Chapter 7
SEVEN
Annie
It’s late by the time we get to the place. Nico gets us a big cab (I manage to squeeze in two ‘cabs are here’ jabs) for all our luggage to take us to the… comically small murder shack that currently claims to be a motel.
“Is this some sort of sick joke?” I ask merrily.
He scrubs his hair sheepishly, but it’s already a disaster thanks to our four hour long convertible ride. Mine is a bird’s nest of tangles despite having it pulled back all day. “The rental place booked it for us,” he says unhelpfully.
“Why? Because when we die here, they won’t have to send us a new car?”
“Annie, please.” Nico looks exhausted.
Nico, Doctor Nico, with the smarts and the whole ‘helping old Italian men and their restaurants’ thing, with the mad scientist hair that is tousled so handsomely it looks purposeful, who has my back in a fight with an actual meathead.
With the warm brown eyes that turn concerned instead of angry when he’s trying to do something stupid like ‘figure me out.’ Like I’m a science problem that needs analyzing and solving.
That was a mistake I let slip at Gino’s. He wasn’t supposed to see that. That what he said on the beach affected me in a way that was both sharp and aching, that it left an imprint so clear and deep that I was able to memorize it and repeat it verbatim.
That isn’t going to happen again.
I will also never again let that little part of me melt when he calls me ‘honey.’ When it comes out of his perfect mouth, I will not turn into an oozing puddle of goo. Or of honey, I guess.
Another tiny piece of me was almost disappointed when he didn’t open my car door for me, because he knew (rightfully so) that I would tear him to shreds about it. But I think I secretly would’ve liked it. I’m never going to think that again.
Because he’s already tired of me, and I need to make it to Miami.
I keep my mouth shut.
He doesn’t look at me and jumps out of the van.
“Thanks so much, man,” he tells the cab driver with genuine warmth, because it seems that Nico really is that nice to everyone but me.
Although he does unload all my luggage from the back, which is nice I suppose, but what’s even nicer is watching his biceps flex to do it.
“Leave them,” he tells me about my luggage. “I’ll come back for them. Stay here and I’ll go check us in.”
“If you insist,” I sniff. I’ll give him this, because I didn’t let him have my car door.
Nico walks back out with a room key and moves two doors down from where I’m standing. After a thirty-second battle with a key in the rusty lock, the door finally creaks open menacingly on its ancient, bloody hinges, signaling to the audience that whatever is in there is a Bad Idea.
I’m proven correct when Nico plants his hands on his hips and looks towards the sky. “For fuck’s sake.”
I inch towards him and peer around the door frame, bracing myself for the man in a clown mask we’ve just awoken from a nap.
It’s… a room. Technically. Everything is brown. Not chic leather brown. Not even trendy taupe. This is “fecal distress” brown. Shit-brown. The-color-of-shit brown.
One of the beds has a massive wet spot in the middle of it. We look up. The ceiling is leaking shit-brown water onto the shit-brown blanket.
“No, thanks,” I say amenably. “I’d rather sleep in the pile of used needles in the corner of the parking lot.”
Nico shivers. “I think I’ve just contracted Hep B.”
We both creep backwards.
“I’ll get us another room.”
“What if we just got a cab to literally anywhere else—”
Nico blows out an impatient breath. “Tried that already. They won’t give us a new car if we do that,” he sighs, like he’s just so burdened by logistics and not, say, the fact that the motel is leaking disease.
“Call me crazy,” I say, “but I’d rather lose the rental car than my skin.”
He drags his big hands down his face and groans. “Let’s see what other rooms they have. We’ll reassess if it’s just as…”
“Fatal?” I offer. “Decaying? Haunted? Noxious?”
He trudges back towards the main office without a response.
I try not to scream when something rustles in the woods behind the murder shack, because statistically it’s probably a raccoon and not a man named Earl who collects toes.
Nico eventually comes back out with a horrified look on his face.
“The only room left is the one they use for performing animal sacrifices,” I supply for him.
“Worse,” he mutters. “The only room left has only one bed.”
The room itself isn’t so bad. It’s almost cozy, in a ratty, mouse-lair way. It doesn’t smell damp or like Giardia or the blood of virgins.
Even so, we both still stare at the one bed as if it’s soaked with the blood of virgins. Virgins with Giardia.
“Well,” I announce, “Pile of needles, it is.”
Nico looks like he is about to cry.
“I can sleep in the car?” I attempt to help.
“No one’s sleeping in the car.” He tears at his hair. “Is this really not gonna be okay with you? I can get us a new rental car and forfeit this one if it’s not.”
“How much is that gonna be?”
He shrugs. “For several days, booking on the day we need it… probably thousands of dollars.”
I stare at handsome, successful Dr. Nico, who picked me up from my parent’s basement where I live, devastating in the dim light of the shit-brown room. “You’d pay that?”
“If you’re uncomfortable, then yeah.”
Oh boy. “I…” My body immediately goes into fight mode.
Sister Annie tries to wrangle Annie of the past into submission, because she is currently salivating and chomping at the bit at the opportunity to use this rich man for nice, free things.
She is fortunate in her triumph. What the hell is wrong with me?
“No. I can handle it. It’s a big bed, and it’s just a few hours. ”
All the tension leaves Nico’s body, and I realize just how wound up he was over this.
It almost makes me feel bad. No, it does make me feel bad.
Because it’s a reminder of just how unbearable I can be.
Exhausting. Because that’s what I am, or was to people.
Just… effort, making everyone clench their teeth and flinch in advance, like I'm a slap they’re waiting for.
“Even fewer hours than you think,” he adds on, oblivious. “I gotta get to DC to meet with this chef at his restaurant. You wanna come with? By the time we get back, it’ll only be eight hours that we gotta be trapped in this room.”
I blink at him. “It’s ten at night.”
“Yeah, but we haven’t eaten yet. And it’s a two-star Michelin menu. For free. Besides, they close at eleven, and I don’t know if you know this, but kitchens after closing are usually a fuckin’ party.”
Oh boy! Old Annie shrieks with delight. Use this hot, rich man to throw down at a party that very likely involves a heavy amount of stimulants? Sign me the hell up. But alas, Sister Annie wins this round again and knocks her out. Stay here.
Nico remains ignorant of my internal struggle.
“I’m good,” I mumble.
He frowns. “What are you going to eat, then?”
“I have the rest of that cheesesteak from Gino’s.”
“You’d rather eat an old, cold, soggy sandwich than have a highly regarded menu of extremely high quality, expensive food? For free?” he asks incredulously.
Not to mention free drinks, because I am, in fact, very familiar with a city restaurant after closing. I have to physically peel myself from the offer. Heart heavy, I drag my suitcases further into the rat lair.
Nico takes a few steps away, and I suddenly have a lump the size of a baseball clogging my throat.
I know he’s just giving me room to maneuver, but the motion makes my stomach clench, because again, this is what people have always done, what I’ve always been—sharp edges and emotional wreckage and a hurricane of serious issues that people learn to avoid or tiptoe around.
“Enjoy, Dr. Nico, but don’t get too fucked up. ”
“Why would I get fucked up? I have to chauffeur your ass bright and early tomorrow morning.”
Oh right, because most people have an intrinsic pause button. “Later,” I call out, just as I enter the bathroom. “And thanks for driving,” I tack on, because I am nice and behaving.
I shut the door, and I slump down on the other side of it.
I look around and decide to sit on the pink porcelain toilet instead of the floor.
Now, trapped in a busted motel rat palace—surrounded by shit-brown grout, cracked porcelain, and the kind of ominous dripping that usually precedes a murder in an abandoned meat locker—I decide this might actually be it.
Rock Bottom. The End of the Line. The Big Sad.
I’ve lived, I’ve laughed, I’ve made aggressively poor life choices.
And now I’m here, in a mildew-scented purgatory that screams, “Your therapist was right.”
I cover my face with my hands and take deep pulls of air that rattle through the space between my fingers. Then I pull out my phone and open up my email, compelled, after all of this, to find some sort of comfort in Chef’s words.
I huff a dry laugh at what he’s written. How Ali shines? By shines, does he mean spontaneously combusts and takes out a small village?
The door to the room slams shut, and instead of screaming Take me with you, I type instead.
From: ali@
To: chef@
I’m a miserable hurricane of serious issues.
But there’s a reason for it, I think. It built and built and built through childhood into high school.
Pressure and expectations from everywhere and everyone.
Be the best. At everything. I didn’t live in high school—I optimized.
Studied like it was an Olympic sport. Worked.
Played two instruments. Volunteered. Wrote.
Perfected. Then I got fucked over. And then I wasn’t the best, despite dedicating my entire existence to it.
Then in the city, on my own for the first time in my life?
Free? I detonated. Exploded into a million reckless pieces.
I leave the shit-brown bathroom to grab my toothbrush, brush my teeth and splash water on my face in an approximation of a night-time skincare routine, plod out, and get under the shit-brown covers. I hate it here.
I reread the deranged email draft on my phone. Then, I place my finger on the backspace key and hold it down.
I’m miserable.
And then I add:
1. I don’t shine. I’m mean and miserable.
2. I’m trying my best not to, but I make really reckless, impulsive decisions just to feel something. Like Not That Safe for Work Sexting (S-emailing? Sexemailing?) with my hot porn star coworker.
3. No one has ever given up on me.
Then I scoot all the way to the edge of the bed and fall asleep.