He’d heard birds chirping when he finally shut his eyes for the night, and because of his impending morning flight, he’d only slept for an hour or two. His phone alarm rattled his brain at 6:30 a.m. Delirious, he reached for the device on the nightstand, stopped the alarm, and set it for 7 a.m. His body craved sleep more than anything—except the woman next to him, who remained heavy with sleep as he traced her hip under the covers. He was in and out for the next precious half-hour, feeling her soft skin, kissing her face. Sometimes she turned to meet his mouth before turning away and drifting back to what seemed like peaceful slumber. She had no plane to catch.
At the ugly sound of the alarm, he forced himself to roll out of bed. He found his pants in a pile near the bathroom, shook them out, stepped into them. There were three small twin beds in the room (it had been the only room available), and they had occupied the middle one, where she still slept. On the windowsill sat a crumpled, translucent red condom. He retrieved it and threw it in the bathroom trash. He didn’t want her to have to deal with it.
He pulled on his sweater and slid back onto the bed, enveloping the sleeping woman. She turned and they kissed more. He wanted to tell her he loved her; he felt it in that moment, even though they’d only met the night before. Guinness, conversation, a silent disco, more Guinness, spontaneously latching onto a pub crawl; a bar with a dance floor she hadn’t been to since she was eighteen. Dancing to ABBA. Sitting on concrete steps in the rain, calling hotels between her pulling him in for kisses.
A taxi waited for him outside the hotel.
“Get lucky last night?” asked the driver, glancing at him in the rear-view mirror.
“Maybe. What makes you say that?”
“Why else would you be out at this hour?”
The driver dropped him off at his hostel, and he rode the elevator up to the six-bed dorm room he’d paid for but hadn’t slept in. He pulled his luggage from underneath the bunk bed and packed in a hurry, cramming the still-wet towel into the suitcase and sitting on it to zip it shut.
On the plane, he sat next to a priest. There was irony in that, he was sure. What a strange life—to choose celibacy. Last night, to him, had been sacred.
About the author
Originally from Seattle, Brent Cronin is an MFA student at West Virginia University. He writes autofiction with a direct, deadpan style, and has been published in Dunes Review, The Listening Eye, and The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature. You might find him riding his motorcycle in the Appalachian hills.
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