Compensation.
The word came out of his mouth so lightly.
Light as one of those free postcards on the hotel desk, the kind a breeze could knock to the floor.
I looked at him.
"I'm allergic."
"Then eat something plain."
He kept his eyes on his phone.
"Katherine's wanted to go for ages. The table's hard to get. Don't spoil it."
Because I wanted to see just how far a person could take his bias.
The restaurant sat by the water, and the sunset turned the tables orange.
The waiter set down one plate of seafood after another.
Spicy crab boil, salt-and-pepper shrimp, curried clams.
Chili oil floated on the broth, the heat of it stinging up into my nose, and my stomach turned.
The welt on the back of my hand still burned.
I hadn't seen a doctor, but I knew I couldn't touch any of this.
Katherine, though, was delighted.
"Sebastian, you remembered I love this."
Sebastian handed the menu back to the waiter.
"Add an order of the spicy seafood soup."
Katherine picked up a shrimp and set it on Sebastian's plate.
"Sebastian, my hand hurts."
She held out the back of her hand.
Two faint red dots on it.
Sebastian took the shrimp at once, bent his head, and started peeling it for her.
Practiced. He even pulled the vein out clean.
Katherine looked over at me, her smile all innocence.
"You're not jealous over one shrimp, are you?"
I didn't answer.
Sebastian put the peeled shrimp into her bowl, then turned and saw the empty place in front of me, and his face darkened.
"Why aren't you eating?"
"I can't eat this."
"Here we go again."
He tossed his wet wipe onto the table.
"I bring you out for a nice meal and you sit there sulking. You're still holding on to that little thing from yesterday? What's the point?"
My fingertips stopped at the rim of the glass.
"That little thing?"
Sebastian looked at me like I was someone making a scene over nothing.
"You dragged the whole day off schedule, Katherine didn't say a word about it, and you're the one acting hurt."
Katherine tugged lightly at his sleeve.
"Sebastian, don't be like that. Maybe Selma just isn't feeling well."
His tone didn't soften.
"She's always like this. Someone coaxes anyone else and it's fine, but she has to have everyone circling around her."
I called the waiter over.
"Could I have a glass of warm water, please."
The waiter nodded and left.
Sebastian stared at me, his brows knotting tighter.
He was probably used to me explaining, used to me arguing, used to me laying out every grievance one by one and waiting for him to rule who was right and who was wrong.
But this time I didn't.
I just took a sip of the warm water.
It was bland.
Going down my throat, it felt like it washed away the last of that leftover hope too.
After dinner we went back to the hotel, and Katherine complained the whole way about being tired.
We'd barely reached the room when she followed us in, wrapped in a blanket.
"Selma, the AC in my room seems to be broken."
She stood in the doorway, her eyes lowered at the corners.
"My allergy from yesterday still hasn't cleared up. I'm a little scared sleeping alone."
I looked at Sebastian.
He was undoing his watch, and glanced up at that.
"Then you sleep here."
I froze for a second.
"She sleeps here, so where do I sleep?"
Sebastian looked like the question had never crossed his mind.
A few seconds later, he said:
"You take Katherine's room."
Katherine murmured at once:
"That doesn't seem right."
She said it wasn't right, but her feet had already carried her in, and she sat down on the sofa.
Sebastian looked at me, his tone matter-of-fact.
"Katherine's been timid since she was little, and she's not feeling well. You've always been independent. What's one uncomfortable night?"
I looked at that big bed.
The couple's mugs, mine and Sebastian's, were still sitting on the nightstand.
