three floors down

Abbie waited patiently for the elevator to arrive. She knew it was late, but she didn't a watch or a phone with her, and didn't think to look at a clock while she was still back in Room 2222. She glanced around, but there were no clocks anywhere, nor other people.

"Must be late," she muttered to herself, shifting her weight.

The other thing she hadn't thought to do before leaving the boys behind was to use their bathroom. And as she waited, she hoped she was no more than a minute or so from her own room.

"Hm. Jake."

She began to think about Jake, wondering what his night had been like. She had parted ways with him and Michelle, and what sort of things did they find themselves getting into? Abbie knew she was adventurous, she knew that she was always up for a good time, always eager for an activity, whatever it might be.

She also knew that not everyone was like that. She knew Jake to be willing to get into some sort of mischief -- but was that purely a result of being with her? She didn't know him in any other context. Was he likely to initiate anything on his own?

"Surely, he must do ... something ... from time to time."

Abbie was also the sort to talk to herself absent-mindedly when she was alone. So as she waited for the elevator to open up on the 22nd floor, she paced, thinking about Jake, thinking about the evening.

"I wonder," she said aloud to herself, "where else in this hotel there were people having as much fun as I was just having."

She thought about the other hotel rooms she walked past just between 2222 and the elevator. What went on behind those closed doors? Most likely, other patrons had no idea what was going on in Room 2222, and yet, quite a lot was going on there. So it stood to reason, as Abbie thought about it, that there could have been any number of things going on down the rest of that hallway.

"Or the other hundreds of rooms in the hotel," she said, verbalizing half of the thought she had begun in her mind.

At the very least, she was sure, there were people all over the hotel having sex. There was no doubt about that. She had thought about this before, in other places. She knew that people weren't (typically) public about their sex lives, but also knew that no amount of privacy changed the reality that it was happening everywhere, all the time.

"Maybe not as much as I just had, but ..."

Even if she hadn't decided to party with Ben and Carter, she'd have gone back to her own room with Jake, and more than likely, they'd have fucked for a while. So it had to be happening all around her. It made her feel good to think about it. It was validating.

"Jake," she said again.

So if she had gone back to her own room with Jake, and if they would have had sex ... then perhaps it was reasonable to imagine that since she didn't go back to the room with Jake ... what if he had been planning on sex that evening, and just hadn't said anything about it?

The elevator dinged and the doors opened. She stepped into the empty car and pressed 19.

"Last I saw him was with Michelle. She's adventurous for sure."

She imagined what could have happened with Jake and Michelle. She thought that they might go have another drink, that they might wander the grounds outside, that they might reconnect with Michelle's husband ...

"Oh my god, what if they all had a threesome?"

She tried to picture Jake and Chris with Michelle, but the idea didn't quite seem to click. She had no trouble imagining Michelle and Chris, but the moment Jake became part of the scenario, she wasn't seeing it.

"Of course, if I had been there ..."

And as soon as she saw herself with Jake, everything else made sense. She wasn't quite sure why she had trouble seeing Jake independent of herself (even when she could easily imagine herself independent of Jake), but every thread of fantasy got blurry until she inserted herself into the story.

"Obviously he has his own life. Obviously I'm not part of everything."

She caught a glimpse of her own reflection in the mirrored sides of the elevator car. She saw herself there, alone, but then closed her eyes, and re-painted the picture in her mind with Jake standing next to her. She wanted to see him, to feel him close by. He was ... comfortable.

"Still, he is his own person." She opened her eyes, looked at the mirrored wall, and saw that, of course, she was still alone.

The elevator arrived at the 19th floor, and the doors opened. Abbie stepped out of the car, and glanced at the signs on the wall to remind her which way to go to get to Room 1962. She noted that it was not the same pathway that, three floors up, led to Room 2222. Of course it wasn't. The floors all matched in that way. It wasn't a new discovery, but it wasn't something she had yet put an actual thought to.

As she walked down the hall, briskly, she opened her clutch and pulled out her room key. She saw trays of discarded room service on the floor, dishes that had been ordered, eaten from, and then set out to be collected and cleaned (though not yet collected and cleaned).

54 ... 56 ... 58 ... 60 ...

She arrived at her door, Room 1962, and slipped the key card into the slot. The electronic latch clicked, and Abbie turned the handle and pushed the door open slowly.