07. Crater

There’s a shrieking sound coming from the bedside table.

It sounds like a Dremel cutting into the cheap tabletop. She blinks against the blinding light from her phone that is illuminating the room as the surrounding darkness tries to pull her back in. Blindly fumbling to grab her phone, she knocks a Five Guys cup leaving a light brown blend of Coca-Cola and melted ice to spill everywhere.
“Fuck,” she exclaims, leaping out of bed.
The hotel memo pad, a cardboard coaster, and a handwritten receipt for two gold wedding bands are all sopping wet.
“What happened?” he asks, softly stirring from the other side of the bed.
“The fucking drink,” she starts desperately blotting the receipt with one of her t-shirts that lay on the ground. The ink on the paper begins to smudge with each blot and the thin yellow paper is disintegrating.
He props his head up from the pillow. In the darkness of the early morning he looks like a gigantic toddler learning how to crawl, she thinks.
“What are you doing?” he chuckles.
She flicks on the lamp, he winces at the brightness.
“It’s all over the receipt,” she snaps. Part of her wants to say the receipt that you were supposed to put away, but she holds her tongue, she can feel her parent’s marriage slipping into the final hours of her own.
He is considerably less concerned about the receipt than she is.
“Come back to bed,” he cajoles. She ignores him. The silence between them rings out.
“Beth, seriously, stop, you’re destroying it,” he says after a minute. She looks at his pleading warm eyes staring at her. Her frantic blotting has caused tears and smudges all over the receipt.
“Leave it for a minute, let it air dry for a bit,” he says softly, “Christ, anyone would think you’re having second thoughts.”
She knows he’s joking, but the guilt is still palpable. Reluctantly, she climbs back into the bed. She wishes they’d gone for a cheap hotel room, at least they always have an extra bed.
He rolls over as she slips back into her side of the king-sized bed. The space between them feels unsettling. She’s grown used to feeling the rhythm of his breathing and a certain degree of constant closeness.
The last few days replay in her mind. The pavement of the strip steamed like a kettle after a downpour. The officiant had joked that rain on your wedding day was good luck, but to Beth, rain on your wedding day in a desert was bound to be a bad omen. The playback of their vows has her chewing the insides of her cheek. She had read somewhere it causes ulcers, so she tongues her teeth instead and feels out the cavity in one of her molars. How is it she had managed to get married before she could even manage to get to a dentist? The gap feels deep, like a crater, on the right side of her mouth.
“Would life really be so bad if you stayed Mrs. Patrick Melchor?” he asks suddenly.
She looks at his hunched back, small freckles dot his upper shoulders.
“For you, it would be,” she replies plainly.
He rolls over to face her, his face crumpled and tired.
“I’ve enjoyed it so far.” There’s a sadness to the lopsided smile he’s wearing.
She brushes the hair out of his eyes and sighs.
“The novelty will wear off,” she replies wearily. His boyish face is hard for her to look at, she can see it pains him to hear her resolute answers.
As soon as they exchanged the rings she could feel herself sinking. On the day when you’re supposed to celebrate your future, Beth Simmonds felt stifled. The future she’d always envisioned suddenly became far removed from her reality. Immediately foreign to her, even. She would have to claw her way out to find the way back to herself and she wasn’t willing to bring him with her. For her, becoming Mrs. Patrick Melchor was more than just an adjustment, it was a life sentence.
Now, as they lie in the enormous bed in the overpriced room, all she wants is to be with herself again, living her boring old life and dreaming of her future. She’d kill to have work in the morning, or even a damn dentist appointment. To soothe herself from the awfulness of sharing a bed with a man she’s never truly loved, Beth feels at the crater in her mouth until her tongue aches.