Griffin lying in his all-wrong hotel bed, barely asleep, barely having slept. His body an open wound. Too much pain, too much trying to walk it off.
And Michael, knocking on his door.
Well, talking through his door. That was different.
“Griff,” his friend was saying. “You okay in there?”
When he sat up—quick, to get it over with—he let the differences from day two become clearer to him. Yeah, Michael talking, but also the light coming through the sheer curtains he hadn’t bothered covering with the heavier drapes, and the muted later-morning noises he could hear through the window.
Two kinds of pain this time.
“Fuck,” he muttered, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed and standing. Another difference: He had not been under the covers. He had not even taken off his clothes from last night.
Don’t think about it, he told himself, but that was fucking crazy. He was, of course, already thinking about it; he had not stopped thinking about it. Her in the back seat of that car, alone, her lipsstill swollen from what they’d done in that doorway. Her before that, standing in front of him on the street, slowly working out what had happened.
He’d tried to head it off, her realizing it. He’d said the meanest thing he could think of in the moment.
Calling themfriends.
He thought of her saying the wordamicable, and the one kind of pain, the pain that had nothing to do with his body, was almost unbearable.
He wanted to lie back down and die.
“Griff,” Michael repeated, muffled through the door, his voice pitched into a different register of concern now. “Open this door or I’m gonna get one of the hotel employees up here.”
Griffin blew out a breath and stood.
It figured. Michael had never let him lie down and die, even when he wanted to most.
“I’m coming,” he said.
When he opened the door, he was confronted with another difference: Michael looking way less hangdog than he had on day two. Not settled, not easy.
But not damp-eyed and terrified, either.
As soon as he took in Griffin, though, his brow wrinkled in concern.
“Did you sleep in your clothes?”
Griffin shrugged. The lie would be to say he’d slept at all.
“You look like shit,” Michael added.
“What’s new?” Griffin muttered, backing away from the door, wishing he’d done more to cover up the imprint of his body on the still-made-up bed. He reached up, brushed a hand over the back of his head, felt the hair there, flattened and messy. He must’ve beenlying still for a long time, which probably was not going to help the other kind of pain, the body kind.
“You forget about this morning?” Michael said as the door closed behind him. Griffin’s room here was big, the biggest they offered at this hotel, but this morning, his friend’s presence felt crowding, overwhelming. He should’ve gone to the church again, instead of coming back here at dawn. He could’ve stood in front of his bell tower. He liked it there.
Griffin moved to the nightstand, picked up a bottle of water he should’ve drank hours ago. Physically, he’d done pretty much every wrong thing since the doorway. Hadn’t hydrated enough, hadn’t rested when his body was telling him to, hadn’t done any of his damned stretches or put on any of his silicone patches, had stayed in the same position for too long, once he was lying down.
He would probably be a wreck today.
And that was so unfair to Michael.
He swallowed, cleared his throat. “No, sorry. Just—uh, had one of those nights.”
Michael nodded, brief and knowing: not only about whatone of those nightsmeant for Griff, but also about Griff not wanting to say more about it.
Exceptone of those nightswas only half-true.One of those nightswas only one kind of pain.
