by Peiri Ann
I looked behind me again, roughly running my hand over my head. It was dark; nothing on the street but street lamps and another building. The streets were empty, and except for me grumbling and grunting under my breath, it was quiet.
I headed back into the hotel.
“Can you give me a key to my room?” I asked the male clerk. I noticed he was eyeing me harder than the girl was. I didn’t have anything to prove it was my room so I might have to use what I had.
He smiled at me. “What room?” he asked. I could barely understand his gibberish.
“5445.”
“I need identification,” he gibbered.
I looked down at myself and threw my arms out. They fell to my sides as I said, “Shit, me too.”
“No ID—no key.”
Growing frustrated and apparently not this guy’s type, I pushed my fingers through my hair.
I need to get into my room.
I caught him look me over.
Desperate, I tried again. Narrowing my eyes and biting my lip, I grabbed the counter’s edge hard so my muscles flexed. His face reddened like he was coy. I smiled and said, “I’m begging you here. Please. I’m cold. I don’t have on any clothes ‘cept these shorts. It’s late and early and I really want to lie down. Please help a guy out.” I flashed my best smile at this man. It felt all wrong but sometimes life called for you to do some uncomfortable shit. Like being straight and flirting with a gay guy.
He blushed as he smiled shyly. “Name?”
“Shultz.”
“Nice.”
“Thanks.”
He peeked up at me as he typed. I was feeling okay until he started flirting back. Tonight had already had seen some surprised visitors in my bedroom and I wasn’t ready for another.
He pulled a key card. “Here you go… Shultz.”
“Thanks, bro,” I deepened my voice. I grabbed the key and left for the elevator.
Janet and Nixon were in my room talking when I opened the door. “Get the fuck out. The both of you. Especially you.” I pointed to Janet. “You need to get out before you start looking like a man in my eyes.”
Janet stood from the chair she was sitting in and started to approach me. “Kyle.”
I looked away from her and around the room for my phone. I had left it on the bed. “Janet, don’t come near me.”
“Kyle, calm down,” Nixon said.
I grabbed my phone from the bed and dialed. Janet was about to catch it.
Janet walked up to me as I brought the phone to my ear. She had on clothes now and I shoved her away from me.
“Hey Kit Kat, what’s wrong?” asked Reagan on the other end of the phone.
“Tulip. Tell you what just happened.” I was ready to jump into it.
“Kyle, no!” Janet shouted, trying to grab the phone.
I pushed her again. “Tulip, cut Janet’s ass off.”
“Wait, tell me what happened,” said Reagan.
“Remember I told you about Spirit?”
“What, you told Reagan about Val?!” Janet blurted over me as I talked.
“Her and Janet ended up coming on vacation with me. Spirit and I were a little on the rocks, but we’re good, you know. She’s a little broken, I’m broken. We work on each other. Okay. Now, remember I told you she and Arch were friends too.” I swatted at Janet as I continued. “Spirit didn’t want to be with me because of it, but Arch and I convinced her we were okay. Her biggest thing was that I not sleep with Arch. And you know I don’t cheat. It’s not me. I hate that shit. But you’d never guess what the fuck happened. Spirit walks in on Janet sucking me up.”
“What!” Reagan shouted in my ear.
“It’s like four in the morning here. Spirit and I had had a mini argument earlier and when I came in late, about three, I ran into her but she told me she was tired and she wasn’t going to come back to the room with me. I’m thinking an hour later when someone walked in my room, it was her.”
“And you’re going with it. Feeling Janet, thinking it’s Val. Then Val walked in.”
“Yes,” I exaggerated. “I’m out here half-naked chasing after her.”
“You never chased after me.”
“You aren’t this important.”
“Ouch. What you want me to do, Kit Kat? And tell Janet she’s a bitch. A home-wrecking bitch. All that shit she dished in my face when I cheated on you. This is way worse.” I put Reagan on speaker. “She is supposed to be your friend. What type of bitch move is that, Janet? You’re a home wrecker! Everyone knows Kyle likes that Val girl. Why would you ruin that for him? You’re so low, Janet. Even if he wasn’t in a relationship, he’s like your brother; that’s nasty. I’ll cut her off, Kyle. All ties. I’m taking your spot, Janet.”
Reagan hung up and Janet’s hand flew to my face. I dodged it and pushed her away from me. “Arch, keep playing with me. You’re growing muscles, losing the little boobs you have and growing a dick right before my eyes. The next time you walk up to me, I’m knocking you out.”
“Kyle, it’s not that serious!” she yelled.
“How is it not?” Nixon pulled me back when I stepped toward her. “It is that serious. You’re supposed to be my friend. You’re supposed to look out for me. Not fuck me over, not try to fuck me, not suck my cock, and definitely not try to sabotage my relationship.” I wanted to punch her. “How could you, Janet? You’re supposed to be our friend! This is the most immature stunt you could’ve pulled. Now she’s pissed off and gone, thinking I’ve done some shit I didn’t do.” I texted Spirit apologizing and asking where she was.
“I might be wrong, but you don’t need to cut me off. And telling Reagan of all people. Why would you tell her?!”
“You’re out, Janet! No ties! Like Tulip said. Pack your shit. Get out of here!”
“Kyle, if you cut me off I’m in the streets.”
“So what!”
Nixon pulled at me, grabbing my attention. “You can’t cut her off, she’ll have no money, no place to go, and no friends or family. You’re angry. Sleep it off and talk to her tomorrow. You know she can’t be cut off. Think about this.”
“No! Fuck her! Had she not been so scandalous, and let me go after Spirit when she walked in the room or gotten off me when the door opened like I told her, I might think about it. But she didn’t. She wanted Spirit to see!” I shouted, looking at Janet.
“So what, Kyle? She apparently doesn’t care about you because she didn’t stick around to hear your side. She was going to drop you anyway.”
“Janet, shut up. You don’t know shit! Keep talking. The next address from me to you is going to involve the name bitch and you’re going to watch my fist flying in your face.”
A knock pounded on the door.
“Please let that be Spirit,” I said, rushing to the door.
“Yes, let it be Spirit so Kyle can stop being a crybaby,” Janet mumbled.
I pulled the door open, ready to spill I’m sorries.
Disappointment drained me. I was looking at hotel security.
A short old gentleman stood at the door, speaking German. An English translator was beside him saying, “You are disturbing the other residents of this floor. Please keep it down.”
I nodded, not realizing how loud I was. “I’m sorry. I’ll keep it down.”
The woman translated this for the man. He nodded and said something which I assume was “Thank you.”
I closed the door and placed my forehead against it, looking down at my phone, begging for a text to come through from Val. I texted her again, adding to my last ten messages.
Me: Val, please, at least let me know you’re okay.
Me: Val, I’m sorry.
Me: Can you please respond?
Me: I know it seems like a sorry ass excuse, but it’s true. I didn’t know it was her.
Me: Valerie, send me a fuck me or something. A text telling me to go to hell. Something. Just let me know you’re okay.
My text times read, 5:15, 5:17, 5:20
, 5:22, 5:38.
I sat in the chair and called. I got the voicemail saying “Amelia” Val’s fake name, was not available and she requested I leave her a message. I hated “Amelia,” her voice, and her “sorry I missed your call” apology.
Janet refused to leave, but she finally stopped talking to me. And Nixon lay down on the bed.
I didn’t know where Val was or if she was okay. She wouldn’t respond and every bad scenario possible played in my head.
I became more pissed, panicked, and angry the longer I sat here and Val didn’t respond.
“Any taps?” I asked Rick, throwing the black duffle bag on the bed.
“Like tap shoes.”
I nodded. “Why are you here?”
“It’s obvious, isn’t it?”
I thought about that. “It’s not, but I get where you’re going.”
“It’s early, get some sleep. We’ll need to head out later this evening for Reynolds.”
“You’re not going to watch me sleep, are you?”
He sat in a chair beside the bed, apparently having no intention of moving from the bedroom of the suite.
“No.” He picked up his phone from his lap. “Hello?” He smiled, but it quickly faded. “Wait, slow down.”
I looked through the black bag, thinking they would have transferred my clothes into it. There were no clothes. Guns, binoculars, a passport with my face, a tablet, and some other useful stuff were a part of the bag’s contents. Rick was staring at me and I pointed at myself, mouthing, “Clothes.”
He nodded, pointing to the closet.
“Hold on,” he said to whoever he spoke with on the phone. I looked at him over my shoulder as I headed to the closet. He halted me, waving his hand in my direction. Once he saw I was stopped, he tapped around something on his phone, got up, and walked over to me. He showed me the screen on his phone, text displayed across it.
You cannot believe Kyle would do you like that. You have to believe him. There is no way he would want to do that with Janet.
My eyes opened wide as I stared at the phone. I mouthed, “Oh, my God. Is he on the phone?”
He nodded.
I shoved the phone out of my face.
He brought the phone back to his ear. “You there?” Rick walked out of the room into the open area. “I haven’t seen her. I’ll keep my ear to the streets just in case she’s snatched. I’m sure she’s fine, man. Don’t worry.” There was a pause. “Bro, calm down. Don’t do that. No, listen.” His words were cut off by Kyle over talking him, I assumed. “Okay, vent. Get it off your chest.” He plopped down in the chair. “Un-hun.” He pulled the phone away and tapped it. “Change so we can go out. I need to talk to you,” Rick said to me.
I shook my head. “Finish your call. I’m going to sleep.”
“If you don’t put on something decent so we can leave, I’m sleeping in the bed with you.”
“So be it.”
I’ve never regretted so be it as much as I did lying in the bed next to Rick. He snored, he was crazy hot in his tank and sweat pants, and he kept throwing his arm around me. I fought with him and he’d wake up saying “sorry” and then turn over. When I wasn’t fighting with Rick, I was thinking about Kyle. All of this kept me from sleeping.
I was back at square one. Kill Kyle. I thought about him for a while and began feeling really low.
My insides were burning. My throat was on fire and my eyes leaked salty tears. I’d been ignoring it. Ignoring the pain I felt about what he did. It was becoming harder to ignore.
I felt like even if he couldn’t see her, he should’ve known it wasn’t me. He should’ve known the difference in how my hands felt, my lips, my tongue and everything. Then I got really jealous of Janet because she probably felt that good to where he couldn’t focus on her touch or her lips and distinguish the difference between us.
I believed, that he didn’t know. But still, he should have known. He should have done something. He didn’t try to move her when he saw me. He just lay there, naked as she was.
Ugh, I couldn’t believe Janet did that. She told me she was over this. Why would she have been so deceitful as to do something like this?
I should at least let Kyle know I’m okay. He’d kept Rick on the phone for almost two hours talking about me.
He was worried and I owed him enough to tell him I was fine.
Rick’s phone lay between us. I found Kyle’s number. Like most bugs, he didn’t store numbers in his phone.
Kyle immediately answered. “Please don’t give me bad news.”
“I don’t want to talk. I only wanted to let you know I’m fine.”
He was quiet for a long while. Maybe thinking of something good to say. But he said, “Okay. Thank you.”
I hung up.
I didn’t feel any better.
At this moment, it was his life or mine. I had dug myself into a deeper hole than the one I’d started in. But now, I had to take out an additional three people and one of them was Rick. I wondered what his plan was. I wondered what my plan was. Was I any closer to being able to kill Kyle than I was a year ago? No. Further from it, in fact.
I knew Kyle and I had something, we’d built something the both of us reveled in. We stabilized something we wanted to fortify, and I didn’t want to tear it down. But my choices were no longer my own. Either way, one of us had to go…
“You’re going to have to talk to him. You can’t ignore him,” Rick said, sitting across from me in a small breakfast café near the hotel.
I snorted. “What do you suggest I do? Butter him up so I can kill him?”
“No.”
We weren’t eating, just sitting across from each other at a two-seater table, talking. He wouldn’t leave me alone unless I talked to him and we couldn’t talk in the room. So he’d dragged me out of the room to here. “Then what?” I looked at him, expressionless, with my arms folded on the table. “And while you’re at it, think about how you’d prefer I butter you up.”
“Wow, Val.”
“Don’t wow me. I’m tired of this. And what I felt last night with him, I never want to feel like that again. I don’t want to be hurt, I don’t want to battle to stay alive. I was offered a pass and I’m taking it. So don’t get too close to me.”
“What? He’s risked his life to save you a number of times. He’s been there for you when you weren’t there for yourself. And you’re just going to off him.”
I nodded, looking out the window. “You too. Reynolds and Nixon.”
“They don’t know it’s them or me. They want you to find out.”
“I bet they know I know; that’s why they asked me to do it. They know I know all this stuff.”
“What is wrong with you? You know you’re wrong,” he angrily accused.
I shrugged. I wasn’t sure about anything just then. “Let me figure this out.” I looked around the café, seeing an older couple laughing over a cup of coffee. “Oh shit,” I blurted.
“What!”
“The disk, I mean the drive. The damn flash drive with the codes. I forgot about it.”
“What codes?”
“Pay for the coffee. Come on, we need to go back to the old room.”
We raced back to the hotel.
Rick knocked on Janet’s door, but Nixon’s door opened.
“Val,” Nixon said, relieved. “Please tell me you’ve talked to Kyle. He is losing his mind.”
I ignored him. “Where’s Janet?”
Nixon shrugged. “Aren’t you Kyle’s friend?” he asked Rick. “How’d you two get together?”
“Do you have a key to this room?” I asked Nixon, pointing at the door to the room I’d once shared with backstabbing Janet.
“No, Kyle does.”
They were going to force me to see him.
Rick and I walked to Kyle’s room and he knocked.
The door opened and Kyle stood there in a black shirt, blue jeans, and all-black high-top boots. He blew a relieved breath, rolling his
eyes upward. His jaw tightened as he stared at me. He was holding back his words and I lost mine.
Rick spoke for me, asking, “Do you have a key to their room?”
Kyle stood at the door, almost frozen, still fighting with his words. His eyes finally shifted from mine to Rick. “Do you know what she’s going to get?”
Rick nodded.
“Here.” Kyle pulled a key card from his pocket. “Can you get it? Spirit, can I please talk to you?”
Rick grabbed the key and ran full speed down the hall, leaving Kyle and me standing there together.
That was a dick move.
“Can you come in?” Kyle asked.
I stepped past him, into his room.
He pushed the door closed behind me. “Spirit.”
“Kyle, I know.”
“But you—”
“But I what, I seem upset, I still want to have nothing to do with you, I still don’t want to talk to you… Let me know when I’m close,” I said, copying him.
“Cut me a break. I hate that shit happened. I hate cheaters. It’s happened to me too many times and I would never put that hurt on you. You have enough on your plate and I promise I never intended to make it worse.”
“Kyle, I forgive you.” I forfeited. I couldn’t argue. I’d slip up and say the wrong thing. Plus, I’d done enough to him; he probably owed me payback.
“We’re cool?” He reached out his hand for me to grab.
I shook my head. “You are your own man and I’m my own woman.”
“Spirit, I won’t do anything to hurt you. You don’t have to take precautions with me. You should know that by now.”
“I—”
He threw his hand up, cutting me off. “I don’t want to argue. I just want us to be okay. Can we go out for lunch, a day on the town? I’m busy tonight, but can you come back after I’m done?”
I shook my head. “No.” I pulled at the bottom of my shirt, discomforted as I prepared my lie. “I’m actually busy. I have some things I need to do myself. So you enjoy your day.”
“I thought you were here for me.”
“Things change.”
“Like what?” He eyed me suspiciously.
I ignored him, looking at the door, ready to leave.