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“But I can have a word with Desiree. Obviously, she’s not allowed to take over that room and kick you out. It’s unprofessional and inappropriate—”
She shakes her head, fully committing to the martyr bit with a weary tone. “Save it. Who am I to stand in the way of love? People should be happy. Notus, obviously. But other people. Better people.” She finishes unpacking and slams the drawer closed. “Now, no more talking. That was rule number one.”
I let the door close. “Talking?”
“Yes. If you’ve forgotten the rules already, I can jot down a list. In fact, I might have just come up with another—” She turns back to survey the room like she’s intensely focused on solving a problem. I watch from the narrow foyer as she stands and walks over to the large window, flattens her back against it, and then starts taking steps, strategically lining the back of her heel up to the front of her toe. She does this over and over until she reaches me, pauses, and looks up with a challenging gaze. We’re chest to chest. Her eyes are two tiny chiselstrying to bore through me. It’s the first time she’s looked directly at me since she strolled into my room. It feels like someone’s squeezing a tight fist around my stomach.
She doesn’t look like she’s going to cave anytime soon. We could be here all night, so I move aside for her, and she completes her task of measuring the length of the room with a satisfied hum.
“Thirty-one feet, give or take. I’ll be generous and let you have the bigger portion. Fifteen feet for me, sixteen for you. I know maintenance is busy battening down the hatches, but I think you and I could jerry-rig a dividing wall easily enough. Where do you think we could find some plywood around here? And how good are you with a hammer?”
She’s serious.
If I handed her a pack of nails and a two-by-four, she’d have aKEEP OUTsign erected within a half hour. By the end of the day, I’m sure she’d finish construction on her wall. I burst her bubble with a dry tone. “Every bit of plywood we have is going toward hurricane prep. Your wall will have to wait.”
“Nonsense. Plywood’s out, but we can get creative. How many shirts did you bring?” She opens the top drawer of the dresser. “Perfect! Look at this! We can string them on a line from wall to wall. Right over the bed and everything. That could work.”
“Put my shirt down.”
She holds my white T-shirt lower so that it falls exactly at her neckline. It’s like she’s a child at a fair poking her head through a silly backdrop.Look, mom. Take my picture!“Now, now, don’t get testy. If you don’t want me to use your stuff, I’m sure I can just borrow clothes from Maddox and Desiree. They aren’t using them right now anyway. Also, for the record, I didn’t realize youownedT-shirts. Not to mention, this one is decadently soft!Sounlike you. I’d expect you to prefer fiber constructed of aluminum cans and old tires. Tough and durable.”
She says the end part with a strong Soviet accent, heavy emphasis on ther.
Sometimes—okay,allthe time—I look at Paige and think,Goddamn it, you’re the funniest person I’ve ever met. Simply existing near you makes my day that much better.But the greatest travesty in all this is that I can’t tell her. Not how funny she is, not how much I want to kiss her, even when she’s being goofy, even when she waggles my T-shirt back and forth just to taunt me.
“I want my shirt back.”
“What are you going to do to get it?” she asks, holding it up like she thinks it’s out of my reach.
I snatch it, and it’s like taking candy from a baby. Easier.
I tell her that, and she scowls.
“I can’t believe I’ve forgotten myself. You’ve completely distracted me and made me break my own rule! No talking is no talking. Now, go to your side of the room and leave me alone.”
The next thirty minutes go like this:
Outside, the rain picks up to a real downpour. Without the TV on, I can hear the storm strengthening, the wind howling. There’s a palm tree just outside our room that keeps thrashing against our window. It would be an ominous backdrop if we were in any way paying attention to it.
We’re not. There could be ten hurricanes, a dozen tornadoes, and an earthquake to boot and we would still be zeroed in on intently ignoring each other, nothing else.
I sit in a chair with my computer open on my lap. I’m working, answering emails, minding my own business.
Paige goes at it, rearranging the furniture in the suite. If it’s not nailed down or ten thousand pounds (like the dresser and the bed), chances are it’s found a new home. She learned that lesson the hard way. Watching her try with all her might to shift that dresser barely half an inch was highly entertaining, but I had to pretend like I wasn’t watching. I made a sound—a blunted laugh that I had to swallow—and she looked up at me with a speculative gaze. I squinted down at my computer screen and moved my mouth really fast like I was reading themost important document I’d ever seen. Oh, look at this email, straight from the president, filled with the nuclear codes and the conclusive evidence that Jack fromLostwas in purgatory the whole time.
I had a footrest at one point. That’s gone. She came over and stood, looking down at it without saying a word. I eventually got the hint, picked up my feet so they hovered just above it, and like a little rat who’d been lusting after a piece of cheese, she swiped the ottoman away immediately. It’s now stacked on top of an end table, alongside a floor lamp and a few spare pillows. Her rudimentary blockade means that if I want to go to her side of the room and peek out the window, I’ll have to climb over the bed.
It also means that if she wants to access the bathroom, or the all-important thermostat, she’ll also have to humble herself and shimmy across that comforter onto my side.
She shivers and rubs her hands up and down her forearms, trying to warm up. “Bit chilly in here, no?Andbeforeyoureply,” she amends quickly, forming one long rambling word to get the sentiment out as fast as possible. “I was talking to myself.”
She looks over at me, and without even having to stand from my comfy chair—(Oh yes, did I mention the best seating in the suite is onmyside of the bed?)—I reach up and press the down arrow on the thermostat, cranking it cooler by one more degree. I just can’t sleep well if it’s too warm, you know?
Paige’s teeth audibly chatter, and I almost feel bad, but then she whips the comforter off the bed and wraps herself up in it, sitting on the window ledge, looking out into the dark, menacing night.
I grab the TV remote, thinking I should at least check the weather to see if there are any updates.
“I guess he thinks he gets final say on what we watch,” she says, now referring to me as if I’m not even in the room.
