Adjoining Rooms

Chapter 1Knox “Are you there yet?” Knox Townsend chuckled humorlessly as he pulled into the Seaside Inn, sporting a fresh coat of salmon colored paint with rust colored trim but looking just as ancient, retro and outdated as he remembered it. “I just got here, Chaz, geez.” Knox struggled to hide the impatience in his voice. Fortunately, his boss either didn’t notice or, more likely, didn’t care. He proceeded at pace. “Well, I’ve got some updated spreadsheets to import, and I need you at your laptop to go over them, ASAP.” “I’m literally just pulling in, gimme five, Chaz, and I’ll be there.” Chaz “The Spaz” Dillingham grunted on the other end of the line and could be heard gritting his teeth all the way through the futuristic console of Knox’s sleek rental car. Knox pulled into one of the many available spaces in front of the ancient hotel lobby and eased the car into park, staring at the swaying palms and rickety boardwalk across the street from one of Seaside, Florida’s two hotels. He sighed, almost grateful for Chaz’s intrusion so he could fight off the bittersweet memories with trivial work fluff. “I’m parked,” he chuffed, afternoon light warming his face the same way it used to all those years ago. “Will that help?” “What took you so long?” Chaz huffed back. “What didn’t? First there was a two-hour delay with my flight back in Chattanooga, then a passenger tried to sneak a dog on the plane and had to be escorted off and then…need I go on?” “Go on? I stopped listening after Chattanooga, pal.” Knox chuckled and could picture Chaz, tie loosened, sleeves rolled up, pacing the length of his tiny cubicle high atop the Playgroundz Café corporate offices in beautiful downtown Nashua, Wisconsin. “Bottom line,” Knox summarized, knowing it was his supervisor’s preferred way of receiving information. “I’m three hours late getting into town and just want a cold beer, a soft bed and a good night’s sleep.” “You’ll need it,” Chad huffed. “Big day tomorrow.” “Please,” Knox murmured, pinching the bridge of his nose to stave off a looming migraine that had been building since he arrived at the Orlando International airport an hour earlier. “You said that last week before my first day at store 83, and the week before that at store 32, so what’s different about…” Knox paused, rifling through the paperwork scattered on his passenger seat to find the case file on the Playgroundz Café in Seaside. “Store 57?” There was a brief pause on the other end of the line and what sounded like more rustling pages. It wasn’t surprising that both men had their wires crossed. Ever since the Upgrades Department back at corporate had decided to do away with the old cold brew machines in their 126 franchise cafes across the Midwest and Southeast, Chaz and Knox had worked tirelessly to begin retrofitting one franchise per week. It wasn’t fun, Knox surmised, but at the very least it was job security. “Isn’t Seaside your hometown?” Chaz blurted, surprising Knox with the sudden attention to detail. “I mean, sure, but…what’s the point?” Knox struggled to sound casual about the fact that he was returning home for the first time in over four years. And, what’s more, staying at the same hotel where he’d kissed his first boy. He wasn’t sure he was pulling it off, but he was sure of one thing: Chaz wasn’t exactly the sentimental type. “No point exactly,” his boss blurted on the other end of the line. “I just know I always feel a little weird when I visit the franchise in my hometown, that’s all.” Knox was stunned. Not only that his boss had feelings, but that he was choosing to speak about them with Knox, who’d only been working for the nation’s seventh largest coffee chain for a few short months. He glanced out the window, at the beach access where he and his high school crush used to surf after school every day, and gripped the steering wheel tightly as if to stave off the sudden tremors in his hands. “It’s surreal, that’s for sure.” Suddenly, it occurred to him that he’d been sent home on purpose, not by accident. “Speaking of, is that why you sent me to spend the week here retrofitting the cold brew machines instead of one of the other guys?” Chaz brayed laughter, raucous and insensitive as ever. “Hardly, bro. You’re still the new guy, remember? New guy gets all the scut work, all the travel, all the babysitting jobs while we upgrade the new equipment and train the managers on it, you know that.” Knox blinked away whatever moment he and Chaz had been sharing and nodded pointedly, taking his hands off the steering wheel at last. He was home. To stay. For the next week, at least. Might as well get used to it. “Oh, don’t I ever,” he sighed, straightening the pages on the passenger seat, and stuffing them into his carryon luggage. “I haven’t been back to the corporate office in weeks.” Chaz ignored the subtle jab with his usual bluster. “Well, anyway, I’ll let you check in now, but gimme a call the minute you’re in your room, okay? I still want to go over these numbers before you crash for the night.” Without another word, let alone time for Knox to reply, the line went dead and the digital dashboard filled with dead air. Knox turned off the car at last and readied himself to open the driver’s side door but just…couldn’t. Not quite yet. He remained glued to the driver’s seat, peering out the window as if seeing straight through to the past itself. Months passed, then entire years, his eyes swimming in moisture as the waning afternoon sun gave the Florida sky a brilliant blue, black, pink, and orange canvas. Flashes of furtive glances, pale skin, sea green eyes and pebbly, waxy surfboards fluttered back to life as the line between then and now blurred like the vision in his moist, brown eyes. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been peering into the past until his phone bleated with an incoming text. He glanced down to see it was from Chaz. Naturally. “In the room yet?” it read, followed by seventeen of his supervisor’s favorite teethy-face emojis and nearly just as many question marks and exclamation points. Knox sighed and slid from the car without another glance across the street, hoping the lobby wouldn’t look exactly the same as it did that fateful prom night four years earlier, but certain that it would. After all, in tiny Seaside, Florida, the more things changed, the more they stayed the same.