“’Fraid not. Only one other room here.”
Oh, no. This day couldn’t have gotten any worse, yet somehow, it did.
“I can sleep on the couch,” Enzo offers.
“That ain’t gonna work for me, son. This is my home, and I don’t like nobody sleepin’ in my living space. Sometimes I like to stay up late and watch some television.” His tone is stern and brokering no room for argument.
“There’s only one bed?” I ask sullenly, already knowing the answer and hating it.
“That’s right,” he affirms. I must've been clinging onto some shred of hope because my heart withers into dust right then and there.
Either I'll have to share a bed with a man who hates me, or one of us will sleep on the floor with the bugs.
I work to swallow. Knowing him, Enzo will force me to sleep on the floor while he takes the bed. He’s no gentleman, that’s for damn sure.
Enzo pushes my feet off his lap angrily and stands. The tension in the air thickens, and unsurprisingly, Sylvester doesn't shy away from his glare. Awkwardly, I shuffle to my feet, the pain flaring in them again while I clear my throat.
“We’ll make it work, Syl. Thank you.”
Enzo turns his eyes to me, but I’m not as brave. Not that I ever plan to let the asshole know that. So despite the need for my spine to bend, I force it straight. It’s ingrained into the very marrow of my bones to shrink beneath the weight of a stare. If I allow them to look too long, they might see beneath the brittle mirage I’ve built around myself. They’ll see the cracks and the imperfections, and with one poke, they’ll find that it was nothing more than a clever illusion.
The man before me has already seen the ugly beneath the glimmering rainbow. Turns out, he was only looking into his own reflection.
I may carry ugliness inside of me, but he’s no fucking beauty queen, either.
Sylvester waves us toward the spiral staircase.
“I’d like fer you two to be in your room by nine o’clock every night, if ya don’t mind,” Sylvester says as he leads us toward the metal steps. “It’s about ten o’clock now, so I’ll get ya settled in quick.”
My brows plunge. I can’t remember the last time I’ve been given a bedtime. Certainly never when I was a grown adult. But despite Sylvester posing the request as polite, it goes without saying he wouldn’t care even if I did mind. Which I do.
Clearing my throat, I say, “Okay.”
I suppose a bedtime isn’t the worst thing to be bestowed upon me in the last twenty-four hours. I’m just grateful that I’m no longer submerged in the middle of the ocean, where ninety-five percent of it is left undiscovered—something I learned after my night with Enzo. That’s all I could think of as the wave wiped us out. It’s all that ran through my brain as the riptide sucked me under and then spat me out like spoiled food.
What’s lurking beneath the surface? Will it swallow me whole or eat me slowly?
I don’t know why the unknown creatures were haunting my thoughts more than the fact that I was surely going to drown before whatever creature could sink its teeth into me anyway. But then, somehow, my legs were kicking me toward the surface, and it was all I could do but hang onto a piece of driftwood from the boat. It said 'ana'on it; the rest of the name lost at sea.
Sylvester’s wooden leg clangs loudly as we ascend the stairs. The metal groans beneath our combined weight, and suddenly my fear morphs from strange sea creatures to being impaled by twisted metal once it finally gives.
We come up to a skinny, short hallway. At the end is a small staircase consisting of only a few steps that lead to a door. There are two more doors, one on either side of the hallway.
“The room up the steps is mine. Yours is on the left.”
“What about the one on the right?” I ask.
“That would be the toilet, but I don’t like anyone creepin’ around my hallways at night, so there’s a bucket in the room if nature calls.”
I stop short, causing Enzo to collide into me.
He growls, but I’m too stunned to hardly care.
“I’m sorry, we can’t use the restroom?”
“Well, of course, ya can!” Sylvester bursts, his loud voice booming as he chortles at me. “Just not after nine o’clock,” he finishes as if what he’s saying is even remotely reasonable.
My mouth opens then closes, but Enzo’s frustration overturns my shock. He pushes me forward and spits, “Cammina.”