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“Good,” he replies, “because I doubt that they have much more than burgers on the menu where we’re going.”
“I don’t—”
“End of discussion,” he says abruptly.
Oh, he’s back. The Marco we all know and love.
I swallow. Can I really do this? Go to a motel under a fake name? I pull my cap lower over my forehead—my only hope of not being recognized. I can barely keep my seat I’m so tired. There are still hours to go.
“Ten minutes,” I tell him. “Let’s stay here, and I-I’ll take a nap. Here, on the grass. I can’t pay for a room, anyway, I don’t have money on me, and I…”
“I got it,” he murmurs. “Come on.”
He starts the engine again, and takes it slower this time, until he reaches the motel up the street. I am so embarrassed I can’t even say ‘thank you’. I can barely keep my eyes open, and as soon as we walk into the small, dingy room, all I see is the bed.
It’s only after I’ve lied down on it, my shoes still on, that I realize that that’s what it is. One bed. Only one.
“Feel free to take the floor,” I mumble as a joke, because I don’t expect him to do it for a second.
I hear him groan as he lowers himself to the filthy carpet, out of view. Even though I was already half-asleep, I jolt upright and see him spread his long legs on the floor.
“What the heck are you doing?” my words come out as a drawl, I’m so sleepy.
“Sleeping on the floor, as instructed.”
I have never been more disgusted by the ‘princess treatment’ as I am now.
“That was a freaking joke, Marco,” I say, but my voice sounds too angry, too violent. All my pent-up emotions are just spurting out on him in some random motel room. Classy. “I-I’m sorry,” I add awkwardly.
He doesn’t say anything. He just picks himself up from the floor and sits next to me. The mattress dips under his weight. He sighs, as if he is in pain. Of course he is, he’s been driving non-stop for nearly twelve hours at this point. The sky is getting dark outside. The night will be vicious with cold, won’t it?
There is some heat in the room, but not enough for me to take off my coat.
He lies down next to me, his long body parallel to mine, and closes his eyes. He is asleep the next second. Boys.
***
It doesn’t take me much longer to drift off.
I am in the middle of a sickly-sweet dream that somehow involves Marco and his sinewy, slender arms, his slender waist wrapped in my hands. But this time, there are no clothes between us. In the dream, I wrap my legs around his, much like I do on the bike, except that there is no bike between us, if you get my meaning. Images of his lips and eyes and hair swirl in my unconscious with the delicious darkness of deep sleep, keeping me safe from bitter and dark thoughts, when I am jerked violently awake. Someone is pounding on the wall.
I almost jump out of my skin, and I sit up so abruptly I get dizzy. The room is bathed in blue twilight, but I’m so jarred by the pounding that I pat in the dark on my nightstand for a light switch and turn the light on. Yellow beams land on Marco’s face.
It’s transformed.
His beautiful features are twisted as if he is in immense pain, and he is shaking like a fish, his body flopping on the mattress, his fists pounding the bed, the walls, anything within reach. Not me, though. He doesn’t hit me. I sit at the edge of the bed, out of the way, and wait for the light to wake him up from the nightmare or whatever is happening to him, but he doesn’t wake up. He’s getting worse.
“Marco,” I croak groggily, “Marco, wake up.”
He doesn’t. He makes a small, whimpering sound and turns his face away from the light, as if it’s hurting him. I can’t stand it. He looks so lost and in so much pain.
Before I can think better of it, I get up and walk around the bed to his side. I grab his shoulder and shake him.
“Wake up,” I repeat. “Marco, you’re having a nightmare. Come on, wake up.”
His eyes, wild, fly to mine and he instinctively jerks away from my touch. He flinches as my hand leaves his shoulder and it’s so intense, as if he’s disgusted by the brush of my fingers against his skin. My hands are cold; his arm was burning hot.
“Are you ok?” I ask him, stepping aside to give him space. He looks around him wildly. “You’re in a motel room with me. You were having a—”
