She’d moved into the bathroom again, and I heard sounds of water running, of a toothbrush being used.
The smile had slid off my face, but for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out why my chest was suddenly filled with gloppy, wet concrete. Of course this was only for tonight. Just like our last time had been. That was why we’d both been on the Spark app to begin with.
So why did I want to wrap myself in this room’s shitty duvet and go bury myself in the snow?
Sunny came out of the bathroom, now completely naked. With the bathroom light behind her, I could see those riotous curves and colorful tattoos spilling over her shoulders and arms.
“You can use my toothbrush,” she said, starting to rub at her face with a makeup wipe. “I have a very clean mouth according to my dental hygienist. They even took a picture of it to use as lobby art. I’m next to a fish tank.”
“Thanks.” I stood and tried to shake off my moodiness. It wasn’t Sunny’s fault that I didn’t know how to be a human anymore.
I brushed my teeth, tried to ignore how intimate it was to use her toothbrush, and stripped down to my boxer briefs, draping my tuxedo jacket, trousers, and shirt over the desk chair as I walked back into the room.
Sunny was already in bed, the lamplight from the street gilding the tip of her nose and the curve of her naked shoulder. I had a moment of stark lucidity.
It’s a bad idea to stay.
But then she held up her arms and declared with a pout, “I’m cold, Mr.Heartthrob,” and I was moving before I could even register that I’d made a choice. The bed creaked as I climbed in, and the duvet was basically made of the itchy pink insulation that goes inside walls, but she was so warm and soft and sweet-smelling, and the perfect way to forget that my own wedding all those years ago had led only to sickness and death. The perfect way to feel like tonight existed in a bubble, and Bee and Nolan’s happiness didn’t have to remind me of anything I had once and didn’t have anymore.
I pulled Sunny into my arms, and she nestled against my side like she belonged there, her hair spilling all over the place. She was snoring within seconds, and I fell asleep tracing a tattoo on her upper arm. A cactus, I thought, with heart-shaped sunglasses.
I awoke an indeterminate amount of time later with a jerk, barely able to see anything in the near-stygian room. A pressureon my lungs was all I was aware of at first. But then my eyes adjusted and I saw.
A sleep paralysis demon perched on my chest, its eyes glowing in the dark.
Before I could scream, the demon pounced and attacked my head, trying to chew on my hair and then making offended noises, like it wasn’t as good as the hair it had the night before or something. I finally managed to flail myself upright, and the demon bolted, leaping off the pillow and rejoining the shadows that had birthed its malevolent form.
“What the fuck?” I managed to wheeze.
“That’s just Mr.Tumnus,” Sunny said. Her voice was full of sleep. “He likes hair.”
“He’s evil.”
“He’s dealing with a lot of unresolved trauma,” she said pertly.
But then she tugged on my shoulder to make me lie down again and draped herself over my chest like I was her pillow.
It felt... good. Better than anything had felt in a very long time.
And even though it was dangerous, even though it was wrong, I could pretend just until morning that this was okay. I could pretend that I was a different man, who’d had a different life. A man who could still laugh and smile and write the music his record label loved.
I could pretend that my wife hadn’t died in my arms five years ago, and that my pointless, pulpy heart wasn’t forever torn in half.
When I opened my eyes again, it was morning, and the demon was sitting on Sunny’s rump, cleaning its paw as Sunny snored lightly under a curtain of gleaming hair. It—Mr.Tumnus, I guessed—glared at me and then made a point to turn aroundand give me his back before he resumed his grooming. The cut direct.
But it was hard to be offended when Sunny was so adorable next to me, sprawled in a tangle of cheap sheets and loose limbs, her inked skin looking extra golden and delicious in the light of a snowy morning. Her arm was flung over my stomach, and one of her breasts was smashed against my side. I could feel the barbell of her piercing pressing into my skin.
I was hard enough that my morning wood was tenting the sheets.
But before I could exorcise Mr.Tumnus from the bed and see if Sunny might be game for a farewell round, a sharppopsounded outside the window, like a gunshot, but tiny. Like an elf-gunshot.
Maybe it was ice... cracking... or something? I was pretty sure ice could do that, although most of my cold weather experience came from being dragged to Aspen for my mother’s annual ski pilgrimage.
Resolved to ignore it and instead begin nuzzling the naked person in the bed, I made to pull her in closer, until I heard a second pop, and then a third. Alarmed now, I reluctantly slid out from under Sunny’s arm and the scratchy-but-better-than-nothing duvet and went to the window to investigate. My breath fogged in the chilly air the closer I got to the window, and after I pulled the water-stained curtains to the side, I saw the source of the noise. Sparks were cracking and popping above the HVAC unit mounted under the window, and when I peered through the glass at the top of the rusted unit, I saw a half-eaten jar of peanut butter with a blue vape cartridge wedged inside.
I turned around to look at the rest of the room in the light of day. The carpet where Sunny and I had set the world record for the fastest sixty-nine-to-completion was an uninspiring shade of teal, peppered with stains and worn down to the backing nearthe bathroom. The walls were paneled in faux wood, the ceiling tiles were stained brown and sagging, and when I reached up and grazed the smoke detector with my fingertips, it fell off with a plasticthunkonto the carpet. I picked it up and studied it.
Expiry date: 11.08.2001
