No. Dinner was... a lot.
Good a lot or bad a lot?
Both. Mostly good.
I watch the three dots appear and disappear twice. Then:
Did you want to talk?
I type:Yes.Delete it. Type:If you're not busy.Delete it. Type:Want me to come there?
Send before I can delete it again.
The response takes ten seconds. I count.
No, it's crowded here. Knox and Toby are down the hall. Silas is in his room. I'll come to you.
Something hot and complicated moves through my chest. Ezra, here. In this room. The beige walls and the mass-produced art and the desk I've never used. The bed I've been sleeping in alone, with sheets that smell like hotel detergent and nothing else.
The room is depressing,I type. Because it is, and because honesty has been working better than performance lately.
Yeah, but at least we can stretch out.
I stare at the message. Read it again. Process the implication —stretch out, which could mean sit comfortably, which could mean something else, which could mean anything, and my brain is doing the thing it does where it runs every possible interpretation simultaneously and arrives at the most destabilizing one.
Okay,I type.Room 214.
20 minutes.
I put the phone down. Pick it up. Put it down again.
A lion shifter is coming to my hotel room at midnight because I messaged him on a dating app. Not texted. Messaged through the app. Because I wanted him to know which door I was knocking on.
I get up. Put on jeans. I'm not answering the door in boxers, that's a decision point I'm not ready for. The gray t-shirt I sleep in. Look at the room. The bed is made because I makethe bed every morning even in hotels because structure is how I survive. The laptop is on the desk. The nightstand has Silas's book, my phone charger, and a glass of water.
I should straighten up. There's nothing to straighten. The room is immaculate because I live like a man who's ready to check out at any moment, because I am.
I hear the motorcycle before I see headlights. The low rumble of it in the parking lot, the engine cutting. Footsteps on the exterior stairs. Pinewood Inn, second floor, outdoor access. A knock on the door.
I open it.
Ezra is wearing jeans and a jacket over a t-shirt, hair slightly wind-wrecked from the bike ride. He smells like night air and bar soap and underneath that, something warm that I've been tracking at a distance for twelve days and is now standing two feet away.
"Hey," he says.
"Hey."
"Nice room."
"It's terrible."
"Yeah, it is." He looks past me at the beige walls, the mass-produced art, the HVAC unit under the window. "This is where you've been spending your time?"
"At night. During the day I've been in your bar."
"My bar is better."
"Your bar is significantly better. But your bar doesn't have a door I can close."
