Daya's room had everything a decent hotel room should offer. There was a king-sized bed, a TV mounted on the wall next to the piece of a local art, and a fridge. Stuffy curtains blocked out Saint John, New Brunswick, the host city of the Canadian Nationals. The radiator purred, filling the air with the smell of burning dust.

She wished she could have spent more time with Shanti, but her sister was in a hurry to wrestle the twins to bed. The kids were overflowing with the excitement of traveling by an airplane for the first time, and Daya could see the melt-down incoming. She felt a bit guilty for not being on hand for it, but a bit relieved too.

Stretch, meditate, and sleep, Daya ordered herself. Sitting on the edge of the bed, staring at one's shaking hands didn't count as prep for competitions.

Just then someone knocked at her door, not loudly, but not uncertainly either. Whoever it was, they wanted to see her. Insisted on it.

Her first thought after she peeked through the tiny spy window in the door was, That's why Shanti was in such a rush. Only Shanti could have given him her room number.

"Mike!" 

The lock was standard, but it gave her trembling fingers some trouble. She buried her face in his chest before he could finish a single step, but somehow they stumbled inside and shut the door.  He leaned against it, letting her wrap her arms around his waist. His heart reverberated in her ears.

"Mike..."

She could feel his lips tracing her hair and forehead. It was heavenly. Finally, she tore her face away from the soft wool with the familiar smell of soap, preparing to kiss the hell out of him. But before that divine clash could take place, she actually saw him, and every suppressed worry flooded back in.

"Oh, gods, it wasn't just a food poisoning, was it?" she gasped. At a guess, he'd lost over fifty pounds. Maybe if she did not know him when he was soft-chinned and pink-cheeked, she wouldn't have noticed how strangely elongated his face became, how his cheekbones protruded, and how the shadows around his eyes and his nose sharpened. It was like someone increased contrast on a photo.  

The incurable diseases crowded one another out of her brain in a flash.

"Mike, what's wrong with you, and why didn't you tell me?"

He collected her to his chest again with a content sigh, driving her anxiety through the roof. 

But before she broke into tears and started shaking the truth out of him, he spoke softly, "What floored me first, back in Edmonton, was a norovirus. Then, because of me going off my rocker and binging just before I got ill, I plunged down the hellhole of throwing up whenever I ate more than a few bites. At first, I thought the virus was keeping me sick, or that my gag reflex was out of whack."

Daya walked her fingers to his jaw and caressed his face. She was trying to put everything she had felt in the last year in this one light touch.

"Then I caught myself shaking when I watched someone eat, both hungry and terrified to touch food. I took myself to see a counselor... I'm recovering, but my eating issues will not go away completely. I might regain every ounce I'd lost, I might relapse into bulimia, there's no telling. It's a day by day thing."

Daya whimpered with relief: her fears were getting the best of her. Mike's health was something to fight for, and she could do that all life long. "Why, oh why didn't you call?"

"At first I didn't feel that baby, I'd been puking a lot, wanna come nurse me?  was a terrific pickup line. Then I stopped caring how pathetic it would be, and all I wanted was for you to be with me."

"Then why didn't you call?" she repeated numbly. "Gods, why do I make the wrong choices in ten cases out of ten? I should have come... I should have never left you."

Mike's lips brushed past her eyes, landing at the tip of her nose. "I'm not telling you all this to make you feel guilty or pity me. I didn't call you because what would you have done? Jumped on the plane in the middle of your training?"

"Yes," she whispered, interlacing her fingers behind his head, bending it, making him look into her eyes. "Yes, of course. Don't even doubt this."

"But Daya, it wouldn't have worked... We'd have been back to square one." The kiss that opened her lips didn't belong with the things-between-us-wouldn't-work-out conversation. She had no idea where his words were heading, but his mouth pursued the course to weakening her knees so much that she'd need him to hold her.

"Different provinces, different cities, different rooms, I can't do it," he whispered between the kisses.

"I can't do it either... but your job, your thesis... it's all on the West Coast. Maybe we can..."

He pressed a finger to her lips.  "I've applied to a couple of universities in Ontario to restart my PhD studies. If they would have me..."

As if a light touch of a finger could stop her from talking. "They would be fools not to."

"You sound like my mother." Mike sighed contentedly. It sounded weird, but if it made him happy, she'd take it. "Even if they pass me by, my resume isn't as blank as it was two years ago, so I'll find something. I mean to be as close to you as I can, as close as you'll want me."

"You're moving... here," she echoed. "I'm not yet used to the idea that you're here now, and you're moving... Gosh, Mike, you fought with an eating disorder, you picked a school... and I knew nothing of it..."

"Oh." Mike's hands slacked a little. "I should have started with asking if you're glad to see me."

She wished she had a mirror, because she figured they would never again have these sheepish, ruffled expressions on. "I can barely breathe, I'm so happy to have you with me."

The euphoria of his presence sent tremors through her middle, as if she was challenging her core to the max in the gym.

"I want you to move in with me." Mike's hand traveled past her cheek, down to her shoulder, to discover that she wore nothing under her tee-shirt. "No ruses this time, no repressed desires. Live with me, marry me if you aren't too scared to tie yourself to me—"

"Scared?" 

Mike must have been shopping for clothes as he was losing weight, but there was a gap enough between his stomach and the waistline of his jeans for her to slip her palm down. She enjoyed the movements of his body between her fingers for two blissful moments.

"Mike, I moved in with you after two days... I'm way, way past scared. I was mad at you, puzzled by you, sexually frustrated around you, and a million other feelings, but I was never scared..."

He breathed hotly into her neck, "If I stay tonight, will it mess up with the competition?"

The fabric of her tee shirt was flimsy under his fingertips, contributing to the amorous longing blanketing her in the warm, heavy folds. "You must let me sleep afterward, and we'll need protection. I don't risk taking hormones."

"Yes to both," Mike said hoarsely, "I hope you don't think I've presumed to ah—"

"Glad you did." If desire made him sound hoarse, it made her voice throaty. Either way, they both sounded like the victims of a flu pandemic requiring a prolonged bed-rest. "There aren't enough towels to tie you up in the bathroom to prevent your escape while I'm combing the drugstores for condoms..."

"No, no. This time nobody runs anywhere. We're making it all the way to the lovers' comfort."

"It's a bed... Most people call it a bed..." she whispered, fighting with his belt buckle. All the locks were hard for her today. "Unless you mean something else?"

Instead of explaining the obscure reference it had to have been, Mike lifted her up—he wasn't incorrigible after all. It was the least professional lift and carry in her entire life, and she loved it.

"Wait, wait..." she urged him after he lowered her on the bed, and slipped the tee shirt off in almost the same move. "Need to free the blanket, you're always cold..."

He lifted his head from her bellybutton, giving her back her freedom to move. She jumped off, ripping the edges of the abstract-design cover and sheets from under the mattress, opening a white shelter for them.

Mike's mouth happily switched to her spine after he had deposited his glasses and the pack of condoms on the bedside table. She twisted around, liberating his torso from the sweater. His skin had not kept up with the weight loss, but Daya kissed her way down his chest to where the hair thinned out. "I love your body, don't wreck it for me, honey..." His hands trembled on her shoulders.

She popped open the button, but as she started sliding down the zipper ever so slowly, Mike pulled her upward by the shoulders, to press his mouth onto hers with the same insistence he had knocked on her door. Whatever he weighed his pockets with—wallet, keys—dropped his jeans past his hips on the floor with a jingle. Her sleepy shorts joined it with barely a rustle, after he yanked on the drawstring to release the bow knot.

She hiked herself up the bed, bringing him along, kiss uninterrupted, her hand in his hair. With the free hand she flung the covers over him, wrapped him with her arms and legs, to keep him warm and loved.

His passionate nature no longer lurked under the surface, just out of her reach. It manifested in the pressure his thigh put on her loins; in each stroke of his hands in and out of the softening warmth between her legs, or over her breasts; in his tongue's familiarity. 

And most of all—in him not saying a single word until he rasped for her help. She guided him inside to complete their union.

Ah...