“Do you have the key?” I asked, leaning down to get a better angle on the lock to our hotel room door.
He frisked his pockets for a second before saying “uhm, no.”

He tried to do it with a straight face, but there was an air of glee underneath his usual sheepish grin that indicated to me he was lying. We had been in Bolivia for two weeks at this point on a month long service trip and had somehow ended up being assigned to a hotel room together.

“You’re cute,” I said snarkily, holding out my hand for the keys.

“I’m cute? Thank you,” he said, not wanting to give up the joke yet.

“Come on, I’m tired. We spent three hours today exploring an old silver mine. I just want to curl up in bed and go to sleep,” I said.

“How are you going to do that without the keys?” He asked me.

At this point he was unable to keep a straight face. I charged at him, driving my fingers into his sides. If there was one thing he hated it was being tickled. It only took him about 3 seconds to give in.

“Ok, ok, here,” he said, handing me the old bronze key.

I stuck it in the lock and the door opened. I walked straight in and sat down on my bed. The room was small, with two twin-sized beds, a dresser, a mirror, a window, and no bathroom. Well it technically did have a bathroom, it just cost quite a bit extra. He had decided the sleeping arrangements. I had originally set my stuff on the bed he now occupied.

“Wait, can I sleep on that one?” He asked when we moved in.

“Sure, why?” I asked, moving my stuff over to the other one.

“Because I don’t want to be in the bed closest to the door,” he replied.

“Ok, why?” I asked growing more and more perplexed.

“Because if someone comes in, they’ll kill you first, and your screaming will wake me up and give me enough time to escape,” he said nonchalantly.

“Charming,” I had replied.

I got into my bed. He yawned loudly from the other side of the room.

“Tired?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he replied.

“You tried to use my face as a pillow today on the bus,” I told him.

We had a 14 hour bus ride earlier that day. Every five minutes he would jerk his neck back and would hit his head on the window with a sickening thud. Finally put my jacket against the window frame so he wouldn’t give himself a concussion. He apparently didn’t find this very appealing because instead of using the jacket, he readjusted himself so he was leaning on my shoulder. Our height difference apparently didn’t make this very comfortable for him however and I woke up to the feeling of his hair tickling my noise as he rested his head on my face.

“Oh really, sorry about that, but hey, I seem to remember waking up to your head on my shoulder a couple times too,” he said jokingly.

“It’s not my fault that your shoulder is so much more comfortable then Bolivian bus seats,” I said defensively.
“I wasn’t complaining, just observing,” he replied.

“I think I’m going to go take a shower. May I use your towel again?” He asked, starting to strip down.

“Yeah, sure,” I said, grabbing it off of the chair he had left it on to dry and throwing it to him.

“God, this thing is soaked. What did you do to it?” He asked.

“I haven’t done anything to it since you used it last,” I replied.

“Alright, fine. I’ll be back in like 10 minutes,” he said and he walked out the door.

I sighed and leaned back onto my pillow. It was surreal to me how well we were getting along. Just a few weeks before we hadn’t been talking to each other. We weren’t angry or anything of that sort, we just weren’t what you would call friends. I don’t think either one of us really knew how to interact with the other anymore. I had delved into a new hopeless romance with another guy who wanted nothing to do with me, and he had taken after trying to date my best friend.

I had forgotten how much fun I could have when I was with him. It had been a very long time since I had spent this much time with him alone. It was fun seeing how he had changed as a person. He really had become a strong, independent, and intelligent guy when I wasn’t looking. In the last two weeks I had began to fall in love with him all over again, and that was a problem, not only because he would never love me, but I knew it would make leaving him in 9 days all that much harder. Still, every time he told a corny joke or tripped over his feet, or gave me that happy go lucky grin he had I felt like was falling deeper and deeper.

I reached into my bag and pulled out a piece of watermelon-flavored gum, shoving it into my mouth and waiting for the flavor to hit me. I saw a spider crawling on the wall opposite me. It went behind a picture frame and didn’t crawl back out. A few second later he came back into the room. I laughed as soon as he did so. He had tried to make it look like his hair was gelled back by using his hands, but it had just gave it more static and it was sticking up like he were the back of a porcupine.

“What?” He asked, putting the towel back on the chair to dry.

“Nothing, want gum?” I asked him.

“Sure,” he said, catching the piece as I threw it to him.

He reached into his bag and pulled out a blue glass bottle, spraying some onto his neck.

“What is that?” I asked him.

“Cologne,” he said.

It smelled amazing. It wasn’t really something you could describe, but he wore it all the time and I couldn’t differentiate at this point between the smell and him. He lived across the hall and so the scent would often waft into my room leaving me with a constant reminder of his presence.

“What’s it called?” I asked.

“I don’t know, it’s in French. Here.” He said, and he threw the bottle onto my bed.

“Touch of Blue,” I said to him. I sniffed it and then handed it back to him.

“I love French things,” I said sighing.

“Really, like what?” He asked, smacking his gum loudly.

“Croissants, wine, I think the language is beautiful. Want to move to Paris with me?” I asked him.

“I hear Paris smells like piss,” he replied.

“That’s not an answer,” I replied.

“Why would I want to move somewhere that smells like piss?” He asked.

“With the amount of cologne you wear, we wouldn’t be able to smell anything else anyway,” I kidded him.

“Oh please, you love my cologne,” he said, picking his bag up off the floor.

“Your right, I do,” I said, crawling back into bed.

He blew a bubble with his gum. I watched as it popped and he drew it back into his mouth so easily.

“I’ve never been able to do that. Blow a bubble with gum, I mean,” I said.

“Really, it’s easy,” he replied.

He picked up my phone and started taking selfies of himself blowing bubbles.

“You shouldn’t leave your bags on the floor. Spiders will get into them,” he said.

“Oh yeah. I saw one crawling on the wall a minute ago,” I replied.

“And you didn’t kill it!” He said, a distinct line forming between his eyes.

“I didn’t feel the need to,” I said, thinking he was being purposefully overdramatic.

“I think this is revenge for me not loving you. I think you put the spider in here,” he said quickly as he picked up his shoes and put them on top of his dresser.

“You are being ridiculous, it’s not going to hurt you,” I said, ignoring his other remarks.

“I’m terrified of spiders. It’s one of my biggest irrational fears,” he said.

“You’ll be ok. I’ll protect you from spiders,” I said soothingly.

It was really sweet to me that someone so macho had such a small weakness. He was so vulnerable and scared. I could see the worry hidden behind his bright blue eyes. He got into bed, but refused to get under the covers. He just sat in the middle of it, his knees huddled up to his chest.

“Can I turn the light off?” I asked softly.

“No,” he said.

“Are you expecting me to go to sleep with the lights on?” I asked him bemusedly.

“I can’t sleep. How am I supposed to sleep when I know there are spiders crawling around this room with their scary a** mandibles,” he said.

“Ok, I’ll stay awake until you fall asleep, and then I’ll turn the light off. If I see any spiders, I’ll kill them,” I said calmingly.

“Can you pass me my phone so I can set the alarm?” I asked him.

He threw it to me. I set one for 8:00 the next morning. I then went through the pictures he had taken. He didn’t look very good, but I couldn’t delete them. I just smiled at them, rolled me eyes and turned my attention to my facebook feed. I scrolled down for a long time before I heard movement from next to me. I looked over at him. He was slowly starting to get under the covers.

“I’m slowly relaxing into it,” he said.

“Good,” I replied.

“Why didn’t you kill the d*** spider?” He asked in a voice that sounded more whiney then angry.

“Because I wasn’t anticipating this reaction. On the bright side, there’s a baby otter,” I said, holding up my phone to show him the video I was watching.

“The spider will probably go for the baby otter next,” he said.

I rolled my eyes and then laid my head down on my pillow so we were facing each other. His hair was still messed up and there was still an air of fear in his eyes.

“I can’t believe we only have nine more days before I’ll never see you again,” I said to him.

“Neither can I,” he replied simply.

“You’re going to graduate and you’re going to forget about me,” I said.

“No, I think we’re both going to graduate,” he said.

“Not the point I was trying to make,” I said.

“Hey, on the bright side, there’s a baby otter,” he said, pointing at my phone.

“Do you trust me?” I asked him.

“Yeah,” he replied worriedly.

“Then close your eyes and go to sleep. I promise that I won’t let any spiders bite you,” I said.

“Fine, but if I wake up with a spider bite, I may literally kill you,” he said, closing his eyes.

Less than a minute later I heard the steady sound of snoring coming from the other side of the room. I got up, turned the light out, and then got back into bed. Before falling asleep myself, I watched that video of baby otters twice more.