across her face.
“What idea?” Adam asked, confused.
“
Plus, added bonus, Harper realized: a new locale for the meeting would guarantee a nonrepeat of the hot tub incident. Party planning in an empty mansion with plenty of drinks and a giant hot tub had seemed like a good idea at the time-but Harper still shuddered at the memory of the half-naked Kaia rubbing herself all over Adam.
“I don’t know,” Adam said doubtfully. “She might not want us all there-not on her first day and all.”
“Hey, we’re her friends, aren’t we?” Harper wheedled, twirling the phone cord around her fingers and hoping he would take the bait. “Come on, you’re a guy, what do you know about what she wants? Speaking as a girl, I can assure you that she’ll be totally grateful.”
“You think?”
Eyes narrowed, Harper smiled.
“Trust me.”
Late Saturday afternoon, Adam pulled the car into the empty parking lot and the two of them stared up at the dark, abandoned building that loomed before them.
“It’s perfect,” Kaia breathed.
And it was. The old Cedar Creek Motel (no creek in sight, of course-only a moldy drainage pipe and a dirty concrete pit that had once served as the “swim at your own not insignificant risk” pool), covered in dust and exuding a stale aura of hollow disrepair. A tilted sign with cracked neon tubing hanging over the entrance hailed the wreck as GRACE’S FINEST LODGING, complete with REAL COLOR TV and 100% REFRIGERATED AIR. The two- story motel, a fiftyroom complex on the outskirts of town, had once been painted a proud flamingo pink, standing as a boldly fluorescent oasis amidst the desert wasteland; now the grayish husk of a building, sallow weeds nipping at its foundations, effortlessly faded into its environment, an overgrown concrete cactus. Unlike the empty, gutted storefronts that littered the main streets of Grace, the Creek stood whole and complete-no boarded-up windows, no graffiti covering its walls, no garbage strewn across its empty parking lot. But it had been abandoned for months.
Not surprising-Grace didn’t have much of a tourist trade. There was no reason to pull off the interstate and drive twenty miles down a bumpy local road, just to stay in a dilapidated no-tell motel. Tourists had better things to do with their time-and those truckers who did pass through town usually took one look at the Creek and decided they’d be better off sleeping in the cab of their trucks.
Kaia and Adam approached the lobby door-locked, but not boarded up-and Adam pulled out the set of keys he’d snagged from his mother’s real estate office. She’d been trying to unload the place for months with, unsurprisingly, no luck.
They stepped inside-and the normal, in color, living, breathing world outside disappeared.
“It’s like a ghost town in here,” Kaia whispered in wonder. “As if everyone just picked up and left one day, just disappeared-and no one’s touched it since.”
And it did seem as if the lobby had sat frozen in time since the day the motel’s owners had skipped town, a few steps ahead of the bankers trying to collect on a year’s worth of missed mortgage payments. A thick layer of dust covered everything, but the furniture, the dingy carpeting, the vintage seventies wallpaper, was all still intact. Preserved. And waiting.
“No one wants to spend the money to clear it out,” Adam explained, stepping behind the reception desk and smearing a track through the thick layer of dust with his index finger. Even the reservation book (no newfangled computer system for this motel) still lay open atop the desk, he marveled. He flicked the light switch on the wall behind him-nothing. No electricity, but that wasn’t a problem; the afternoon sun filtered in through the lobby’s small windows. It was dim and shadowy, but they would be able to see. “They’re just waiting for someone to buy it,” he explained to Kaia, enjoying, as he often did when he was with her, the unusual sensation of being an expert; she knew so much, but nothing about the West, about life in a small town, about anything that mattered-really, she needed him. And she seemed to know it. “Then the new owners will figure out what to do with all this stuff,” he continued, gesturing toward the vinyl chairs and woodpaneled coffee table to their right. “Or maybe they’ll just tear it down. Cool, huh?”
“I think it’s creepy,” Kaia said in a hushed voice, pressing close to him.
Adam had grown up amidst the ruins of Grace’s past-playing spies in the empty shells of old factories, hunting for buried treasure around the abandoned mines. But he put a comforting hand on Kaia’s back-of course she wouldn’t be used to that kind of thing, he reminded himself.
“Come on,” he said, leading her through the dark lobby. “Let’s take a look. It’s perfectly safe.”
She stayed by his side, and they crept down the hallway, explorers in a lost world. Not that there was much to explore. The surprisingly spacious lobby, a narrow hall with peeling orange wallpaper and a long stretch of numbered bedroom doors, a cramped staircase leading up to an identical hallway on the second floor (though here the wallpaper was green and purple-or had been, until all the colors faded to gray). And that was about it.
“This is the place,” Adam said with confidence, as they surveyed the “courtyard,” a paved area by the empty pool with some plastic tables and chaise lounges-he could already picture the scene, drunken seniors spilling outside, dancing in the moonlight, hooking up in the shadows. It was perfect. “It’s on the edge of town, so no one will notice us here, it’s big, it’s dark-this is the place.”
“We should check out a room first, before we decide, don’t you think?” Kaia asked.
“Aren’t you scared?” Adam teased. “Ghosts of truckers past, and all?”
“I think I can handle it,” Kaia said with a smile. “Just stay close.”
They chose a room on the first floor, at the end of the hall. Adam pulled out his mother’s skeleton key and turned it in the lock (Cedar Creek was a bit behind the motel curve-the electric key card craze had passed them by). They stepped inside.
The room was musty and dark, and just as frozen in time as the rest of the building. But it was a motel room nonetheless-bathroom, chair, TV-and queen-size bed.
What more did you need?
“I have to admit,” Kaia began, “it looks-aaah! What the hell was that?” She squealed and threw her arms around Adam as a grayish white streak raced across the floor and disappeared into the far wall.
“Did you see that?” she asked between rapid, panicked breaths.
“It’s just a mouse,” he assured her. “No big deal.”
“It practically ran over my foot!” Her arms still around him, she squeezed tighter.
“Hey, it’s okay. It’s gone now.” He rubbed her back for a moment until her chest stopped heaving and her muscles unclenched. “It’s okay now,” he repeated. She closed her eyes and slumped against him, leaning her head against his chest. He stared at the wall over her shoulder, trying to focus on the complicated pattern of flowered diamonds, on the large spiderweb dangling from the upper right-hand corner of the ceiling, on the critique his swim coach had given him yesterday after a subpar performance in the butterfly heat. On anything but the body quivering in his arms.
Kaia looked up at him, his face only inches from hers.
“Good thing you were here,” she said softly. “I’m terrified of mice-but with you here, somehow I feel so safe.”
Adam blushed and mumbled something incomprehensible.
“It’s funny,” Kaia said, leaning closer and tightening her grip. “I’ve only known you for a few weeks, but I just feel so close to you. Sometimes I think…” Her voice faded away, and then she tipped her face toward him and closed the narrow gap between them, pressing her lips to his.
For a moment he responded, pressing his body to hers, pulling her tight, his lips opening slightly, his tongue gently running along her lower lip, tasting her-
And then he pushed her away.
“What are you doing?” he asked harshly.
