“You haven’t. I told my dad I hated him yesterday, but I was hurt. I’m not sure I do though. I think I hate the way he makes me feel. If he stopped doing the things he knows he shouldn’t and started acting like the person he was when I was a kid, then I could have him in my life.”
“What about your mom?”
He hums, long and low. “I love my mom. I’ve just always been mad at her for enabling my dad. After talking to her yesterday, I think she’s realized she doesn’t know everything. So yeah, that’s my trauma dump.”
Knowing the type of difficult relationships he’s dealing with makes me understand him so much better and I’m giddy that he’s trusted me with something clearly so raw. “Thank you for sharing with me.”
“Thank you for comparing yourself to an airport.”
I try to stop the laugh so I don’t give him motion sickness, but I can’t help it. I cover my face with my hands, like that’ll block out the embarrassment. “I swear I’m not this much of a disaster normally. You make me nervous; I think. It comes out and I can’t even stop it. Sometimes I lie in bed awake at night cringing. Emilia has done nothing but bully me about it since we got here.”
“I love it, Aurora.” He rolls onto his stomach, resting his chin in the palm of his hand. I peak at him through my fingers. “You make it easier for me to be myself because you’re so . . . you. I overthink everything I say and do and you just—”
“Don’t think before I speak?”
“–you say what’s in your head.” He brushes my hands away from my face, so I have nowhere to hide. “It’s great. You’re great.”
“You really know how to make a girl feel special, Callaghan.” I might be about to combust. “Remember, you enabled me next time I start rambling.”
He laughs, shaking his head as he lays back down, this time placing his cheek on my bare stomach. “Is this okay?” he asks cautiously.
“Yup.” My hand settles against the nape of his neck, drawing patterns and trailing my fingers up and down the hard muscles of his shoulders. “Is this okay?”
“Yup.”
And I’m not sure exactly which animal I’m doodling against his skin when it happens, but somewhere between a hippo and a penguin, he falls asleep. So I keep doodling, until eventually my hand slows and I fall asleep too.
Chapter Eighteen
AURORA
“Rory, the smell. I can’t do it.”
Emilia’s hands cover her mouth has she tries to smother the sound of her retching. I can’t help but roll my eyes at her as she takes a cautious step back from the vomit-soaked bedding I’m bundling into a laundry bag. “You’re such a baby. It isn’t that bad.”
“You can’t make me do this during Pride. It’s a hate crime, Aurora.”
We started sneaking alcohol from our parents when we were freshmen in high school. I’ve personally held Emilia’s hair back while she vomits more times than I care to remember, but the idea of dealing with someone else’s sick is apparently abhorrent to her.
I tie the laundry bag tight at the top and hold it out to her. “Can you please get rid of this and send the nurse over?”
Snatching the bag from my hands, she nods and runs out of the cabin, shouting, “love you,” over her shoulder.
“Auroraaaaaa!” The sound of my name echoes from inside the bathroom block attached to the kids sleeping area, but is immediately followed by the sound of barfing.
My name being called in that exact way was how I was first alerted to vomit-gate.
We’ve spent the day celebrating Pride. I have glitter in places no woman should have glitter, which isn’t a surprise after Xander was put in charge of it and he put it on every surface. When we did our diversity and inclusion training, Orla explained we wouldn’t be doing our Pride event until after the fourth of July. One of the campers’ moms manages up-and-coming singers and they were going to do a performance for the kids but wouldn’t be available until today.
You lose all track of days in this place anyway, so they could have told me it was still June and I’d have believed them.
I thought I had an easy night ahead of me when Jasmine told me she didn’t feel well and wanted to go to bed straight after dinner. Maya and Clay are on night duty, but I said I didn’t mind hanging out with Jasmine until they brought all the other kids to bed this evening.
Her temperature was fine when I checked it, so I told her to sit on her bed while I retrieved some face wash to get the glitter and rainbows off her cheeks and that’s when I heard my name.