Kyle walks with quick steps down the old-town streets to The Only Hotel, which was only so in name. It had actually once been the only hotel in town until they built the Motel 8 and The L’Hotel French – it is a dumb town. Everything has dumb names, there is no library, and the people are happy and dumb. It is not Kyle’s town, and he is supposed to be leaving but instead he is walking back to The Only Hotel, a bouquet of calla lilies in hand, crunching through the long-dead leaves as they wait for December’s delayed burial.  

The Only Hotel is one of those hotels that gives you a key to the front door so that the owners – who function as the entire hotel staff – can go home to sleep after a long day of waiting around for clients who almost never come. Kyle likes this. As alien as he had felt in this place, walking up the steps, turning the key, and opening the door to a quiet-unlit foyer feels like going home. He just wants to go home. But he can’t go without me.

The flowers are an apology, we had had a fight and calla lilies are my favourite. Particularly the purple ones, but Mary’s Flowers only had white I guess. Kyle was confused by our fight, for him it was one of those bullshit “it’s not you, it’s me” talks that always end in a big fight and a phony breakup. A breakup only real until we had both calmed down and made up – we had these kind of fights all the time.

When he reaches the third floor, he turns to the door on the right and swipes his key. Then, quickly grabs the door knob, with the same hand, as he cradles the bouquet in his other. The knob is warm on his cold skin.

“Oh shit!” the bed exclaims from behind the opening door. It’s me, sitting in bed with the sheets pulled up to my chin, my hair in every direction, and my eyes wide and shifting. I am a cartoon of a boy watching a scary movie, and in bed next to me is a man watching the same movie but with only apathy to read from his face. There is an emptied bottle of rum on the dresser and a string of beers, like rose petals, leading to the bed.

“What the fuck is this?” Kyle just wants to go home but, in the hissing of this question and in my terrified speechlessness, he feels something – power. He throws the bouquet against the wall and it bursts apart, each flower taking off in a different direction. In this moment, Kyle knows I am afraid of him and he is going to use that fear to exact his revenge.

As Kyle stomps toward the bed, I jump out naked, fail to make use of my feet and fall to the floor. In my fall, I grab onto the curtain and rip the curtain rod from the wall, draping myself in my stupidity. I must look pathetic on my hands and knees, looking over my shoulder at Kyle with nothing but drunkenness in my eyes and a cape of itchy, purple fabric on my back. He hates me for it.

“You fucking idiot.” He slaps me in the back of the head, but only with a strength muted by emotion. “You fucking idiot, James!” he slaps me again and his face folds into an X of rage and tears stream over the wrinkles. “You fucking idiot! You fucking idiot! You fucking idiot!” he slaps again and again with less and less force as he crumbles down so that both of us are on our hands and knees beside each other. All the while, the man in the bed sits motionless and without a care. He is the first to get up and leave the room. Kyle cries a while then gets up and kicks a beer bottle at the wall on his way out. It doesn’t break, it just makes that satisfying clink and rolls back to my side.

_____________________________________________________

I wake up in a ball on the floor, my head on my jeans and the rest of me folded up into the curtain. It is so itchy. I throw it off of me and rise to look out the window. I don’t have to worry about anyone seeing me, it is Sunday, and on Sunday mornings everyone is in church and then they go straight home. Every business stays closed all day – it is a dumb town. It is my town, the one I once called home anyway. Looking out the window, I can see right to where the streets end and the farmers’ fields begin. The one set of traffic lights still flicking green to yellow to red, directing no one at all. It is barren, impotent, and dying.

I turn to face the room and am confronted with the retelling of last night’s story: the curtain rod on the floor, the explosion of white calla lilies all around the room, the empty bottles of confidence, and the little Tylenol box on the dresser. I pick up the box and shake it, then pour it out into my hand. Two little blue pills fall into my palm. It pisses me off to think how many of these I have wasted because Kyle was suddenly “not in the mood”, or “too tired”. And last night, I was still in my game of anything-but waiting for the pill to kick in when Kyle showed up. That is a good thing though, I suppose. Or it would be if I had the balls to explain to Kyle that nothing had really happened yet and why, but he didn’t know. I have been this way for almost a year now and somehow he hadn’t noticed my taking on of a new expense. These pills aren’t cheap, you know?

I get dressed, try to put the impending hotel bill out of my mind, and go for a walk. I figure I’ll swing by the café where I met Devyn the barista last night. Devyn, being the audience to last night’s horror-show. The apathetic man-in-the-bed. The café will be closed so I don’t imagine I will see him, but I toss my blue pills into my pocket anyway. I doubt he would be in church with the rest of the town, Devyn is as gay as Nathan Lane at Pride. And from the looks he was getting in the café last night, I’d say the town knew it too. They weren’t that dumb.

It is cold and my thin jacket is doing little, aside from looking great. I fiddle with the blue pills in my pocket and think about just going back to my warm hotel bed and jerking off. I figure I’ll do that once I give the café a walk-by.

As I cross the street to the café, I check my phone, Kyle hasn’t called or texted – I don’t know what I’ll say if he doesn’t break the silence. The air in my lungs feels like it is trying to escape through my chest in one big cloud of anxiety, and I sigh to let it out.

While shoving my phone back in my pocket, I bring my other hand up to my brow and lean against the café window. Looks empty. The lights are off, the chairs are on the tables, I see a red light behind the bar, but all seems to be still. I don’t know what I expected, but I am disappointed.

Tap! Tap! Tap! The glass vibrates on my nose and I flinch. I look down and in the booth right against the window is a girl smirking at me. She has a short undercut hairstyle with a streak of purple running through the black. She waves. I give her a confused smile and wave back. She gestures to the door with a point and gets up. I walk over to the door and her smiling face awaits me. She opens the door.

“Did you want to come in? I have coffee on if you wanted some.” Her voice is very pretty. It’s high, but strong. Her invitation feels more like a command.

“Yes. Uh… Please?” I step inside. “How did you get in here?”

She laughs a little. “My family owns the place. Did you think I broke in or something?” she bites her tongue in her smirk. She is playful.

“Well, that would have been more interesting.” I’m not very good at using a joking tone but she laughs anyway. She stares at me a moment, biting her tongue again, and then turns to the bar. She reaches over the counter on her toes, exposing a tattoo between the dimples in her back. “You’re a Libra?” I ask.

“No, I’m actually a Cancer. But I believe we choose our own signs.” Her sentence ends in a tone that says “aha!” as she slides back to her feet with a mug in her hand. She spins so that her legs are crossed as she turns to face me and hands me the mug. It is a performance. The mug is empty and I want to make a joke about how this doesn’t quite satisfy my want for coffee, but I can’t come up with anything. So while I stand there like an idiot looking at an empty mug, she walks past me and sits back down in the booth by the window. “If you wanted to fill that cup with something, the coffee on the table is hot.”

I smile and reach into my pocket. My hands and leg are shaking with nervousness. I pull out a little blue pill and pop it into my mouth before joining her at the table. “I’m James by the way.”

She doesn’t react. She is drawing something. “I know. We went to high school together, James.” She just keeps on drawing.

“Really? Oh my God. I’m so sorry.” In a town of three hundred fucking people, how could I not remember this girl?

“It’s okay. I’m three years younger than you, James. I wouldn’t expect you to know who I was. But every girl in school knew who you were. I’m Sarah.” She looks up from her drawing for a moment and smiles at me. “Every girl wanted you.”

“Well… It’s nice to meet you, Sarah.” I extend my shaky palm.

There is a pause and then she looks up at my hand, her face saying “really, dude?” and then she grabs it and shakes it mockingly. “Oh yes, very nice to meet you, sir.” She says in a ridiculous low voice. I’m a little annoyed but it feels more like a gesture of welcoming than true mocking.

“So, what are you drawing?”

“I don’t really know,” She says, staring at the page as though she just realized she had been drawing this whole time “it’s just kind of a bunch of lines going in so many directions and turning into lots of different shapes. I like it. It’s sex–” she interrupts herself with an adorable sneeze. “Jesus. Bless me! Sorry. It’s sexy.” I just stare at her, amazed.

She pushes her pen and paper to the side and puts her palms on the table, leaning slightly closer “Listen, do you want to fuck me or not?” She does not wait for a reply. I’m frozen in my seat as she gets out of hers, flanks the table, pulls her pants down to mid-thigh, bends over, and, with elbows supporting her, messes up her hair. “You better pull my fucking hair.” I chew my lip but do not move. “Oh! And choke the shit out of me.” She lets out a little giggle and bites her tongue yet again.

The door opens and knocks the little bell. “Oh shit!” Sarah hisses, “It’s my brother!” I look up to see the man coming in and she scrambles back into the booth, fighting her pants back up to her waist.

“What the fuck is this?” He is standing there in a long pea coat with a beautiful white scarf draped around his neck and shoulders. “James?” it is Devyn.

My phone buzzes in my pocket next to the massive erection in my jeans – a text message. It is from Kyle.

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