Love and Its Lies

Fourteen - Quality Time

Aly had no regrets eating two slices of pie after having just had a hefty dinner. It had been quite a great night. She had just spent more than an hour having dinner with John—sure, they weren’t alone and it wasn’t technically a date—but it was the most time she had ever spent talking and listening to him.

For sure this time, she had been registered in his radar. She was no random acquaintance anymore. She couldn’t help but smile at the memory of John calling her his friend—she finally had a part in his life! They had officially bonded! There was no way he would ever mistakenly call her “Annie" or some other name ever again. From there on out, Aly knew that there was no where to go but up.

As soon as she finished her pie and tea, she kindly brought the plates back to the kitchen where she found Marion cleaning up. After Aly thanked her and praised her magnificent cooking, Marion told her to bring up a tray to Danny’s room.

“Since you’re now friendly with Danny, would you mind bringing this up to him on your way? I don’t want the tea to get cold,” Marion had said to her. As reluctant as Aly was, she couldn’t find the heart to say no to the old lady's kind eyes.

So, there she found herself, knocking on the door to Mr. Snarky Pants' room with a tray of pie and tea. In all fairness, Aly didn’t think he was that bad, especially after the moment they had on their way back to the hotel. She had asked him about his family on a whim, thinking to poke some fun. Instead, she found herself speechless at how he unexpectedly shared something so personal. It was at that exact moment that Aly realized he was a person, and not a heartless robot that was just pretending to be human.

Sure, he may tone down the sarcasm a little bit, and it would also be better if he didn’t suspect John to be a villain, but with all things considered, he seemed like a pretty decent guy. If Aly were to be honest, she’d even go as far to say that she was impressed at how he held the conversation with John earlier. Also, who would have thought that the weird journalist used to play sports? She had pegged him to be the quiet type to brood in the library and write poems while listening to sad music during college, but it seemed that Danny had a few surprises up his sleeve.

While on the topic of surprises—as soon as the door to his room opened, Aly found herself, yet again that night, completely speechless. This time, however, it was for an entirely different reason—as before her, stood a man half-dressed. Aly couldn’t help it as her eyes fixated on the beads of water trickling down the bareness of Danny’s surprisingly lean torso.

She never would have thought that this was what hid behind those layers of old, hideous, ill-fitted pieces of clothing. Her gaze followed the movement of the muscles on Danny’s arms as he put his hands on his hips.

I guess he did play sports, Aly thought to herself.

Danny cleared his throat, and when Aly looked up at his judging face, she immediately turned red as she became cognizant of the fact that she had been staring at him like a p*****t.

“Is that for me?” he asked with an air of disinterest.

Aly did not know where to look. She switched her gaze awkwardly between the food, Danny’s wet hair, and his room behind him. “Y-yeah,” she stuttered. “Marion told me to bring this up for you.”

“Hmm, okay, thanks,” Danny simply said with a blank expression. None of them moved or said anything for an uncomfortable second. “Are you… going to hand it over?” Danny asked, unsure.

Aly, who then realized that she was acting strange, straightened her back and tried to seem unfazed as she handed the tray over to him in a slightly forceful manner—causing a few drops of tea to spill. “Here,” she said with a dignified tone. “Stop answering the door naked, Danny. No one wants to see all that.” She motioned at his upper body with a finger.

That prompted him to look down at his trunk. “I’m clearly not naked. Maybe you should stop caring about how I dress,” he said indignantly.

“Fine,” Aly coldly said.

“Fine,” Danny matched her tone. He stayed still and watched as Aly stood there, unsure of what to do before slowly and awkwardly turning around, but not without her eyes reflexively looking down at Danny’s surprisingly broad and damp shoulders then up at his messy wet hair.

She shook her head and said, “I’m going then,” before rushing back to her room and slamming the door behind her. Danny frowned in confusion—as if she couldn’t be any weirder—then carried the tray into his own room.

Aly's eyes were wide as she pressed her back against the door. She could not believe that she acted like that in front of someone no other than Danny—that weird, snarky boy. Being in her mid-20's, it was not as if it was the first time she had seen a man’s body. Heck, the football boys back in college used to run around top less and sweaty after practice. It was admittedly one of the reasons Aly liked to watch them practice—specifically, to see John having fun and looking like such a hunk while playing the sport. There were quite a few girls and gay men hanging around as well. Much like how guys and lesbians also flocked to support cheerleading practice.

But, to gawk like that over the mean journalist! Aly felt like she cheated on John in a way—granted that they weren’t actually together, but still…

To take her mind off it, Aly sat on her bed and switched on her old laptop. There was crappy wifi in the hotel, but it was enough to load her emails. As soon as she opened her inbox, a flood of new emails greeted her—from professors and classmates alike.

With wide eyes, Aly read through all 12 of them in a few minutes. She had forgotten that being out of the city didn’t mean that she didn’t have to do course work to pass the semester. It was her last before she had to write her thesis next school year, and failing even one class was not in her plans.

She had three papers to write, and a few worksheets to answer. Thankfully, some of them were due by the end of the week, but the majority of the work had deadlines an hour past or the very next day. Aly immediately got to work. She made sure to include an excuse on the worksheets that were due before—it was a good thing that they were fairly easy.

By 11 in the evening, Aly was able to finish all of the worksheets—no thanks to the slow internet connection and her lagging laptop. Amidst all the panic, she made a mental note to buy a new one. There probably was an electronics store somewhere in town, but it was most likely closed by that time—seeing as how most of the establishments stayed open only until 6 pm.

The three papers, however, were no walk in the park. With a lot of horse crap and few researching—something that Aly didn’t like to do, but had no choice as of the moment—she managed to finish one by 12:30. Halfway through the second one, however, her laptop began to give up on her.

With a tired mind and weary eyes, she began to frantically hit the space bar and the Enter key—all to no avail.

“No, no, no!” she groaned as the screen suddenly went black. She pressed all of the keys in hopes that it would somehow awaken the gadget, screaming at it, “Wake up, you little…” but none of it helped. Angrily throwing the laptop onto her bed didn’t do much of anything either.

Aly leaned her head back on the headboard and closed her eyes. The papers were due tomorrow. She immediately regretted prioritizing the worksheets that were due later—she had done so with the intention of finishing all of the work that night, in anticipation of more to come the next day. She was also never one to procrastinate school work, since the thought of leaving something unfinished always kept her up at night.

Aly got up, brushed her teeth, changed into her pajamas—a matching pink, cotton, button-up top and bottoms with a pattern of cartoon dogs on the fabric—and stretched her sore neck and arms before getting under the old sheets. She had not stood up once after she opened her laptop. That was the kind of work ethic she had.

“Okay, let’s try to sleep,” she mutter to herself as she turned off the lamp beside the bed and settled into a comfortable position. “You can finish the papers tomorrow and send an excuse, Aly,” she continued, trying to convince herself.

Aly closed her eyes, tried to relax her muscles and clear her mind. After a few minutes, she started to count sheep—something she had never really done before, but only heard of. When she got to two hundred, she opened her tired eyes and looked at the time. It was way past her bedtime, yet her brain still buzzed with ideas and worry.

She could knock at the electronics store until they opened, or she could wake Marion and Fred up to borrow a laptop or a computer. Oh, but just imagining the pissed-off look on Fred’s face was enough to shut that idea down. She also did not want to bother sweet Marion from her rest.

Aly could, however, bother someone else.

So, there she found herself, knocking on Danny’s door the second time that night.

The door opened to reveal a yawning and clearly half-awake and half-annoyed Danny. His hair stuck up in different directions, and the old, thin band shirt and red Nike jersey shorts he was wearing were crumpled. Aly had obviously awoken him from a deep sleep, and he was not hesitant to show that he was unhappy about it.

“What?” he asked crankily while he held the door open, his eyes half-lidded as they adjusted to the light.

Aly leaned sideways to look behind him. Her eyes twinkled as she spotted his laptop on the desk.

“I need to borrow your laptop,” she said.

Danny scratched at the back of his head then ran his fingers through his hair in a failed attempt to keep them away from his face. “What?” he asked again. “Don’t you have your own?”

“Yes, I know,” Aly said, tapping her feet restlessly on the floor as her sleep-deprivation registered. “But it broke and I need to write some papers.”

She looked around the hallway and asked in a whisper, “Will you let me in? I don’t want to cause another ruckus.”

Danny was still clearly confused, but held the door open for her anyway. He’s more compliant when sleepy, Aly noted to herself.

“I just need your laptop for an hour tops. I have some papers I need to finish and I can’t sleep until I do,” Aly went straight to the point.

Danny shut the door and sat on his bed, looking a bit more awake now. “Can’t you, I don’t know, use your phone to do it?”

“It’s difficult to type in the tiny keyboard and search. It’s very inefficient. Please, Danny,” Aly said, softly pleading. “You can sleep while I do it and I won’t make any noise, I promise. I’ll lock the door when I’m done, and I cross my heart I will not look at your porn.”

Danny frowned at her, bewildered. “I don’t keep p**n on my—” he stopped, too tired to argue and said, “Hang on.”

Aly sighed in relief as he opened his laptop and turned it on. He motioned towards the chair in front of the desk.

“You can work there, but I won’t sleep. Who knows what confidential file you’ll open up,” he said.

Aly clasped her hands together in glee. “Thank you, thank you!” she happily exclaimed. “I promise I won’t be mean to you for a day—okay, two days.”

That earned her an eye roll from Danny, which she didn’t mind. She hurriedly sat and went to work while Danny sat on his bed with his back against the headboard.

Aly glanced at him and nodded towards the lights. “You can turn them off if you want, I won’t mind.”

Danny scrolled through his phone. “Why would I do that?” he asked without looking up.

“So you can sleep,” Aly said as she logged into her email. She turned to look at him with a raised eyebrow. “Or are you one of those people who weirdly can’t sleep without the lights on?”

Danny looked at her and flatly said, “Just get to work.”

Aly shrugged but did so.

She continuously worked without looking up from the screen at least once, while Danny sat on his bed using his phone then reading a book. They stayed quiet until the promised hour passed. Somewhere around the second hour, Danny had fallen asleep with the book on his lap. Aly wouldn’t have noticed if it weren’t for his light snoring.

His head hung with his hair messily dangling down. Every now and then, he would slightly fall to the side and jolt back to his midline, but he never woke. Aly smiled and stifled a laugh. Whatever happened to watching her in case she opened an important secret file? She shook her head and returned to her task.

Some time around 4 in the morning, Danny fell to his side and was finally awoken. He did not realize when he had fallen asleep. In a panic, he immediately looked at his desk to check on Aly—to see if she had gone, or if she had really just been working and not digging through his folders. To his surprise, there she still sat leaning on the desk. Her head was down and she used her arms as a pillow.

Danny quietly stood up and put on his glasses to check on the laptop screen. He had to carefully hover above her to be able to touch the track pad. A window was open, showing the sent email messages from Aly’s account. Other than that, nothing else was on the screen. Just to be perfectly sure, Danny also checked the recently opened folders. It seemed that she had successfully finished all of her work—without touching any of his files—and fallen asleep.

For a second, Danny considered whether he should wake her up, but seeing how peacefully she slept, he decided otherwise. Instead, he only shut his laptop down and moved it away from her, in fear that she may inadvertently wreck it in her slumber. Then, he took a spare blanket from the closet and very slowly draped it over her—in the process, just then noticing the pair of pajamas she wore. He lightly snorted. The pajamas were on brand, he thought, before placing one of the smaller pillows on the desk beside her. Then, he turned off the lights and went to bed.

Aly slowly woke to a bright light shining upon her face—the sunlight had slipped in through the tiny space from the side of a window that was not adequately covered by the curtain. Still disoriented, she lifted her head and looked around. The room looked similar to hers but none of the stuff were hers.

Draped around her back and shoulders was a blanket, and a pillow with a dent from the side of her head laid on top of the desk. She then remembered she was in Danny’s room.

I must’ve fallen asleep as soon as I finished, she thought, rubbing her eyes and yawning.

The tenant of the room was nowhere in it. Aly checked the time—it was 12 noon. Danny was probably downstairs for lunch. As if on cue, the thought of lunch made Aly's stomach grumble. She stood up from the chair, finally feeling energized from the 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep she just had. She folded the blanket and placed it on top of the bed along with the pillow, unconsciously smiling.

Aly had to admit that Danny was actually more caring than he let on. Despite their usual banter and vehement disagreement about John's character, he still agreed to help her out and even went as far as to give her a blanket and a pillow. If only he’d frown less and smile more often—oh, and also wear clothes that weren’t a size or two larger than needed—he wouldn’t seem so unapproachable.

Before Aly left the room, she gave it one last look to see if she had left anything. As her eyes landed on the backpack sprawled on the floor then the laptop on the bed, the thought of looking for files regarding John crossed her mind.

She narrowed her eyes at them then looked back at the door. She could easily block the doorknob and go through Danny’s things. In fact, she wanted to.

Making up her mind, Aly clicked the lock on the door and stepped out into the hallway, and closed it behind her. She took a deep breath as soon as the temptation was safely locked away from her reach.

To clear her mind, she went inside her room and took a bath before going down to eat. Marion was there and ready to serve her food. Inside the dining area, two foreign guests ate and chatted each other. It was the first time Aly had seen the other people staying in the hotel, and they weren’t shy about not fitting in. They looked—well, like tourists, what with an expensive camera hanging around their necks, their all-black attire, the fanny packs around their waists, and their extremely bulky bags with flashlights hanging by the sides.

Aly took a seat one table away from them. As Marion placed a plate of food in front of her, Aly leaned in and asked, “Tourists?”

Marion whispered back, “Paranormal enthusiasts,” she quoted them.

Aly fought a laugh—even though it was just a few days ago that she, too, thought the entire town was haunted.

“They find anything yet?” Aly said in a jest. Marion smiled at her and shook her head.

Aly finished her lunch, went out to buy a new laptop and did a grocery run. She even went to attend a mass in church and mingled with the people afterwards, just for the heck of it. At that point, she was already recognized by quite a lot and was not regarded as the “new city girl" anymore. With Aly greeting some of the people by name and making small talk, she felt like she finally fit in.

However, even in such a small town with little population, not once did she run into John nor Danny. John, she knew she would see some time that night when he meets with whomever it was he was on the phone with—only she wasn’t quite sure where they would be meeting, but she was confident she’d find a way. Danny, on the other hand, she only wanted to find so she could give thanks for last night.

Aly found it quite odd that she had not seen a peep of the journalist. He was usually always in her vicinity the past few days that she had gotten used to him suddenly appearing out of nowhere to mind her business. She thought about asking Marion or Fred, but that would only raise eyebrows.

Come 6 in the evening after an entire afternoon of gallivanting, Aly decided to go back up to her room to prepare for her little spy mission at 7 o'clock. She was about to enter her room when Danny exited his.

He wore the black hat that he once used when following John around, and he had a small backpack over the back of his old black leather jacket. He stopped in his tracks as soon as he saw Aly.

“I’m coming with,” she said.

Danny played innocent. “Coming where to with whom?”

Aly looked at him as if to say she wasn’t stupid. “You’re wearing your stalking cap,” she stated, making him immediately take it off, “and you’re wearing all-black. You’re off to follow John to his meeting.”

“I’m—”

Aly held up her hand. She already knew what he was about to say. “Don’t bother lying,” she sternly said, “I’ll be out in a minute so wait for me.”