Chapter 4: I Left Before He Woke Up

I wake up before the sun.

That half-second of total disorientation, what city, what floor, whose sheets smell this good, and then Garry shifts behind me and pulls me closer in his sleep and his breath warms the back of my neck and everything rushes back in one long, complicated wave.

Wrong room. Right man. Terrible timing.

I lie there for a moment and just breathe.

He sleeps quiet. No dramatic sprawling, no snoring. Just his chest rising and falling against my back and his breath warm on the back of my neck and his hand open and relaxed against my stomach like even unconscious he defaulted to holding on. Like keeping me close was just the natural resting position.

Ugh.

I should not find that as devastatingly wrecking as I do.

I have specifically decided not to find anything about this man sweet. He is a stranger with a wife, separated or otherwise, and I have a train to catch at nine and a life that exists in an entirely different city and none of this was supposed to happen.

I start moving slow. His arm loosens as I slip out from under it and I hold my breath like that will help, easing to the edge of the mattress, setting my feet on the floor.

He doesn't wake up.

Good. This is good. Clean exits are underrated.

I ease out from under his arm, holding my breath, and he stirs but still doesn't wake. I find everything in the dark by feel. Dress. Jacket. Both shoes, which feels like a genuine personal victory given the chaos of last night. My bag is by the door and I pick it up and I stand there with my hand on the handle and I make the mistake of looking back one more time.

He's stretched toward my side now. Arm reaching across the empty space where I was, like his body noticed the absence before his brain did.

Something pulls low in my chest, inconvenient and insistent.

I open the door and I leave.

**********

The hallway is empty and fluorescent and completely without mercy. I look absolutely insane, I'm sure of it. Yesterday's dress. Last night's makeup somewhere south of where I left it. The specific walk of a woman who made a series of questionable decisions and is now processing them in a hotel corridor at five forty-seven in the morning.

My actual room is three floors up.

The elevator is too quiet. My reflection in the metal doors stares back at me and neither of us has anything useful to offer.

Room 412 is exactly as I left it. Suitcase. Toiletries lined up neatly on the bathroom counter. My organised, responsible, sensible life sitting right where I parked it before I accidentally walked into a stranger's room and let him take me apart twice.

I sit on the edge of the bed and I don't move for a while.

I think about the way he said my name. Dara. Like it meant something specific in his mouth, like the word had weight he put there deliberately. I think about his hands and how certain they were, how nothing felt rushed or careless. I think about  I think about the phone lighting up and Vaness and wife. And the cold drop in my stomach when I saw it and how I stayed anyway and how I'm sitting here at nearly six in the morning and I still genuinely cannot locate the part where I'm sorry.

It was messy. It was reckless. The kind of night you don't fully explain to anyone because the explanation always makes it sound worse than it actually felt.

But it felt like something real. I felt something. That's the part I keep circling back to.

My phone rings.

Unknown number. I almost don't answer. Nearly six in the morning, unknown number, this is how bad decisions compound themselves. But I answer anyway because apparently I have learned absolutely nothing tonight.

"Hello?"

A pause. Then his voice, low and rough around the edges with sleep. "You left."

My eyes close.

"Garry."

"Mm." His voice is quiet, no accusation in it. "How'd you get this number?"

"You're calling me."

"Right." Another pause. "I found your card. It fell out of your bag."

I think about my business cards. My name on them. My number. The city I live in and all the neat evidence of a life that exists nowhere near this hotel... my job title at the company I've worked at for six years.

"Okay," I say.

"I just wanted to make sure you got back okay to your room."

"I did."

"Good." He sounds almost relieved. "That's good."

Neither of us says anything and it should be awkward and it isn't quite. It sits between us warm and slightly bruised, like something that doesn't have a name yet but is thinking about getting one.

"Garry," I say finally.

"Yeah."

"When she comes back from Lisbon..."

A long pause. "Yeah?" 

"Sign the papers."

Silence. Long enough that I think I've pushed into something that wasn't mine to push into. Then he exhales, slow and deep, something releasing in it that sounds like it needed to go.

"Yeah," he says softly. "I know."

"Okay." I lie back on my bed and look at the ceiling. "Get some sleep."

"You too." His voice drops lower. "Dara."

"Mm."

"Wrong room," he says. "Right night. Breakfast tomorrow? Start afresh?"

Something in my chest opens quietly at the edges.

"Okay. Goodnight, Garry."

I hang up.

I stare at the ceiling for a long time.

Then I sleep better than I have in months.

End of Arc 1: The Wrong Room