Chapter 19 – Brianna #2
The door closes behind me, and the silence of finally being alone is deafening.
I let out a heavy breath of relief. The room is stifling, hot and muggy, like someone turned off the air conditioner after cleaning it thinking it’d be cooler in August. The first thing I do is crank the AC down to sixty and blast the fan on high.
Then I wipe down the TV remote with a sanitizing wipe I find in the bathroom just in case.
It’ll be an icebox in here soon, but that’s fine.
I won’t be sleeping any way I just can’t stand being hot and wired. And horny.
I turn on the TV and start scrolling through the channels, but I can’t focus. My mind is spinning, my heart pounding, and my body buzzing with restless energy.
Okay… so, what next?
It’s close to two in the morning now, and I’m pacing the sticky, carpeted floor like a caged animal.
The energy drink I chugged is still buzzing through my veins, and I know sleep isn’t happening.
My body is wired, my brain refuses to shut off, and all I can think about is the way Seth said I’d have kept you in the car.
I thought we were vibing, then he made that comment about my glasses and then the red hair I used to have last fall.
My hair had been red for years, but after my mom died, and I moved to New York City, I felt like I needed a change.
Hence the light brown hair and going back to closer to my natural color.
But lately I’ve been missing the strawberry red.
My phone pings with a notification from the group chat I’m in with my Brookhaven crew—Natasha, Alessia and Rhiannon Carpenter and Rosie Tremblay. My neighbors and roommate, and basically the closest thing I have to a support group and a comedy club rolled into one.
The only problem is that Rosie has officially joined that club too. Which means my employer, and the sister-in-law of the man I had a one-night stand with, is dangerously close to figuring out that I have a massive, embarrassingly obvious crush on her brother-in-law.
And if I’m not careful, she’s going to figure it out long before I’m ready for her, Boone or Seth to know.
Rhiannon: Bri! Is everything okay??? Rosie just told me that you and Seth went to Boston to get Sawyer.
Brianna: Why are you awake?
Rhiannon: Breastfeeding.
Alessia: I’m up too. Pregnancy insomnia.
Rosie: Pregnancy insomnia for me too. How’s Sawyer? She must be so scared.
Natasha: I'm here too! I’m closing down the bar.
Brianna: Wow. Everyone’s awake right now.
Brianna: Yes, we’re in Boston. Sawyer’s sleeping now. She panicked and didn’t want to get on the flight home, so she stayed with one of the volleyball moms. We’re resting until she wakes up.
Natasha: We as in... You and Seth?
Rhiannon: Oh… one-bed trope?
Natasha: What’s that?
Rhiannon: Where in the romance novel, they get to an inn, and there’s only one bed, so obviously, they’re forced to share the bed, and then they end up FUCKING.
Alessia: YES! One-bed trope! Tell us there’s only one bed!
Natasha: Is there one bed?
Rosie: If there’s one bed, I’m telling Boone. He’s going to flip.
Brianna: No. We got separate hotel rooms.
Rhiannon: Boo!
Alessia: What a waste of a road trip trope.
Rhiannon: There’s always only one bed. This isn’t fair at all.
Natasha: Maybe we should call the hotel and demand they share rooms.
Rosie: Let's do it.
Brianna: Not this time. Totally two separate rooms and two separate beds. Trust me, I counted. One-two.
Alessia: So, what are you going to do? Sleep for a few hours and then drive Sawyer home?
Brianna: I can’t sleep. I chugged an energy drink on the drive and listened to my early 2000's greatest hit playlist.
Rhiannon: Brutal.
Natasha: I bet I know what you're going to do next.
Rhiannon: ?
Brianna: Natasha.
Natasha: ??
Rosie: What are you doing?
Alessia: We’re all waiting to find out. Gabriel’s snoring next to me and it’s making me so jealous that he can sleep. What are you doing?
Brianna: Nothing at all!
Natasha: …
Alessia: Spill.
Brianna: NO. I’m not going to do it.
Natasha: Yes, you are.
Brianna: Okay… maybe…
Natasha: You telling them or me? Trust me, they’ll love it.
Brianna: Fine. Sometimes when I can't sleep, I watch married people porn. It's really no big deal.
Rhiannon: CUM again?
Alessia: What is married people porn?
Natasha: Exactly what it sounds like.
Rhiannon: We’re all very open-minded here, just trying to understand. Do they pretend to be married or are they really married?
Brianna: They are really married.
Rosie: Hot.
Rhiannon: You should invite Seth over to watch with you.
Rosie: I’m telling Boone.
Brianna: This chat’s going on mute. BYE.
Rhiannon: No! Don't leave us hanging. Send me the couple’s name so I can watch with Cain!
I choke out a laugh, shaking my head as I slide my phone onto the table beside the bed and then lean over to blast my face directly with the cool air vents.
Natasha’s not wrong. This is one of those things I do when the insomnia hits, and it’s not something I’m remotely embarrassed about.
More than once, she’s walked into the living room to find me curled up on the couch with a bucket of popcorn, completely captivated by whatever scene they’re engaged in on the screen.
“What the hell are you doing?” is usually her first question followed by. “And why is he shoving that in her asshole?”
Most of the time, she ends up sitting down beside me. Then the two of us spend the next two hours dissecting every scene and wondering if it’s possible for marriage to keep that level of desire and heat even after several decades together.
Maybe that’s why I keep watching. Not because I believe every grand gesture or dramatic declaration, but because some stubborn part of me still wants to believe that love, passion, and marriage can coexist the way they do in the movies. Or pornos.
Anyway, now that she brought it up, I can’t stop thinking about it.
And it’s not as weird as it sounds. It’s not about the kink.
It’s not about taboo shit or getting off at the end of it.
It’s about connection. Emotional intimacy as much as physical.
Watching two people who’ve been married for years, who know each other’s bodies inside and out and have seen each other at their lowest, still finding ways to keep things hot.
It’s not some overproduced, scripted nonsense. It’s raw and real, full of little moments that make my hopeless romantic heart sigh. Like a home video, except with some rough sex.
The way he looks at her like she’s his whole damn world.
The way she touches him like he’s her safe place and has held her through the tough years.
I chew my bottom lip, glancing at my phone again. It’s so romantic...
I’m already reaching for cell phone, tapping into the app that holds all my secrets. It’s like muscle memory at this point. And it makes me feel safe.
I press a few different buttons and before I know it, my favorite couple’s face fills the screen of my phone.
Married for fifteen years. In their early forties, yet still wildly in love.
Their connection is magnetic, electric in a way that makes my stomach flip every time I watch because I want that so badly, I can almost taste it.
I scroll through their feed and select one of their latest uploads that I haven’t watched yet.
The screen fills with their smiles, and before I know it, I’m sinking deeper into the plush hotel bed’s pillows, my eyes glued to the blue glow, heart pounding for reasons that have nothing to do with the energy drink coursing through my veins.
I fiddle with the hotel TV’s remote and eventually figure out how to cast the video onto the big screen at the end of the bed so that I don’t have to hold my phone up by my face while I rest. The husband starts talking and instantly I feel myself being to relax into a smile.
Why do I do this to myself? Why do I watch people who are happy fall in love with each other every night?
Because I’m a sucker for love. For connection.
For knowing that it’s possible to choose the same person each year and not call it compromise.
And maybe… maybe a tiny, irrational part of me feels like I may never find something like that and so watching it happen for other people allows me to live a dream I’ll never have.
I bite my lip, heat pooling low in my belly as I get lost in their world, my mind drifting to thoughts I have no business entertaining right now about the man on the other side of my hotel room. I wonder what Seth’s doing. Probably sleeping or stretching his hamstring after his exhausting game.
My eyes go back to the TV where the husband just pulled out a massive purple dildo he’s going to use on his wife.
She’s a total size queen which I love for her.
I shift to get more comfortable, stretching out on the bed fully clothed while watching from the safety of my little cold cocoon.
I’m minding my own business, lost in their world, when—
KNOCK. KNOCK. KNOCK.
My head whips toward the hotel door like I’ve been caught committing a crime.
My heart pounds like a drum line, and my brain completely short-circuits from lack of sleep and caffeine.
I scramble to pause the TV, jabbing at the button on my phone where I’m casting the damn video to X out of it, but it’s not working.
Why won’t it turn off?!
Panic surges through me. Mute. MUTE IT! Because now the wife’s moaning loudly while the husband is teasing her clit with some sort of sparkly feather wand. I slap the mute button which works and hold my breath, hoping, praying it’s just room service or someone drunk thinking this is their room.
Please be room service.
This hotel has room service, right?
I tiptoe to the door, peeking through the peephole like some kind of criminal hiding from the cops. But no.
Nope. Nope.
NOPE.
It’s Seth. Standing outside my room. Hair a rumpled mess. Hazel eyes heavy with exhaustion.