Sylvie
“Winslow,” he repeats.
“Yeah, because you should take the bed, and Winslow will whine if he can’t get up in there with you—he really likes being little spoon—”
Knox shakes his head, like a dog getting water out of its ears. “There is no way I’m taking your bed.”
“There is no way you’re sleeping on the ground! Are you serious? You’re already in pain. No, my prescription is one big golden retriever–sized hot-water bottle and a comfy mattress. The featherbed on that thing is great. I can sleep out here.”
“I napped in that bed! I know it’s great! You don’t need to sell it to me!”
“I’m trying to sell this to you! Let me sell it!”
“You’re, like, reverse-selling it. You’re re-buying your own bed from me in this moment. That’s your bed. And anyway I have my sleeping bag, and a tent, and there’ll be residual heat from the fire. See? It’s settled.”
“Knox, I have slept in a sleeping bag so many times. Give me the sleeping bag.”
“Where were these sleeping bags?”
“Sorry?”
“Where were they?” His eyebrows are very skeptical. “These historically relevant sleeping bags? Were they in the woods?”
“. . . no.”
“Or were these sleeping bags in somebody’s suburban backyard?”
“They weren’t, actually,” I tell him, but I’m distracted. There’s a hint of wet in the air.
“Where were these sleeping bags?”
“My friend Jilly’s basement. But it was an unfinished basement!”
“Right.” Knox stands and ushers me to the van. “In you go.”
“It’s going to rain!”
“Hence the tent,” he says. “Keeps it out.”
“Well, fine!”
“Fine yourself!”
“I’m going to bed!” And how can I both be laughing too hard to be mad and be actually mad at the same time? I want him to let me take care of him.
A LITTLE LATER
“Knox? Hey, Knox?”
No answer.
“KNOX!”
“Whoa, you scared me.”
“Sorry, I just—” I open the van door a little wider. “It’s loud because of the thunder. Can you hear me okay?”
“Sylvie?”
“CAN YOU HEAR ME OKAY? Over the—”
There’s a flash of lightning so close that our campsite lights up like a museum exhibit.
“IS THERE ANY METAL ON YOUR TENT?”
When Knox sticks his head out of the tent, he’s immediately soaked down to his shoulders. “METAL?” he asks.
“METAL!”
The rain is streaming into his eyes. “THE ZIPPER?”
“KNOX.”
“I’m fine!”
“YOU ARE NOT FINE, YOU ARE GOING TO GET ELECTROCUTED! OR YOUR CAST IS GOING TO GET WET.”
“I’M FINE!”
“KNOX MIDDLE NAME RAYBURN. GET YOUR BEHIND IN THIS VAN RIGHT THIS MINUTE.”
A LITTLE LATER
“Middle name, huh?” He’s toweling his hair one-handedly on the floor of the van.
“I was doing my best with what I had.”
“Hmm.”
“Did you get your cast wet?”
“Not too bad.”
I’m cross-legged on the bed, Winslow’s head in my lap. He’s smiling just enough to show his little golden retriever fangs, and I poke them, and I pretend that I’m not really, really nervous.
“Are you going to tell me?” I ask him breezily. “Your middle name?”
Knox grins at me. “Nope.”
“Top secret, huh?” Thunder above us, hard and fast. There and gone. “I’m happy you came in.”
“Very possibly my tent is going to end up in Lake Michigan.”
“Don’t look,” I tell him. “We can pretend until morning.”
He yawns. “I’ll just stretch out down here, with a blanket—”
I watch, trying not to smile. His plan is not going to work. But one thing I’ve learned about him is that he has to figure that out for himself.
He tries to lie back, but his head bumps against the center console. “Ugh.”
“You’re too long.”
“That’s a funny way of saying tall.”
“Length seems to be the operative word in this situation.”
“I can just—” Knox pulls his knees to his chest, but: “Ugh.”
“Now you’re too wide.”
“Got an A in geometry class, huh?”
“Okay. You get in the bed. I’ll get on the floor.”
“I am absolutely not making you sleep on the floor in your own van.”
I feel myself cross my arms. “You are not sleeping in a metal tent in a thunderstorm.”
We look at each other for a long, long moment.
“Okay,” I tell him, “let me find a hotel then,” which means I scroll through our options on Maps while I listen to Knox theatrically groaning.
“Do you really have the money for that? I feel like you don’t.”
“It’s worth it,” I tell him, hand over the phone. “Found a Holiday Inn that’s only half an hour away.”
“I don’t want you to have to drive in this—”
Someone’s picked up the phone at the hotel. “Hello?” I say. “Hi! I know it’s late, but we’re camping in this storm, and I was hoping you had a—”
“We’re booked up all week,” the clerk says shortly. “Beach vacationers.”
“Oh. Okay. You’re sure you don’t have anything?”
“Our guests booked these rooms months ago. You’re not going to have any luck around here tonight.”
“Sorry,” I tell him, though I’m not sure why I’m apologizing, and he hangs up the phone without saying goodbye.
“No room at the inn?”
“Beachgoers.”
“Huh,” he says.
We listen to the rain drumming on the roof of the van.
Be brave, Sylvie. I square my shoulders.
I open my mouth. I say, “Listen, if you climb up in here with me, we can share and I can keep a pillow between us or something Holy Spirit style. Not like I believe in the Holy Spirit? But they used to say that to us at dances. Catholic school, right? The chaperones had little squirt guns and if we danced too close during a slow song they would squirt us like we were animals.” Dear God.
“We’re not animals. But ha! Speaking of animals!
Winslow can sleep where you just were. See?
There’s enough room. Go ahead and trade places. ”
“Okay,” Knox says, slowly, in a no sudden moves kind of way. Then he unfolds himself off the floor, shoos Winslow gently off the mattress, and climbs in next to me, warm and damp-haired and—all at once—right there.