“Why?” I ask, my words half-breathed. Every syllable is an effort. I want to lie down, but I know it won’t help. I feel so weak. I don’t want to be standing anymore.
“Because I’m going to change and come back.”
“You don’t have to. I’m okay,” I say, and I can hear how tired, how feeble, how not okay I actually sound.
“Just tell me where the room key is, Abby.”
I lift my arm with a wimpy point at the dresser. I hear the slide of the plastic across the wood and the careful click of the door as he opens and closes it.
Through the pain, a glimmer of relief.
I don’t have to do this alone.
Moving feels impossible, so I don’t. I stay leaning against the wall for however long it takes to hear the beep of the door key scanned and feel Miles take up space near me again. It feels like hours.
“Let’s get you to the bed,” he says.
“Not yet. I might…” I gesture to the bathroom. Everything is sideways and spinning and my stomach is unsettled.
“Okay, can we both agree that you’re not getting on a boat?”
I stick my bottom lip out and squint harder, expressing my displeasure as best I can without words.
“Pout all you want; you couldn’t make it to the boat, much less handle it when it’s moving.”
“Don’t be mean to me,” I say. “I’m ill.”
“You are, which is why we’re staying here,” he says.
I want to argue so badly, but I can’t find the energy for it. Words won’t come to me. And the worst part is that he’s right—I would not survive a boat ride or even the walk to the boat. I know he’s not being mean, but my vacation is being ruined by this migraine and I’m taking it out on him.
“Fine, but I?—”
Another wave of nausea hits me. It’s not a normal wave; this is a tsunami, and I am not going to be able to ride it.
Faster than I’d like to, I move into the bathroom, just making it in time to empty the contents of my stomach without getting it all over the floor. I reach to move my hair out of my face, butMiles is already there, scooping my hair away and rubbing my back. As I lower myself to the floor, he comes with me.
The pain in my head is excruciating. The exertion of it all has my brain feeling like it will bust through my skull, and the sharp pain behind my eye feels nothing like a pinch and everything like a knife.
“I’m so sorry,” I whisper.
He hands me a washcloth to wipe my mouth with as I flush the toilet and close the lid. I rarely throw up more than once during a migraine, since I use this window of time to take my meds and hope they work quickly.
“Apology not accepted.”
He releases my hair as I turn to face him. I’m certain I look like a hot mess right now—pale and sickly. Barely keeping my eyes open.
“But I feel bad.”
“For what?”
“For being sick, for not being able to go on the boat. For inviting you to go with me—and now you’re just watching me puke.”
“I much prefer this to a sunset. They’re overrated.”
My stomach contracts with a laugh, but the exertion causes a painful pulse in my head. “Don’t make me laugh; it hurts,” I say.
“Okay, no more laughing,” he says and holds up two fingers like a Boy Scout. “Scout’s honor.”
