People We Meet on Vacation by Emily Henry (best story books to read .TXT) 📕

Alex brings me chicken noodle soup and water and tea. He sets timers for when I’m able to take more medicine, checks my temperature every couple hours throughout the night.

When I sleep, it’s dreamless, and every time I stir awake, he’s there, half snoozing on the bed beside me. He yawns himself awake, looks over at me. “How you doing?”

“Better,” I answer, and I’m not sure if it’s true in a physical sense, but at least mentally, emotionally, I do feel better having him here, and I can only manage a word or two at a time, so there’s no use explaining that.

In the morning, he helps me down the stairs to a cab and we go to the doctor.

Pneumonia. I have pneumonia. Not the kind, though, that’s so bad I need to be in the hospital.

“As long as you keep an eye on her and she sticks to the antibiotics, she should be fine,” the doctor tells Alex, more than me, I guess because I don’t really look like the kind of person who can make sense of words right now.

When Alex gets me home afterward, he tells me he has to go back out, and I want so badly to beg him to stay, but I’m just too tired. Besides, I’m sure he needs a break from my apartment and me after a whole night of playing nurse.

He comes back half an hour later with Jell-O and ice cream and eggs and more soup, and all kinds of vitamins and spices I’ve never even considered keeping in my apartment before now.

“Betty swears by zinc,” he tells me when he brings me a handful of vitamins with a cup of red Jell-O and another glass of water. “She also told me to put cinnamon in your soup, so if it tasted bad, blame her.”

“How are you here?” I struggle to get out.

“The first leg of my flight to Norway was through New York,” he says.

“So, what,” I say. “You panicked and left the airport instead of boarding the next plane?”

“No, Poppy,” he says. “I came here to be with you.”

Immediately, tears spring into my eyes. “I was going to take you to a hotel made of ice.”

A quick smile flits across his mouth. “I honestly don’t know if that’s the fever talking.”

“No.” I scrunch my eyes shut, feeling the tears cutting trails down my cheeks. “It’s real. I’m so sorry.”

“Hey.” He brushes the hair out of my face. “You know I don’t care about that, right? I only care about getting to spend time with you.” His thumb lightly traces the wet streak making its way down the side of my nose, heading it off just before it reaches my top lip. “I’m sorry you don’t feel well, and that you’re missing the ice hotel, but I’m okay right here.”

Every ounce of dignity obliterated by having had this man change my pee-drenched bedding, I reach up for his neck and pull him toward me, and he shifts onto the bed beside me, maneuvering close at the beckoning of my hands. He wraps an arm around my back and draws me into his chest and I slip an arm around his waist too, and we lie there tangled together.

“I can feel your heartbeat,” I tell him.

“I can feel yours,” he says.

“I’m sorry I peed the bed.”

He laughs, squeezes me to him, and right then, my chest aches with how much I love him. I guess I must say something like this aloud, because he murmurs, “That’s probably the fever talking.”

I shake my head, nestle closer, until there are no spaces left between us. His hand moves lightly up into my hair, and a shiver runs down my spine from where his fingers trail along my neck. It feels so good, in a sea of bad feelings, that it makes me arch a little, my hand tightening on his back, and I feel the way his heartbeat speeds, which only makes mine skyrocket to match it. His hand moves to my thigh, wrapping it around his hip, and my fingers twist against him as I bury my mouth against the side of his neck where I feel his pulse thudding urgently beneath it.

“Are you comfortable?” he asks thickly, like our lying like this could just be a matter of alignment, like we’re building up a narrative that protects us from the truth of what’s happening. That even through the fog of being sick, I can feel him wanting me like I want him.

“Mm-hm,” I murmur. “Are you?”

His hand tightens on my thigh, and he nods.

“Yeah,” he says, and we both go very still.

I don’t know how long we lie there, but eventually, the cold medicine wins out over the sparking, alert nerve endings in my body and I fall asleep, only to find him safely on the other side of the bed the next time I wake up.

“You were asking for your mom,” he tells me.

“Whenever I’m sick, I miss her,” I say.

He nods, tucks a strand of hair behind my ear. “Sometimes I do too.”

“Tell me about her?” I ask.

He shifts, lifting himself higher against the headboard. “What do you want to know?”

“Anything,” I whisper. “What you think about when you think about her.”

“Well, I was only six when she died,” he says, smoothing my hair again. I don’t argue or press for more, but eventually, he goes on. “She used to sing to us when she tucked us in at night. And I thought she had a beautiful voice. I mean, like, I would tell kids in my class that she was a singer. Or she would’ve been if she wasn’t a stay-at-home mom or whatever. And you know . . .” His hand stills in my hair. “My dad couldn’t talk about her. Like, at all. I mean, he still can’t really without breaking down. So growing up my brothers and I didn’t talk about her either. And when I was probably fourteen,