Page 41 of Prosecco with My Professor
There are a few moments of silence, followed by a lot of grunting and then the click of my bedroom door. I put proper clothes on. I have to sit down on the bed between steps as the adrenaline wears off, and I realize how goddamntiredI am.
Finally, dressed in pajama pants and a T-shirt—I attempted to put a sports bra on but got too winded while I wrestled with it—I open the door.
Santo is stretched out on his back on the floor.
I step over him and sink into the couch, too tired to have a conversation on my feet. “What are you doing?”
He grunts. “I think I threw out my back.”
“Oh no,” I say, while simultaneously sinking down onto the cushions. “Should I call someone?”
“No,” he says. “This happened once before at a football match. I need to get up and move around.” He sighs and lies there.
“Santo,” I whisper.
He grunts again.
“Have you been taking care of me?”
I can’t see his face from here because the coffee table is in the way, but Santo’s bare right foot curls briefly. “Yes. How are you feeling?”
“Tired. Very tired. Was there someone else here?”
Santo explains that he called his doctor to come see me and when I offer to pay, he waves it away. He tells me he’s been talking to my friends on and off, especially Tessa, and she’s been sick but feeling better and is planning to fly here tomorrow.
“What day is it?” I ask.
“Sunday.”
I groan. I slept the entire weekend away and missed half a week of classes. This is going to suck.
An alarm goes off in front of me, Santo’s phone buzzing on the table.
“That’s the alarm for you to take your antibiotics.” With a lot of grunting—him—and protesting—me—he gets to his feet and retrieves my medicine and a glass of water. I gulp it down obediently, and he measures out two pills labeled Tachipirina for himself—an over-the-counter painkiller common here.
I wrap myself up in the blanket on the couch, inhaling deeply but not at all like a weirdo when it smells like Santo, and then notice there’s a pillow here too. “Were yousleepinghere?”
“Yes, I have soup. Would you like some?”
Okay, I guess Santo doesn’t want to talk about sleeping on my couch, but that also could have contributed to his back pain—it’s definitely not big enough for someone our size to stretch out on.
“Soup sounds great, thank you.”
Santo heats a pan of soup and putters around while I doze on the couch. He nudges me awake when he brings two bowls over.
The smell of lemon and chicken hits me hard, and my stomach grumbles. “It smells delicious. What is it?”
“Avgolemono soup. It’s Greek.”
“Did you make this?”
“Yes.”
We hunch over our steaming bowls. The soup looks creamy and there are herbs sprinkled over the top, and chunks of what I’m assuming is chicken floating. I blow on a spoonful until I deem it safe and take a sip.
Oh god, it’s good. I’m thankful I haven’t been that stuffy—though I would take blowing my nose constantly over hawking up colorful phlegm any day—and force myself to savor the meal. When the kids were sick, I usually heated soup from a can. Of course, if one person in our family got sick, it worked its way through the entire group, so that not only was I sick, but I was also taking care of four people in various stages of illness.
Also, I’m not much of a chef—not like Sara and Tessa, anyway. And there’s not a lot of soup season in Texas, at least not like here. Last weekend in Zurich, it was crisp and cold, and we ordered takeout one night. Sara had found a vegan restaurant, and we all agreed that her truffled cauliflower parsnip soup was the best dish of the night.
