I catch the driver checking on us in his rearview, the wind whipping into his own window sending his hair dancing across his forehead.
“I said I missed you!”
“Oh,” Ren calls back. “Sure!”
I laugh and give up for now.
We gasp our way into our hotel and collapse flat onto our beds. Ren rolls his head to the side toward me, and it’s just the two of us staring at each other, breathing in the same air again, existing in the same space.
“Hi,” I say.
“Hi,” Ren says back.
My bangs are stuck to my forehead, and Ren’s hair curls at the nape of his neck in the way it does only when he’s returning from a run, fresh out of the ocean, when it’s July and everywhere is an oven. It always makes him look a little boyish, drawing me back to the adolescent version of him I used to sleep with on the trampoline in his parents’ backyard, or teenage Ren, lounging on a chair next to me at the public pool in summer, when it seemed like that part of our lives would never end. All we had was time.
It makes my arms itch in an anxious way, this reminder that this weekend is the exact opposite of days like that. Now, we only have thirty-six hours to fit in all the time we’ve missed together over the last year.
I push myself up to standing before I can get too comfortable, and extend a hand toward Ren. “Come on.”
“Where are we going?” he asks, observing my waggling fingers but not moving an inch.
“Come with me and you’ll find out.”
For a minute, I worry he won’t. That the idea of going back out into the heat is too unbearable, and the list and this weekend will be for naught. That I won’t be able to make it all up to him, how inconvenient my move has made a relationship that was once as easy as breathing.
But just as I’m about to try to urge him up again, Ren smiles and grabs my hand.
chapter ten
It turns out my list may have been a little overambitious.
We hurry through the top hits of the Art Institute, ending at theAmerica Windows, then hustle through Millenium Park, stop at The Bean and take an obligatory picture in its mirrored surface. I doggedly try to keep us on schedule, checking the time every twenty minutes, while Ren gamely pilots us toward each stop like a dad on vacation, following the blue dot that represents us on his phone screen and turning me toward our next destination when I get so focused on moving quickly that I nearly miss it.
By late afternoon, the next three stops on the list are all bars. “The tiki bar is this way,” Ren says once we reach the river.
At the bar, we sit under a speaker that plays a cover of “Kokomo” on repeat that I enjoyed the first three times and is now the auditory equivalent of Baker-Miller Pink, and order Isaac’s favorite drink on the menu. They arrive in coconut-shaped cups after fifteen minutes of the thirty I allotted for this place. I gulp half of mine down before my brain freezes from the icy, piña colada–adjacent mix while Ren sips his more carefully. Some of the energy seems to have seeped out of him, and I can’t totally blame him.Everything feels sticky here, and we’re crammed at a tiny table in between two loud, sweaty groups.
“Let’s go,” I say, glancing at the time on my phone. Happy hour ends in twenty minutes at the wine bar Lydia suggested, and I can only hope things might be better there. I nod at the unfinished drinks between us, tap mine against his. “Bottom’s up.” Ren takes one more drink of his, but leaves it mostly unfinished. He’s not one for overly sweet things, anyway.
On the walk there, I keep my eyes forward as we pass a beer garden with picnic tables under umbrellas, misters set up around the perimeter. The blazing sun makes every step feel like ten, and my head is starting to spin from all the ground we’ve covered, but there isn’t time for it.
“Let’s stop here,” Ren says, and I realize he’s no longer next to me.
I turn around, observe the border of flower beds surrounding the tables before ambling back over to him. “It’s not on the list.”
Ren squints toward the tables, the dogs sprawled under them, the people looking a lot happier than we are in direct line of the sun. His eyes stay narrowed as he sucks at one cheek. “Seems like it should be,” he says. “Have we considered the possibility that Lydia and Isaac compiled their suggestions in much cooler weather?”
“The entrance isn’t even on this side.”
He nods at the flower beds, barely knee high. “I think we can manage.”
“We can’t just climb—” The words aren’t even out of my mouth before Ren is wrapping an arm around my waist, pulling me into him as he picks me up easily and steps over the flower bed.
On the other side, he sets me down, my hands finding his shoulders to steady my feet.
“See?” he says, grinning down at me. “Easy.”
With the cool water misting down on my bare shoulders and Ren’s arm still around my waist,there is no list, only the yeasty smell of beer wafting out of the building, the soft fabric of Ren’s T-shirt against my skin, and the whole evening stretching ahead of us.
