twenty-two: the windy city

*

Nothing screams luxury like waking up on the twenty-first floor of a five star hotel in Chicago, so far away from the hustle and bustle below that I can't even hear the street noise. This bed is so big that Storie and I are each completely spread out and we're not touching – though there was plenty of touching last night, after we showered together to wash off the plane and city grime. It's pretty impossible to share a shower with my girlfriend and for it to not turn into something more. Especially when the shower has a massage head.

Let's just say that we made the most out of this bed last night, and we ended up back in the shower.

"I want to take this bed home with me," Storie says when she wakes up and spreads out like a starfish in the middle of the bed. "Wanna go halves?"

"I feel like this bed would probably set us back a month's salary each."

"Maybe next year," she says, rolling into her front and sighing into her pillow before getting up with a yawn and a stretch. "What's the breakfast scenario?"

"Included in the room and it ends at eleven." I glance at the gold clock on the wall. "I think we can just about make it."

It's a quarter past eight. Even on vacation, if this counts as a vacation, it's hard to switch off our natural alarms. Storie's always out of the apartment by eight thirty and I give myself ten minutes to get to the office for nine. So there's no sleeping in today, but that gives us even more time to explore the city at our leisure. I've already checked the forecast and looked out the window and as cold as it is – barely twenty-five degrees – the sky is clear.

"I think it's a perfect day for a bit of sightseeing." I pull on my pants and unroll a t-shirt to wear under my sweater. Years of frigid Ohio winters have taught me the importance of layers – at my old apartment, I spent a solid three months wearing at least two layers to bed just to get to sleep without freezing to death. "I was thinking we could grab breakfast and check out the Willis Tower?"

"Is that the one with the glass platform or the tilting wall?"

"The platform. The tilting wall is at the John Hancock Center." I'm halfway into my sweater before I realize it's inside out. "We can do that one if you'd rather?"

"No, no. I think I'd shit myself," she says with a laugh. "Kris did the one that tilts and he said they play some kind of soundtrack of malfunctioning machinery while you're leaning over the city a thousand feet in the air. I would actually die."

"Well, we can't have that. How on earth would I explain that to your mom?"

She laughs and throws a balled up pair of socks at me. "You wouldn't You'd have to run." There's a note of sincerity, of something hitting too close to home, when she says, "You don't want to mess with a grieving Dzsenifer Sovany."

*

The restaurant is crazy fucking fancy even just for breakfast. I mean, this place serves lobster and caviar for breakfast. This is a whole other league of wealth and even though whatever we have is included in the deal Kris got us, I feel bad knowing that they charge nearly twenty bucks for a bowl of fruit. I may have been raised in a wealthy family but I was not raised to be extravagant – it feels kind of wrong.

But Storie is lapping it up, buzzing with glee as she orders an English muffin with poached eggs, smoked bacon and hollandaise sauce, and I think fuck it, we're here for a good time. So I order their full signature breakfast and an assorted bakery basket to share (and yeah, I do plan to wrap any spare croissants in a napkin for later), and a Belgian berry waffle. We're not paying. Might as well go all out.

"This is incredible," Storie says around a mouthful of muffin and egg. "This puts my poached eggs to shame. Oh my god. Is this how rich people eat all the time?"

"If they live in a hotel, sure," I say, polishing off my second glass of fresh fruit juice. The first was orange; this one was grapefruit because I've never tried it before. Too tart for my liking, but kinda refreshing after so much meat. I think we'll have to Uber to the Willis Tower at this rate, after so much food. I can't face a thirty-minute walk.

"I think it'd be pretty cool to live in a hotel. You never have to think about breakfast and someone else does all your cleaning and makes your bed."

"No privacy," I say. "You always have to think about what you're leaving lying around, 'cause you know housekeeping's gonna see it."

She raises an eyebrow at me. "What exactly do you leave lying around that you wouldn't want housekeeping to see? You're hardly the leader of a cartel or a massive cokehead."

"That you know of. What if I'm just really good at hiding my drug paraphernalia?"

"Yeah, somehow I just don't buy it." She takes a sip of her tea that's supposed to taste like an English garden. Neither of us have a clue what an English garden tastes like, but I highly doubt it's lemongrass and yellow fruit. What even is yellow fruit? Like, banana and pineapple? Or is that its own kind of fruit?

Our conversation floats off on a hundred tangents as we finish our breakfast and catch a bus downtown, huddling together in the aisle because there are no seats left. It makes the journey twice as long as if we'd taken a taxi or ordered an Uber but we're in no rush, and it's pretty cool to see Magnificent Mile in the daylight. Our hotel is right off Michigan Avenue, right in the heart of the shopping district, and while neither of us are that into shopping, we'll probably walk it later. Once we've digested our mammoth breakfast.

In my efforts not to look like a clueless tourist, I've memorized the directions again: take the bus all the way to Michigan and Huron and walk around the block to the tower, right on the river. Easy enough. All the roads seem pretty straight and all the blocks are pretty square, more like Manhattan than Cleveland's funky triangles.

That's where I want to go next with Storie. I've been there before, but she spent nineteen years in New York City: I want to see the city through her eyes. I want to see where she lived; I want to walk her home turf. But that's for another day. Today, it's Chicago, and the city is living up to its name. The wind is not messing around, whipping our cheeks the minute we step off the bus. It's a popular spot, several other tourists clambering off to get up to the viewing deck, and I needn't remember my directions because we just follow the crowd and soon we're sheltered from the icy breeze.

Storie holds my hand in the elevator. We're bunched close together with ten other people, warm and cramped, and I can feel her flicker of anxiety in the way she's gripping my fingers. It takes a full minute to reach the Skydeck, a hundred and three floors up, where we let out a collective breath to be freed from the small space.

And then we suck in a collective breath when we come face to face with the view. Floor to ceiling windows all around, offering a vista of every aspect of the city for miles around. An infographic informs us that on a clear day, we can see Wisconsin to the north; Michigan to the east, and Indiana to the south. It's pretty clear today. I wouldn't be surprised.

It's surprisingly busy for a February day but we find a bit of unoccupied window space facing Lake Michigan, and I can't believe it's a lake. It looks like an ocean. I've flown over it before, and I like on Lake Erie, but the Great Lakes still blow my mind, so unfathomably huge.

"This is incredible," Storie says, tentatively placing her hands against the window before her forehead touches the glass too. I stand next to her and do the same, one arm draped around her waist. The lake is a dull gray, nothing like the green-blue under a summer sky, but it's still magnificent. This would be a good place to propose, too. I can see it now. The view taking her breath away, distracting her while I get down on one knee.

It's all I can think about sometimes. Ever since I realized I wanted to marry her, my brain takes itself off on a walk, imagining all the ways I could pop the question: I must've conjured up every possible scenario in my head, including plenty of scenes in which she gives me an awkward smile and pushes my hand away and says no. I mean, just because we've talked about it a bit doesn't mean she's obligated to say yes. It'll crush me if she says no, but at least this time I know I've given it my best shot, that there's no third chance.

Storie's looking at me funny. "You okay? You look miles away."

I snap to it, shaking out of my thoughts. "I'm just dumbstruck," I say. "The view is so much cooler than I was expecting."

We take a ton of photos and several selfies that fail to capture the enormity of the view behind us. An enthusiastic German woman takes a few pictures for us, too, which turn out surprisingly good. Storie sends them straight to her mom, who sends back an immediate string of hearts and hug emojis.

"Am I in your mom's good books yet?" I ask. Storie rolls her eyes and puts her phone away.

"She likes you just fine." She pats my chest and smiles. "You've successfully worked your charm on her."

"I am pretty charming."

"Oh, irresistible." She says it like she's joking, but she sure as heck couldn't resist me last night. I remind her of that with a whisper in her ear and she bats me away, grinning hard.

"Careful, you'll hurt your eyes if you keep rolling them that hard."

"Careful, you'll hurt your entire body if you trip over your ego," she retorts. I gasp and clasp a hand over my chest.

"The only thing I'm tripping over is—" I'm silenced by her hand over my mouth.

"I'm begging you, Liam, do not finish that sentence," she says, her tone warning, her eyes dancing.

"—this step," I finish meekly, kicking the step that separates us, giving Storie a boost so she's almost the same height as me.

"Smooth. Real smooth."

"Just like my ass."

"Ha!" She snorts and turns away from me. "In your dreams."

*

Our first day as tourists is exhausting. After the Willis Tower we walked a mile to Open Books, this awesome non-profit second-hand bookstore where we spent a couple of hours perusing their expanse of shelves and took a break on a sofa in the kids' section. We got a funny look from a pair of teenage girls who walked past as Storie was reading The Hungry Caterpillar out loud to me. How we ended up like that, I have no idea.

From there, we carried on down West Lake Street until we hit Michigan Avenue again and ended up at The Bean – which, I learned today, is actually called Cloud Gate. But it looks neither like a cloud or like a gate. Definitely looks like a bean. We're now armed with a bunch of dorky pics of our reflections in its mirrored surface. They're dumb and cringey and totally cliched, and I love them. We look so happy. My cheesy grin is a reflection of how I feel on the inside: like the luckiest guy in the world. Like I've hit the jackpot.

It's pitch black when we end up at Starbucks for a hand-warming hot chocolate. Peppermint for me; toasted white for Storie, and a couple reindeer cake pops.

"I've had the best day," Storie says, licking the cream off the top of her drink. She catches one of my feet between hers and gives me that heart-melting smile, the one that turns me into a puddle at her feet. "Thanks for this, Liam."

I put my hand over hers and say, "It's worked pretty well, hasn't it? I was convinced the flight was gonna be cancelled or delayed, or the hotel wouldn't have the reservation, or something else would've gone wrong."

It's the anxiety talking. I know that. And I know how irrational it is, but no matter how good I'm feeling, it's always there at the back of my mind. Storie's smile turns softer, sadder.

"It's been perfect," she insists. "Although"—she holds up her bag—"I didn't really need to buy four more books. My shelves are groaning as it is."

I stretch my hands, knuckles cracking. "Then our first order of business once we're home is to get you another set of shelves."

"God, no, I have too many books as it is!"

"No such thing, babe."

"Babe," she repeats, caught on the edge of a laugh. I don't know where it came from either. I've never called her that before. "I don't mind it. I could be babe."

"What about darlin'? Honey? Sweetie? Hot stuff? Sexy mama?"

I only stop because she kicks me and guffaws, choking on her mouthful of hot chocolate.

"Oh my god, please, no, do not ever call me sexy mama."

"Yeah, that kinda screams mommy issues."

"Just a bit."

"I'll stick to ... sugar plum," I say.

"All right, nutcracker."

"On second thought..."

She grins and winks. I rest my chin on my clasped hands, just looking at her. Yes, I know, I'm totally whipped. I don't care.

By the time we make it back to the hotel, after walking around more of Grant Park before catching a bus to Navy Pier, we must've walked thirty thousand steps. My legs are aching, the balls of my feet sore, and my nose must be chapped from too much exposure to the cold lake air. As picturesque as the pier was, with the bright lights and the lapping lake, it's probably better suited as a summer attraction.

"You know what?" Storie unwinds her scarf and eases off her boots, flopping onto the bed with a satisfied sigh. "I think I'm finally hungry."

Aside from our Starbucks stop, we haven't eaten anything since breakfast. No wonder I'm extra tired.

"Not gonna lie, I think my feet will drop off if I walk another step." I belly flop onto the bed and pull myself closer to her, until I'm on my back with my head in her lap. "Wanna try the room service?"

"Reckon we can afford it?"

"Absolutely not. A burger is probably, like, fifty bucks." I tap my finger on my lower lip. "Hmm. Drop a hundred dollars on room service, or risk losing my legs in the pursuit of Chipotle? Tough call."

"I can go and get us something," she says, reaching for her boots.

"Absolutely not. No way are you going out on your own in Chicago," I say. I don't want to infantilize her or come off as a controlling dick, but I'm no idiot. The city after dark is no place for a lone woman, especially not one who isn't familiar with the streets. "I'll go."

"And lose your legs?" She reaches across me for the room service menu on the bedside table. "Let's just get in our pajamas, choose a movie and some extortionate dinner, and slob it up here. My treat. You've done all this."

"No, Storie. It's on me." I take the menu and scan it, my mouth watering at the options. "I mean, this whole trip is to celebrate the fact that I'm making real money now."

"As opposed to all the fake money you were making before?" She lies down next to me, resting her temple against mine.

"As opposed to the dodgy handfuls of ten dollar bills I was getting paid from the Winter Wonderland. Don't tell Kaylani I said this, but I'm pretty sure her uncle's breaking the law."

Storie snorts. "That seems like forever ago, now," she muses. "God, that elf costume. That ... that was something else."

"Not my finest hour."

"But it got you here. It got us here." She pushes a hand through my hair, idly playing with it. "Without that job, we wouldn't have bumped into each other again. You'd never have met Kaylani and she wouldn't have told her aunt about you ... crazy, isn't it, how much of life hinges on small decisions?"

"Don't. I already overthink that enough as it is. I guess I owe that damn costume a thank you."

"It was spectacularly bad. I'm honestly surprised you didn't have more complaints."

"I'm pretty sure any complaints got filed away in the garbage."

She laughs and rolls onto her side, her hand on my cheek to turn my head as she presses her lips to mine. I can't get enough of her kisses and my heart soars each time she initiates it, even now, two months since she came back into my life. I don't know if I'll ever get over this feeling. This complete and utter joy. The elation that fills my chest every time I see her face.

We end up spending way too much on room service (not that I care – my feet are dead and my stomach is empty) and Storie chooses a movie, one she's seen before so she knows she likes it, and this right here, this is heaven. Snuggled under a heavy duvet in a warm room with the love of my life, watching Home Alone in a high-rise hotel with a Chicago-style deep dish pizza and a cold beer.

*

I can't believe how fast the weekend has flown. Somehow it's Sunday night, and it's time to head for Union Station after another day packed full of every touristy thing we could think to do: we started the morning at Montrose Beach, for the views of the city from the sea wall, and wound our way back downtown via Lincoln Park Zoo. Even in the biting cold, it was east to spend hours there and now my camera roll is filled with videos of monkeys and gorillas, and several selfies we took on the bridge that crosses over South Pond.

I've been there before in the summer and spotted countless newlyweds taking their photos on the bridge; I wasn't expecting the same on a dreary Sunday in February, but Storie and I spotted two different winter brides in the space of twenty minutes, one with a fur shawl over her shoulders and another with a coat that matched her dress. With the skyscrapers rising from the haze behind them, piercing the crisp white sky, I'm sure those photos will come out looking incredible.

Now it's almost ten o'clock and my feet are aching, my body in desperate need of a bed. When we made it to the station at eight, I was anticipating a message from the Amtrak staff warning us that the train was running hours behind schedule, but it's only thirty minutes late when it rolls into the station, this huge, intimidating beast of a double-decker train. Storie's leaning against me in the line, our tired bodies holding each other up as we wait to be shown to our bedroom. It's a seven-hour journey from Chicago to Cleveland and I could've just bought us a couple of chairs in economy – they're big and comfortable enough, and they recline pretty far – but I wanted this to be fun. Even if we spend most of the time sleeping, I wanted to go all out. Okay, not totally all out, else we'd be in a bedroom suite, but this way we've got our own private bathroom and a full-size bed, and a drop-down twin bed in case it's too cramped.

It takes a while, waiting for everyone else to disembark before we make it to our room, which has already been converted from a sofa and a chair to a couple of beds.

"This is so cool," Storie says, dumping her backpack on the upper bunk and twitching open the curtain to watch as we slowly pull out of Union Station, city lights blinking between buildings once we're out in the open air. I sprawl out on the bed, which has been made up for us, and tuck a pillow under my head.

"Living in the lap of luxury," I say, kicking off my shoes before I cross my ankles on the bed, tilting my head so I can just about see out of the window.

"How did you even think of this?" she asks, braiding her hair for bed as she gazes out at the city we're leaving behind.

"Matt did the Palmetto, the one that goes from New York to Miami, and he said it was one of the coolest trips he ever took," I say, watching her watching the view. Each time we pass a light, it casts a glow on her skin. "Obviously, this isn't quite so cool, or long, but I figured if we like it, maybe we could do one of the big ones someday?"

"How long was Matt's trip?"

"I think it said it was supposed to be twenty-eight hours but it ended up being, like, thirty-five? He said there were a bunch of delays 'cause the train lines are shared with the freight companies, or something, and the freight gets right of way." I sit up for a better view, just about able to make out the vast black lake. "I'd love to do the Sunset Limited."

"Where does that go?"

"New Orleans to Los Angeles. It's two straight days if you don't get off at any of the stops, but it goes through San Antonio and Tucson and Palm Springs."

Most of the journey is through the countryside, the train tracks cutting through Farmland, Illinois and Middle of Nowhere, Ohio, although there are some good views after Toledo, when the sky might be starting to lighten up. I'm kind of hoping we get delayed for a couple hours in the middle of the night, so we can wake up with the sun out and still have time to enjoy the ride.

Storie's eyes go wide and she twists around to face me, dropping onto the seat opposite the bed. "Oh my goodness, that sounds incredible."

"There's the Southwest Chief, too. That one goes from Chicago to LA via Kansas City, Albuquerque, and Flagstaff."

She goes all starry eyed at the thought. I can see her romanticizing the journey in her head: hours and hours of cross-country train travel, watching the world go by from the viewing car; reading in her private bedroom and taking breaks in the cities she's never seen, never been remotely close to. When Storie and I met, she had spent her entire life in New York, hardly even stepping foot as far as New Jersey; moving to Ohio was a big deal. Even now, four years later, she has hardly travelled outside her comfort zone: this trip to Chicago is the furthest she's been from Cleveland since moving here, and I can't wait to show her more of the country – of the whole damn world.

The bottom bunk is just about big enough for the two of us. I set an alarm for six, an hour before our scheduled arrival in Cleveland, and slip in next to Storie's warm body. She pulls me in close, her arm over my waist, her hand on my stomach. I love when I get to be little spoon, when she wraps herself around me and presses her face to the nape of my neck; I sleep so much better with her next to me. I don't think I realized how badly I've slept for the last few years in that cold, drafty little apartment with its uncomfortable bed and its cloying loneliness until I moved in with her and rediscovered comfort.

*

The next thing I know, my alarm's going off and I jerk awake with the irrational panic that I've snoozed it ten times and we've slept through our stop, and we're well on our way to this train's final destination of Washington, D.C. I throw open the flimsy curtain to look out of the window but all I see is field. We could be anywhere in the country. It takes me a moment to come to my senses and check my location on my phone, which, when it eventually loads Google Maps, tells me that we haven't long left Waterloo, Indiana. Which means we haven't hit Toledo yet, haven't even made it to Ohio, and we were supposed to be there at five. By my calculations, we still have a good four hours of travel left, and less than ninety minutes until sunrise.

Damn, looks like I got my wish after all. Panic subsides and relief takes over: we won't be arriving in Tower City Station in the dark, but in the bright light of a winter's late morning. We'll get to watch the sun rise from the train, might even catch a glimpse of Lake Erie from the tracks.

Storie stirs when I get up. Rubs her bleary eyes and looks up at me as I'm changing into yesterday's t-shirt, a bit less crumpled than the one I've slept in. "What time is it? Are we nearly there?" she asks, the question stretching around a yawn.

"There were some holdups in Indiana," I say, getting stuck when I try to shove my head through an arm hole. I can only assume that's what happened, anyway, seeing as I was still awake when we left Illinois behind. "We're a few hours behind schedule."

At any other moment in my life, those words probably would've spelled disaster or frustration or anxiety, but not today, and Storie shares the sentiment. Her expression morphs from sleepy confusion to joy when she connects the dots.

By some miracle, the viewing car isn't full when we head up there after the quickest of breakfasts – leftover pastries from yesterday's hotel breakfast, and coffee from the machine at the end of the corridor. Most people haven't woken up yet, except the group getting off in Cleveland and the eager ones who want to snag the best seats before dawn, and there's a couple of seats facing the window on the northern side of the train that'll face the lake. We snag them before the middle-aged couple with binoculars approaching from the other end of the observation car, and we watch as greenery flies past. There won't be much to see but this for a while, not until we're through Toledo and we cross over Sandusky Bay as we come into Cleveland, but we won't be moving now that we've got the best seats in the house.

"This worked out really well," Storie says, getting her phone out to video the view from the window.

"Literally couldn't have planned it any better. Did you sleep all right?"

"Surprisingly well," she says. "That bed was weirdly comfortable. I was expecting to be up all night or, like, the movement of the train would make me feel funny but I was so tired, I think I was asleep within ten minutes of lying down."

"Which means we could totally do a longer trip?" I ask.

"Oh, for sure." She tucks her phone between her thighs and drops her hand into mine. "I was looking at some of those other routes you mentioned and I already can't wait. Did you see the one that does the whole west coast?"

"The Coast Starlight? It's my dream trip."

"The photos are gorgeous. I can't believe some of the views. We have to do that one at some point."

"We should make a rule: we'll take at least one train journey each year."

I guess I can count this as a resounding success, then. I hold out my hand to shake hers. "Deal."

*

the hardest part of writing this chapter was researching amtrak trips and getting so nostalgic, i miss american train travel so much!