Page 71 of Find Me in California

He pulls on jeans and a wrinkled navy shirt, swishes with mouthwash, and leaves the room to look for her. On the way downstairs, he runs into another guest. The man looks familiar, and Matt snaps his fingers when it clicks. He’s the guy from the pool the other night.

Matt stops him. “Have you by chance seen the woman I was with? Long brassy hair?”

“You’re the jerk-off who woke me and half the hotel.”

“Ah ... okay.” Matt didn’t realize they’d been that loud. “Have you seen her?”

“Don’t know what you’re talking about. Nobody was in that pool but you.”

A nervous laugh escapes Matt. “Seriously, have you seen her?”

“Imagine yourself a fake girlfriend all you want, bro. But it was just your naked ass in the water.” The man stomps up the staircase, laughter trailing him.

“Asshole.” Matt jogs down the steps and past a housekeeping cart as he heads for the front office on the off chance Magnolia is there. When he recognizes the maid cleaning a room, he pokes his head in.

“Hey, hi,” he says when the maid startles at the sight of him. “I’m the guy in room 208. Have you seen the woman who’s been staying with me?”

“Room 208? No.” She shakes her head. “No woman with you. Just you.”

Matt scoffs. There aren’t many rooms in this motel and Magnolia is memorable. “She answered the door when you came by. You spoke with her.”

“I remember. You answered the door. You told me to shove off.” With that, she shuts the door in his face.

Addled, Matt backs up and, hands on hips, looks vacantly around. That’s not how he remembers what happened. “What’s wrong with these people?”

They’re screwing with him.

He enters the front office and questions the clerk. The young woman behind the plexiglass insists the only person in Matt’s room has been Matt. He hasn’t had any visitors other than a pizza delivery. She saw the guy dropping off food yesterday.

“Huh.” Matt rubs nervously at his neck and returns to his room. He opens the door and is assailed with an odor that sends him reeling back. Soiled food and stale beer. There’s also an undercurrent of vomit. “What the fuck day is it?”

“Tuesday,” answers a guest walking past Matt’s room.

“The hell?” Matt frowns after him and swings his gaze back into the room.

For the first time in what he figures has been three days since he checked in, Matt sees the mess in the room for what it really is: eau de three-day binge. A careless, irresponsible waste of time.

“No. Nonononono.” He claps his face. He should have been to California and back by now. He’s supposed to be home prepping for the Le Mans race with Dave. He did not just spend—fuck—seventy-two hours holed up in a motel bingeing on booze.

A small crinkled paper bag on the table catches his attention as if waving a neon-orange flag. It’s the bag Dave gave him. He upends it. Two tins are full, but one is about empty, the very one Dave warned him about because of the potency. The edibles Dave cautioned arehomemade. Matt must have mistaken them for his headache gummies because they’re the same shape and color.

“Are you kidding me?”

Matt crumples the bag and chucks it across the room. Empty beer bottles are everywhere. There are also two empty whiskey bottles. The marijuana he smoked is gone. That, or it never existed. Same with the purse Magnolia left in his car. Gone, gone, gone.

He cups a hand over his mouth and turns a circle.

He did not just wake from a three-day bender. The last seventy-two hours were not a lucid dream. Mags was here. She is real. She has to be. He spoke with her. He touched her. He can still taste her. There’s no way he imagined her. He picked her up on the roadside. He drove her to her parents’. He swam with her.

He thinks of the guy he ran into on the stairs and his deprecating laugh. The maid and her wary once-over when she recognized him. And Julia. He remembers Julia, and slowly, his mental fog parting like a curtain, he recalls the hours upon hours they spent on the phone. Her reading Magnolia Blu’s diary to him, sharing stories about his grandmother he hadn’t wanted to hear but had listened to because he loved Julia’s voice. He was craving her company. He was cravingher. Their long calls about everything and anything. Intimate, revealing confessions he’s never wanted to share with anyone. Somehow his mind twisted it all into some sick fantasy. His stoned-out brain.

How pathetic is he?

Julia had begged, pleaded, and demanded that he pull himself together and get to California. Yeah, his relationship with Elizabeth sucked. Yes, she’d been exceptionally harsh with a kid suffering from PTSD. But did she deserve to be abandoned during her sunset years? Julia hadn’t thought so. She even offered to help Matt. Had gone so far as to offer to come pick him up herself.

But he was too damaged. How could he help anyone, especially Liza, when he never sought help for himself? He’s an expert at quashing grief and trauma, burying both with drugs, liquor, and avoidance.

And that’s not the half of it. He not only failed his grandmother and Julia. He failed his best friend and business partner. He promised to have the Ford photos to him by today and he’s not even half-done curating the thousands of photos he took.

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