Then I pick the letter back up and stare at it.
“What the actual fucking fuck?” I blurt.
I’m out of the room the next minute, down the elevator, then standing at the front desk. The bumbling clerk insists the room is already paid for and I can just go.
He also kindly informs me that the free breakfast buffet is still open for another hour and ten minutes.
I’m outside. Harsh morning sunlight bakes my face. There’s a stickiness in the air that I hate instantly.
I wait for something to hit me. Epiphany. Heartbreak. Tears.
Nope. Nothing.
I’m just …annoyed.
“What the actual fucking fuck?” I mutter for the twenty-sixth time as I’m on the road zooming back home fifteen miles an hour over the speed limit. Yeah, I’m such a rebel. Watch out.
The note is on my backseat. His weirdly perfect handwriting is just a notch down from a literal printed font.
I’m sorry, Timothy?
You deserve more?
I pull into a gas station just outside of town and, after filling up the tank, sit in the car for a hot minute and debate texting him.
What would I say other than angry words or angry questions I could probably just answer myself?
He got spooked? I laid it on too thick, too much, too soon? He has a wife and kids back home? I’d believe just about anything.
Or nothing at all.
“I’m sorry, Timothy. You deserve more,” I repeat out loud, but do I?
By the time I get back home, I’m all out of everything: anger, sadness, questions. All I have is a ringing in my ears and a crick in my back. Guess those cushy hotel beds weren’t as lovely in reality as they looked on the surface.
Y’know. Like guys named Austin.
All dreamy and studly, then proving to be a total ghost.
I probably imagined him this whole time. Even at T&S’s. Billy was probably hiding in the office calling up my mom asking if she knew any good reason why her dear son would be pretending to bandage up an imaginary guy who bonked his head on a lamppost.
It’s suddenly so possible, it’s impressive.
Maybe I made it all up.
“Sweetheart,” greets my mom from the sitting room, the little table next to her full of notebooks, with her phone in hand and a laptop sitting on her lap. “You’re home early this morning! After your text, well, I didn’t know what to expect. I didn’t realize you had a local friend to go and hang out in Fairview with.”
“I don’t.”
She stares back, puzzled.
I head up the stairs, leaving her with her puzzle.
The second I close the bathroom door and turn on the shower, something happens. The noise of the water filling my ears. Filling the room. Filling my brain. Then I slowly take off my clothes, and no matter where I look, I see his eyes by that hotel room window. I hear what he said. The way he looked at me when he spoke. How gently he held me in his arms.
Something doesn’t feel right about it.
Maybe that’s why I’m not crying.