Chapter 36 Crash
Crash
The adrenaline crash hits me the second I squeeze past her and into the room.
I sling my pack off my shoulder and onto the floor, collapsing against the bathroom doorjamb. The light is off, but I—the human-sized lump blocking the switch panel—make no move to change that. I’m fully willing to pass out onto the first surface I come into contact with, even if it is a wall.
Sensing my indifference to everything but losing consciousness, Yumi reaches around me, flipping the switch herself.
“I can’t believe you’re so tired.” She takes the window bed. Good. Less walking for me.
“You’ve been sleeping on the flights,” I mumble, face down against the slightly stiff white comforter. Oh. It seems that I lay down at some point. Interesting.
“You could sleep on the flights, too,” she points out, her voice drifting from different places in the room as she walks around for whatever reason.
“No. What if someone steals our stuff?”
“That’s not going to happen.”
“Season Five, Romi and Jenna,” I say, turning my face just enough that my words aren’t completely muffled by the comforter. Cracking one eye, I find her opening the room’s window, sliding the pane up to let in a cool breeze and the smell of flowers. “Are we allowed to have the window open?”
“What, are we going to climb down the mountain from here? And listen.”
I crane my ear in her direction, and just when I start to think that she only said it to shut me up, I hear it. The sound of a violin drifts in and out, like someone turning the volume dial of a car radio.
“I think they’re pacing,” Yumi says, leaning her head out and looking around.
Her hair ripples in the breeze, sparkling in the lamplight, and I feel a clunk like a core memory slotting into place.
On my deathbed I will remember this—the comfort of the bed beneath me; the violin practice, just distant enough to be pleasant; and the way the cool night air settles onto my forearms like gauntlets.
Yumi leans backward out the window, back arching and eyes closed.
“Be careful,” I demand weakly.
Her laugh floats to me on the night air. “I’m always careful.”
Even in my delirium, I manage to pull a face. “Who do you think you’re talking to?”
“I don’t know,” she teases, turning over to lean on her forearms but never looking away from the courtyard. “I was hoping you’d forgotten.”
“A year isn’t enough to wipe the stress you cause me from my brain.”
With a sigh that sounds more fond than annoyed, she steps back from the window and returns to her bed, facing me. “Final five,” she says, her voice light as gossamer.
“Final five,” I repeat, trying to put the knowledge of how close we are to the end out of my head. I focus on a different problem, one that’s more immediate. “I’m so thirsty,” I moan.
“Could it have to do with your only sip of water being at”—Yumi reaches over, grabbing her notebook and flipping through the pages—“11:37 a.m.?”
I side eye her. “Are you tracking my meals, too, busybody?”
“No,” she says. “I know you’ll eat. It’s the fluid intake I’m concerned with. If you collapse mid-challenge, we both lose.”
I roll my eyes, but the truth is, I know this is the way Yumi cares for the people around her. It always has been. She’s the poster child for having an acts of service love language.
Dehydration is a side effect of my ADHD medication. Yumi read that in the first informational leaflet I brought home from the pharmacy, and she hasn’t forgotten it since. I feel like half of our relationship is built on her shoving a drink into my hand.
I accept her water bottle, brushing my fingertips across hers. Blame it on exhaustion-worn motor skills. I take a long sip before handing it back to her.
She shakes her head, a small smile playing on her lips. “Thank you. Now, was that so hard?”
“Yes. Take this back,” I say sleepily, jiggling the water bottle even as I roll away from her.
She crawls over me, taking the bottle from my hand and settling onto the bed facing me, cross-legged. I’m not as brave as Yumi. Outright admitting what I want from her—to stay in my bed with me—is too hard. So instead I ask, “Can you put my hair up?”
There have been so many intimate moments between us since we left Arizona.
This one is different. Yumi’s always loved playing with my hair, and I’ve always been wholly indifferent to it.
I tolerated it because I tolerated her. I’ve never been the one to ask before, and I hope she knows that I’m not really asking for it this time, either.
“Sure,” she says, voice soft. The rubber stopper on her water bottle squeaks closed, and the mattress shifts beneath me as she angles closer.
I lift my head off the pillow so she can gather the braid tucked beneath me. Her fingers move gently through my hair, nails running along my scalp as she separates the strands. It’s so familiar—a methodical rhythm that’s firm yet gentle.
Her fingers graze my scalp until my eyes become too heavy to hold open. I glance up at her one more time before letting myself drift off, and I catch her watching me, smiling softly.
And in the brief moment between sleeping and waking, I find myself wondering what happens after.
I don’t doubt that this is real…now.
In the early days of reality TV, when the genre was still finding itself and the producers weren’t bound by the Court of Social Media Opinion, there was a show called Heavyweights.
In the simplest of terms, it was an extreme weight-loss challenge—and I do mean extreme.
After the first few seasons, contestants started speaking out about how they were encouraged to not drink water on elimination days so the scale would “be kinder to them.” They exercised for eighteen hours a day, only stopping to sleep and eat meals deprived of really any carbs, protein, or fats.
By the end of the show, contestants would have lost hundreds of pounds in the most unhealthy way and walk off set with unsustainable gym habits, eating disorders, and a deeply internalized shame about their own bodies.
It was horrific, and it is also the best and most severe example of rule number one: Reality TV is not reality.
When those people were on the show, their entire lives revolving around losing weight, they did. They really did weigh whatever unreasonably low number popped up on the scale. It was Real when it was happening.
But when it was over and they returned to their life and its demands, things that had been real while they were on Heavyweights fell to pieces. Back home, they ate nutrient-rich food. They had to go to work for eight hours a day. They had kids and bills and hobbies. They gained the weight back.
And the people who did maintain the routines and carry over TV to reality? They were the unhealthiest of all.
Two things can be true at once.
This is real. I have feelings for Yumi and she has feelings for me. Waking up next to her feels like a privilege. Her pride when she finished today’s challenge made me want to grab her face and kiss her. As they would say on The Bachelor, I’m falling for her.
And reality TV is not reality.