Strong Enough(21)

Less than ten minutes (of the clerk fawning over Jasper) later, we are dragging our bags out of the elevator. I stop and hold out my hand for a key. Jasper obliges by setting a black plastic card onto my palm.

“Room number?”

“Suite 631,” he provides.

I glance at the plaque that tells me in which direction suite 631 lies and I start off in that direction, not intending to say anything else to Jasper. When I stop in front of the double doors, Jasper stops, too. I peer up at him in question.

“I got us a suite.”

“Us?”

“Yes.”

“To share?”

“Yes.” When I continue to stare, he continues. “If that’s not okay, I’m sure that smoking single next to the vending machines downstairs is still available. I thought I was doing you a favor.”

I sniff, trying not to be angry and not understanding why I am. “I guess I’d have known that if I spoke French.”

Jasper shrugs and takes the key from my fingers, letting us into the spacious suite. The colors are soothing blues, browns and beiges. A combo living-dining area is straight ahead and, beyond, a stunning night view of the city is visible through the part in the heavy ecru curtains. There are doorways to either side. I can only assume each is a bedroom.

“You can have your pick. I’ll take the one you don’t want.”

“It doesn’t matter. I’ll take right, you take left.”

Jasper shrugs, walking into the living room to toss his key and his bag on the coffee table. I ponder the mysteries of this man as I start toward the bedroom that will be mine. I pause in my exit. “So . . . how many languages do you know?” I ask.

“Six, but I’m only fluent in four,” he admits without even looking in my direction.

I grit my teeth. The man infuriates me. He’s so guarded, yet so casual about knowing six, six different languages. Who the hell is he?

I don’t have the answers, and I don’t expect I’ll be getting them either. I guess I’ll just have to add them to my list of curiosities about the enigma I’ll be rooming with.

“Interesting,” I say minimally. I get no response, though. Jasper is already paying me no mind as he digs a thin laptop from his bag and sets it up on the table.

I resist the urge to flounce off as I roll my suitcase into the bedroom to the right, leaving Jasper to do . . . whatever it is that he does.

I unpack my toiletries and a few nightly things like my sleep shorts and tank. My belly rumbles for food, so less than an hour later, I’m prowling through a book on the dining table, looking for a room service menu. I hear Jasper in his room, talking to someone on the phone in his low, steady rumble. My eyes fall on a slim MacBook resting on the shiny, wooden coffee table. Casually, the book in my hands laid open to the room service menu, I back up until I can see what’s on the screen. I feel bad for snooping, but it’s not like I opened up his computer and rifled through it. I’m just glancing at what’s in plain sight.

And I almost wish I hadn’t.

The DMV picture of a woman Matt used to date is pulled up on the screen. It’s zoomed in on some kind of back-end page that has all sorts of details I imagine aren’t accessible to the general public. I forget for the moment that Jasper has probably hacked a government site to get this information. I forget it because I’m too busy staring at the address highlighted under Megan’s picture. I know it. I spent many a night there, in Matt’s arms, listening to him tell me he loved me, wishing I felt that he really did.

And now Megan lives there.

I guess Matt could’ve moved out and Megan could’ve moved in. That’s possible, but highly unlikely. Matt loved that house. His mother had lived there when she was a girl and it was the place she talked about more than anything else when she lay in a hospital bed, dying of cancer. I can’t imagine Matt ever letting that house go. People don’t throw away things they love. They keep them, fight for them. Ask them to stay. Follow them to the ends of the earth if they must.

I close my eyes against the beautiful, smiling face staring back at me. I knew Matt didn’t love me. Or at least not enough. But this . . . this proof, it makes it hurt all over again.

As rude as it is to eavesdrop, it’s nearly impossible not to when the quiet is so deafening.

“That’s okay, Megan. I don’t need to leave a message. I can just call back later. Do you happen to know when Matt will be home?”

That’s all I need to hear. More than I ever wanted to hear.

I toss the room service book onto the couch and go for my purse, not bothering to interrupt Jasper to let him know where I’m going. At the moment, I don’t even know myself.