Chapter 20
I dream about Santo,but they’re not normal, sexy dreams. He’s making me drink stuff, and though I’m pretty sure there’s a kink for that, it doesn’t feel sexual at all. It feels nice…caretaking even.
Also, I dreamed about a blonde woman. Again, not sexual dreams, though she was definitely my type. They were both there, and maybe that was a sex dream, and I just don’t remember details? I’m not sure, but if that’s the case, it’s a shame. I’ll have to think about it more later.
Like a sex dream, though, I wake up sticky and sweaty and badly having to pee.
The having to pee thing is completely normal, obviously. I’ve had three kids; when do I not have to pee? But it makes me think of the weird dreams.
Otherwise, I feel better than I did when I fell asleep. I swing my legs over the side of the bed. It’s black outside my window, telling me it must be nighttime, but I have no idea what day it is. I’m also in different clothes. A shiver slides down my spine, one that tells me my chills aren’t completely gone, but I’m pretty sure I can make it to the bathroom.
I have to walk past my open doorway to get to the bathroom, and my eyes catch a flash of movement big enough to startle a scream out of me. Santo jerks up from the couch, eyes wild.
I’ve completely lost focus on my muscles and quickly re-tense, sinking to my knees on the floor while urging my bladder to control itself. I squeeze everything—including my eyes—tightly.
I will not pee myself in front of Santo. I will NOT PEE MYSELF IN FRONT OF SANTO.
In the other room there’s a curse and a thump and then an even louder curse and a softer thump. I open my eyes to see Santo on the floor in front of the loveseat, his feet tangled in a blanket and his T-shirt twisted and riding up his torso.
I squeeze my eyes shut again.
“Emma, are you okay?”
“I have to pee,” I rasp, which explains somewhat but doesn’t answer the question—I will be okay if I can make it to the bathroom. I stand, squeezing my knees together and thank god that I’ve kept up with my yoga practice with Sara and Jade got us started doing Kegel exercises years ago and I had pelvic floor physical therapy after Parker was born.
Even with all that, it’s close. I press a hand between my legs and run as best I can while still feeling like shit and clamping my knees together, and if a little pee comes out, well, worse things have happened, and Santo doesn’t have to know.
Bladder empty, I don’t want to put my underwear back on, but also, I’m just wearing panties and a shirt. With Santo in my apartment.
Maybe I wasn’t dreaming.
I crack the bathroom door open. “Santo?”
He grunts.
“Can you close my bedroom door so I can change?”
There are a few moments of silence, followed by a lot of grunting and then the click of my bedroom door. I put proper clothes on. I have to sit down on the bed between steps as the adrenaline wears off, and I realize how goddamn tired I am.
Finally, dressed in pajama pants and a T-shirt—I attempted to put a sports bra on but got too winded while I wrestled with it—I open the door.
Santo is stretched out on his back on the floor.
I step over him and sink into the couch, too tired to have a conversation on my feet. “What are you doing?”
He grunts. “I think I threw out my back.”
“Oh no,” I say, while simultaneously sinking down onto the cushions. “Should I call someone?”
“No,” he says. “This happened once before at a football match. I need to get up and move around.” He sighs and lies there.
“Santo,” I whisper.
He grunts again.
“Have you been taking care of me?”
I can’t see his face from here because the coffee table is in the way, but Santo’s bare right foot curls briefly. “Yes. How are you feeling?”
“Tired. Very tired. Was there someone else here?”
Santo explains that he called his doctor to come see me and when I offer to pay, he waves it away. He tells me he’s been talking to my friends on and off, especially Tessa, and she’s been sick but feeling better and is planning to fly here tomorrow.
“What day is it?” I ask.
“Sunday.”
I groan. I slept the entire weekend away and missed half a week of classes. This is going to suck.
An alarm goes off in front of me, Santo’s phone buzzing on the table.
“That’s the alarm for you to take your antibiotics.” With a lot of grunting—him—and protesting—me—he gets to his feet and retrieves my medicine and a glass of water. I gulp it down obediently, and he measures out two pills labeled Tachipirina for himself—an over-the-counter painkiller common here.
I wrap myself up in the blanket on the couch, inhaling deeply but not at all like a weirdo when it smells like Santo, and then notice there’s a pillow here too. “Were you sleeping here?”
“Yes, I have soup. Would you like some?”
Okay, I guess Santo doesn’t want to talk about sleeping on my couch, but that also could have contributed to his back pain—it’s definitely not big enough for someone our size to stretch out on.
“Soup sounds great, thank you.”
Santo heats a pan of soup and putters around while I doze on the couch. He nudges me awake when he brings two bowls over.
The smell of lemon and chicken hits me hard, and my stomach grumbles. “It smells delicious. What is it?”
“Avgolemono soup. It’s Greek.”
“Did you make this?”
“Yes.”
We hunch over our steaming bowls. The soup looks creamy and there are herbs sprinkled over the top, and chunks of what I’m assuming is chicken floating. I blow on a spoonful until I deem it safe and take a sip.
Oh god, it’s good. I’m thankful I haven’t been that stuffy—though I would take blowing my nose constantly over hawking up colorful phlegm any day—and force myself to savor the meal. When the kids were sick, I usually heated soup from a can. Of course, if one person in our family got sick, it worked its way through the entire group, so that not only was I sick, but I was also taking care of four people in various stages of illness.
Also, I’m not much of a chef—not like Sara and Tessa, anyway. And there’s not a lot of soup season in Texas, at least not like here. Last weekend in Zurich, it was crisp and cold, and we ordered takeout one night. Sara had found a vegan restaurant, and we all agreed that her truffled cauliflower parsnip soup was the best dish of the night.
But as delicious as that was, I like this soup better. It’s not vegan, so there is that, but it’s bright and lemony and creamy and is hitting the spot so well.
I have a second bowl, though I’m full in addition to the lethargy that already existed, but I stay upright long enough to check my phone.
There is a slew of messages: my friends being concerned for me and then Tessa updating them via Santo; my kids each randomly texting me as usual and then Tessa telling them in a group chat that I’ve been sick; and some of my classmates checking in on me, but mostly messaging about school work that is so long and overwhelming I have to put my phone down.
I refocus on Santo, who is cleaning up the dishes. “Thank you for taking care of me,” I tell him. He pauses while drying a bowl and looks up at me. His face is so honest, his features so handsome, it stops my breath momentarily.
“It was nothing, piccola.” He frowns, sets the bowl down, and walks over to me. He’s moving stiffly, his back bothering him, but he still bends down to put the back of his hand on my forehead. It brings us so close that I can see the rim of darker brown around his irises, like a chocolate ring.
Santo’s gaze darts over my face, eyes, lips, and back up to his hand. “Still a little warm, I think. Should I take your temperature?”
I shake my head, dislodging his hand. “I just want to sleep again.”
“All right.” He places his hand on his back and straightens. “I am going to my apartment to check on Zola. I will be back, though.”
“Aw, Zola. She misses her daddy.” I mumble as I rise to my feet. “You can stay with her. Sleep in a real bed.”
He shakes his head. “Tessa will be here in the morning. One more night won’t kill me.”
“Okay.” I pause outside my bedroom door. “Do you want to bring Zola over?”
He cocks his head. “You wouldn’t mind?”
I shake my head and leave it at that.
An indeterminate amountof time later, I wake up to voices coming from the kitchen and a rumbling noise coming from somewhere above my head. There’s a soft weight up there too.
From the living room, Santo is describing the medicine I’m taking. When Tessa answers, I shift, telling myself I should get up.
That shifting dislodges the thing on the top of my head with a grumpy meow noise. When I sit up, Zola stares at me from my pillow. The rumbling has stopped, and she looks, as usual, put out.
“I could not keep her out of your bedroom,” Santo says from the doorway. “I hope that was okay.”
Tessa joins him and smiles. “Morning, sunshine.”
“What time is it?”
“Eight a.m.”
I raise my eyebrows.
“I took the first flight this morning.”
“From Paris?”
“No, I didn’t go to visit Luc this weekend since I didn’t want to risk getting Anouk sick. But I didn’t get it nearly as bad as you did, so I’m here now.” Luc’s elderly grandmother had a fall a few months ago, and Luc moved in to take care of her and save money so that he could visit Tessa more often and quit one of his jobs.
“Sorry, honey.”
Tessa shrugs. “You look like you’ve gotten the worst of it?—”
“Gee, thanks.”
“—and I’ll see Luc next weekend. Now, when was the last time you showered?”
I groan at the idea of getting this sickly sweat off me, and Tessa grins. “Thought so. I’ll take it from here, Santo.”
Santo looks at me, reluctantly apologetic. “I do have a lecture.”
I wave my hands. “You’ve done more than expected for a neighbor. Or a professor.” Again, the words feel like poor substitutes for what he is or, maybe, what he has the potential to be. Although, after nearly seeing me pee myself, he’s probably changed his mind.
I cast the thought aside as something I need to think about later. Santo steps into my room, and I almost think he’s going to touch me before I realize he’s reaching for his cat, the giant black ball of fluff curled up on my pillow.
With her gathered in his arms, he holds my gaze and tells me to get well. Tessa and I both watch as he leaves my apartment.
Tessa turns back to me and claps her hands. “Okay, shower.”
We step into my small bathroom, and I glimpse myself in the mirror. “Oh no,” I moan. “This is what I look like?” My hair is a complete disaster, which is a real feat considering how thick it is. I have a bun that’s lost most of its mass and has flopped to one side. I look sickly, and with shock, I realize that I probably looked even worse than this at my peak.
If Santo is still attracted to me after this, perhaps his standards are even lower than mine.