EW12/DT14

Disclaimer: please read this series of posts starting from EW29, then backwards.

I can almost sense your dread while you open up this post.

I think it's your first time seeing my new tattoo, she said, somehow highlighting the triangle of feathers, roses and flames just by looking over her shoulder.

It makes you look so much hotter, he answered, mesmerised with her nakedness, her back completely bare the last time he saw it months ago.

You know everything that happened here; it was your second home once, when you had your internship at Ibis. You thought it would be the only way your life revolved around hotels. But it was where everything began, when we both did something stupid in a hotel with a stupid name. Where everything restarted three and a half years later, this time in a posh hotel room after only three days of meeting again.

We all know that I remember the smallest details. The rooms where we stayed in are all in my head, their layouts, the date, what you were wearing. What we did. The positions we fucked in. It's a curse and a gift, same with the way I remember my dreams so clearly.

Mayo Inn, with Cheers sandwiches and the hijabi at the reception that you were so afraid of being judged by. I had a shift at Ben and Jerry's that night, but I bailed on it. You watched streams on your phone while I read a disturbing manga on mine. I woke up to the song that goes So say Geronimo! Say, say Geronimo!, and you looked at me for a moment and said Why do you still look so pretty after just waking up?

Haising, with the big steps and long flight of stairs that blew me out even when our room was on the second storey. I remember the book I was reading, the clothes I was wearing. You watched Until Dawn on your laptop, and I looked away when Matt got hung on a hook. And here was where you suddenly got so strong, being able to go on so much longer than your seventeen-year-old self.

But my favourite was still Boss, with its wide lobby and pool that we didn't even swim in. It was another spontaneity, booked on the second day of our reunion. We wanted to drink and smoke and pretend we were other people.

Or maybe that was just me.

I wanted to be Chloe Price, with her black hoodie and cigarette between her lips. You just wanted to be you, a man that would be loved again by the woman he adored. The woman who was still listening to her playlist called 29/9, the birth date of his own best friend.

We were just going to drink, we swore, but the tequila tasted like shit on its own and we didn't get any coke. We just finished our big bag of Ruffles instead, kissing and making love in between. Don't you miss doing this? , you said, hovering above me and wondering what or who was on my mind.

You've said more than your fair share of things that haunt me. Strings of words that continue to sting me even until today, like I just don't love you anymore.

But that day, it was my tongue that broke you, when it slipped into your mouth, when it slid down and around your manhood, when it said I feel like I'm cheating on him.

You asked what was about to happen afterwards? I took it literally on purpose, trying to avoid answering. I didn't believe you yet, still with the wariness of another departure. Now I wish I didn't have the ego that fed on the tears you cried for me, and the words you said, lying down next to me: I don't want to lose you again.

We wanted to get drunk that day, but what we got was intoxication by your hope, my pride, and the relationship that was long gone in all the hotels of Bugis.