by Alexa Anna
There’s a light knock on the door.
“You OK?” come both of their deep voices, through the thick door.
“I’m fine,” I say, my voice full of tears.
I turn the water on in the sink, more for the white noise than anything else, and I sit down on the floor, my back slumped against the wall.
I look down at my feet and just stare at them, my thoughts going wild.
I’ve never felt so horrible, so alone.
Why won’t they keep themselves safe for me? I don’t understand it. Don’t they care about me? Don’t they want to be with me.
It’s now, right now, that I realize I’m horribly, horribly attached to them, more emotionally attached than I ever thought possible.
Suddenly, I make a decision. It’s the hardest one I’ve ever had to make, but it comes easily.
I get up and turn off the water, but not before rinsing my face off. I open the door and Luke and Jake are standing before me, looking worried.
“You OK?” says Jake, putting his arm around me.
I shrug it off.
“I’m not OK,” I say. “I can’t watch you two go back out there, not while I stay here.”
“Well you can’t come with us,” says Luke. “It’s simply too dangerous.
“But that’s just the thing,” I say. “It’s also too dangerous for you two. You’re going to die and I realize… I really care about you two. More than I ever thought. I can’t… It’s going to be too painful for me if something happens to you.”
“What are you saying?”
“I just can’t do it,” I say.
“Can’t do what?”
The words are immensely hard for me to get out.
“I can’t be with you two… I can’t continue this if I’m going to have to watch you two put your life on the line all the time. I’m sorry. I really want to be with you, but I just…”
Tears are coming down my face again, streaming down.
“Wait, Lexi…”
“Lexi, don’t go…”
But I’m already turning around and I’m headed out the hotel door.
“Lexi!” says Jake. “We want you, like we’ve never wanted anyone before.”
“You can’t go back to your apartment,” says Luke, always the practical one. But I can see in his eyes that he’s hurt by my departure. “It’s too dangerous for you there. Stay here and we’ll get another place, if that’s what you want.”
“I’ll get a hotel,” I say. “Don’t worry, I’m not going back to The Downs, and I’m not going back to my apartment. I’m going to stay far, far away from all this.”
I’ve never cried harder in my life.
They call after me, both of them, but I’m already in the elevator.
“Excuse me, could you call me a cab please?” I say to the attendant at the front desk in the lobby, a fancy place with a marbled counter and cushy chairs all around.
“Are you OK, miss?” he says, looking concerned. After all, I probably look terrible, a complete mess. And I’m still crying.
“I’m fine,” I say. “I’m just upset. I had to leave my, uh, boyfriends.”
“Your… oh, OK,” he says, giving me a strange look.
I’d forgotten for a while that having two boyfriends is not considered normal, and actually looked down upon. But why in the world is it?
Well, it’s good I’m getting out of this situation. I won’t have to deal with people’s reactions. I won’t have to deal with caring about them so much that I fear they’re going to die when they go to work.
The cab comes and it takes me to another hotel, on the other side of the city, far, far away from The Downs and that horrible mess, far away from my old job and my apartment, and of course far away from Luke and Jake.
This hotel room isn’t anything like the one that Luke and Jake purchased. I don’t have the money for that, but then again, I don’t even have the money to pay for this one. I put down a credit card at the front desk, knowing that I’m going to be going into debt just to pay for this crummy room.
The walls are bleak, just as the room is, with wallpaper peeling away to reveal peeling paint. Who puts wallpaper over paint, anyway?
I don’t have any of my things with me, so I just take off my clothes and crawl under the covers, trying not to think about how dirty they certainly are. One of the pillowcases has an ugly yellow stain on it and I push it off the bed and try to pretend like it’s not there.
I pull the covers over my head and curl up into a little ball, and the tears start to come again.
I guess I didn’t realize how much I really cared for them, after all. Their bodies and their cocks, and the steaming hot sex, that was all distracting me from the emotions that were developing underneath everything, the emotions that I didn’t realize were really there, growing stronger each and every day.
Luke and Jake’s faces are still fresh in my memory, but all I can see are their expressions as I leave them. Horrible, pained expressions, their feelings for me coming to the surface and distorting their normally stoic expressions. Luke couldn’t contain it in his collected cool and Jake couldn’t manage his normal comic smile.
They want me. I know it in their looks. I know it in the way they act and talk. They want to be with me, and I know it’s more than just sex.
But I can’t watch them throwing their lives away like this. I can’t watch them expose themselves to so much danger. Don’t they think about me, and what might happen to me if something happened to them? Am I just being selfish, though? No, I don’t think so. It would be selfish to stay, to want them, to mourn for them when they get gunned down, thinking all the while that everything would be OK no matter what. That would be just delusional. What I’m doing is the necessary thing, the responsible adult thing.
But I’ve never felt so alone in my entire life. There aren’t a ton of people in my life. Really, not that many at all. Luke and Jake were filling that void for me. But I did have Jim at the bar, no matter how sleazy he was. My tears flow extra hard when I think about him, lying dead on the bar floor. There were also the regulars in the bars, who I didn’t really enjoy talking to, but at least they were a constant social presence in my life.
Now there’s nothing, no one. I don’t have a job. I don’t know if I can return to my apartment. I don’t talk to my parents, and I don’t have any siblings. The only people left in my life are Jake and Luke, and I just walked out on them. But I had to. I had to do it.
I lie in bed crying for a while until the tears finally dry and I feel a little bit better, but still too depressed to get out of bed or even take the covers off from over my head. I only eventually do it when it gets overwhelmingly hot and stuffy. Depression is terrible, a terrible, awful feeling of sinking, of nothing mattering, of everything being lost, but it does tend to distract you in a way from regular day to day life. When it starts to lift a little, that heavy curtain, you’re then left with the mess you never cleaned up when you were seriously depressed, with empty food cartons and an unmade bed.
When the tears have stopped and I gain a little emotional strength again (from the crying, from the passing of time), I realize again that I’m here in this hotel room with no food. My stomach draws me back to life, tugging at me from within, and I look around the room, getting out of bed, realizing again that I have no possessions here.
I put my clothes back on and close the door, locking it behind me, realizing that this hotel room is so cheap the lock itself is too flimsy. It’s a good thing no one has any idea where I am. All I have with me is my cell phone, and I pull it from my pocket for the first time since… I don’t know when, and see that the battery has died.
Sighing, I unlock the door again and head back into the room, which somehow looks much worse now that I return to it, and go to the wall to plug in my phone, before realizing that I don’t have my charger with me.
This tiny difficulty, this small obstacle, almost sends me again into tears. But at the same time, it giv
es me something practical to do, some small part of my practical life that I can take control of. It gives me something to fight against, which can be good.
I lock the room again, pocket the key, and walk back to the front desk.
I’m pretty sure there were tears on my face still when I first checked in, and the front desk woman seemed like she was being overly nice to me, perhaps sensing that something was amiss with my life. Maybe she sees a lot of this sort of thing, working at a hotel like this.
“Excuse me,” I say, speaking as politely as I can, even though my voice still seems to get caught in my throat, a sort of strange choking going on. “I forgot my charger. Do you think you could charge this for me?”
“Sure, honey,” she says, a woman in her sixties, with platinum hair and a kind face. “Is it USB?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “I’ve never used any charger but the one that came with it. If you don’t have one, that’s fine, I’ll just…”
“Don’t worry, most of these are the same now. Here, look,” she says, taking the phone gingerly from me. “It’ll fit right in mine.”
“Oh,” I say, honestly surprised that something is going right for me. “I didn’t have any idea…” I feel stupid, too. It’s 2017, and I should know something about phone chargers. But I’ve never been that into technology, unlike Jake and Luke, who seem to know all about their little gadgets and how to use them. Not that they’re anything like tech guys, the stereotypical ones, that is. “Thanks so much,” I say. “I really appreciate it.”
“No problem, sweetie,” she says.
“By the way, do you know if there’s a place to eat around here?”
“There’s a diner down the street, but you’ll have to walk a ways. And it’s just a highway… there isn’t a sidewalk or anything.”
“That’s OK,” I say. “I need some time to think anyway.”
She nods at me and gives me a sad smile. Somehow I have the impression that she’s been through a lot of things on her own, and knows that I’m going through something now.
Of course, if I told her it was that I just left my two men, I’m sure she’d be shocked. Well, you never can know. But that’s my instinct, at least.
I thank her again for charging my cell phone, and tell her I’ll pick it up on the way back.
I walk out into the cold, dark night. The wind is blowing and the clouds are obscuring the stars and the moon. Just the dull light pollution from the city is reflecting off the clouds, giving everything a dull feel to it.
The traffic passes me, moving over 60 MPH, and I try to walk on the shoulder as much as possible, but once in a while, I have to walk in the road here and there, and the cars whiz by me without slowing down at all. I can feel the wind from them as they pass. I don’t have any clothing that would help with visibility, but after what I went through last night, this doesn’t feel dangerous at all. That’s not a good sign—growing accustomed to danger, to bad situations. Like this, things could easily slip, and go south quickly, without me even realizing it before it’s too late.
Eventually, I get to the diner. It’s the only thing on this entire stretch of the highway, except for the hotel, which I can see down in the distance, its tacky neon sign glowing in the night.
This is a real greasy spoon place, with a few down and out characters sitting around, sipping coffee or poking at some very unappetizing food.
I could eat anything right now, though, so I don’t even care how bad the food is.
The waitress takes my order and gives me a curious look that I’ve gotten plenty of times before in The Downs, which means, “You don’t belong here, do you?”
I order a full American style breakfast with hash browns and bacon, since it’s something I’ve always liked.
When the food comes out, piping hot, having been prepared suspiciously quickly, I gobble it all down without a second thought. It’s been a long, long time since I’ve eaten anything.
She serves me a mug of coffee that I didn’t ask for, and I also order an ice cream sundae.
It’s good when it comes, surprisingly good, with the taste of coffee still lingering on my tongue.
But now that my pressing physical need of hunger has been met, my mind goes back to ruminating about Jake and Luke. I mean, how could it not? I had something with them that I’ve never had with anyone else. It was so hot, so sweet, and they were so… funny. They really cared about me. I know they do. I’ve never had any doubt that they don’t want me. But… a relationship with them? I’d just be asking for tragedy, for further heartbreak. Better that I cut things off now, even though it’s probably the hardest decision I’ve ever made in my life. I’m fighting every single instinct that I have. I’m fighting my own body and my own mind.
If this were the movies, the waitress would be a kind woman with a lot of extra time and sympathy on hand, and she would say, “Hey, kid, you don’t look like you’re doing so well.” And she’d sit down with me and listen to me and tell me that everything’s going to be all right. But this isn’t the movies. This is my real life. My screwed up life. And so she’s just a regular waitress, overworked and tired, with bags under her eyes. So I finish my sundae and I walk the depressing walk back to the hotel, feeling worse with each step that I take.
Jake
“How could you just let her go like that?”
“What do you mean me? You didn’t do anything.”
“I told her not to leave.”
“So did I. What did you want me to do, force her to stay?”
“No, of course not. She’s got to make her own decisions.”
“Well it looks like those decisions don’t involve us.”
“They do involve us. She chose to leave us.”
“Why? Why did she leave?”
“She cares about us, I know she does. She wants to be with us.”
“But she left us. She left. She fucking left.”
“She can’t be around the violence… the stress… we could die at any moment…”
“That’s part of the work…”
“That’s our job, right.”
“So she wants us to just give that all up?”
“Yeah, which, obviously…”
“But…
“I know, she left…”
There’s a long silence. We’re both feeling terrible. An hour goes by and we hardly speak.
My thoughts are going to some dark places. It feels like someone’s torn out my insides.
I know I want to be with her. I know Luke does to. I want her like I’ve never wanted anyone else, ever. She’s the one… She’s the one for me, for us. There’s no one else like her. There never has been and there never will be.
This nice hotel room has never felt so depressing.
I’ve got a couple of those little mini bar bottles of whiskey empty in front of me, but I’m still steady on my feet. I’m pacing by the window.
“Will you shut up for a moment?” says Luke.
“I’m not even talking,” I snap back.
“I mean that damn pacing.”
“What the hell am I supposed to be doing?” I say. I’m too depressed to make a joke, to make fun of him, to say anything really…
Suddenly, Luke’s out of bed on his feet, grabbing his gun and stuffing it in his holster.
“We’ve got to get going,” he says.
“Going? What the hell are you talking about?”
“We’ve got work to do,” he says, his tone of voice unreadable, static, the same as always, deadpan and serious, as if nothing’s happened. But I can hear behind this farce his real hurt… it’s in there, but he won’t let it out.
“I’m taking the day off,” I say, slumping down along the wall. Next to me is an outlet with a phone charger plugged into it. I think I remember that Lexi was going to plug in her phone, but she only got to the step of plugging in the charger, forgetting the phone… Sometime after that she left… for good.
“Nonsense,” says Luke. “Grab your
gun. We’re getting out of here. We’ve got shit to do.”
“What the hell are we going to do?” I say. “Lexi’s right. We’re in over our heads.”
“You know this isn’t going to get resolved without us.”
“Where the fuck do we even start, though?” I say. “And how can you think about work when Lexi left us.”
“There are other people who need us,” says Luke.
“The people of The Downs? They should have left years ago.”
“They don’t have a choice,” says Luke, and I know he’s right. They don’t have money, they don’t have opportunities. It’s their home, or their place of work. They don’t have anywhere else to go, and no one else to help them.
“Well,” I say. “Even if I can get Lexi out of my mind for a moment… What the hell are we going to do? You have any ideas?”
“Not really,” says Luke, shaking his head. He’s checking his spare bullets, counting them, putting them in his pocket just right. He’s grabbing gear left and right, stuffing his pockets full of knives, his radio, his cell phone, everything.
“So we’re just going to barge in there and get shot to pieces?” I say. “Actually, we don’t even know where the hell the headquarters is. So better yet, why don’t we just stand in the street in front of the bar, fire our guns in the air until they come looking for us, and then we can die in a firefight like we’ve always wanted. If we’re lucky, we’ll take a couple of them out on the way down.”
Luke just shakes his head. “We’ve got to do something,” he says. “You have a better idea?”
“Actually,” I say, suddenly thinking of something. “I do.”
“Well I’m all ears,” says Luke, sarcastically.
“Listen you prick,” I say. “Just because you want to go on a kamikaze mission because Lexi left us doesn’t mean there aren’t other alternatives. I’m not going to let you run into certain death.”
“Well if you’re not coming with me, I’m going alone.”
“Just like at the bar, when you left us?”