, and he tugs me across the street. Out of nowhere, a wave of sudden nausea hits me, and I stumble on a crack in the sidewalk.
“Whoa, you okay?” Nico calls through the roar of the weather.
I nod my head as we keep walking, even though I feel like crap. What the hell is happening to me?
Soon the combination of the jog and the withering humidity is too much, and it doesn’t take longer than a block before I have to stop again. I grab the railing of a set of brownstone stairs. Nico whips around as I collapse on the bottom stair, holding my stomach while the rain hammers down in fat sheets. I will not puke in the middle of the Upper West Side. I will not puke, I will not puke. Will. Not.
“Baby, what’s wrong?”
Nico’s at my side in a moment, sliding an arm around my rib cage while I bend over. I breathe deeply as the nausea subsides. Damn. Quinn isn’t going to let me hear the end of this. And neither will my father.
“I’m fine,” I say. “This weather is just kind of kicking my ass. Give me a second.”
Nico looks at me up and down, and before I can say anything more, he slips another arm under my legs and lifts me up like I weigh nothing. With a wicked grin and brief peck on the cheek, he carries me briskly down the block.
We stop in front of a boutique, one of those places that would have said no to Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman. With me in his arms, Nico busts through the glass doors, startling the waifish salesgirls lounging behind a display of beige skirts.
“She’s not feeling too well,” he tells them with his trademark smile as he sets me neatly on the bench by the entrance. “Can she hang out here while I find a cab?”
With his rain-soaked shirt hugging his muscles transparently, he’s putting on the best wet t-shirt contest in the world. Even through the nausea, I can’t help but appreciate the view.
The salesgirls clearly like what they see too. One of them stumbles as she takes in the soaking wet god in front of her. She barely glances at me, despite the fact that I am dressed in red in a store devoid of color.
“S-sure,” she says. “Take as long as you need.”
Nico gives me a gentle kiss. “Stay here, baby. I’ll get us a cab.”
* * *
It takes close to thirty minutes for Nico to get a cab, leaving me thirty minutes to wilt on the bench, pressing my temple against the cold glass wall of the store and willing the waves of nausea that just won’t quite die to go away, away, away. I have had one offer of help from the salesgirls, the bitches, and it isn’t until Nico lifts me up again that I realize just how shitty I do feel. I want to lie down right here on the cold white marble and go to sleep. I want to be anywhere else than a New York City cab.
And I want to know what the hell is going on.
The cab is even worse than normal. The interior stinks of cheap air freshener and hot dogs, and the driver, a taciturn guy named Karim, is blasting some kind of South Asian music featuring an ear-piercing female singer. Karim drives even more erratically than most New York cabbies, whipping and winding around the corners, jerking at the stoplights hard enough to throw me against the thick plastic barrier between the front and back seats.
Ten blocks down Broadway, and it’s too much.
“Stop,” I say weakly. “Stop, I need to get out. I’m going to be sick.”
There’s nothing a New York cab driver fears more than people throwing up in his cab. I spoke softly, but almost immediately, the cab pulls over.
“Out,” Karim orders.
“Hold on, man, just give her a second,” Nico’s arguing. “She doesn’t feel good, but she’ll be all right.”
“I need out,” I manage to say. “Now.” That final lurch did it for me.
“Out!” yells Karim, and he slams his hand on his horn, prompting Nico to shuffle quickly out of the cab and come around to help me out. He stands me up on the curb and tosses a few bills at the cabbie, who zooms away.
The sky thunders. My stomach rolls. I sprint to a trashcan on the corner, where the stench of urine and rotten garbage lingers. Everything I’ve eaten today comes up.
“Shit!”
Nico’s voice is frantic behind me while his hand is at my back, holding back my hair as I lose my cookies on a busy street corner in the middle of New York City.
“Nasty!” I hear someone sneer as they pass by.
My thoughts exactly. If I didn’t feel so awful, I’d be incredibly embarrassed.
When I stand up, all the blood rushes from my head. There’s another clap of thunder, and I barely register a flash of lightning against the dark gray of the sky and tall buildings.
“Nico,” I mutter, just before I fall forward into his arms.
Chapter Thirty
Layla
There’s a ringing sound in my head. It comes and goes, like a timer going off, but just a bit slower. It’s steady, but annoying. And it’s making my head hurt more than it already did.
I groan. I just want it to stop. Ugh.
“Layla?”
The voice is warm, kind, and male, but not one I recognize. He repeats my name, and something rustles around my body. I’m in bed, but it’s not my bed. My hands grasp at the sheets, and my eyes open.
“There she is. I thought you were coming around.”
Dressed in purple scrubs, Simba smiles sweetly. “Hey there. Welcome back.”
I frown. My vision is a little hazy, but it’s clearing up quickly. Looking around, I see that I’m in a small corner of a hospital, partitioned off from the rest of a busy ER by two hanging curtains that encircle my hospital bed. They are light blue, speckled with small pink teddy bears. My wrist aches a little. I look down to find an IV drip line inserted into my vein, just below the oversized sleeves of a hospital gown. It makes me feel faint again, so I lie back against my pillow and close my eyes again.
“You okay, there, honey?” Simba—the nurse, it appears—does a quick check of my vitals, taking my temperature and blood pressure in record time before making quick notes on my chart at the end of the bed. “I’m Tad, the nurse on call here tonight. You had quite a spell at the park.”
I clear my throat, coughing a bit. I blink, trying to remember the name he just told me, but still, all I can come up with is Simba. “What…what happened?”
“You fainted, dear.” His expression is kind and honest. “Right in the middle of Lincoln Center, if you can believe that. You’re lucky your boyfriend was there to catch you, otherwise you’d probably have a nice little gash and a concussion too. It’s nothing major—just dehydration. Your doctor ordered an IV drip to help.”
He taps the bag hanging from the rod next to my left elbow. I just nod as he continues checking me out. Where is Nico? Where are my clothes, my things? A pounding headache rips through the side of my head, but disappears quickly. God, I feel like shit. This is worse than any hangover I have ever had.
“Baby?”
A familiar deep voice rumbles, and a brown hand gingerly pulls the curtain aside. Nico’s head pops in, his Yankees cap crooked and propped so far up that the bill points almost to the ceiling, the way it looks when he’s been taking it on and off in quick succession. His worry transforms into relief when he sees I’m awake, and he wastes no time moving to sit on the edge of my bed.
“Hey,” he murmurs sweetly as he takes my hand and brushes a thumb over my knuckles.
I squeeze gently, and he leans in to nuzzle my nose with his.
“You might want to give her some space,” says Simba.
Nico sits up, obviously annoyed. The thunder in his expression is enough to cause the nurse’s mouth to close mid-sentence.
“I’ll let the on-call doctor know you’re awake,” Simba says as he ducks away.
Nico turns back to me. “You need space, baby?” he asks with a sneaky grin. “Is Lion King right?”
I giggle. “You see it too?”
“How could I not? He looks like he just ran in from the Serengeti. Was off chasing wildebeests and shit.”
I giggle again. Nico lifts a hand up to cup my face, then runs it down my neck to rest on my shoulder. He exhales, long and slow between full, pursed lips.
“You scared me, sweetie.” His voice is almost too low to hear. He studies the edge of my hospital gown, fingering the coarse fabric.
“I’m sorry.” My own voice is coarse, unused, though it hasn’t really been that long that I was out.
“Layla, you got nothing to be sorry about.” Nico’s deep eyes fill with kindness.
“I know. I just…I’m pissed I ruined our date.”
At that, Nico tips his head back and laughs loudly, big from his belly. “Our date? You were worried about ruining our date?”
“Well, it was important!” I protest, suddenly irritated that he finds this so funny. I want to shove him aside, but I’ve got a freaking needle stuck in my arm. “You went through all that trouble with the picnic. And it was our first big date since...you know. Since you decided to...”
“Stay?”
Nico just laughs harder, his whole body shaking. I cross my arms and fume, which only makes him laugh even more. I stare at the stupid teddy bears until finally he calms down long enough to catch his breath.
“Only you…shit…ah, my stomach hurts,” he stutters, still chuckling every few words. “Only you would faint in the middle of the fuckin’ street, baby, and then worry that you ruined our date. God, you are so fuckin’ cute!”
I stick my lower lip out and frown, but I can’t keep the sour expression for long. Nico’s big hands capture my face as he gives me a gentle kiss, ending with a nip of my bottom lip and the promise of more once I feel better. He leans his forehead onto mine again and sighs.
“Don’t ever fuckin’ do that to me again, all right?”
It’s then I realize that he was genuinely scared, that most of his laughter is rooted in fear. I whimper and accept another kiss with a closed mouth, conscious that I haven’t brushed my teeth since losing my lunch. Then I scoot over on the bed and pull him beside me so I can rest on his broad chest.
“How long was I out?” I ask, winding an arm around his middle while one of his wraps around my shoulder.
Nico kisses the top of my head and rests his chin there for a second. “About an hour and a half. You just…shit, baby. I thought you were dying or something. You just collapsed. Your eyes rolled back in your head, and you just looked…gone.”
I exhale sharply. I obviously can’t remember what it felt like to pass out, but I can imagine how scary it would be to see Nico do something like that. Instinctively, I burrow a little closer.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
He just hugs me tighter. “And I told you. Nothing to be sorry for. We just…I just need to take better care of my girl.”
I sigh, but don’t reply. I love that he wants to take care of me, but I don’t want to be another burden in his life. He already takes care of so many people.
But he speaks before I can say as much.
“Layla,” he says, and I’m struck by the way his voice, normally so deep and strong, quivers slightly around my name. “Layla, baby, I—”
But before he can finish his sentence, we’re interrupted by a tall woman in a white coat and a stethoscope.
“Ms. Barros?” she asks as she pulls the curtain aside. It’s not really a question, since she’s reading my name from the chart.
Nico stands up, and the doctor looks him over.
“I hear this guy is your hero.”
Nico suddenly looks bashful, and I smile back at the doctor. “I guess he is.”
“Lucky you.” She moves to the other side of the bed to sit next to me on a rolling stool. “I’m Dr. Andrews. I just wanted to check in, make sure you’re feeling better now that you’ve woken up. Tad said your vitals are good.”
I nod. “Okay.”
She looks at the IV bag. “Well, you took almost two full bags—you were pretty dehydrated. You don’t have a concussion thanks to this guy, but you should continue to hydrate at home and try to take it easy. It’s so easy to relapse when you’ve had mono this badly.”
I blink. “Wait...what?” Did she say mono? “No, no. I had the flu a few weeks ago. It’s just a relapse from that.”
Dr. Andrews pages through the chart again. “Um, no dear. We did a blood test just to check for some things, and you came up positive for mono. Mr. Soltero told us that you had been sick recently. It wasn’t hard to put two and two together.” She flips the papers back down. “Sometimes mono is hard to diagnose. It can look like the flu in the beginning. Let me guess: you’ve been a little more tired than usual and lost a bit of weight recently.”
“More like a lot,” Nico pipes up.
I swallow. My chest feels like it’s made of ice. I know it’s not cancer or anything, but this is the last thing I need. It’s the middle of the semester. I have finals coming in a few more weeks. I can’t be this sick right now.
“You’ll need to take it easy over the next few weeks,” Dr. Andrews is saying. “I’m going to prescribe some anti-nausea medication to make sure you can k
eep food down, but more importantly, you need to be getting enough sleep. I’m guessing you’ve been feeling tired a bit?”
I nod. I have, but I figured that was just because, you know, I hadn’t exactly been sleeping a ton. Like every other college student.
“Well, then,” Dr. Andrews says. “No hot baths. Minimize your caffeine intake. No alcohol, or even tea, which is a diuretic.”
Nico takes my hand as my mouth falls open. No caffeine? How am I supposed to make it through eight-a.m. classes without caffeine?
The doctor continues to rattle off a bunch more suggestions for a speedy recovery. I’m left feeling like an invalid. I basically have to be treated like I’m on hospice for a week or two. This is seriously the last thing I need right now. I glance up at Nico, who is listening intently to every word she says. Shit. Like a twenty-six-year-old wants to play nursemaid to his new girlfriend. How fucking romantic.
“Ms. Barros?” Dr. Andrews pulls my attention. “Do you have any questions?”
I blink. “No. No, I think I got it.”
Dr. Andrews replaces the chart at the end of my bed. “All right, I’m going to get your paperwork started to go home. As soon as it’s finished, you’re free to go.”
“Sounds good. Thank you.”
She ducks out with a polite nod, and Nico immediately resumes our previous position with my head back on his chest. He hums a little as he strokes my hair. I close my eyes. Nowhere feels as good as right here.
“Mono,” he murmurs. “Damn.”
“I’m okay.” I say, gripping him closer.
His warmth emanates through the thin cotton of his t-shirt, soft and worn under my cheek. He smells so good—an antidote for any ailment. But then the realization hits me of just what I’ve been diagnosed with. Mono is a kissing disease. Which means if I have it, Nico probably does too. Or will, unless I stop kissing him now.
Bad Idea: The Complete Collection Page 28