Compensation.

The word came out of his mouth so lightly.

Light as one of those free postcards on the hotel desk, the kind a breeze could knock to the floor.

I looked at him.

"I'm allergic."

"Then eat something plain."

He kept his eyes on his phone.

"Katherine's wanted to go for ages. The table's hard to get. Don't spoil it."

Because I wanted to see just how far a person could take his bias.

The restaurant sat by the water, and the sunset turned the tables orange.

The waiter set down one plate of seafood after another.

Spicy crab boil, salt-and-pepper shrimp, curried clams.

Chili oil floated on the broth, the heat of it stinging up into my nose, and my stomach turned.

The welt on the back of my hand still burned.

I hadn't seen a doctor, but I knew I couldn't touch any of this.

Katherine, though, was delighted.

"Sebastian, you remembered I love this."

Sebastian handed the menu back to the waiter.

"Add an order of the spicy seafood soup."

Katherine picked up a shrimp and set it on Sebastian's plate.

"Sebastian, my hand hurts."

She held out the back of her hand.

Two faint red dots on it.

Sebastian took the shrimp at once, bent his head, and started peeling it for her.

Practiced. He even pulled the vein out clean.

Katherine looked over at me, her smile all innocence.

"You're not jealous over one shrimp, are you?"

I didn't answer.

Sebastian put the peeled shrimp into her bowl, then turned and saw the empty place in front of me, and his face darkened.

"Why aren't you eating?"

"I can't eat this."

"Here we go again."

He tossed his wet wipe onto the table.

"I bring you out for a nice meal and you sit there sulking. You're still holding on to that little thing from yesterday? What's the point?"

My fingertips stopped at the rim of the glass.

"That little thing?"

Sebastian looked at me like I was someone making a scene over nothing.

"You dragged the whole day off schedule, Katherine didn't say a word about it, and you're the one acting hurt."

Katherine tugged lightly at his sleeve.

"Sebastian, don't be like that. Maybe Selma just isn't feeling well."

His tone didn't soften.

"She's always like this. Someone coaxes anyone else and it's fine, but she has to have everyone circling around her."

I called the waiter over.

"Could I have a glass of warm water, please."

The waiter nodded and left.

Sebastian stared at me, his brows knotting tighter.

He was probably used to me explaining, used to me arguing, used to me laying out every grievance one by one and waiting for him to rule who was right and who was wrong.

But this time I didn't.

I just took a sip of the warm water.

It was bland.

Going down my throat, it felt like it washed away the last of that leftover hope too.

After dinner we went back to the hotel, and Katherine complained the whole way about being tired.

We'd barely reached the room when she followed us in, wrapped in a blanket.

"Selma, the AC in my room seems to be broken."

She stood in the doorway, her eyes lowered at the corners.

"My allergy from yesterday still hasn't cleared up. I'm a little scared sleeping alone."

I looked at Sebastian.

He was undoing his watch, and glanced up at that.

"Then you sleep here."

I froze for a second.

"She sleeps here, so where do I sleep?"

Sebastian looked like the question had never crossed his mind.

A few seconds later, he said:

"You take Katherine's room."

Katherine murmured at once:

"That doesn't seem right."

She said it wasn't right, but her feet had already carried her in, and she sat down on the sofa.

Sebastian looked at me, his tone matter-of-fact.

"Katherine's been timid since she was little, and she's not feeling well. You've always been independent. What's one uncomfortable night?"

I looked at that big bed.

The couple's mugs, mine and Sebastian's, were still sitting on the nightstand.

One blue, one white.

Before I left yesterday, I'd poured half a glass of water into the white cup, meaning to use it for my medicine when I got back.

Now the cup was in Katherine's hand.

She took a sip and wrinkled her nose.

"It's a little cold."

Sebastian took it, poured it out, and refilled it with hot water for her.

Something in my chest went hollow.

Then, slowly, I smiled.

So it turned out that my being understanding was just their reason to move me out whenever they liked.

So it turned out my place, too, could be given away with a single sentence.

Sebastian saw me smile and it only irritated him.

"Don't be snide."

I didn't say anything.

I walked to the wardrobe and took my clothes out one by one.

I unzipped the suitcase, softly.

Katherine watched me.

"Selma, are you really going? I can put up with it, you know."

I put my toiletry bag inside.

"You don't need to put up with anything."

The smile on her face paused.

Sebastian stood where he was, as if it hadn't occurred to him that I would actually leave.

"Selma, is this necessary?"

I zipped the case shut.

"Yes."

His face darkened.

"It's just one night."

I looked up at him.

"Sebastian, last night was one night too."

The room went quiet, and as it happened, I no longer wanted to hear any more excuses.

Later in the night, I ran a fever.

Toward dawn, my dreams were all the ferry-waiting area on Honeymoon Island.

The lights were off, the sea wind blew in, and the plastic chairs were cold as ice.

I sat there hugging my backpack, watching one ferry after another pull away from the shore.

The wake at each stern flashed white, then was swallowed by the dark.

Someone was calling me.

"Selma, open the door."

I opened my eyes. My forehead burned so hot it ached.

The knocking outside came fast and bright.

"Selma, hurry up, we're going diving today."

It was Katherine.

I braced myself on the bed and sat up. The room swayed in front of me.

By the time I reached the door, the floor felt soft under my feet.

The door opened, and there was Katherine in her swimsuit, a sheer cover-up over it, her hair pinned up prettily.

Sebastian stood behind her, a waterproof bag in his hand.

He saw me and his brow creased again.

"Why aren't you ready yet?"

I held onto the door frame.

"I have a fever. I'm not going today."

The anticipation dropped off Katherine's face.

"But diving is so hard to book."

I looked at Sebastian.

"This wasn't on the itinerary before."

His eyes flickered.

"We booked it last-minute yesterday."

Yesterday.

Which was when I'd been alone on Honeymoon Island waiting for them.

They'd been in Maui booking today's dive.

My throat tightened.

"I want to rest at the hotel."

Sebastian's face went dark.

"Selma, can you not make a scene?"

"The thing on Honeymoon Island already wrecked a whole day. Now you're not coming today either. We came here to have fun, not for you to put on airs."

I raised a hand and touched my forehead.

My palm was burning.

"I really don't feel well."

Sebastian glanced at the red swelling on the back of my hand.

"Katherine had an allergic reaction yesterday too, and she was fine after resting a bit. Stop using your health as an excuse."

Katherine said quickly,

"Sebastian, why don't we just skip it? I'll stay with Selma."

But as she said it, her hand tightened around the strap of the dive bag.

Sebastian, sure enough, felt sorry for her.

"You've been looking forward to this so long. Why should you miss it?"

He turned to look at me.

"She's being this understanding, and you still want more?"

I stepped back.

"Then you two go."

Sebastian gave a cold laugh.

"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.