Page 46 of Your Chorus
14Talk is Cheap || Chet Faker
COLE
I knewMatt and Kay would probably claim Matt and I’s hotel room; I just thought it would take them longer than 8PM to do it.
“Weren’t you supposed to be going on adate?” I ask, my forearm braced against the room’s door as I stand in the hallway, listening to the sound of Matt hunting around for his goddamn pants as Kay laughs in the background.
“We did!” Matt insists. “We went to the hotel bar, got a drink, came back here. What more do you want from me?”
“Jesus,” I call back, “I hope you put in a little more effort when you were actually trying to convince her to be your girlfriend.”
“You know I did! You were there! We played her favourite song for her in front of two thousand people!”
“Yeah, like two years ago, man,” I protest as the door get cracked open a few inches and we come face to face. I raise an eyebrow. “You been riding on the wind of that ever since?”
He just shakes his head at me. “Can I help you, Byrne?”
I spare a glance at his attire—or lack thereof. He’s shirtless with a pair of jeans pulled on, their button still undone. A very obvious hard-on is straining against them.
I meet his eye again. “Sorry, not interested.”
He’s not impressed. “Ha ha. You’re a fucking clown, Cole. Now if you don’t mind, I do have someone who isveryinterested waiting in the room back there, so I ask again, what is it you need?”
“A shower,” I explain. “Me, JP and Ace are going to some bar.”
“So use their shower.”
“Ace is in there. You know how long that fucker takes on his hair. Plus I need some of my shit from the room.”
Honestly, I probably could have made due without it, but I didn’t realize the noises behind the hotel room door were the sounds of coital union until I’d already knocked and interrupted them.
“You can use my shower!” Kay’s voice calls from inside the room. “Roxy went to some coffee shop, so the whole room is empty. Here, Matt, give him my key.”
Matt gives me a dark look and trudges back into the room before appearing with the key card, boner still going strong. I smirk at him, and he scowls.
“I, uh, still need my stuff,” I remind him.
“For fuck’s sake,” he grumbles.
“Just let him in, Matt!” Kay shouts. “He can find his own stuff.”
Matt looks back over his shoulder towards her. “You’renaked,Kay. He’s not coming in.”
“Oh my god, Matt, I have a blanket on. Just let him in the room. This is taking way too long.”
Matt throws his hands up in defeat and steps back so I can move past him into the room. The light’s are all off save for the one on the nightstand, which is right next to where Kay’s sitting up against the headboard, her shoulders bare and the blankets drawn up over her chest. Her glasses are on slightly sideways. She raises her hand in a wave.
“Hi, Cole.”
“Don’t look at her!” Matt hisses behind me.
Kay rolls her eyes. “May I remind you that I’m not your property, Matt Pearson? Just because Cole is here, doesn’t mean your masculinity is automatically threatened. If IwantedCole to see me naked, I could—”
“GUYS!” I interrupt them. “No one’s getting naked, okay? Please. I’m gonna grab my shit and leave. You two are freaking me out.”
I’m not even sure what I grab out of my bag before I practically run past Matt and out into the hallway. Kay has to shout the room number after me as I go, but I don’t slow down. There were way too many boners and boobs involved in that encounter.
I get to the right room and swipe the key card. It’s late enough that the place is almost too dim to make out the shapes of the furniture, even with the curtains open, but I don’t turn any lights on. I throw my shit down on the bed and just breathe for a second.
