A Beginner's Guide to the American West ✓

chapter forty-two

*

It's late when I drag my weary, sore-in-the-best-way body from a second shower to bed. Arjun follows, hanging his towel on a hook, and he gets in next to me. Eases me onto my side and wraps his arms around me in a warm embrace as he kisses my neck and his hand brushes over my ribs. I've never been so worn out, never seen how much my body can do when it really wants to. I take Arjun's hand away from my chest and entwine our fingers and kiss his knuckles.

I ache all over, my thighs sore and my neck cramping, but it's a satisfied kind of pain, the kind from a night well-spent, the kind that makes me feel alive – and dies away when I let go of Arjun's hand, which he trails over my stomach. A million butterflies are unleashed at once and I turn my head to kiss him, to swallow him up.

"I love you," he murmurs, his hand flat over my bellybutton, holding me to him.

My heart stops. I replay what I just heard, wonder if I got it right. Then my pulse throbs at triple speed, cantering out of control, and I want to say the words back to him – I need to – but not while I'm facing away from him. As comfortable as I am with his arms around me, as much as I don't want to move, I have to. I roll over, his arm still draped over me, so that our faces are inches apart and I have to hook my leg over his.

"I love you too."

It's dark and he's not wearing his glasses so he can't see me well at all – he told me his regular vision without glasses is like driving in a rainstorm without windscreen wipers – but his grin broadens, and he finds my lips with his fingers, cups my cheek, kisses me gently.

When we part, I nudge him to roll over so I can enclose him in my arms, wrapped around his body, and I inhale the nape of his neck, warm and damp after our shower when I held him and washed him and made him come one more time. It feels right to lie here with him in my arms, to love him and be loved by him, to be his boyfriend, as he falls asleep. Heavy breathing is interspersed with incoherent mumbling and I wonder what he's dreaming about. And then he says my name, and I know.

*

It's time for the last breakfast, around a big table in the hotel restaurant before checkout. Arjun and I will be moving to a different hotel, the one his sister booked for him long before he knew I'd be joining him. Cancelling my hostel meant I lost my five-pound deposit, but I'm pretty sure it's worth it for two more nights with him.

Seeing Carrie and Ade could be awkward, and I cringe of the thought of last night – listening to them and liking it – but when they appear hand-in-hand, the last ones to join, Carrie just gives me a sly grin. We heard them and they heard us, and she knows we both had a pretty fucking great night.

Today, everyone disperses. Sam's staying a couple of days before driving back home with Jude; Carrie and Ade are catching their first train tonight; Brannan's heading to the airport in an hour to fly to New York. This evening, Kristin and Klara start their next trek from a motel near San Francisco Airport, so they'll be gone by four, and Young-mi's leaving at eight to catch her late flight to Los Angeles.

I can't bear to see everyone go, but I know now more than ever that I'll be back. No matter what, I'll be back in this country to join Young-mi for another trek and a year may feel like forever away, but I pray Arjun will come back with me too. I pray that we'll last, that this isn't a holiday romance fuelled by the fire of being together twenty-four seven for two weeks. I pray that he won't get home and shed his rose-tinted glasses.

We sit. I shift a little to find a comfortable position, my body in shock after last night, having got used to a complete lack of action. Arjun notices and tilts his head ever so slightly.