“Come inside with me,” I said to Sarai as I put the truck in park. “This place is sketchy.”
I grabbed our overnight bags out of the backseat and opened Sarai’s door, helping her out. I held her hand as we crossed the parking lot. She didn’t pull away, which I considered a win, but I didn’t expect that anything had changed.
“Hey, I have a reservation for Evans,” I told the night clerk. She looked bored and irritated that I’d shown up, but she nodded and immediately searched my name in the computer behind the desk.
“It looks like someone overbooked,” she said, grimacing.
I stood up straighter. No way in hell were they going to turn us away after we’d just spent all day driving. I had no idea where the nearest hotel was, and I wasn’t going to search for a new place to stay this late at night.
“I have a room,” she said in relief. She looked between us, then met my eyes. “It’s only got one full bed in it because we’re waiting for the other one to be shipped,” she said quickly. “But it’s newly remodeled. You’d be the first people in there.”
“Fine,” I said, setting my credit card on the counter. “I’m guessing the change in rooms will change the price?”
“Of course, of course,” she said, typing.
A couple of minutes later Sarai and I had our key, and we were walking toward our room. All the doors were outside the building, and I glanced at the windows as we passed. Most of the curtains were closed, but a few were open, and I could see families in the rooms, probably travelers like us, and it made me feel a little better.
When I opened the door to our room, I laughed in disbelief. The place was tiny, smaller than any other hotel room I’d ever seen. There was space for the other full bed the clerk had told us they were waiting on, but I wasn’t even sure how they’d fit a nightstand.
I also didn’t think either of us had realized just how small a full-sized bed was.
“You’re going to hang off the end,” Sarai said, setting her purse down on the dresser as I closed the curtains.
“I’ll make it work,” I said with a sigh, dropping my duffel on the floor. “Sat on my ass all day and I’m still beat.”
“You can have the bathroom first,” she said with a small smile of thanks when I set her bag down in front of her.
“I’ll be quick,” I replied. Normally, I’d insist that Sarai go first, but I wanted to check it out before Sarai got in there. I’d seen some nasty hotel bathrooms.
Thankfully they really had just remodeled our room, and that included the bathroom—everything was clean and bright. As I looked around, I grimaced at myself in the mirror. I was still growing my beard because I finally could, but I looked like a damn hobo.
After taking care of business and a quick shower, I wrapped a towel around my waist and went back into the room to find Sarai sitting on the bed. She wasn’t watching TV or playing on her phone. She was just staring at nothing as she ran one finger back and forth over the edge of her cast.
“You okay?” I asked, trying not to let her hear the worry in my voice. I knew that just because we’d left our apartment behind, she wasn’t going to suddenly turn into the woman I’d married, but I’d hoped for some change, no matter how little it was.
“I’m fine,” she said, turning to look at me. “Are you all done in there?”
I nodded.
As she walked into the bathroom, I realized something. Sarai was wearing makeup for the first time in weeks. I smiled a little to myself as I pulled the sheets to the foot of the bed, checking for critters. Maybe leaving the apartment had helped.
I was rethinking that an hour later as Sarai and I tried to get comfortable on the bed. I hadn’t touched my wife, really touched her, in more weeks than I cared to think about, and trying to keep my body away from hers on that bed was nearly impossible. When I tried to roll onto my side, my ass pressed against her hip. If I rolled onto my back, our elbows bumped into each other and my shoulder pressed against hers. When she rolled onto her side, it was even worse. There was no way in hell that I’d be able to sleep with her ass pressed against me.
There was nowhere to go. The clerk had said they were buying a second new mattress for the room, but they clearly hadn’t replaced the one we were sleeping on. It sank down so far in the center that unless we held on to the edges, we naturally slid toward each other. Sarai was doing her damnedest to keep some space between us, but it wasn’t working, and her anxiety was feeding my own.