It was another room. A family of three stood in the doorway, jabbing a finger at the man and shouting, "What do you think you're doing, going after a young girl?"
The man wilted at once and let go of my arm. "Just a joke," he said, then ducked back into his room.
I stood there shaking, staring at the door that was still shut tight, and something in me went cold all the way through.
I touched my face and only then realized it was already streaked with tears.
My safety hadn't been worth a single word from his junior labmate: leave her alone.
Five years together, and it was a joke.
The mother of that family helped me up and gently wiped my tears away.
She shot a hard glare at the closed door. "Your friends are terrible people."
I gave a bitter smile. Right. Even a stranger couldn't stand to watch, and they could sit behind that door and listen to me scream without a shred of guilt.
I thanked them, but I didn't knock again.
The front desk had already said there were no rooms, so I curled up on a sofa in the hotel lobby and made do.
I took out my phone and started building a slideshow.
I called it The Boyfriend Who Could Never Stand On My Side, and I recorded everything he and Bernice had done.
By the time I typed the last word, the sky had gone light.
I checked the hotels nearby.
It was peak tourist season, and everything around here was booked solid.
The earliest return ticket I'd been able to get wasn't until the day after tomorrow.
I gripped my phone, my chest aching. If I could, I wouldn't spend another second around them.
When I looked up, I saw Byron and Bernice ambling over, both of them yawning.
Like he was doing me a favor, Byron tossed the key card into my lap. "Here. Go rest."
He looked at the dark circles under my eyes with a hint of mockery. "This afternoon Bernice and I are going sightseeing. If you'd behaved last night, you wouldn't have gotten locked out."
I said nothing. I just stared, hard, at the purple bruises on his neck.
Before Byron could speak, Bernice pouted. "Laura, what's with that look? Byron had a touch of heatstroke yesterday, so I helped him with a little gua sha, that's all."
Byron looked at me with open impatience. "Can you not spend all day seeing things that aren't there?"
I lowered my head and said coldly, "Fine."
"There's nothing between me and Bernice. Can you stop being so jeal—"
At my answer, Byron froze.
As if he hadn't expected me to be this calm.
His face went slightly off, and he opened his mouth. "Laura…"
I picked up my luggage and stood. "I'm tired. I'm going back to the room to rest."
Byron watched me walk away, and for no reason he could name his chest felt hollow.
Maybe he really had gone too far last night.
But then he thought about how the suite had inexplicably been downgraded to a twin room and I hadn't said one word to fight it.
And Byron decided I'd had it coming.
He gave a careless shrug. Five years together, whatever happened, I would never leave him.
He put the whole thing out of his mind and went off with Bernice to hit every sight nearby.
I didn't go with them. I stayed and rested at the hotel for two days.
Only on the day I was leaving did I set out with them to climb the mountain.
I touched the keepsake my mother had left me, resting over my heart. That was the reason I'd come at all.
