I cross from behind the counter and gesture out at the mess of my foyer. While all the hotel-related items have their place, there’s an entire corner of the room where Grandma stuffed her old paperwork and tchotchkes. When I moved into the place, I added my own shit on top of it. There are still a few moving boxes with my summer clothes, my old paperbacks, and some of the legal paperwork that granted me the inn in the first place. I’m sure the guests notice the clutter, but I haven’t had much spare time to clean it out. This party seems as good of an excuse as any, especially if I’m trying to make a buck off of showing people what the Little Haven Inn could be at its best.
“I am going to be going through the crap my grandma left behind and the crap I moved in with me,” I announce, heaving up the first of my boxes to plant it on the floor at my feet. I set to work on unfolding the top. “Let’s just hope I don’t find anything private in my grandmother’s stuff that she wouldn’t have wanted me to see. Iunfortunatelyhave it on good authority that she and my papa had an intimate relationship until his death, and I’m more than a little worried I’ll find the handwritten letter equivalent of a sext or a dick pic in here…Oh my god.”
I slam the top of the box shut and shove it aside. Gray steps away from the counter, his coffee cradled between his palms.
“Was there a spider in the box, She-Ra?”
Another moan from upstairs sounds off on cue, followed by a barrage of feminine giggles. A low, determined squeak starts, the unmistakable pounding of bedframe feet grinding against the antique flooring. My breath catches, and my fingers curl around the edges of the box.
“God, those two are into each other.”
“I haven’t even met them yet. I only know them by the sounds of their afternoon delight.” Gray smirks.
“That’s all any of us knows them by,” I tell him. “I met the couple once at check in and they’ve hung up the Do Not Disturb sign every morning since. Honest to God, I don’t think they’ve eaten anything but each other in at least a week.”
I smile up at him, waiting for him to at least give me an obligatory chuckle at my joke. But Gray’s eyes are trained back on my box, even as the moaning and pounding from upstairs continues.
“What’s in the box, Molly?”
I take a deep breath. Recenter. It’s not like I just found the grandparent porno stash I’d been teasing about.
“It’s mine, not Grandma’s,” I say. I fold up the top and push it aside. “It’s nothing, just some embarrassing old diaries. My mother must have packed them up for me, because there is no shot in Hell I’d let these things see the light of anything but a fire after the thoughts I had back in high school.”
“So you’re saying they’re juicy?” Gray grins and leaps to make a play for the box.
I scramble just in time, blocking the box with my body as Gray stops just short of coming nose to nose with me.
“Did you write about your first period?”
I stick my tongue out at him, and Gray throws his hands up.
“Alright, I’ll lay off,” he says, and he gets up.
As he does, another long, spirited moan drifts down the stairs, followed by athudthat sounds suspiciously like some of my furniture being abused in a sex act. I glance up the staircase, and when I do, Gray makes his move.
He grabs me by the waist, hauling me out of his way so he can snatch the box and pull out a diary from the top.
“I swear to God,” I tell him, the hot blush from my cheeks practically steaming the air. “If that’s one of the books from my middle school years, you can expect nothing but poetry about Mr. Langdon from first period English and maybe a close documentation of my cup size. I wasveryaware of the fact that my boobs hadn’t come in.”
I make a face, trying to fight back the panic I feel rising in my chest. Gray isn’t trying to be malicious. He isn’t trying to hurt my feelings or make me anxious, but if he knew…
He flips open the first page, and his eyes widen as he reads the text. “Whoa, your sophomore year. I wonder if I’m in it.”
The room tunnels into a devastating scope of black stars. I rush forward to snatch the diary, but Gray teasingly steps away, dodging me with years of basketball expertise. He holds the book up, flipping idly through the pages.
“This was my senior year, so I wonder if you wrote anything about that party we all went to at Kelly Howard’s house. Hunter swears up and down that he never kissed her, but IknowI can’t be the only one who saw him through the window rolling around that field with Kelly. He had poison ivy on hisdick, for crying out loud! And—”
He stops talking then. He stops everything. Gray is frozen, still holding up my little book as he scans the pages.
“Gray.” My voice comes out weak and breathy. I should move, right? I should take this moment to snatch back my diary, tuck it under my sweater, and make a run all the way for Savannah down south, never to be seen or heard from again.
He glances over at me, and when his eyes meet mine, my insides turn to jelly. I’m flooded with white hot feeling, and there’s a gush—an actual gush—of wet warmth between my legs as the walls of my cunt quiver for him.
“This was basically fan fiction, right?” I stutter out. My lips are shaking. “I mean, we were both so young and… well, God, I hadn’t even had my first kiss yet. Sex was still this abstract, mind-blowing concept where every time was supposed to end with fireworks and declarations of love and squirting orgasms.”
His brow furrows at that, and my stomach drops into a steel ball.
“Oh my God. I did not just saysquirting orgasms…”