“Where are you guys from?” She asked from the other side of the hot tub.
I hated this question so much lately. I was homeless. I was couch surfing. I was living with whoever would have me, whenever they’d have me. I was staying the week at this resort, turning 31 years old and pretending like my life wasn’t a fully engulfed tire fire. I quickly looked over my shoulder to see if he was in earshot.
“Oh, up in the Sierra Nevadas.” I smiled.
“How beautiful!” She smiled back.
It wasn’t true, but it took a hell of a lot less explaining than the truth would have. Nothing else seemed to be working, so maybe a half-assed shot at manifestation would get the ball moving.
Within a few minutes, he was back at the edge of the hot tub, slipping a leg back into the water as he handed me another beer. I watched him intently. He’d been a staple in my life for almost two years, but he looked like a stranger to me now. I didn’t love him like I once did, but it made my life simpler if I pretended.
I squinted a smile at him.
The jets in the hot tub were roaring, and the outside air was freezing. I could have stayed in that hot tub for the rest of my life and not complained once.
“That’s so cool you guys can just take off and vacation whenever you want!” She told us both with a hint of bewilderment in her eyes. She must have been just a couple years younger than me. She’d told us she’d moved from halfway across the country to work at this here resort.
It was the middle of the week, in the middle of March, and we had her completely fooled. She thought we were successful. She thought we were in love. She thought we could stand each other. She thought he was rich, and she thought I’d gotten lucky to have met such a nice man. I faked a smile back to her, just like I’d been faking everything else up until this point.
“How far was the drive from the Sierra Nevada Mountains?” She asked, while her eyes bounced between the both of us. I felt his eyes on me. What web of lies was I spinning this time?
“Oh, just a few hours,” I waved it off, hoping the conversation wouldn’t lull here.
I refused to make eye contact with him.
After a stop at the resort bar, we were back in our suite.
“Sierra Nevadas, huh?” He was getting ready to get in the shower.
I was tired. I’d been tired for eternity. Tired of fighting with him. Tired of fighting to survive. I’d been sleeping on couches for months, and as of recently, sleeping in his bed again.
I made playful eye contact with him and threw my arms out, “Who knows?”
o0o
“Oh yeah, I know just where that’s at,” he told me from across the patio table, “We lived just about 10 minutes from there!”
The three of us had just exchanged pleasantries moments before in the empty house we were sitting outside of.
“So, this would be yours,” He extended his arms.
“How soon are you looking to have someone move in?” I asked apprehensively. What are the chances this was too good to be true? There was only one, very specific, answer I was hoping for.
“We wanted to swap out the light fixture in the bedroom, but, as early as possible, I guess.” He wiped the beer from his lip before he set down his glass.
I tried not to sound like my next question was a joke, “so, tomorrow morning is okay then?”
They chuckled for just a half a second before they’d both realized I wasn’t.
“Oh sure, yeah, that’s just fine!”
I drove back to the city in complete silence. I couldn’t tell what was good or bad anymore. I couldn’t process friends from foes anymore. I couldn’t process if the decision I’d just made was the right one or not. I couldn’t process anything that had happened to me lately. I’d just been living my life on autopilot, hoping not to crash and burn.
“Hey, I just found a place to live. Can you help me move in the morning?” I told him once I’d hit the freeway.
“Holy shit! Yeah, of course.”
o0o
12 hours later, I was back in front of that house with a now-empty U-Haul, dripping sweat in the July heat. We’d just thrown everything into the house and were getting ready to head back down the mountain.
“I just gotta figure out how to get this check to them,” I absentmindedly explained to Tim as I leaned against the door of his blue chevy, navigating the call log on my phone. “You know they used to live down the street from my old house?”
“Really?” He scrunched his nose.
“Yeah, they just bought this property in April.”
Wild Little Hare 