“No.” My voice drops. “You’re trying to run before you have to feel anything.”
Her silence answers for her.
Someone calls from behind us. The spell breaks.
She steps away first.
***
At the hotel, the front desk clerk hands out our keys.
"Bobby McDermott, you are in room 1010. Eli Vargas room 915, Bryce Blackhorn 1218, Colby Hayes, 921, Gabriel Shelly 1200, Gregory Mills, 1021, Dex Miller 917, Ryder Hale 1019, Annabelle Hacker, 1219.
Wait...1219...right next to mine. Does she realize that?
***
We ride the elevator in thick, suffocating silence. Dex yells “HAVE FUN, CHILDREN” as the doors close, and I flip him off as they shut.
Annabelle stands on the opposite side of the elevator like if she breathes too close, we’ll spontaneously combust. My pulse hasn’t slowed once since dinner.
The bell dings for our floor.
We step out. Walk down the hall. Stop in front of our side-by-side rooms.
She slides her key into 1219 and pushes the door open. I do the same with 1218.
And then I hear it. A soft metallic rattle.
I glance at the wall we share. Then at the door inside my room. The adjoining door. The lock plate is tilted. The deadbolt… broken.
“Seriously?” I mutter.
Annabelle appears in my doorway a second later, holding her own adjoining door half open.
Her expression is a mix of disbelief and doom. “Is your lock broken too?”
I nudge mine with a knuckle. It swings open three inches.
“Yep.”
We stare at each other through the gap like two idiots caught in the world’s horniest architectural flaw.
She exhales hard. “Well isn't this ironic?"
“Absolutely,” I say. “But I call it fate.”
She tries to shut her side. It doesn’t latch.
Finally she meets my eyes. Resigned. Flustered. A little breathless.
“And we’re adults. We’re handling this professionally.”
“Sure.”
“And no...”
I step closer. Close enough she feels my breath. Close enough thinking stops.
