Second Chance on Honeymoon Island

"Here we go again. You put on that face because you want me to beg you, is that it?"

I looked at him.

He hadn't always been like this.

Freshman year, when my club rehearsed late into the night, he'd wait downstairs with his bike, a warm cup of coffee tucked in the basket.

He said I took everything too seriously, that if nobody kept an eye on me I'd run myself into the ground.

Sophomore year, when I had a fever, he carried me on his back to the campus clinic, cursing me the whole way for being an idiot.

Back then, "idiot" meant he ached for me.

Now, "idiot" just meant he was sick of me.

When Sebastian saw I wasn't moving, he pulled the door open himself.

"Suit yourself."

The door shut.

Katherine's soft voice drifted in from the hallway.

"Selma's not really upset, is she?"

Sebastian said,

"Don't worry about her."

The footsteps faded.

I leaned against the back of the door and slowly slid down to the floor.

The carpet was rough, scraping against my knees.

My head throbbed, and my stomach kept turning.

I dug out my phone to book an Uber to the hospital.

But every page was in a foreign language, and I couldn't make out the resort's address.

I tapped a few times and hit the wrong thing each time.

In the end I made it downstairs with a hand on the wall and reached the front desk.

The clerk on duty was a young woman, her badge reading Fox.

When she heard me ask for a nearby hospital in Chinese, her head came up at once.

"You're Chinese?"

I nodded.

She looked at my face, then at the red rash on my arm.

"You can't go by yourself like this."

"I can manage."

The words were barely out when my legs went weak under me.

She came around the desk and steadied me.

"I'll go with you."

I froze.

"You're still on shift."

She said a few words to a coworker and picked up her bag.

"Let them dock my pay. We're all a long way from home out here. People should help each other."

She said it lightly.

But it landed in my ears and left a small burn there.

A stranger's hand held me up, her palm warm.

She got us a cab, handled the registration, translated for me.

The doctor said it was an allergic infection from an insect bite, told me to stay off seafood and spicy food and to get on an IV.

I sat in the infusion area, the needle pushed into the back of my hand.

The fluid trickled into my vein, drop by drop.

Cold.

My phone buzzed.

I thought it was Sebastian.

The screen lit up. It was a notification from my social media feed.

Sebastian had posted an update.

In the photo, Katherine stood in a wetsuit at the edge of the glittering blue water, flashing a peace sign.

Sebastian's caption read,

"The scaredy-cat's first dive. Not bad at all."

I stared at that photo for a long time.

He'd taken it well.

The light, the angle, her expression—all of it, well done.

Katherine replied in the comments,

"Thank you, Sebastian, for looking out for me the whole time."

He answered with a smiley face.

The needle in the back of my hand suddenly stung.

A thin line of blood crept back up the tube.

Miss Fox pressed down on my hand at once.

"Don't move, it'll blow the vein."

I nodded and turned off the phone.

Outside the window, the sun was bright.

The hospital's disinfectant smell crept into my nose, sharp enough to make me want to cough.

I sat in a plastic chair in a hospital in a foreign country, swollen with rash, burning with fever.

And my boyfriend was on social media, recording another girl's first dive for her.

So this was what it was like when you weren't loved—even being sick felt like an imposition on other people.

By the third IV bag, I opened my phone and blocked both Sebastian and Katherine at the same time.

When my finger pressed down, it didn't shake.

My eyes stung instead.

While Miss Fox was out buying congee, I leaned back alone in the infusion chair, staring at the ceiling.

The hospital's fluorescent tubes hummed, like the last echo of that swarm of mosquitoes back on Honeymoon Island.