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So, I do the only thing I can do right now. I started cleaning up this wreck Kassidy left. I remove her in areas I hope the hotel staff never finds. Those ugly fake strands of hair she bought from the farmer’s market. Her false eyelashes were scattered in the sink.
By the time I come up for air, Phoebe is standing in the bathroom doorway, impressed with my handy work.
“What are you doing here?”My chest was heaving with anger and adrenaline.
“The door was open.”But still, she stands there, and she doesn’t linger before joining me, with a washcloth to clean the lipstick off the walls.
“What are you doing?”
“It’s an awful color of lipstick.”Stating the apparent facts.
“Do you even wear makeup?”How dare she make comments on such things.
Phoebe’s hand stops moving.
“No, I don’t.”
Because she so happens to be goddamn gorgeous when you take out the shadowy parking lot vibe from before.
“I don’t need your help.”
“I know. I wasn’t helping you; the maid is my friend, and I don’t want her to have to clean this up by herself.”Phoebe shocks me again tonight.
“How often do you stay here?”
“Depends on the job, but my company is based here. I come every couple of weeks stop and check in.”
“As a prostitute?”Kassidy would have kicked me in the balls for a comment like this, but all Phoebe does is smile and laugh.
“I don’t think it would be that bad of a job.”She shrugs, not denying it.
“You aren’t, are you?”Because it would be just my luck. I can hear my mother freak out about it now.
“No, haha, I am a travel photographer. Or something more stupid along those lines. It’s mostly basement work, like festivals or concerts. But lately, I have been getting more exposure for landscapes.”She scrubs the pink/purple shade into swirls, and I tell her it looks like a flower.
I don’t know why she downplays what she really did for a living; she could have told me anything but lied about being less than she was.
We work most of the night, and it feels strange to thank her. Phoebe doesn’t make it awkward as she shrugs and leaves me with the peace sign hanging on her fingers.
I can’t sleep.
It’s not that I can’t; I choose not to. I decide to remain awake for hours. Not festering over my life imploding. I avoided that topic because I tried to figure out the stranger who wanted to save me.
More questions pop up in my head. I know I should be worried about how I will get home, what I will do when, or if I get back there. But all I keep imagining is if Phoebe’s face is one I have seen before. Not that we have ever met, but I can feel the permeance.
Even without speaking much, I could tell we shared something in us similar. It wasn’t a spoken confession, but I knew inside Phoebe, she was tweaked a little wrong like I was.
Phoebe, I remember, though I wish I didn’t.
I used to miss the way your fingertips lingered on my skin after you found ecstasy. How you shuddered but kept me entirely too close that I was held captive in our passion.
I panicked and wanted to find a different escape, a new definition of how uncomplicated fucking a stranger could me. But you took those possibilities away from me.
Instead, Phoebe, you filled every gap I never knew I needed to feel whole. And I sit here, my hand aching as I write this long form of a love letter, I hope you never read. All because you showed me a world I didn’t believe existed. A possible connection I only thought idiots dreamed about.
You’ve made me drunk with this ambition to become more.
Even as I sit here in a dark basement, listening to the couple upstairs shout at each other. It is comforting. This is comforting. Because this is all I have known, and I know how to react to the battlefield when the enemy is also my lover. The enemy is also damaging my existence, but I continue to love her.
