in his neck, my skin against his, feeling like every cell in my body had missed him.
‘Better, you insane person?’ he said, when he finally pulled back so that he could see me properly. I think my lipstick may have been halfway across my face. I almost definitely had stubble rash. My ribs hurt where he was holding me so tightly.
‘Oh, yes,’ I said, unable to stop grinning. ‘Much.’
We decided to drop our bags at the hotel first, me trying not to gabble with excitement. I was talking nonsense – a stream of disjointed thoughts and observations coming out of my mouth unfiltered. He watched me the way you might look at your dog if it did an unprompted dance: with faint amusement and vaguely suppressed alarm. But when the lift doors closed behind us, he pulled me towards him, took my face in his hands and kissed me again.
‘Was that to stop me talking?’ I said, when he released me.
‘No. That was because I’ve wanted to do that for four long weeks and I plan to do it as many times as I can until I go home again.’
‘That’s a good line.’
‘Took me most of the flight.’
I gazed at him as he fed the key-card into the door and, for the five-hundredth time, marvelled at my luck in finding him when I’d thought I could never love anyone again. I felt impulsive, romantic, a character in a Sunday-afternoon movie.
‘Aaaand here we are.’
We stopped in the doorway. The hotel room was smaller than my bedroom at the Gopniks’, carpeted in a brown plaid, and the bed, rather than the luxurious expanse of white Frette linen I had envisaged, was a sunken double with a burgundy and orange checked bedspread. I tried not to think about when it might last have been cleaned. As Sam closed the door behind us, I set down my bag and edged around the bed until I could peer through the bathroom door. There was a shower and no bath, and when you put the light on the extractor whined, like a toddler at a supermarket checkout. The room was scented with a combination of old nicotine and industrial air freshener.
‘You hate it.’ His eyes scanned my face.
‘No! It’s perfect!’
‘It’s not perfect. Sorry. I got it off this booking website when I’d just finished a night shift. Want me to go downstairs and see if they have other rooms?’
‘I heard her saying it was fully booked. Anyway, it’s fine! It has a bed and a shower and it’s in the middle of New York and it has you in it. Which means it’s all wonderful!’
‘Aw, crap. I should have run it past you.’
I never was any good at lying. He reached for my hand and I squeezed his.
‘It’s fine. Really.’
We stood and stared at the bed. And I put my hand over my mouth until I realized I couldn’t not say the thing I was trying not to say.
‘We should probably check for bedbugs, though.’
‘Seriously?’
‘There’s an epidemic of them, according to Ilaria.’
Sam’s shoulders sagged.
‘Even some of the poshest hotels have them.’ I stepped forward and pulled back the covers abruptly, scanning the white sheet before stooping to check the mattress edge. I moved closer. ‘Nothing!’ I said. ‘So that’s good! We’re in a bedbug-free hotel!’ I gave a small thumbs-up. ‘Yay!’
There was a long silence.
‘Let’s go for a walk,’ he said.
We went for a walk. It was, at least, a great location. We strolled half a dozen blocks down Sixth Avenue and back up Fifth, zigzagging and following where the urge took us, me trying not to talk endlessly about myself or New York, which was harder than I’d thought, given that Sam was mostly silent. He took my hand in his, and I leant against his shoulder and tried not to sneak too many glances at him. There was something unexpectedly odd about having him there. I found myself fixing on tiny details, a scratch on his hand, a slight change in the length of his hair, trying to reclaim him in my imagination.
‘You’ve lost your limp,’ I said, as we paused to look in the window of the Museum of Modern Art. I felt nervous that he wasn’t talking, as if the terrible hotel room had ruined everything.
‘So have you.’
‘I’ve been running!’ I said. ‘I told you! I go around Central Park every morning with Agnes and George, her trainer. Here – feel my legs!’ Sam squeezed my upper thigh as I held it