1 Chapter 1

It was a dark and stormy night. Probably. It was almost eleven P.M., anyway, and it had been snowing to beat the band for two days. I couldn’t see a thing through the curtains of steam rising from the hot tub in which I was ensconced. All I knew was it was stormy enough that the hotel was empty for the second night in a row, and dark enough that the increasingly insistent ding ding ding! trying to fracture the tranquility of my soak was probably imaginary. We’d had twenty-nine inches of snow in twenty-two hours, according to Tulsa’s favorite weathergirl, Miranda Chen-Singh, and the forecast called for at least another day and a half of steady snow-dump from the skies; anybody banging away at the Ring Bell for Service at the front desk of a roadside hotel on this night needed psychiatric care a lot more than they needed a hotel room.

And yet the dinging persisted. They’re gonna make me get out of this hot tub…I was not best pleased, but it wastechnically my job as a Guest Services Specialist, as my cousin-boss had emblazoned on my nametag, to provide a prospective guest with a modicum of service. And it was high time to refill my paper cup with hot chocolate from the lobby machine, so fine; I reluctantly raised myself from the one warm spot in Oklahoma, wrapped myself in a white hotel robe, my hair in a white hotel towel, and my feet in some white hotel slippers and, remembering my empty cup, I shuffled along the tiled corridor to the lobby.

Ding ding ding!

“Yeah, yeah,” I muttered, thinking unkind things about the sorts of people who clang for service while hotel employees are trying to enjoy a rare evening of solitude and hot chocolate. Do I come ringing your doorbell while you’re trying to take a bath? No, I do not. But this train of thought derailed when the bell buster, resting his palm for a spell, wandered into my field of vision at the end of the hall. I may well have gone and leaned on this dude’s doorbell at bath time, in the hopes of summoning him wet and naked to the door. He was a hunk!

Or a substantially overweight ex-twink, a few more steps revealed. Big and beautiful, anyway, even if it wasn’t all gym muscle. With a swoop of blond bangs over a pink-cheeked baby face, and a big butt sloshing back and forth in a pair of gray running pants of the variety specialty-cut for a “jock” in name only whose running days are a ways behind him and are not running to catch up.

I’m a sucker for a good-looking guy with a little meat on his bones, I guess is what I’m getting at, and I was indeed in a more service-oriented mood than I expected to be when I greeted him. “I thought I heard somebody out here.”

“It was me,” he said.

“I see that now,” I said around a smile. “What the heck, if you don’t mind my asking, are you doing out here on a night like this?”

He rolled his lively blue eyes and hugged himself around the heft of his middle, as if to ward off the chill of any snow that might have blown into the lobby behind him. “I’m trying to get to Arkansas. My sister lives there. It’s something of a family emergency.”

“With you out on the highway in this your family damn near wound up with two emergencies.”

He scoffed a polite half-laugh of agreement. “Yeah, I know. I started looking for a hotel like two hours ago. I’da just pulled over and slept in the car, but it’s white—they wouldn’t’ve found me until spring.” He made a point of taking in my spa attire, then looked around the lobby. “Do you know if anybody works here?”

“Huh?” It took a second to register; wet hair and a robe maybe didn’t scream On Duty. “Oh, right. Yes. I do. I work here.” I scurried to the front desk, as if to prove this assertion.

“Pretty lax dress code,” he said, following me.

“Yeah, well, I don’t work on Fridays, so I take my casual day on Tuesday.”

“I see.”

I dug through a drawer and fished out a nametag. Affixing it to my robe, I said, “There, seeSuhaib. That’s me.”

“You know what, I don’t care if you’re really ‘Suhaib’ or if you’re some wacky guest living out a front-desk fantasy; if you can give me a key that opens a room with a bed in it, you’re my new best friend.”

“I can do that. You got a credit card and a driver’s license?”

Once we dispatched with the initial-here-sign-here formalities, I gave him a key and my usual spiel: “Continental breakfast is laid out in the morning from seven until nine, it’s included in the rate of your room. Complimentary coffee, tea, and hot chocolate are available in the lobby twenty-four hours a day. There’s snacks, beer and wine, and sundries for sale in a little cubby around the corner, you pay me for those here at the front desk. The pool closes at ten,” I added, “but I still have it open tonight because the hot tub feels amazing.” I gave him yet another once-over. Here on the side of the Oklahoma highway, it wasn’t the kind of offer I’d make willy-nilly, but he gave off a distinctly queer big-city vibe, and with the night sky more ice than air, I could always chalk it up to Southern hospitality if I was reading him completely wrong. And you don’t get what you don’t ask for. “You’re welcome to join me.”

His smile was genuine, which I figured counted for something. “Appreciate the offer,” he said, “but I think I’ve already started to fall asleep. I’d just as soon get on up to my room.”

“You don’t need to be embarrassed.” It fell out of my mouth—I’d meant it as a private thought, at most. And yet I kept talking. “It’s not like I’ve never seen a fat guy naked before.”

He blushed, but he laughed, and looked at me like maybe someone had snuck up behind me and was making bunny ears with their fingers. “It’s not that,” he said. “Thanks anyway.” He walked the few feet across the lobby to call for the elevator, pressed the Up button. The doors opened right away and he all but leapt in.