He + She

by Michelle Warren

  “You’re not.” Her lips quirk as if she sees right through me. “But listen, I had to check out of my hotel, so do you mind if I leave some of my stuff at your place while we’re out?” She holds up her small bag and I wonder where the hell the rest of her stuff is, but then remember she didn’t have any baggage at the airport. But who travels across the country with almost nothing?

  “Well?” She nudges my arm and I snap out of the list of questions that are building about her.

  “Yeah, no problem.”

  • • •

  “I know it isn’t much,” I say as we stand in front of the HelgaInga Hotel.

  “You think I’m worried about your hotel choice?” She raises an eyebrow and grabs my hand, pulling me up the stairs. Just like yesterday, I’m surprised when she touches me. It’s so effortless and natural.

  We enter the lobby, if you can call it that, and looking around at the ancient dimly lit place, I admit that I’m a little more than embarrassed to bring her here. The hotel is a grade-A dump and when I made the reservation, I was only thinking I needed a place to crash, not a place to impress a chick.

  “You’re right.” She turns and crosses her arms. “I am worried. You didn’t tell me you had a jukebox in your lobby.” She practically skips to the dirty thing, squeezed between the 1970s vending machine and dusty, outdated rack of tourist flyers.

  “You got any change?” She drops her bags on the floor and holds out her hand. I scramble for a few quarters deep in my pocket and pass them over. She rolls them into the money slot and selects a song. The machine clicks a few times and soon a melody hums, filling the small lobby and awakening the snoozing hotel manager sitting behind a cracked glass window.

  She places a hand on each side of the machine and sways her behind in a soulful way as the tune fades in. If I could see it, I know the word Tuesday would be swaying with it, and my temperature rises at the thought. The lyrics kick on over the music and she twists to face me while dramatically lip-syncing to “Dancing Queen” by ABBA. I chuckle when she slides her palm over my chest and slinks around me, dancing seductively. When she drags her delicate finger, it leaves a heated trail on my skin. My hands ball at my sides as I try to be chill, but it’s difficult with her sprinkling her sexiness all over me.

  “Don’t act like you don’t know the words, too.” She grabs my hands, waves them around, beckoning me to dance.

  “No, no.” I slide back, holding up my palms. “I require many, many drinks before I can submit to that kind of mortification.” And I don’t do that, not anymore. At least, I try my best not to, but it’s an endless battle. That, and I can’t take my eyes off her every move—her sparkling eyes, her wild mane, her impossibly thin waist above her curvy behind. Why would I want to dance and miss one moment of her parading around me like a peacock?

  When she throws her head back with laughter, I want to melt right onto my knees and worship this girl. There’s something about her outlook on life and her magnetic passion that I want to soak up and keep. I want to see life through her eyes, even for just a little bit.

  The haunting vocals fade and the song ends.

  “Maybe next time,” I say, and pick up her things.

  “Just remember,” she offers seriously. “There may not be a next time.”

  Shea moves past me and heads for the stairs. I follow, wondering what she means, but then remember that I don’t even know her real name. After today, we may never see each other again. For all I know, she could take off in the next minute like she did yesterday, and I still don’t understand why. When we reach the top of the first flight, her good mood seems to have returned.

  “Which room is yours?”

  Chapter 10

  She

  When I reach the top floor, I head straight for room 507. The door isn’t even locked when I instinctively turn the knob. “You might wanna lock your door,” I holler back to Hew and push through. A cloud of musty air hits me, and I scrunch my nose and cough.

  Behind me, Hew quickly tromps up the stairs. I spin to see him barge through the door and push past me.

  “What’s wrong?” I widen my eyes at his reaction.

  He drops to his knees, shuffling through his open suitcase like a crazed person, and then jumps up and races to the bathroom, checking his stuff but he doesn’t answer.

  “Are you okay?” I ask again.

  “Someone’s been in here!” he yells. “I think I’ve been robbed!”

  “Oh my God, were you robbed?” I step forward, worried, and waiting for him to come out. A moment later, he pops around the corner with that beaming smile of his. “Gotcha!” He winks and points at me. “Just kidding.”

  I narrow my eyes, pick up a pillow from the unmade bed, and hurl it at his handsome face, but he quickly ducks behind the wall, laughing. The deep rumble is so loud that it resonates in the small room, filling my heart with a genuine smile.

  “You jerk! You had me going! I was worried.” I giggle as he picks up the pillow and throws it back. It lands squarely in my chest, but he’s already hidden back in the bathroom.

  “There’s no way I’m leaving anything important in this place. Not where anyone can find it,” he says in explanation from the other room. “The door’s lock was broken when I got here, and all the other rooms were taken.”

  “Good call.” I throw the pillow aside and reach to tug open the curtains as I fight with the instantaneous guilt. I shouldn’t have to feel guilty for having a good time. For thinking he’s handsome with that dark wavy hair, his warm chocolate eyes, his raspy voice that does something strange to me every time he talks, or for laughing and joking around. I lift my chin and tell myself what I need to—I won’t feel guilty anymore. With all I’ve been through, I shouldn’t have to. Now, I just have to try to take my own advice.

  “I’ll be out in a minute and we can leave,” Hew calls out, and shuts the bathroom door.

  “Okay.” I look around the room, which is pretty awful. A crooked bronze lamp hangs above, surrounded by horrid avocado-colored walls. The room is furnished with old and dented lacquered furniture, and the bed’s comforter is brown with a geometric pattern faded from years of washing, or lack of washing. I scrunch my nose at the disturbing thought and reach to open the window. I unlock and lift the frame and lean out into the crisp fall air, taking a deep breath. That’s when I notice the metal fire escape. Unable to resist, I crawl out the window and settle on my butt with my back pressed against the wood-slatted wall. I always wanted to live in a building that had a fire escape. It’s all so romantic, like in Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

  I lodge my boot against the railing and lean my head back with a sigh, happy to be away from my hotel, where I could potentially be found. If Hew hadn’t shown up, I’d be on the road by now. The truth is that I need a plan. With worry-filled sleep last night, I never got around to making one. I have to go off the grid to hide, and the only way to do that is get some cash so my credit cards can’t be tracked.

  “Shea.” Hew leans out. “Aren’t you freaked to sit there?” He looks down five stories and shivers.

  “Nah, not afraid of heights, though it’s not the most stable structure.” I kick the railing and it jiggles. “But this is the best part of your room.” I gesture to the view of the Golden Gate Bridge in the distance. “You wanna join me?” I slide over a little, but he grabs my arm.

  “You’re seriously making me nervous. I don’t do heights, and I definitely don’t do rickety fire escapes.”

  “Really?” I move to shuffle back to the window and he releases my arm, but instead of climbing back into the hotel room, I stand. “So you wouldn’t want me to do this?”

  I jump—twice. In response, the entire metal structure gives and bounces with a deep, squeaky moan, sounding like it may detach from the building at any moment. All color drains from Hew’s face and he reaches out to me like he wants to save me, but I step just out of arm’s reach and jump again, enjoying torturing him a little. I’ve looked death
in the eye once, so nothing about this makes me nervous. I know from experience that you can’t control when you go. Destiny does.

  “Shea, please, you’re going to fall. Be careful.”

  “It’s just payback for making me believe that you got robbed.” I do a rep of jumping jacks, and Hew breaks into a perceivable sweat. I laugh manically at his reaction.

  “Okay, okay, you got me, evil one. Now come in.” He waves me forward.

  “Tell you what, how about you get your stuff and we’ll leave via the outdoor stairs?” I squat down to meet his gaze.

  “How about—” He leans out of the window and looks down again. “No!” He quickly encircles his muscular arms around my knees and back, locking me in a death grip, and pulls me inside the room through the window, far too fast for me to resist. We collapse onto the edge of the bed and slide with a heavy thunk onto the floor, my weight crushing his chest, and both of us laughing hysterically.

  “For an architect who should be able to handle heights, you’re a wuss!” I try to stand, but he grabs and tickles me as if we’ve done this a million times before. I find myself attracted to him when I clearly shouldn’t be, but everything between us has happened so naturally. I have to wonder if destiny is messing with me again, so to protect my heart and mind, I wiggle out of his grip to stand. Anything to keep the distance, though admittedly, it’s not easy.

  “If I were you, I wouldn’t be caught dead on that floor.” I offer him a hand. “I think I saw it moving earlier.”

  “Nothing can be as bad as the bed. Trust me.” Hew clasps his fingers with mine. His touch is warm and comforting, just like the timbre of his voice, and I yank him to stand. When he does, he lands right in my personal space. Close enough to kiss me, and I suck in a breath before stepping back a pace.

  “Really? You won’t sit out on a fire escape, but you’ll sleep in a bed with sheets that probably haven’t been changed since the eighties?”

  “I have to draw the line somewhere, don’t I?” He slips on his jacket. “Let me just grab one thing and we can go.”

  Chapter 11

  He

  I go to my secret hiding place, kneel onto the cushion, and reach behind the back of the lone armchair. When I checked in and found that my room couldn’t be locked, I searched the room for a hiding place. I knew that if anyone came into my room, no one would even bother looking behind this mold-covered thing. I grab my camera and loop the strap around my neck, letting it rest on my chest.

  “A camera? You left a professional camera in an unlocked hotel room?” Shea asks.

  “Living on the edge.”

  We leave the room, shutting the door behind us.

  “I’m just surprised to see you with it. I didn’t figure you for a photographer, too.” We shuffle down the stairs.

  “Clearly, your freaky carny radar must be off today,” I suggest as we reach the lobby.

  “You’re right, I haven’t been feeling myself.” She pauses and turns to me. “You know, I took a photography class in high school once, but it was mostly so I could make out with Turner Bishop in the darkroom. He was wicked hot. A total badass. The kind of guy who ticks off your parents.”

  “So how’d that work out for you?”

  “Not great. Mr. Catalono, our teacher, caught us playing tonsil hockey in the darkroom while Turner massaged my boob under my shirt. It was my first time to second base. Not as great as I thought it would be, but I blame Mr. Catalono for killing the mood.”

  “The nerve!”

  “Right? I know. We spent the better part of the semester in detention, and I never did figure out how those f-stop things worked.” She points to my camera. “I don’t have the patience to figure out mechanical stuff.”

  “Once you figure it out, it’s not too bad.” When we get outside, I lift the camera and remove the lens to snap a quick succession of images. Shea’s hair blows in long, soft, undulating waves, just like a Botticelli painting. She turns and looks to me with her beautiful eyes framed with perfectly sculpted dark eyebrows. But it’s her lashes that make me want to reach out and touch her creamy face, sprinkled with delicate freckles. Her lashes reach far, black and thick-fringed, intensifying her sparkling green eyes.

  When I’m done with my impromptu photo shoot, I look down at my digital screen to see what I’ve captured. I scroll through each image, but she isn’t smiling, only staring right through me. In the deep, churning ocean behind her gaze, I sense all the hurt that led her here, and I desperately want to ask her about the day I saw her on the plane, who she was running from and why. Did he betray her? Did he hit her? But I can’t ask, not yet, because when she bares her soul to me, I’ll have no choice but to share my story, too.

  For the first time since I met her, I understand her need to keep her name secret and respect that. Here, someplace other than at home, we can be who we want, be with who we want, as long as it makes us happy. There’s no past today, only this moment together, right now. I may need that as much as she does. We are exactly the same that way.

  “I know what will make me feel better.” She pushes my camera away, like she’s trying to hide what the photos reveal.

  “I can honestly say that I’m scared to know.” I follow her down the hill. “Let me guess, you want to scale the high support beams of the bridge?”

  She laughs. “Not today.”

  “Well, I have a map we can check out.” I stop, pull it from my jeans pocket, and unfold it. Just as I lift the map to reading distance, Shea rips the paper from my hands and tears it into a million little pieces. “Hey!” I try to stop her, but she dodges from side to side and tosses the shreds in the air like confetti. They flitter around in the breeze. Several pieces land in her wild hair.

  “Today is not about planning,” she says. “Today is about exploring. Today is about adventure and getting lost. We’ll be as free as birds.” She spreads her arms into the breeze, and I’m not sure if she’s putting me on or if this is really how she is.

  “Okay. Where do you suggest we go?”

  “I have an idea. Surprise me and take me to your favorite spot in the city.”

  “That’s your grand idea?” I ask. “That sounds planned.”

  “No, then I’ll take you to mine. You’ll never guess where it is.” She bobs with excitement.

  “You’ll show me yours, if I show you mine?” I wag my eyebrows and give her cute little body a once-over, knowing it will garner a reaction.

  She smacks my arm. Exactly what I wanted, anything to make her touch me.

  I laugh and continue. “Small problem. I needed the map to get to mine.”

  “Oh, I bet you do!” This time she looks me up and down and laughs.

  “Ha-ha.” I bump into her playfully. “I guess I walked into that one.”

  “You make it too easy.” Shea grabs my hand and squeezes. “Seriously, though, that’s where the exploring part comes in. If we walk in the right direction, we’ll get there eventually, but who knows what we’ll see along the way.”

  “I just hope it’s not the bicycling nudists.”

  “That’s exactly what I’m talking about! That was so random and awesome, and when we tell our friends about that, they’ll think we’re lying.” She looks at the next four-way intersection. “So, which way do we go?”

  Chapter 12

  She

  Hew shrugs his shoulders and complies with my request to take me to his favorite spot in San Francisco. “It’s a pretty far walk from here, or we can take a taxi,” he suggests.

  “No way! We walk. It’s perfect outside. Everyone keeps saying that the weather should be crappy, but I think they’re lying. It’s been in the seventies and sunny for two days, and I heard it was the same all last week.”

  I twine my arm with his and he leads me north, up and down several hills lined with beautiful homes. Many people are out walking their fur babies, their real babies, or exercising.

  “Oh, I almost forgot,” I say. “I need to get some cash. Wait
here.”

  I leave him on a corner and run across the road to a banking machine. I unzip my purse and riffle through for my debit card. When I find it, I insert it into the machine, type in my PIN number, and take out as much cash as they allow—two hundred fifty dollars. This will hold me for a few days; at least I can sleep easy tonight knowing that no one can trace my credit card. I will be safe.

  Hew joins my side and gives me a strange look when I quickly roll up all the bills and shove them in my coin purse. “I was completely out of cash,” I explain.

  “No worries, I’ve got cash, too,” he says, patting his back pocket, and his words catch me off guard. It’s something couples say to each other, to let them know they’ve got the other covered. But he doesn’t really even know me, nor do I know him. The thought of him forming an attachment to me leaves me feeling guilty at first, but then happy.

  “So, where to?” I ask.

  “This way.” He leads me to the peak of another hill and at the top, I can see that it leads all the way down to the crystal-blue waters of the South Bay. We don’t walk straight down the hill. In the spirit of adventure, Hew zigzags us all over the place, up and down hills, playing the part that I gave him—that of architect.

  “San Francisco is a mix of homes and architectural styles. Of course, there are the famous Victorian painted ladies.” He gestures to a row of them, all aligned perfectly, but each with their own color scheme.

  “They’re like my perfect house. Where else would you get away with painting ten different colors on one building? They definitely wouldn’t do that at home.”

  “And where’s that?” he asks as he lifts his camera, taking shots of the streetscape.

  I catch myself right before screaming out the name of my town. My real town. But the same rules that I gave us yesterday still apply. “I’ve lived all over, but I’m thinking it may be time for a new home,” I lie, and point to one of the painted ladies, a mostly yellow and white one. “Yellow houses are happy houses. That’s why I like this one the best. I think I’ll move here.” I stop at the bottom of its long front stairway.