“Did we use protection?!” she repeats in a much more startled tone. I feel all the blood rush out from my body at that question.“I don’t know,” I reply, feeling quite restricted and unable to flee, although my most base instinct is to flee, “I don’t remember anything about last night, I don’t even know who you are and how I ended up here, and I honestly don’t even know if we did anything!”“Then what the fuck is this?!” The woman screams and pushes the two fingers she had, I assume, stuck in her downstairs in order to get the sample.“I don’t know!” I reply, scrambling to my feet in order to find my clothing. And oh, God, they’re just tossed everywhere! My pants had somehow been lodged on a lamp, my underwear is caught under the leg of the bed, and my shirt was on the back of the chair near the small desk. The room looks like it belongs to a very low-grade hotel and is that mold I can see growing on the wall?!How on earth did I end up here? How far away from the nightclub is this p
After we get dressed without trying to catch one another in the eye we get the hell out of the room. The rest of the hotel looks just as stingy as the room, and the strangest thing is that the lavender and cream smell follows me. Earlier I thought it was from the bed, now I’m starting to realize that the people maintain the hotel, which is quite a generous term to allocate to whatever the cleaners and the management are doing here, might just have pumped some air spray all over the corridors and whatnot to keep away the smell of the mold. I don’t feel like being cranky about that much because it’s quite nice.Anyway, we make our way to the front desk of the hotel, passing a disturbing number of couples who are coming out of the room in various forms of emotion, some angry, some disgusted, some mortified, some indifferent, and some looking genuinely happy and satisfied, to join the din.Oh, ok. So this is that type of hotel then. Where they might advertise rooms for lodging, but in act
“Drugged?” Estelle repeats, “Are you talking about things like date rape drugs? What!? Are you serious?”“100%,” I say, "I mean, think about it. Neither of us knows what happened to us, both of us have major black holes in our memories after drinking. We don't know what happens after we drank that one drink, we do not even know who got it for us and then the next thing you know we wake up next to each other on a bed naked. Looking like we'd slept together, but neither of us remember any of that.”"Yeah, but that doesn't mean we were drugged," Estelle insists, "maybe we were sort of in that we didn't remember what we did l last night,” she tries to reason, and although it frustrates me that she's trying to say this is our own fault when it looks like it clearly was not. I can't understand what compels her to say so. I mean who wants to admit that they had been drunk in that nightclub people shame victims for things like this saying that there are too many. Estelle might be afraid of th
“Jace, what’s wrong?” Estelle asks, looking quite alarmed, “You paled like a vampire when the receptionist said that name, and I know it’s not your name, but the surname is the same. Did they catch your name wrong? Did you slur it too much when we registered into the room last night?”“I couldn’t have said that name,” I tell her, “That…that would be disgusting and plain weird. Joseph Greyson is my father.”Estelle looks taken aback, “I’m sorry, what?”“That’s what I’m saying,” I reply, “Joseph Greyson is my dad's name and there is no way in hell that I’d give his name to a place like this even if I’m blackout drunk! I mean, I don’t like dropping his name in normal circumstances, why would I do it when I’m trying to score some with a girl?!”“Hey!” Estelle squawks, indignant.“Sorry, sorry, but you get what I mean, right?”“Why are you afraid to talk about your dad?” Estelle asks instead of dignifying that with a response. “Are you embarrassed by him or something?”“No, no, of course n
“You mean to tell me,” Gerald questions calmly, “that you went to a nightclub after getting wasted in a bar, slept with a random girl who wasn’t using birth control, did not think of using protection, somehow lost your wallet, and now you’re afraid that you might have gotten her pregnant?”“Yes, I am,” I sigh, “I didn’t mean for any of this to happen.”“No, you didn’t,” Gerald agrees, “no one means for stupidity to happen to them, they just walk right into it.”“I wasn't there to sleep with a girl, honest,” I insist, “I just wanted to have a drink and forget everything, okay? I was mad and pissed, and sad if I’m being honest. I was so tired. I just wanted to forget.”Gerald holds my eyes for a moment, and I distantly wonder what he sees there. Does he notice the misery I have emanating from me? Does he notice how fidgety I am? Does he notice how desperately I need a drink so I could get my nerves settled? We’re sitting in a car right outside the bank after coming here to get all my fi
“I’ve got to take this,” I tell Gerald and before he could answer, I take the call, “Hello, Estelle.”“Oh, hello, Jace. For a moment there I was afraid that you’d given me the wrong number, but I’m very glad you didn’t.” Estelle replies with no hesitation whatsoever, “Anyway, did you get the card issue fixed?”“Um, yes,” I say, “it’s all fixed. Just came out of the bank, actually.”“Oh, great, great. Did you have any damage? Did anyone drain you of your accounts?”“Uh, no, nothing like that. Not sure about the actual cash though.”“Oh, good.”“Yeah.”“Awesome.”“Not really?” Is it me or was this getting awkward? And why am I smelling lavender and cream again? Was this phantom memory smell or something? “I mean, this whole thing just kind of sucks. I need to get new identification information too, a new social security card, get a new wallet…you know, all this stuff that I need to exist as a legal citizen here.”“Oh, yeah, right.” Estelle replies, “Well, I called to tell you that I tal
“What?” Gerald asks, clearly flabbergasted, and I pull at his arm, manhandle his person so he could look out of my window, and point at the person I’m seeing.“Look!” I crow, my heart racing in my chest and my mind tries to do all it can to make sense of what I’m seeing, “the guy right over there, crossing the street right into that little lane Don’t you see who that is?”Gerald squints, “I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about-oh, god.”“It’s him, we need to pursue him!”“Jace, Jace, stop!” Gerald calls out as I scramble to exit the car so I could chase after the guy, “Jace, we need to call backup.”“We’d lose sight of him if we do,” I yell back, “that fucker slipped away from us once, and he’s not going to do it again.”“Jace, no!” Gerald calls out, but it’s already too late because I’m already up and running after him. I push past the pedestrians walking around, garnering dirty looks and cries of outrage, reminiscent of when I followed this exact person through a busy stree
I think that I will be able to wait a few moments, but as time goes on, I don’t see him coming out. This makes me feel agitated until I finally cannot hold it in anymore. I weigh the odds of probably getting shit in my mind and come to the conclusion that because this is a crowded neighborhood with shops placed so close to one another in a way that the sound of a gunshot would ring and alert everyone in the vicinity of what was going on in the shop, neither Aiden nor the people in the shop would risk it.But that doesn’t mean they wouldn’t be able to attack me in any other way.Yet if I allowed Aiden to escape in some way from here, we would lose the first lead we had of him in months, and it was not something we could risk losing, not when we were so close.And so, steeling myself to face anything that happens in the shop, I make my way in.The specialty shops seem to be selling antique furniture and wooden souvenirs of all sorts. The whole place smells like incense and there’s light