Hold My Breath(64)

“Look,” I whisper. “I don’t want this to be weird. I booked two rooms when we planned this trip. Let’s just use them. I’m sure we’re near each other.”

Still chewing the other half of her muffin, Maddy looks me in the eyes, eventually nodding with a slight movement. The fact that she isn’t talking, isn’t nodding bigger, or exhaling in relief makes me wish I’d lied, pushed her a little to see how she’d take sharing a room with me. But I don’t lie to Maddy—except for that one, awful, horrible big one. This is a fresh start, and friend or more, there will be no more lies from now on.

Once our front desk girl, Clair, is off the phone, she checks us in and swipes my card for the entire cost. I catch Maddy’s eyes on the receipt, and I notice the small tick in her lips. Even a budget motel in this part of the city runs two hundred a night, and two rooms over three nights is a small family vacation.

I hand Maddy a key card and lead her toward the elevators. I packed a few of Tanya’s things in my bag for her, so when we reach the third floor, I follow her to her room first.

“Three sixteen,” I say, gesturing over my shoulder. “Looks like I’m across the hall in three nineteen.”

“Oh…” she starts, her brow bunching briefly. She covers it by nodding and folding her arms over her chest, blocking my full entrance into her room behind her. “Good, we’re close then.”

I lift my bag at my side.

“Your clothes…I could just pull them out real quick, or…do you want them in a drawer?” It’s clear she doesn’t want me to follow her into her room.

“I think I’ll just stick with this,” she says, tugging her thin blue T-shirt out from her stomach. “I’m beat from the day, so I think I’ll just probably crash, maybe shower in the morning.”

“Right,” I nod, my mouth closed tight. “Probably a good idea. You want me to just call you or something to wake you up in the morning?”

I’m asking more because I still don’t have Maddy’s phone number, and regardless of this awkward relationship purgatory we’ve landed in, I still want it.

“No, I’ll be good. Just let me know what time to set the alarm for.”

Shit.

“Right…okay, well let’s plan on seven? Maybe eight? Let’s live a little…sleep in,” I say, pulling the right side of my mouth high. Maddy’s mouth matches mine, and I want to kiss it.

“Split the difference, seven-thirty,” she says, wrinkling her nose when she says the time, like she’s telling a secret or being bad.

I chuckle and point my key card at her.

“Deal,” I say, tapping the card against the palm of my other hand a few times before nodding and turning to face my door. “This is me,” I say over my shoulder, as if it weren’t obvious where I was going, and I hadn’t just told her my number.

“Good night, Will,” she says, and I wait long enough to watch her mouth stretch into the kind of smile that hits her cheeks and holds on to her giggle. Of all of Maddy’s smiles, this one has always been my favorite.

My chest warms from seeing a genuine look of happiness stretch across her face, I do my best to smile back. “Good night, Maddy,” I say, turning and pressing my card against the reader at the same time she does behind me.

Our doors beep in unison, and we both push the handles down and our doors click open. My heart is kicking me from the inside, telling me to wake up and quit being, as my uncle would say, a chicken shit.

“Hey, Maddy?” The words rush out of me before I really have time to decide what comes next. She turns to face me quickly, her eyebrows raised and her body already in her room while I have yet to cross over my threshold. She’s trying to speed away while I’m trying to draw things out, but f*ck it. No more lies.

“Just then, when I asked if you wanted a wake-up call? It was really just a lame attempt to get your phone number,” I shrug.

The same smile from before touches her lips, but this time it makes her blush. She looks down slightly, then peers at me through her lashes.

“Good night, Will,” she says.

“Good night, Maddy,” I repeat, at least satisfied that I went down swinging.

Her door sounds with a click before I finish closing mine, so I give up for the night and twist and hook the latch at the top. Unable to help myself, I rest my head against the door and count to five, then look through the peephole with one last dash of hope in my belly. It bursts quickly when the hallway is empty on the other side.

I turn to face my room—two double beds, a white wooden chest of drawers and entertainment center, a table with a coffeemaker on top, and a window with a view of the Fourth Street parking garage. I laugh to myself, wondering if Maddy’s sizing her room up right now, too, then I toss my bag on the far bed and step into the equally plain bathroom to run water over my face. The shower looks tall enough that I might not have to hunch, so I push the curtain back and twist the knob, happy when I feel the water turn hot.

I tug my shirt over my head and walk out to the room, tossing my shirt, along with my jeans, over the arm of one of the wooden chairs near the table. As I turn to walk back to the bathroom, a quick movement under my door catches my eye. A small square of paper, folded in quarters, is flicked underneath, and I hear the sound of the keycard registering and a door clicking closed a second later.