“I feel fine,” Joel2 said, knotting his shoes. “Believe me, the damage she’ll cause me if we don’t go on our second honeymoon will leave me in a much worse condition.”
The nurse nodded. “Like we say: ‘happy wife, happy life.’ But please, don’t overexert yourself.” He affixed a cold metal disc to Joel2’s arm. “This will do its best to keep you healthy and strong, but your body is still repairing itself. Be careful, or you’ll be seeing me again sooner than you’d like.”
Joel2 thanked the man. He attempted to walk out of the room, only to have his legs buckle underneath him.
“Joel! Everything okay?” Sylvia said as she entered the room and jogged to his side.
“Yup. Just getting my sea legs.” As she helped him to his feet, he gave a meaningful look to the nurse. The man held up his hands as if to say, I’m staying out of this.
Sylvia helped Joel2 out of the room, then through several green exit doors, passing the security camera whose video I would see just a few minutes later. Parked right out front was the largest RV both Joel2 and I had ever seen. It was more like a small house on wheels.
“The streams do not do it justice,” he said.
“After the day we had, we deserve to travel in style,” Sylvia said as the side door opened and automatically lowered three steps. “Hey! What are you doing?”
Joel2 had lifted Sylvia off the ground and was struggling to get her inside the cabin. “I never”—he took a labored breath—“I never carried you into our house when we got married.” Thankfully, none of his newly printed parts tore as he gently placed her within the RV.
The loving glance she rewarded him with was one he (or I) hadn’t seen in quite some time. The inside of the RV had a galley kitchen, entertainment center, and a queen-sized bed with fresh sheets. “Car, how long will it take us to get to our destination?” Sylvia said without taking her eyes off Joel2.
“Approximately two hours and fifteen minutes with current traffic,” responded the vehicle.
“Take your time,” she said, sliding a hand down Joel2’s chest. “And disable all third-party APIs. No contact unless it’s an emergency.”
“Confirmed,” said the RV, driving away from the hospital. The sudden lurch forward caused Joel2 and Sylvia to steady themselves against each other.
“We should do the same,” she said breathlessly, her face only inches from his. “Really go off grid. Just you and me.”
“I’m all yours,” said Joel2, turning off his comms.
Sylvia led the man who was her husband (but also not) over to the bed. The nanites repairing his body had released a fresh round of opiates after he’d damaged his new cells lifting Sylvia into the RV. She sat him down on the bed and began to undress.
Her shirt came off, then her shorts, revealing her pleasant, full figure. She gave him a sheepish smile as she unhooked her bra. He couldn’t remember the last time he had watched her like this, admired the curve of her hips and breasts. She was so beautiful, and he was lucky to have her. When they had first gotten together, seeing her like this had always driven him a little crazy. It was nice to realize it still did, effects of the nanodrugs aside.
She leaned forward to kiss him on the lips. “You think you can handle this?” she said, breathing heavily.
“One part of me’s ready,” he said. She reached between his legs to confirm, her kisses becoming more intense as she stroked him. “And I think other systems are coming on board.”
“Good,” she said, unbuttoning and sliding off his jeans. “I don’t want to do anything more without your permission.”
“What—do you mean—anything more?” he said in between kissing her and taking off his shirt.
“Later.” She sighed as he took her nipple into his mouth. “Right now I’m just glad you’re here.”
“Me too.” He stroked her face, feeling her body against his. “I’m sorry I stopped trying.” He thought about all those nights she’d come home from work late. They could have been doing this, or even just sitting on the couch with each other, but instead he had been more focused on work and video games.
“We both stopped trying,” she said, dropping her head to kiss his chest. “Or at least, I didn’t have the energy to keep trying for both of us.”
He traced a finger down her spine, cupping the curve of her ass. “But we’re okay now, right?”
She nodded, tears in her eyes. “I guess, before today, it never dawned on me that one day you might not be around. Then, when that bomb went off … I realized I couldn’t live in a world without you.”
“I am pretty irresistible,” Joel2 admitted. He moved his wife onto her back, skin pressing on skin as he kissed her intensely.
“You don’t understand, Joel!” she said, pushing against his chest. “What I did, it was—”
He silenced her with his mouth, his hands squeezing her breasts. “I don’t understand a lot of things,” he said, his tongue tasting her shoulder, her neck, her belly. “But I’m glad to be here. With you.”
She took his face in her hands. “You sure you’re—okay?”
He braced himself above her, his arms shaking only slightly. “Let’s find out.”
Neither one of them was very good with expressing their thoughts and emotions, but what they couldn’t say in words, they expressed with their bodies, rekindling a flame that had almost been extinguished.
The RV woke them up a few hours later when it announced their imminent arrival at the Hotel Heliconia, high in the mountains of Costa Rica, and one of the few places that still accepted physical currency. Sylvia hoped it would allow them a night or two without detection while she waited to hear from Pema.
A light rain began to trickle as they neared the resort. Before long, the skies opened up, rain falling down so hard, they could hardly see anything outside the window of the RV.
“Come on, we’re here!” Sylvia nudged Joel2.
He peered out the window. A small wooden sign pointed the way up to the resort, at the top of a steep staircase. “I thought we were staying where we went on our honeymoon.”
“This place is better.” She nudged him with her shoulder. “More secluded. Almost impossible to find.”
“Can’t we just wait out the rain in here? Hell, I bet this thing is bigger than our hotel room.”
“I doubt that,” Sylvia said. “We splurged on the room, too. It’s the only one they had left.”
“We?”
She laughed. “Yes, me, the royal we.”