The One Month Boyfriend (Wildwood Society)

Kat

When I wake up,Silas is gone and I can hear shouting through the wall. For one brief moment of alarm, my tired brain thinks it’s Silas shouting next door, but it’s not. It’s Evan. Shouting at eight in the morning about… the Dulles Toll Road? What the fuck?

It takes about two seconds for me to go from sleepy and lazy to rigid with anxiety in this very comfortable bed, eyes wide and staring at a very blurry ceiling as the events of last night—last weekend? Last month? Last year?—come crashing down around me like chunks of plaster.

I make out waited and don’t even care from the other side of the wall as Olivia shouts back at Evan. I cover my eyes with my hands, because maybe they’re about to pipe down and stop shouting and, I don’t know, do a meditation or something together because it sure sounds like they could —

“—For work, you know that.”

“It was a request!”

They’re closer to the wall now. Maybe five feet away from me, and I pull the blanket over my head as if that’ll help. It does nothing. My blood pressure spikes.

“They gave me two options!”

“And LOOK AT WHAT YOU CHOSE.”

Holy fuck, someone’s gonna call the cops.

“Keep it the fuck down, you know the walls are thin.”

“Yeah and you know WHO’S ON THE OTHER SIDE?”

I put a pillow on my face for good measure, and curl into a ball on my side.

“Olivia, shut the fuck up.”

“Why, so you can hear better? Maybe I should —”

Her voice fades as she moves away and for one terrible, panicky lightning bolt of a moment I think she’s going to come knock on my door and start shouting at me, because that is something that makes sense in my just-woke-up-and-already-dialed-to-eleven brain right now.

I’d hide in the bathroom. No fucking question.

But then they’re fighting again, the shouting not as dramatic, and I take the opportunity to leap out of bed and put on my glasses and the first clothes I pull out of my suitcase.

Then I heave a deep breath that’s supposed to be relaxing and use the relative quiet to worry about where Silas went. Not that I was expecting to wake up to, I don’t know, a hand gently brushing my cheek as he murmured sweet nothings until I awoke with a blissful smile on my face, but I did think he’d be… here.

Not… wherever he is. Getting coffee? Taking a walk?

He didn’t panic about what happened last night and just leave without—no, his suitcase is still here.

Unless he was so panicked that he bolted with nothing but his wits and the clothes on his—

“You think you can do that? Just go?”

Evan again. I swear I am going to lose my fucking mind, all my panic alarms ringing like mad, not least because this is completely alien to me. When we were together, sure, we had arguments and disagreements and even raised our voices once or twice, but we never had a full-on, hear-it-through-a-wall shouting match.

Maybe we didn’t care enough about each other.

What a fucked up thought. I grab my room key, shove my feet into flip flops, and make my escape, relieved that there’s no one outside the door, inexplicably demanding to be let in, and power-walk toward the lobby. The hallway is a vulnerable area because there’s nothing to duck behind and until I can get around the corner, at any minute someone could—

Behind me, a door opens. Without looking, I somehow know, deep in my soul, which door it is. Probably because as soon as it does, I can hear arguing.

Obviously, I shouldn’t turn and look. It’s another ten feet to the blessed neutral ground of the hotel lobby, where I can duck around a corner or hide under a desk or smear complimentary yogurt on my face so they don’t recognize me, and of course, I should scamper in there and leave them to their own devices.

So, of course, I do. I look in time to see Olivia angrily yank her suitcase over the threshold, her blond hair in a droopy ponytail, her face bright red, wearing cutoffs and flipflops. She shouts one last thing into the room, then turns on her heel as well as one can in flip-flops, and storms off toward the parking lot, suitcase bouncing behind her.

I stand there, staring. Every nerve in my body is singing with alarm, but I can’t help watching the drama because I did this. My ex who fucked me over and one of the girls he did it with are having a meltdown more appropriate to a trailer park than a nice hotel, and it’s at least in part because I made their unhappiness my business.