In the hollow light of the motel entrance, she twirled her cigarette between chipped nails, solemnly staring at each puff of smoke. The white tendrils rose toward the moon, reaching out for a luminescence that they could only ever be a shadow of. The fat, stout manager at the front periodically glanced at her; the area had a multitude of wannabe delinquents, committing petty misdemeanors here and there—too afraid to venture into the art of true crimes.
It didn’t matter.
She’d never even stolen a sucker from the mom-and-pop convenience store east of here.
Now, she lingered near the creaky doors to conduct her nightly visit into each motel room with the copied master key.
Room 1:
The cracked, glazed vase still leaned against the wall, as if it were too world-weary to stand on its own.
This wall was the cleanest of them all.
She remembered quiet smiles, beer breath, and sloppy saliva. Then a silly laugh, a push away, and feelings of awkward satiety.
He was blond, muscular, and a partier.
She didn’t miss this one.
---
Down the outside corridors she walked as she heard the crickets murmuring under the dull azalea bushes. Her heart quickened just like it did the first time and she moved her feet a little faster. The greasy summer humidity clamped its hand around her neck as she skipped a one-two-three onto the dusty step. The broken light was still a home to the buzzing, avaricious flies that sought radiance where there was none. She liked the ever-present hum of these ephemeral creatures.
Room 4:
She had stayed in this room the longest. With a sweet-eyed boy, who was forever her friend. Friends. Friends only now. It still smelled of bubblegum nights when toy cars of rose-colored youth turned into a jaunty deck of cards with its bent Queen of Hearts and a ripped Ace of Spades then became just soft hands of earnest whispers to exploratory caresses that stemmed from idealistic hearts.
She loved the summer breeze of idyll—ripe and understanding, but sheltered from the world.
He comes back once in a while. With that ripped Ace of Spades in his now-maudlin deck of cards.
Polite as ever, now. But she cannot forget the achingly familiar tone he once used in the tired, but thoughtfully melodious conversations that turned increasingly incoherent as each night’s moon disappeared into the horizon.
She dislikes his suit and tie and his clipped handshake. She much prefers the disheveled boy with ragged jeans and saccharine breath.
---
This set of motel lights stared at her unflinchingly at the opening of the next room—just as its previous inhabitant had.
Room 11:
The malformed patches on the wall stood the test of time, yet they still revealed the tears underneath it. The squash-colored globs of paint failed to fill the rifts within the wall that she and this boy had forced in.
Nothing betrayed this one, except the small silver earring that adorned one lobe and the miniscule tattoo under his fine collarbone that read, “Hell is empty, and all the devils are here.” His rich, starched polo shirt lent an air of stinking privilege that made his interest in Shakespeare ironic. Then, again his manic and depressive episodes made all of his more sophisticated qualities appear out of place.
Full of contradictions, he was commanding, proper, and stern on the weekends.
But if she encountered him on a Tuesday.
If she met with him on a Tuesday, his nails would rake her skin, possess the walls, and cut into the frail skin of his ashy cigarette. He would dare her to race across the streets with cars spearing down a green-lighted road. Then he would push her to climb the barbed fence and stand for five seconds in the dusty lot that was marked “NO TRESPASSING”, before scrambling back hastily to public ground. She would do it just for the sake of feeling sweetly dangerous, like nobody could ever contain her.
Always laughing in somber desperation, he dragged her down with him into his painfully blissful existence that turned bitterly reflective in its small moments of consciousness.
Yet he taught her the world beyond its rules.
And the scarred walls are left to tell the tale.
The last room that she wanted to visit is the best and the worst. Just a year ago, this one flooded with light at 8:30 every evening, but now nobody dares to enter this one except her.
Room 17:
She had been afraid of smelling the traces of his cologne and the whiff of Suave shampoo upon the pillows.
This one both knew her and tested her limits, but he also inspired her so, so much. No longer did she need to be a bored, wasted nobody in a broken-down cul-de-sac town. She was not a girl that someone left behind. And she was not an aimless troublemaker, finding her highs just to feel high.
She was petrified, but his smile helped her enroll in school again, learning lessons one at a time. He helped her find the dreams she once had—the one of finding bright lights and admiring eyes. He was a dream, too, with his patience, beauty, and fond laughter.
A dream that she did not doubt and a dream that never gave her that hard taste of regret, like all the other ones had.
And it was a dream that could have been
She said his name one last time.