Hotel Stepmom

The hotel key card was a flimsy piece of plastic with a magnetic strip that had already demagnetized twice. I stood in the hallway outside room 712, swiping it for the third time, watching the little red light blink its refusal. The air smelled like chlorine from the indoor pool two floors down and the faint chemical lemon of industrial cleaner. My duffel bag strap cut into my shoulder. I'd been traveling for eleven hours. I just wanted to shower and sleep.

The lock finally clicked green. I pushed the door open.

And there she was.

My stepmother, Vivian, standing in front of the mirror in nothing but a black lace bra and a pair of high-waisted underwear that matched. She had one hand braced on the dresser, the other holding a mascara wand to her left eye. Her hair was wet, dark blonde strands clinging to her neck. The bathroom door behind her was open, steam curling out into the room.

She saw me in the reflection before I could back out. Her hand didn't stop moving. The mascara wand swept up through her lashes with the same steady rhythm it had been keeping before I walked in.

"You're early," she said.

I dropped my bag. It hit the carpet with a dull thud. "Dad said the room was under his name."

"It is." She finished the eye, capped the mascara, and turned around. The movement was unhurried. She didn't reach for a towel or cross her arms. "He gave me the second key. Thought I might want to freshen up before dinner."

I stared at the wall behind her. The wallpaper had a pattern of tiny gold fleur-de-lis that repeated every six inches. I counted four of them before I managed to speak.

"Where is he?"

"Bar downstairs. He's been there since three." She picked up a tube of lipstick from the dresser and twisted it open. The color was a deep, bruised red. "Said he'd meet us at seven."

I checked my phone. It was 6:42. Eighteen minutes. Eighteen minutes to stand in this room with my father's wife while she finished getting dressed like I wasn't there.

She applied the lipstick in two strokes, pressed her lips together, and studied herself in the mirror. Then she looked at me. Not through the mirror this time. Directly. Her eyes were a pale green, almost gray in the dim hotel light. I'd known her for six years. She'd married my father when I was nineteen, a fact that still felt like a clerical error. She was thirty-eight now. I was twenty-five. The math had always made me uncomfortable.

"You look tired," she said.

"Long drive."

"From where?"

"School. Grad program. I told Dad."

"I know. He mentioned." She turned back to the mirror and picked up a small bottle of perfume. Two sprays to her neck. One to her wrist, which she rubbed against the other. The scent reached me a second later. Something floral and sharp, like crushed stems. "He also mentioned you've been avoiding his calls."

"I've been busy."

"Mm." She didn't believe me. She didn't have to. She pulled a dress from the closet, a simple black thing on a hanger, and stepped into it with the kind of ease that came from years of practice. I looked away. At the window. At the city lights starting to flicker on against a sky the color of old dishwater. At anything that wasn't her.

"You can sit down," she said. "I'm not going to bite."

I sat on the edge of the bed. The comforter was stiff and smelled like bleach. I put my hands on my knees and tried to think of something to say that wasn't a question I didn't want the answer to.

"How was the flight?" I asked.

"Fine. Your father snored the whole way. I read a book." She zipped up the back of her dress, or tried to. Her hand twisted behind her, reaching for the zipper pull, and missed. She tried again. Missed again.

"Can you," she started, then stopped. Let her arms fall. "Would you mind?"

I stood up. Crossed the room. The distance between the bed and the dresser was maybe eight feet, but it felt longer. She turned her back to me and gathered her hair over one shoulder, exposing the nape of her neck. The zipper was open from her mid-back to the top of the dress. I could see the clasp of her bra, the small gold hook, the pale skin beneath it.

I took the zipper pull between my thumb and forefinger. The metal was cold. I pulled it up slowly. The teeth clicked together one by one. When I reached the top, my knuckles brushed the back of her neck. She didn't flinch. Neither did I. But something happened in that half-second of contact. A current. A recognition. I stepped back before I could name it.

"There," I said. My voice came out lower than I intended.

She turned around. We were close. Closer than I'd realized. Her perfume was in my throat now, sweet and cloying. She looked up at me, and for a moment neither of us moved. The room was quiet except for the hum of the mini-fridge and the distant sound of a television through the wall.

"You should change," she said. "Dinner's in fifteen minutes."

I nodded. I didn't move.

She smiled. It wasn't a warm smile. It was the kind of smile that knew something I didn't. "I'll wait in the hall."

She grabbed her purse from the dresser and walked past me. The brush of her arm against mine was deliberate. I was sure of it. The door clicked shut behind her, and I stood alone in the room, staring at the closed door, my heart doing something complicated in my chest.

I opened my duffel bag. Pulled out a wrinkled button-down. Held it in my hands without seeing it.

My phone buzzed. A text from my father. *Running late. Order me a scotch. Neat.*

I typed back: *ok*

Then I sat on the bed for a full minute, doing nothing. Just breathing. The room smelled like her now. That perfume. It was everywhere. On the pillows, on the curtains, in the air I was pulling into my lungs. I thought about the zipper. The skin at the back of her neck. The way she'd looked at me in the mirror.

I stood up. I put on the shirt. I checked myself in the mirror, the same mirror she'd been using, and saw something in my own face I didn't recognize. Something hungry. Something I needed to put away before I walked out that door.

Vivian was leaning against the wall in the hallway, scrolling through her phone. She looked up when I stepped out.

"Ready?"

I nodded. We walked to the elevator side by side. Neither of us spoke. The doors opened. We stepped in. The doors closed. And in that small metal box, descending twelve floors to the lobby, I felt her hand brush against mine. Once. Twice. The third time, she didn't pull away.

I didn't either.

The elevator dinged. The doors slid open. The lobby was bright and loud, full of people checking in and out, dragging luggage, arguing about dinner reservations. My father was at the bar, visible through the archway, laughing at something the bartender had said. He hadn't seen us yet.

Vivian stepped out first. She turned back and looked at me over her shoulder. That same smile. The one that knew something.

"Coming?" she asked.

I followed her. I didn't have a choice. I'd been following her since the moment I walked into that room and saw her standing there in black lace, and I knew it. The question was what I was going to do about it.