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I’m superstitious.

Hell, anyone who does this ought to be.

You’re at the mercy of fate. Of an animal who genuinely doesn’t care if you live or die, and whose life wouldn’t change if you did die. I find that reassuring in some ways. Maybe reassuring is the wrong word. It reminds me of how small I am, though. How much I don’t matter.

I try not to carry around too much main character energy.

That just puts a whole lot of pressure on everything you do, when in reality, all the little choices that you make on a given day don’t matter all that much. Just don’t go around hurting other people, that’s what I figure. There’s no cosmic deity who gives a shit as to whether or not I take a left or right on my run this morning.

I knew people who thought like that in high school. Who thought that they needed to consult God about every single thing they did, from what they were going to have for breakfast in the morning to who they were going to take to prom.

Maybe it’s my background, but I figure God is a littlebit too busy to weigh in on your prom date. I’ve seen what real problems look like.

My lungs are burning by the time I make it back to the motel room, and I’m sweating. I pull my shirt off right as I walk in, and glance around the room, not seeing Sarah anywhere.

I hear the shower running, and I grimace. Because I really need the shower. I’m disgusting. I have a low tolerance for that, and I draw that back to a childhood that carries traces of neglect. Sometimes the water wasn’t turned on, so it wasn’t like I could have a bath every day. Now I like to be clean all the time, which is kind of a bummer given my chosen career. There’s a lot of dust, a lot of sweat. I don’t mind it for a short amount of time, but that’s it. It’s probably a control thing, really.

Issues. They’re my generational wealth. The inheritance that I got from my mother.

I feel a little bit of guilt when I think about her.

Marnie. I know her name. I don’t really know what happened to her after she lost custody of me.

But I do know that she was a teenager. I do know that she didn’t have support, and while I know she also chose not to seek support from my dad, I can’t know for sure what all was going on with her when she made that decision. Life is complicated. I’ve tried to be a little more understanding as the years have gone on.

The door to the bathroom opens, and Sarah emerges, dressed in a different outfit than the one she had on before. A sundress with little yellow flowers. Her dark hair is wet, beginning to curl, and her cheeks are pink from the warm water. It’s weird, cognitive dissonance. Because I know her. I’ve known her in this capacity for a long time, even though there were years between. We were like siblings.

But now, when there’s a woman getting out of my shower, it’s usually because I had sex with her.

So, my body is reacting to this moment in weird ways, and it makes me feel astronomically guilty, because I also am so familiar with her background of abuse. The last thing that she needs is a guy thinking things about her when the situation isn’t sexual at all.

It feels like a violation of her, and I take that little, blooming feeling of tension in my stomach, and pick it off aggressively like I would pick a dead blossom off a plant in my stepmom’s flower bed.

“Morning,” I say.

“Morning,” she says, looking away from me, and I’m suddenly very conscious that I’m half dressed.

“I need a quick shower,” I say.

She nods. “Yeah.”

I grab my clothes out of my suitcase and head straight into the bathroom, closing the door and locking it behind me. The water is warm instantly, because Sarah just used it, but I need cold water coming in from that run. I spend the next five minutes standing underneath a punishing spray before soaping up, rinsing and getting out and dressed as quickly as possible.

When I come back out into the room, Sarah is folding the blankets on the floor. Something about that makes me smile. That she’s trying to make it easier for whoever has to clean up after we go.

“Breakfast?”

“Oh. Sure. Actually, if we could go to the diner that I work at, Daisy’s, that would be good.”

“Sure,” I say.

“I’m going to have to quit. I feel bad leaving them in thelurch, but my boss does know about Chris. I mean, not the whole story, but she knows that he’s been harassing me.”

“She won’t be surprised, then.”

“No. Also, if he shows up around there, they don’t let him stay. They can’t stop him from loitering across the street or anything like that, but they don’t let him into the diner.”

I nod, and we pack everything up in the motel room, loading it all into my truck and heading to the diner.