Jason
Stuck Together
The hotel lobby is trying too hard—gold chandeliers, a piano that plays itself, a floral arrangement bred in a lab to intimidate men who forget anniversaries.
We’re back at our hotel and dripping on the marble like a stray dog in a tux.
Riley stands two feet to my left, ponytail damp, expression set to I dare you.
The night clerk smiles the way people do when they’ve been trained to handle celebrities and Karens.
“Mr. Maddox—so sorry for the inconvenience. Citywide outage jammed our system and, well.” His fingers flutter over the keyboard like he’s playing defense.
“We have one suite left. The Crown level. Comped upgrade, of course.”
“Great,” I say. “We’ll need two keys.”
“Of course.” He prints them. “And one bed.”
The sentence lands with the weight of a slapshot. Riley’s glare slides past my shoulder and cracks against the desk. The clerk blinks, then adds, chipper and doomed, “The Crown suite has an exceptional sofa.”
“Trade us,” I say. “Two standard rooms. Broom closets. I’ll sleep in the elevator. She gets a door she can lock.”
He winces. “We are… sold out.” He gestures at the lobby where three other teams have colonized the sofas, a sleeping toddler drools on a jersey, and a PR rep we know too well is arguing about blackout curtains. “We can bring a rollaway?”
Riley’s voice is surgical steel. “We’ll take the suite.”
“Riley—”
“Professionalism,” she says without looking at me. “We handle problems. We don’t make scenes.” Her eyes flick to the growing line behind us. She’s right. I hate it.
The clerk clears his throat, eager to live. “Elevators are to your right. Power’s back on, but ice machines are… temperamental.” He slides our keys across like peace treaties. “Enjoy your stay.”
We don’t answer. We peel off toward the elevators in a silence with razors in it.
In the steel box we stand with enough space for a third person made of common sense.
The floor count ticks up. Riley watches the numbers.
I watch her reflection watching the numbers and practice not being the kind of man who says I’ll take the couch; you take the bed.
I am that man. Being him in front of her feels like an audition she didn’t ask to sit through.
The suite door opens on money: a view of the city’s wet jewels, a couch the size of a small continent, a single king bed framed like a crime scene.
I dump my bag by the sofa and aim for casual.
“I’ll take that,” I say, flipping a throw blanket over the back like I didn’t just calculate how many vertebrae I can offend before morning skate.
“Fine,” she says, already moving toward the bedroom with clinical efficiency. “You need eight hours horizontal. Couch will ruin your back.”
“My back’s a tank.” A muscle twangs like wire. I don’t flinch; she still notices. Of course she does.
Her eyes narrow. The trainer takes the wheel. “Bedroom. Now.”
“That an order or an invitation?” I hear it leave my mouth, want to bite it out of the air, fail.
“Order.” She snatches my bag like I’m a rookie who can’t be trusted with luggage. “You need the bed more than I need optics. You’re useless if you seize up.”
“I’m never useless,” I say, soft and stupid.
“Sleep,” she counters—softer and smarter. She shoves the bag through the doorway and closes it between us with a decisive snick that says everything else we don’t.
I stare at the wood like it might open if I tell the truth to it. On the other side: drawers slide; water runs; a hair dryer coughs to life. I unfold the blanket, aim it at the couch, and miss because the couch is too far and I’m tired enough to fail at gravity.
“Professional,” I tell the room. The room doesn’t laugh.
Storm-quiet settles—fancy fixtures humming, pretending not to watch. I fish a second blanket out of the credenza and shake it over the couch like that makes it a bed. It doesn’t. It makes it a couch with delusions of grandeur.
I toe off soaked sneakers and tug at the knot my spine’s been saving for a special occasion. It answers with a hot little spasm that flashes down my lower back and into my hip like an electric apology. “Perfect timing,” I tell the ceiling.
The bedroom door clicks. Riley reappears—hair twisted into a no-nonsense knot, face scrubbed to the kind of pretty she’d roll her eyes at if I said it. She’s clutching a stack of hotel pillows large enough to smother a linebacker.
“Here,” she says, dropping them with triage precision. “Lumbar, side sleep, head. Build a wedge. Keep your spine neutral.”
“I’ve got the bed,” I say at the same time, because my mouth never reads the room. “You take it.”
Her brows tick up. “No.”
“Riley. I’m not letting you sleep on a couch because a citywide outage is bad at logistics.”
“You’re not letting me?” Arms fold, hip hooks—punctuation. “Adorable.”
I hold my hands up. “That’s not—” The muscle zings again. I don’t reach for it. She sees me not reach for it. Clinical, lethal.
“Sit,” she orders, already sculpting pillows into architecture. “Prove you can lie here for more than ten seconds without swearing and we’ll revisit your chivalry speech.”
“Revisit?” I lower myself like the couch might buck. The wedge hits the sore spot just right; the pain eases by degrees I pretend not to feel. “Feels fine.”
Her look hears the lie and declines to prosecute. “I’m in the bedroom. You’re on the couch. I set an alarm for anti-inflammatories. If you sneeze like a pulled muscle, you call me.”
“I don’t sneeze like a pulled muscle.”
“You do. It’s very macho.” The corner of her mouth almost tips; she kills it and points to the side table. “Water. Meds. Don’t be a hero.”
“I’m offended by how little faith you have in me.”
“I have an exact, medically sound amount of faith in you.” She steps back to the doorway, a hand on the frame like it’s holding her up. Softer, almost hidden: “Sleep, Jason.”
The sound of my name from her mouth is a low-grade sedative with bad side effects. “Night, Lane.”
For a breath she hesitates in the warm trapezoid of light—profile, silhouette, the suggestion of a thousand things we don’t say. The door slides shut with a neat snick that puts a period at the end of the sentence.
The city flickers beyond the glass like it’s trying to Morse-code advice.
My back throbs a little less against the wedge she built.
My chest throbs a little more against the idea that she did.
I flip to my side, rearrange the blanket for the tenth time, and tell my body to take the win.
It answers with a restless ache that has nothing to do with vertebrae.
The suite goes museum-quiet—heavy carpet swallowing footsteps, the AC breathing like it’s trying not to be heard. I’m half asleep, half annoyed at the couch’s geometry when a laugh slips through the wall. Riley’s. Low, unguarded—the one that used to live under my skin.
Murmurs. Then words sharpen: “Sophie, I’m fine.” Softer. “No, really.”
I unlock my phone to keep from knocking on the wall. The screen blinds me. Thumb hovers over her name—still pinned at the top like a bruise. Did you eat? Delete. We need to talk. Delete. I’ll take the floor if it helps. Pathetic. Delete.
“Don’t,” she says through the wall. My heart jumps like she heard me think. “I know what you’re going to say,” she adds—to Sophie, not me. “It’s just a room. It’s just a night.”
Just a night lands like ice water. I set the phone on my chest and count ceiling seams, push breath in and out like my lungs are stubborn rookies.
“He’s… being decent,” she says. The compliment fits like a shirt I don’t deserve. “But this is a mess.”
I want to tell her I can fix the mess. Buy the hotel, knock down a wall, build two rooms with a moat. I want to tell her I heard professionalism and didn’t argue because I’m trying to be the man who doesn’t make everything worse. I want to tell her I’m sorry I learned that too late the first time.
Instead I stare at my reflection in the black window—city lights sketching a blue outline around a guy who looks like he lost a fight to a couch.
The phone buzzes with a news alert I don’t open.
My name trends like weather; her career drowns when that storm rolls in.
I turn the screen face-down and pretend that changes the tide.
Her laughter fades to a hush, to the cadence she saves for people she trusts.
I wonder if I still make that cut, if I’m a name she dodges when Sophie asks the question nobody leaves alone.
The wall answers with quiet. Then: “Goodnight,” she says—to Sophie, to herself, to the version of us that doesn’t exist. The call clicks.
I type one more thing before I can stop myself: I’m sorry—for tonight, for before, for the way I stood there while the door clicked shut on us. My thumb hovers over send like it’s a trigger. The cursor blinks. I see the headline. I see her badge blinking red because of me. I backspace every letter.
The phone goes dark. The wall stays thin. I shove my hands under my head, stare at the slice of light under her door, and tell myself it’s better if she sleeps. I don’t.
Steam ghosts the bathroom mirror in the morning; towels smell like cotton breeze and starch.
We slot around each other on autopilot—her toothbrush clicks off as mine starts; her elbow skims my rib cage when we trade the sink.
“Shoulder,” she says, palm skimming to check tension.
It’s nothing more than contact, but my body reads it like scripture. “Range of motion?”
I lift, rotate. “Good.” My voice comes out rough. Her eyes flick to my mouth, then away like she’s mad at herself for looking.
We swap again—she reaches for the dryer, I dodge, shoulders brush. Heat licks down my spine more efficiently than any warm-up. I grunt, make space I don’t want to give. Professionalism chases me to the kitchenette where the coffee machine coughs to life like it smoked a pack during the blackout.