Serendipity

Sprawling his limbs across the hotel bed, eyes loosely shut he let a groan of relaxation escape his smiling lips. His first waking thoughts were on the absence of the depressing buzz of his alarm clock and splendidly having nothing to do today. Absolutely nothing to do in this unfamiliar place he decided to randomly visit on the occasion he was accustomed to calling “Jack’s Holidays”. Jack loved mornings like these.

“Come on! I’ve been waiting for you for hours! We have things to do!” A voice cut through the peace, a voice filled with purpose booming from the bathroom. On hearing the voice, Jack’s smile drained of the happiness that suspended it. “Come-on!” The voice insisted with urgency in its tone. He didn’t know what he hated more; the alien sense of purpose pushing the emotion in the words of the voice or that the rare moment of enjoying the solitary simple was stolen from him by the interruption.

“Lets-Go!” the voice droned on.

“All-#ing-Right!” Jack yelled flinging his pillows across the room. He walked over to the unfamiliar bathroom and grabbed his toothbrush that seemed to both smile at its use and do nothing at all.

“Easy on the paste! Slower! Don’t push so hard!” the toothbrush demanded. Jack had precautions he made for his holidays, precautions like buying a new toothbrush in hopes that it wouldn’t be the asshole that the last one was. He found for some reason toothbrushes were always demanding always the eventual asshole but never in the store when they acted like orphan children each begging him to choose them. What about toothbrushes made them that way he wondered?

“# it.” Jack spoke out loud to himself, dismissing the thoughts. Today was no day for jeans, he decided, and began digging through his suitcase.

“Oh…Yeah... To the left… To the left!” the suitcase moaned. Jack never had days to himself exactly but some were more to himself than others; he sighed with the beginnings of this morning in mind predicting today would not be the latter. Dressed in his favorite well-fitted black suit open collar naked of a tie, he wondered if this hotel offered some type of continental breakfast. Jack didn’t know what continental breakfast meant save for ready-made free food, but it set him on his course. He learned from the front desk that the hotel didn’t serve breakfast, but as it turned out there was a Cracker Barrel just across the parking lot. Jack loved Cracker Barrel, not because it had the greatest food but because it had his favorite breakfast food. At the mention of Cracker Barrel he could already almost taste the grits with the ridiculous amounts of bacon he ripped up and deposited into it. Breakfast was great. Nazi Toothbrush and perverted suitcase aside, today was going to be a good day he decided, desperately clinging on to the positive.

“Don’t you wish you were me!” it said. Leaving Cracker Barrel, Jack’s attention was immediately drawn to the boisterous Harley Davidson in the corner of his eye. A soft but audible grunt involuntarily escaped Jack’s lips, and without his permission words formed and went off into the world.

“What a lucky motorcycle…” Jack said and meant genuinely while locking eyes with the woman on the back of it. She smirked.

“The # did you say‽” His attention was snatched by the screwed up face of the heavily tattooed burly man on the front of motorcycle. Jack knew that tone of voice and what was to follow. The biker seemed to fly off the bike, and was on him in an instant. Jack prematurely winced, bracing for impact. He didn’t mean to challenge the biker he thought and why didn’t all of the pig taste as awesome as bacon he wondered moments before the world faded to black.

He awoke to a slowed motion of time, taking in her face, her lovely presence cradling his head, time slowing even more as he drowned in her features, a slim 5’7”, unnaturally red hair, the same Mona Lisa smirk on her face that he remembered in what seemed like just seconds ago. He was caught in that smirk as she suggested drinks in the hotel bar at 7pm. Still confused from the punch, he recoiled in that he wanted no more of the terrible traumatic endings which he knew with every woman before. The traumatic endings which he felt condemned him to being alone, the source of which he deduced due to his realities incompatibility with what they called the real world that every woman lived in. His reflexive precaution conflicted by the smile on her face that said “I understand.” He stammered on in absence for an excuse, which would provide escape from the moment in a gentle way.

“I’m gay!” Jack immediately cringed at the picture he painted.

“Oh…?” She said awkwardly. “Sure… me too at times. See you at seven!” Jack was not going to meet her at seven, he decided.

His day felt like it blurred to the conflicted next moment at 7pm in the hotel bar. He somehow ended up there despite his terror in being faced with this fright of the uncertain but inevitable. Through the crowd he saw her and experienced the fear of being frozen in the moment again. I want to hold you close he thought. Do you share the indefinable hope that I feel? he thought at that smile through the crowd that ruled his day.

He learned a lot in what seemed like timelessness to him. He learned that she was on her own vacation too. That the biker was a few days new to her and was only what she thought might be a welcome difference from the life that was her everyday life and learned what seemed like a thousand other things that he thought he understood. He opened up vaguely, sharing his disconnect with the world. She understood.

“I know what you mean and I found the answer to it,” She said.

Jack unconsciously leaned in close across the shared glasses of bourbon in honest anticipation of the answer.

“# it all.” she said. The ashtray capitalized on the remark and made a suggestive comment that he ignored. Jack connected. They laughed.

“Is that it? You darlin would have saved my parents the piles of money that they spent on my physiological care.” The onset of his cringing reemerged rooted in that moment of honesty. Why did he say “darlin”? he thought. She simply laughed.

What was happening? Jack pondered. He knew through prior established precedence any type of this connection to the opposite sex never led to good, but he never experienced it like this, he thought. Jack escaped to the bathroom where he noticed the alcohol content of his urine seemed to clean the grime off the urinal. He interpreted through the cleansing factor of his urine that he was surely drunk, maybe drunker than he has ever been. He should go, he decided. Jack’s plan was crushed upon exciting the restroom, their eyes hungrily locking in a stare. He wanted her, and this was bad. He wanted to do things to her, with her. Jack lost his grip on the logical. He wanted to hold her close. She bit her lip across the room seemingly mirroring some variation of his intense feelings.

Barely avoiding sex on the way to his hotel room, he knew his prior determination was lost beyond a comeback. He stroked her hair gently while urgently grabbing the condom he kept in his wallet. The condom screamed in protest to what was to come. At this he and she both laughed like kids at a dirty joke. In a brief pause their eyes locked again though this time in confusion. What did this mean? They both wondered. It didn’t matter they both decided, as they faded into the simple joined solitude.

reply to post by Strayed


This story needs a chapter 2

Xx

reply to post by Kalixi


Ha, thanks. This was actually kind of his happy ending more or less (no double entendre intended).