Chapter 30: Lies
The alley behind the motel was a canyon of crumbling brick and stinking shadows. Mark stood frozen, the "NO TRESPASSING - VIOLATORS WILL BE PROSECUTED" sign buzzing faintly under a dim, fly-specked light. He’d been told, flatly, by a pock-faced clerk that he was banned from the property. That he needed to leave. Now.
He’d argued, his voice thin and desperate, saying his girlfriend was in room 214. The clerk had just smirked, a knowing, ugly twist of his lips, and pointed at the door.
So Mark waited here, in the damp and the gloom, watching the motel’s back entrance. For an hour, he watched men come and go. A guy in a cheap suit, adjusting his tie as he left. A college kid in a football jersey, laughing into his phone. Each one entered through the stained door, and each one, after twenty, thirty minutes, emerged looking loose-limbed and satisfied. They all went to room 214.
His stomach was a tight, cold knot. The image of Jenny’s phone in the cafeteria, the glistening, stretched proof of something he couldn’t name, was superimposed over everything. This was worse. This was a procession.
Then the door opened, and Amy stepped out.
She stretched, a slow, cat-like arch of her back, before noticing him. Her eyes widened in a perfect pantomime of surprise. “Mark! Oh my god, what are you doing here?”
She was dressed in what she called her ‘daytime look’: a plaid micro-skirt so short the frayed edges of the fabric barely grazed the lower curves of her ass, and a white lace top that was mostly see-through, her nipples pressing against the delicate pattern. Her thighs gleamed under a sheen of sweat, or something else.
“I was… worried,” he said, the words feeling stupid and inadequate. “The guy at the front desk said I couldn’t come in. He said I was banned.”
Amy laughed, a light, tinkling sound that bounced off the alley walls. “Oh, him! He’s such a creep. He totally hit on me last week and I shot him down. Guess he’s still salty about it.” She batted her eyelashes, her gaze utterly innocent. “You didn’t believe him, did you?”
“Amy, I saw… guys. Going into your room.”
“I know! Isn’t it awesome?” She clapped her hands together, a gesture that was once endearing and now felt rehearsed. “It’s my new study group! For Professor Evans’ chem class. It’s, like, super intense. We were doing lab reports. It got really hot in there, all those brains working hard, you know?”
Lab reports. In a pay-by-the-hour motel. Mark’s eyes dropped from her face, down her body, to the ground between them. As she shifted her weight, something slipped from under the hem of her skirt. A used condom, slick and heavy, fell onto the cracked asphalt with a soft, wet plop.
He stared at it. The world narrowed to that single, damning object lying in the filth.
Amy followed his gaze. She let out a little gasp, then a giggle. “Eww, gross! People are so disgusting, just littering.” She looked back at him, her expression one of shared commiseration. “This neighborhood is the worst. I totally almost stepped on that.”
The lie was so colossal, so brazen, it short-circuited his ability to process it. He could smell her, a mix of her vanilla perfume and the unmistakable, musky scent of sex. He could see a faint, sticky whitish trail drying on her inner thigh that her short skirt did nothing to conceal.
She saw him looking. “Ugh, I know,” she said, wrinkling her nose. “Some idiot spilled his protein shake all over the place in there. Got it all over me. It was so embarrassing.”
Protein shake. Lab reports. A jealous clerk. She had an answer for everything, wrapped in that sweet, logical tone that used to draw him to her. The Amy he knew was in there somewhere, he was sure of it. The Amy who loved quantum physics and bad horror movies wouldn’t do this. Wouldn’t lie to him like this.
He had to believe that. The alternative was to accept that the woman standing before him was a stranger.
“Come here,” she said softly, stepping forward, her voice dropping into a familiar, intimate register. She cupped his face, her thumb stroking his cheek. “You look so stressed. You don’t have to worry about me. I’m fine. Everything is fine.”
She leaned in and pressed her lips to his. Her kiss tasted bitter, a sharp, acrid flavor beneath the gloss. It was the taste of another man, maybe several. His mind screamed, a raw, silent shriek of betrayal. But his heart, his desperate, foolish heart, clung to the lie. He kissed her back, his hands hanging limp at his sides, trying to find the girl he loved in the chemical, polluted taste of her mouth.
He broke the kiss, his lungs burning for air that didn’t taste of her deceit. The world swam back into focus: the grimy bricks, the buzzing sign, the condom still lying at their feet. His throat was tight.
“We should get out of this alley,” he managed to say, his voice rough.
Before Amy could answer, a large man in a tight white tank top swaggered past. He smelled of cheap whiskey and axle grease. As he passed, his hand came up in a casual, practiced motion and delivered a sharp, stinging slap to Amy’s left buttock, the sound cracking through the alley like a gunshot.
Amy let out a delighted yelp, more giggle than surprise, and did a little shimmy that made her skirt ride up even higher. “Mikey, you jerk!” she called after him, her tone dripping with affection. She blew a kiss to his retreating back.
Mark stood rigid, the image of the man’s hand on her skin, the familiar way she’d said his name, branding itself onto his mind.
She turned back to Mark, her expression shifting seamlessly to one of mild exasperation. “Ugh, that’s just Mikey from the auto shop down the street.” She leaned in conspiratorially. “He’s, like, totally obsessed with me since I helped him with his community college application. It’s so awkward, but he’s harmless.”
He just stared at her, the protein shake, the study group, the jealous clerk, and now the overly friendly mechanic colliding in his head into one screaming, obvious truth. His hands began to tremble at his sides.
“You’re so quiet, baby,” Amy said, reaching out to stroke his arm. Her touch felt like a brand. “Don’t let this gross place get to you. Let’s go get a coffee, my treat.”
He couldn’t speak. He could only nod, a slow, mechanical dip of his chin, as he let her lead him out of the alley by the hand. The cool air felt like a lie against his skin, and her cheerful, mindless chatter about coffee blends was a soundtrack to something inside him finally, quietly, breaking.