She took a deep breath and narrowed her eyes. “After an overnight drive from San Diego to Sacramento, a little morning B&E at my old friend Fiona’s, and then another long drive, with an emotional afternoon at the windswept, sun-baked historic site of a national embarrassment? I’d be sleeping. In the car. Regardless of whether I’d taken a wad of cash from Fiona’s room. Because I wouldn’t want Dingo’s car sitting in a motel parking lot, like a giant, flashing MADDIE IS HERE sign, within view of the highway. Likewise, I wouldn’t be sleeping while parked at the Desert Flower All-Nite Diner.” She gestured at the restaurant whose lot they were driving through. “I’d find some dark, deserted backstreet, in one of these little towns along 395, and even then I’d sleep very lightly, and plan to wake up early, get moving at dawn. Hopefully checking my phone when I wake up, for a message from my father.”
Pete nodded. “That’s what I thought, too,” he said, as he pulled next door, into the parking lot for the Desert Flower Motel, where a neon vacancy sign was lit. “So how about we call it a night, and get, um, a couple of rooms.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
“Do we need more than one?” Shayla asked, but then immediately backpedaled. “I mean, it’s okay if we do. You know, need more than one room. It’s been a long day. I’m tired of me, too.”
Peter laughed. “I’m not tired of you.”
Yeah, but what was he supposed to say? And God, there was a huge difference between the kind of sex they’d been having—caused by earthquakes and various other aftershocks—and the kind of sex in which they checked into a motel, first, and then slept all night in the same bed, after.
And true, they’d slept all night in what Shay would forever after think of as the Hot Sex Tent, but this was definitely different. This time, they’d get washed up, and brush their teeth, and turn down the bed, and then even actually say good night and fall asleep afterward.
This was relationship sex, and it was not going to help her remember that this thing they shared was not a real relationship.
“And no, I mean, I thought,” Peter was saying, “that you’d prefer two. Rooms. So that it wouldn’t be awkward when you told everyone back at the house that we were staying in a motel.”
“Ah.” Shayla understood.
“Yeah,” he said, “believe me, we are not sleeping in separate rooms. I mean, unless…you’re tired of me.”
She leaned over and kissed him. “One room,” she confirmed. “Because here’s the text I’m going to send.” She recited as she typed. “Contact from Maddie! Plans to meet her tomorrow! Hooray! Staying at Desert Flower Motel, Route 395, just south of Lone Pine. Cellphones on all night, call if you need ANYthing! Love you!” She hit send. “Now imagine if I’d said, Staying at Desert Flower Motel in rooms 214 and 216. The subtext is Note that we are staying in TWO ROOMS, that’s T-W-O, as in two separate rooms, one for each of us, and everyone would immediately know, absolutely, without a doubt, that we’re really sharing a room and having incredibly hot sex, because that was too much information for a text, and clearly I was attempting to misdirect.”
Peter was laughing. “The crazy thing is, you’re right.” He looked out of the truck’s windshield at the motel office, but he didn’t move.
“You know, it’s okay with me if we just keep looking for her,” Shayla said quietly.
He looked at her. “And do what? Drive down every road in every town along 395?”
“Well, we won’t hit them all, but we can make a dent,” she said.
Peter shook his head. “It’s an impossible task. And futile.”
“We might get lucky.”
“The only way we find them is if we get phenomenally lucky. To be effective, we’d need to search on foot. Maddie’s been with Dingo for days now. Even if he’s stupid enough to park where his car can be spotted from the street, she’s not. No, I’m going to use this time to rest, and wake up early enough to get a good meal, so I don’t walk into that meeting tomorrow exhausted and hangry, because that won’t be good.”
But he still didn’t get out of the truck.
So Shay said, “It’s okay with me if we just rest. We don’t have to, you know, have, um, sex.”
He turned sharply to look at her as he laughed. “When do I ever not want to have sex with you?”
“Well, you just seem so worried—”
“I am worried.”
“Sometimes sex and worry don’t go together all that well.”
“In what universe?” he asked, then said, “Oh, is it possible that when I finally have time to finish reading Outside of the Lines, I’m going to find out that Jack’s magic penis doesn’t work when he’s worried?”
Shay laughed despite herself. “Jack doesn’t have a magic penis,” she reminded him.
“I’m pretty sure it’s extra magic if he can’t get it up when he’s worried,” Peter said.
“It’s not that he can’t get it up,” she said.
“What, then? He doesn’t want to? That’s worse. We’ve got about seven and a half hours before dawn, which is when we think Maddie and Dingo are going to wake up and get moving. I can spend that time worried and wandering the streets, running my batteries even lower and becoming stupid and useless, or I can recharge. I’m going to pick recharge—which includes fucking both of us into a very deep REM sleep. In full disclosure, a shower before we do that would be really nice, too.”
“So why are you hesitating?” she asked.
“I’m not hesitating.”
“Do you need…help, paying for the room?” she asked.
“Jesus, no! Why would you think that?”
“Sorry! I’m trying to figure out why you’re…kind of just sitting there…?”
“I’m moving very slowly,” Peter said. “I got a little sidetracked before, trying to imagine exactly what that meeting’s going to be like tomorrow. Dad, I need to borrow twelve thousand dollars to pay off the loan shark I used to support my drug habit. Oh, by the way, in Sacramento, I accidentally-on-purpose killed a man for his mocha latte. Have fun raising my meth-addicted baby with your new roommate, Dingo, while I spend the rest of my life in jail!”
Shayla laughed. “Peter, my God, that is some serious, professional-grade worrying.”
“And yet…” He smiled at her. “I need a shower,” he said. He leaned in and kissed her. “And maybe this means I’ll never be a hero in a romance novel, but I desperately need you.”
Smash cut to love scene.
If Shayla were writing this story, after a line like I desperately need you, she would’ve cut immediately to them having literally steamy sex in the shower, skipping over the humorously awkward reality of the too-lengthy checkin that included a key card that didn’t work. Twice.
Yeah, that third trip to the motel office was a hoot.
Harry popped into her head as they finally got the motel room door unlocked and…
Oh, dear, he said, as Peter muttered, “Ah, Jesus.”
“It’s not that bad,” Shay said. But it was. The room was decorated in Quiet Desperation, circa 1972, complete with cheap paneling on the walls, dark green indoor-outdoor carpeting, and a worn-out bedspread that was no longer quite as emphatically flower-power since its yellows and oranges had faded about two decades ago. The “art” on the walls consisted of pictures of owls with big eyes.
Peter went up to one to look more closely. “This is what the desk clerk meant by the Owl Room.”
Harry laughed. I don’t want to know what the other choices were.
“At least it’s clean,” Shay said, attempting to bright-side it as she pulled back that spread to reveal bright white sheets.
“These are paint by numbers,” Peter pointed out.
“That makes it sweet,” Shay said. “Like, someone’s kid or elderly parent painted them.”