Chapter 49
Capri
Hayes
A tiny sliver of light pierces through an opening in the curtains and reaches my eyeball.
My head pounds and my mouth feels like it sucked a dirty tennis ball.
The doctor in me knows I need to get out of bed and hydrate but the country boy wants to pee the bed.
Then I remember I heard a knock at the door maybe a quarter hour ago.
I use all my energy to get up and walk to the door.
I open it and there’s a tray with a note.
My head clears and I bend down to grab it.
My heart races with hope. But the note is not from Brady.
It’s from Phil and Will. “Thanks for the text. Glad you’re alive.
Hope this will help.” I pick up the tray and bring it in.
A glass with a raw orange-yellow yolk, and tiny twin bottles, one brown with Worcestershire sauce the other red with hot sauce.
A “prairie oyster” has absolutely no basis in scientific evidence but I’ll try anything right now.
I mix it together and chug it down in one gulp.
I pull back the curtain slowly so my eyes can get used to the light. It stings, but less than I thought it would. Maybe it’s the amino acids from the yolk, or the placebo effect, but I’m not as much of a physical wreck as I was in bed.
Emotionally is another story.
I try to piece together everything that has happened the past day, the past summer, the past year. The past year is the easiest, working at the garage, missing Brady like crazy. The past summer, being with Brady, falling for him again. The past week… My mind comes to a screeching halt.
I treated Brady like he was too fragile. I wasn’t protecting him, I was making decisions for him about what I thought he could and couldn’t handle. I was so wrapped up in my damn clinical assessments of situations that I couldn’t see what he really deserved.
I rub my eyes and walk to the bathroom. My flight leaves later tonight and I have to catch the ferry first. I imagine bouncing on the waves toward Naples by myself.
Without Brady. I have to hold my stomach and sit on the edge of the bed.
But as soon as I’m on stable ground I realize I’m sitting on a piece of paper.
I pick it up; it’s the napkin with Will and Phil’s number.
On the other side one of them has scrawled the words, “Love is a verb.” Then I remember asking them about the secret to their relationship at the bar last night.
Is that all it is? Wasn’t I starting to do that this summer?
I’m not the person I was when I was waiting for Brady at JFK clutching my anatomy book out of fear of connecting with him again, but I’m still not at a point where that stuff is easy for me.
Love is easier as a noun. More manageable under my microscope.
I pack up my things and carry my backpack downstairs, noticing a few more rips and stains on it. Well-earned wounds from a summer of adventure that I never thought would end like this. I can’t believe I’m leaving here without him.
I’m in the lobby looking over the cinema-themed decorations, thinking about all the places we’ve seen together, the bookstore in London, dancing under the stars in Barcelona, skinny-dipping in Berlin and wandering around Poznań, the most romantic city in the world if you ask me.
But there are still so many places for us to explore. I want us to do it together.
I take out my keycard to hand back to the hotel clerk and my fingers move past the napkin I stuffed in my pocket.
Love is a verb. That’s what Brady wants.
He wants me to act, to show him even when it isn’t easy or comfortable for me.
To love. He doesn’t need me to protect him from the world, he wants me to enter it with him and trust him, not manage him.
But how can I show him that I figured that out when I’ll be in Boston and he’ll be so far away?
How can I make him hear me and understand how I really feel about him through the distance?
I’m about to hand the clerk my card when I notice all of the movie props artfully attached to the wall.
Then it hits me. I can let him know that I’m not standing on the sidelines of this relationship or holding anything back.
Love is a verb. “Excuse me,” I ask the person at the front desk.
“Do you think I could borrow something from the wall over there?” It might not work and I’m not sure I have the balls to do it, but it’s my only shot.