Page 98 of We Met Like This
“I thought it was funny,” he said. “And I like teddy bears.” That last sentence he’d said under his breath, almost like he was talking to himself.
Winged creatures took flight in my stomach as I stepped inside the elevator. He pushed the button for the third floor, the highest floor of this hotel.
“Do you have a best friend, Oliver?”
“I do.”
“What’s he like?”
“He moved up to Seattle for work. Got married a couple years ago. Has a baby on the way.”
“Is that why you asked me if I’d ever been to Seattle?”
“I don’t know why I asked you that. Probably. I was nervous.”
“Do you visit Seattle a lot to see him?”
“Maybe twice a year.”
I leaned back against the railing next to him. He mimicked my position, our shoulders bumping. “You really won’t line dance with me tomorrow? For research?”
“I’m not big on making a fool of myself.”
“I’msobig on you making a fool of yourself,” I said, smiling his way. “No, but really, everyone will be doing it, so nobody will be watching you.”
“Except you,” he said.
“I’ll be recording so that I can blackmail you into deleting that voicemail of me you have.”
His throaty laugh was my favorite.
“You didn’t seem nervous, by the way,” I said. “On our second first date.”
“You make me nervous,” he said softly.
Was that a good thing?
The elevator dinged and the doors opened.
“What was with the burying-bodies question?” He put a hand on my lower back as if I didn’t know how to leave the elevator on my own. I didn’t mind the direction.
The wheels on my suitcase echoed through the empty hall as we walked. “I told you about this book, right? How the AI controls the town?”
“Oh, right. Yes, you did.”
“There’s this point where the main characters, Ana and Alan, need to talk without being listened to or detected, and right now that scene feels like it exists in white space. No real setting. I’m hoping to find some options while we’re here.”
“I see,” he said. “Abandoned silos could work.”
“They could.”
We may not have been sharing a room, but we were neighbors. We each used our key at the same time, the green lights on our respective door handles flashing together.
“Back here in thirty minutes?” I asked, indicating the hall. “And we can check this place out.” It was only three o’clock,plenty of day left to explore the even smaller surrounding towns and find the silos.
He nodded and disappeared into his room. I flung my suitcase onto the bed, then turned in a circle. A bathroom, desk, a mini fridge, a microwave, a king-sized bed, a slider out to a balcony, and on the wall that separated my room from Oliver’s… a door. I walked over to it and opened it to reveal another door. I knocked.
A minute later, he opened it with a smile.
