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The hotel room is the nicest hotel room I’ve ever stayed in. It’s not like there’s much competition there, I’m generally more of a motel or budget chain hotel kind of guy, but this room is nice. I’m suddenly so glad to have been bullied into attending this conference. Floor to ceiling windows, tons of space, a whole meeting table, and the biggest, comfiest looking bed imaginable. After months of sleeping on a tiny twin bed while working on the taskforce (not even a twin xl!), this bed is going to be heaven.
“You’re blocking the door, Dr. Grace. Is something wrong with the room?” Stratt says.
Automatically, I step aside for her.
“No! No, it’s great, it’s amazing actually.”
She rolls her suitcase into the room and sets it on the bench beside the giant bed.
“Sorry,” I say, stepping back into the hall. “I thought you said this was my room?”
“It is,” she confirms, unzipping her suitcase and starting to unpack.
“Then why-”
She cuts me off. “We’re sharing, Dr. Grace. Come in and close the door.”
Hesitantly, I obey, flipping the lock behind me.
“But there’s only one bed,” I protest.
She gives me a flat, exhausted look. “The hotel is full, this was the only room available that suited my needs.”
“You didn’t try another hotel?”
‘Or bully the hotel management into giving you another room?’ is what I meant. She could have done it, she was amazing at getting her way. Her job was to make the impossible possible! Surely she could have extended that to hotel rooms.
“All of the hotels in this city are booked,” she tells me. “That Taylor Swift tour is here this weekend. We were lucky to get this room.”
“Maybe we can make a pit stop,” I joke with the tiniest bit of sincerity.
She rolls her eyes, but takes her tablet out of her bag next and starts to tap out a message. Probably nothing to do with me, but a guy can hope.
“Seriously, though,” I say, rolling my suitcase back and forth in front of me. “This room only has one bed.”
She looks up from her tablet. “Is that a problem for you?”
I look down. “I’ll take the floor, I guess.”
I’ve slept on worse. At least it’s a clean floor.
She takes her suit for the conference off to the bathroom to change, leaving me alone in the room. Why doesn’t a room this nice have a couch? There’s definitely space for one, probably even space for more than one.
I start doing some quick couch-geometry. If we put one right up against the windows, we could still fit an even bigger one against the adjacent wall. If the tv stand moved a little to the right, closer to the door, that’s probably one more couch at least. By this point, couch has ceased to sound like a real word, but I’m on a roll here and fueled by my annoyance at the lack of comfortable spots for me to sleep.
“Dr. Grace, why aren’t you dressed yet? Our flight was delayed, we don’t have time to stand around.”
I jump. “Sorry!”
I tip my suitcase over and dig out my suit. I hope it’s not wrinkled, she didn’t give me much time to pack. Thankfully, it isn’t.
Stratt is standing by the mirror now, and wow she looks good. She always looks good, don’t get me wrong. I think she looks great in her comfortable sweaters and pants that I’m convinced are sweatpants masquerading as dress pants (which I’m honestly a little jealous of, I want secret sweatpants too), but seeing her in a suit is something else.
She’s even wearing makeup! Not much makeup, but enough that I can tell she’s wearing it. The dark circles under her eyes have been hidden somehow, and she’s got some color behind her eyes. Now she’s putting on lipstick, and… and I realize I’m staring. I go to the bathroom to change.
“Don’t burn yourself on my curling iron,” she tells me through the door.
For my own safety, I decide to stay away from everything she’s got on the counter. I change quickly and run a hand with some water through my hair so it doesn’t stick up as much. This seems like a fancier conference than I expected.
I haven’t even dropped my travel clothes back onto the clothes explosion that is my open suitcase before Stratt’s voice stops me.
“What did you do to your hair?”
“I fixed it,” I say, a little defensive. I thought it looked good.
“Put it back,” she says.
“What?”
She marches over and reaches up, ruffling my hair.
“Hm,” she says, appraising, using the hand on my head to tilt it back and forth. I let her. “Better.”
She goes back to the bathroom and grabs the curling iron. I glance at the mirror she left. My hair is back to looking like it always does.
I fix my suitcase into a more contained pile and take a seat at the meeting table to wait for her. She’s ready in no time, and once again I have to remind myself not to stare.
“Ready to rock and roll?” I ask.
She frowns. “What?”
“Ready to go?” I try again.
“Oh. Almost,” she says, and holds up a necklace. “Can you help me with this? I can’t get the clasp.”
I hope she doesn’t notice my hands shaking as I take the necklace and step behind her. I brush her hair, which is curled now, to the side. It’s really soft. The clasp is a little tricky, but I get it on the second try.
“Thank you,” she says when I step back. “We can go now.”
The conference is a conference. That is, there’s not much to say about it when no one gets called a staggering waste of carbon. At least it had food.
Now we’re back in our room and I’m preparing for an uncomfortable night on the floor. I showered and changed right away; my suit felt a little tight and I was beyond ready to get out of it. Best part about being in a fancy hotel: I don’t have to ration my hot water usage. I boiled myself like a crab and enjoyed every second of it. It almost makes the floor feel worth it. Now I’m at the meeting table scrolling through emails on my phone.
Stratt hasn’t taken her turn yet, and is instead looking through her neatly packed suitcase. Finally, she sighs and grabs the hotel room key.
“Where are you going,” I ask.
“To the hotel gift shop. I forgot to pack my pajamas.”
“Eva Stratt forgetting something? Must be a cold day in hell,” I say.
She frowns at me.
“It’s okay, though. You can just borrow something of mine to sleep in. I always pack a few extra shirts.”
“Maybe if you didn’t pack so much your suitcase wouldn’t look like that,” she says, but she hasn’t left for the giftshop so I’m taking it as a win.
I drop my phone on the table and go over to my suitcase, finding her one of my baggier, comfier shirts. It’s a funny one, it says ‘mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell’ and has a mitochondria lifting weights. Gets me every time. One of my students gave it to me.
She raises an eyebrow at it but takes it. That’s two wins for me!
While she showers, I take some of the blankets and arrange them into a little nest on the floor. Yeah, this is going to suck.
I go back to the meeting area and find the coffee maker. It’s a fancy one, and it even has some hot chocolate packets in the basket of coffees and teas beside it. Score! I make two cups, leave one on the bedside table for Stratt and take the other to my blanket nest.
Soon enough, she emerges in a cloud of steam, her skin a light pink. She must have enjoyed the unlimited hot water too. Look at us, a couple of delicious boiled crabs. I have to avert my eyes immediately, though. She’s wearing my shirt, which comes down to about mid-thigh on her, and no pants. Honestly, I think her wearing my shirt alone would make me a little blushy, but like this? I’m doomed.
“You were serious about the floor?” she asks.
The sheets rustle as she settles herself in the bed.
“Well… yeah?” I reply. “What else would I do?”
“Share,” she tells me. “We’re both adults here, Dr. Grace. It’s a big bed and there is plenty of space.”
“Um, but,” I stutter.
“But nothing. Get up here before you hurt yourself trying to sleep on that floor.”
It sounded like an order. I didn’t have to follow it, but the bed was pretty big. I put my blanket nest back onto the bed and join Stratt, keeping as much distance between us as possible. At least she has the blankets pulled up to her waist now.
“What is this?” she asks, picking up the steaming styrofoam cup beside her bed and sniffing the hot chocolate inside. “Did you put this here?”
“It’s hot chocolate,” I say, holding up my own matching cup. “I made you one too.”
She hums and takes a sip. It almost surprises me, I don’t think I’ve ever seen her drink anything but coffee. She holds onto it as she takes her tablet and starts to work on something, so I think I did well with that.
“So…” I say, feeling awkward. “Want to watch a movie?”
She gives me a strange look. “It’s late, don’t you think?”
“Right. Okay.”
I take some of the decorative pillows that Stratt had moved to the floor earlier and arrange them into a wall between us.
“We can be mature about this, Dr. Grace. We don’t need a barrier, and we certainly don’t need those decorations on the bed. They’re dirty.”
“Right. Okay.” I’m getting a little repetitive here, but I don’t know what else to say.
I put the pillows back on the floor where they belong.
“I don’t know if this is some misguided attempt to protect my virtue, but-”
I cut her off. “No, no. I just didn’t want to make you uncomfortable.”
“I’m not uncomfortable, so please calm down.”
“Right. Okay.” There I go again.
I can be normal about this, I tell myself. I can be so normal about sharing a bed with Stratt. I finish my hot chocolate, go brush my teeth, then lay down on my side of the bed. I shut my eyes.
Stratt putters around as she finishes getting ready too, the lights turn off, then I feel the mattress dip as she gets back into bed too.
“Goodnight,” I whisper.
“Goodnight.”
This was the best night of sleep I’ve had in ages, I think as I start to wake up. The bed is so warm and comfortable, I wish I could stay here forever. I’m hugging a pillow, and it’s really soft, so I tighten the arm I have wrapped around it.
The pillow shifts and my eyes fly open. I’m spooning Eva Stratt. She’s pressed flush against me, with her hand on top of the hand I’m holding her with. Her hair tickles my face where I have it pressed against the back of her neck. It smells nice, lemony like the hotel soap but mixed with something more her. My lips are just barely brushing her shoulder.
I scramble backwards.
She yawns. “What time is it?”
Oh fudge, she’s awake. I think I woke her up when I thought I was hugging a pillow. I check my phone.
“Just past five,” I tell her.
“We don’t have to wake up until six,” she says and burrows deeper into the blankets.
Blushing, I lay back down, firmly on my side of the bed. It’s not as far away as before, because we seem to have shifted into the middle, and she hasn’t moved back to her side.
“Come back here,” she says, softly. “It’s cold.”
Is she sleep talking? She casts a glance over her shoulder at me, and no, she’s clearly awake.
“Are you sure?” I ask.
“I wouldn’t have suggested it if I wasn’t.” She yawns again.
Slowly, like I’m approaching a feral cat that might attack at any second, I move back. Still with about half a foot of space between us, I drape an arm back over her. In a flash, she’s pressed back against me. She’s shivering, but it subsides almost immediately.
“I could just go turn the heat on,” I suggest.
She shakes her head. “It will take too long. This is easier.”
I can be a space heater if that’s what she needs. She scoots impossibly closer, and I get the hint and hug her tighter. She hums, sleepily, happily, I think.
It’s nice. Maybe this is why I slept so well last night. I close my eyes and let myself drift.
I wake again to the sound of my alarm. Stratt is already awake and dressed, the shirt she borrowed from me folded neatly on top of my suitcase explosion. Secretly, I’m a little sad I didn’t get to see her in it again this morning.
“I thought you said we could sleep in,” I say, as if six in the morning could really be considered sleeping in.
My voice is rough and low, still in that gravelly just-woke-up phase. I could be imagining it, but I think I see a blush creep up around her turtleneck.
“I got a call from one of our investors,” she says. “You should get dressed, Dr. Grace,” she continues. “We have a few more meetings today and room service is on its way up with breakfast.”
We spent all of last night cuddling and she was still calling me Dr. Grace? I guess I was still calling her Stratt, but that felt different.
I nod, stretch, and get out of bed. She’s back on her tablet, so I guess that means we aren’t going to talk about it. I should have expected that. Maybe I really was just a convenient space heater to her.
I get dressed, pushing back the sudden and inexplicable urge to wear my mitochondria shirt, and join Stratt at the meeting table. She’s eating breakfast, accompanied by her usual two coffees. A third coffee and an assortment of pastries sits at the place across from her along with my plate of breakfast.
“I’ve pushed back our flight,” she says. “It will be an overnight.”
I taste my coffee and it’s exactly how I like it.
“Really? Why? We were supposed to leave in the afternoon.”
“I’ve had something come up, another potential investor. You won’t be needed there, though.”
So I’m just supposed to wait outside her meeting? She must sense my confusion, because she smiles, the tiniest thing that I only notice because I know her face so well. She slides her tablet across the table so that I can see the screen.
No motherfluffing way!
The concert was amazing, and despite the late hour I can’t help but give Stratt a play by play as the plane back to the taskforce settles into the sky. She takes my chattiness in stride at least, humming and nodding at the appropriate moments.
I’m not even close to running out of things to say when I feel a light pressure against my shoulder. Her head is resting against me. Space heater then pillow, I’m a multipurpose tool.
I take the tablet that sits precariously on the edge of her lap, and wrap an arm around her shoulders. She sighs and settles closer.
I guess this is a thing now.