I'd been working at a hotel in Newcastle which will remain nameless for a few weeks when I first met Devon. It was nothing more than a summer job of holding down the front desk, laying tables, and cleaning rooms and I'd expected nothing remotely special until she wandered in -- and in an instant I was starstruck. Not just because she was attractive, in a slightly scary way -- short black hair, blunt bangs which I didn't realise were still in, pale skin that looked like it'd never seen the sun, a slender body with small breasts but a peachy butt -- but because, though she was smaller than me, she still found a way to be intimidating whenever she looked at me. It was almost a gift for her. And in a way, for me.
Devon, like me, was doing summer work between university semesters. She was studying molecular biology, which was quite a bit more creative than my, well... creative writing. I tried to make light of her over-qualification while demonstrating how the online booking system worked but she didn't find it very funny. She didn't seem to find much of anything very funny. It was clear, pretty quickly, that I had little chance with her.
That summer was an unseasonably wet one -- and so we were flooded not just by leaks in the old Victorian roof but by cancellations. Some days, not having seen a single customer, you would wander the empty corridors like you were in The Shining. Being understaffed as well as underbooked, with even the manager rarely to be seen given his love of the pub three doors down, it started to feel like we could get away with anything. So it was that whoever ran the desk would usually be reading, or listening to music, or even, as I did more than once, setting up their laptop they brought from home just so they could play video games. On one occasion, Devon even announced that she was going to shower in an empty rooms after being caught in the rain on her way from home. I warned that she could get in a lot of trouble and she just shrugged and told me that'd only happen if I was a nark. I guessed she wasn't too concerned about holding down this job.
When Devon did go upstairs, having printed off an electronic card for Room 12, I waited a safe amount of time and then followed -- I had no intention of peeking on her, to be clear, but I wanted to be sure that she really was showering. It seemed like such a taboo to break given we were, in a sense, custodians of this place -- a word better used in museums but that was what it was coming to feel like here. With my ear against the door, yep, there was the sound of the shower. She was really doing it. I shook my head in wonder and returned to the front desk. Devon clearly had the kind of guts I could only dream of.
Slowly, despite feeling like the type of guy Devon would never even look at if she wasn't forced to by her employment, something began to develop. She enjoyed my sense of humour -- I'd ditched the barely disguised self-pity of self-deprecation in my late teenage years and now just claimed to be the best at everything no matter how bad I was. Devon didn't believe me -- it'd be fucking perfect if she did -- but she enjoyed what I think Americans call my moxy. Or moxey. One of the two.
As a consequence, slowly but surely, something flirtatious began to develop between the two of us. It's pretty easy to put a finger on when it started because Devon was certainly not the subtle type. In fact, she was so unsubtle that I didn't interpret it as flirting at first. I thought she was just fucking with me. It would be in her character. The first time was, in a sense, the most dramatic -- she'd showered, again, and showed up at the bottom of the stairs and stood at the precipice between stairway and hallway, wrapped in a white towel with her hair still wet. She played it off with some "nobody came in, did they?" and, of course, the answer was no. I found it hard to even look at her while she was in that towel, and not just because of all the rules she was breaking but because I wondered if she even knew what she was doing. And, also, I knew that once I started looking I wouldn't want to stop.
Then, Devon just casually asked: "Hey, Toby. What would you do if I just dropped my towel right now?" I stared at her.
"Probably rub my eyes," I replied. "Like in a cartoon." She smirked -- it was such a poisonous little smirk and she fucking knew it as well. With a shake of the head, she turned and went upstairs to get dressed. But I knew at the time that it said quite a lot that I'd been half-expecting her to actually do it. And I'd been quietly hoping to live in that universe. Alas, I didn't.
The next few days saw all kinds of comments while we worked -- or didn't. When I asked Devon to hurry up with laying the tables for breakfast, she replied with "or what, you gonna spank me?" When I was just sat there trying to listen to Weezer and she kept pulling up porn on the work computer and saying "you ever tried that one?" When I left for the night and she muttered "don't forget to fuck me on your way out."
Okay, so, by this point you're probably thinking the following: "the fuck? I know you said she wasn't subtle but, like, come on, man. That's farcical." And you'd be right. But here's the thing -- when someone goes so far, so out of nowhere, it comes full circle and you stop thinking it's flirting and start thinking they're just fucking with you.
And then, one Monday mid-afternoon, everything changed.
Rain was lashing down amid this historically shitty summer -- Devon and I were both at the desk, watching the grey swill outside and listening to its pattering on the roof, trying to imagine a world where somebody would come and not even able to do that.
"Why the fuck are we here?" Devon sighed for the thousandth time. As we were permitted our own clothes, so long as we kept our name tags on at all times (Devon had drawn lovehearts on hers in black marker), she wore black jeans, black trainers, and a black Nirvana shirt with that white logo of the weird face. You know the one I mean. No wonder we got no customers. "Nobody's even booked," she complained.
"We won't be here for long," I remember replying. "No way the hotel survives business this shitty."
"What a tragedy." Devon nodded and went back to her phone, scrolling mindlessly through Twitter, before continuing: "I guess I'll miss it in a way, though. Next summer I'll probably have to find some other job and no way will I get paid to do fuck all like I do here."
"Oh, no way," I chuckled. "We both lucked out even if it doesn't feel like it right now."
"Better to be bored than stressed," Devon agreed.
A period of silence followed as I sat down and stared into space, thinking about nothing in particular, while Devon also sat and put her feet up on the desk. Her trainers were muddy but I was way past protesting.
"Funny how we can do literally whatever we want here," I muttered. "Hell, could probably sleep in the beds and nobody would know."
"Or have sex in them," replied Devon, nonchalant as you like. I glanced at her. "What?"
"You know what you did."
"You love it." I just shook my head and looked away. And then... "Why don't we?"
"Why don't we what?"
"Have sex." This time I didn't so much look at her as stare at her. Her very casual expression was disconcerting to say the least.
"Is this another one of your jokes?"
"No." She shrugged. "I dunno. I'm bored. You're bored. No-one's around. Why not?"
"Well..." Nerves were gurgling in my stomach -- or was it excitement? I wasn't coming up with an answer, though.
"Are you gay?"
"No."
"It's fine if you are."
"I'm not."
"Okay." She gave me a look like I was stupid. "So... why not? You like me, right?" I looked away from her, certain my face was going red, hoping like hell that she couldn't see my hands were trembling. This really didn't feel like a joke.
"Maybe a little."
"Well, there you go. I'm offering."
"By that logic you must like me, too. If you're offering."
"Apply whatever logic you like." I looked back at her and sighed -- no way this was real. I'd say yes, be about to go for it, and then she'd pull back and laugh at me. And I wouldn't recover from that. Not for years.
So, despite knowing I'd probably regret it, I said no. Crestfallen, Devon filled her cheeks with air and let an awkward silence hang over us.
Finally, she spoke again: "You don't believe me, do you?"
"Not at all," I laughed. "You're fucking with me. I know you well enough."
