Salt and Cedar

The motel room smelled like salt and cedar, which made no sense, because motels never smell like anything but carpet cleaner and old cigarettes. But Noel had a candle going. A candle. In a room that cost forty bucks a night.

"You're staring at it again," Noel said from the bed. He was on his stomach, sheets around his hips, one arm hanging off the side. Tank, his golden retriever, was stretched out on the rug by the radiator, watching us with the dignity of a chaperone.

"Nobody brings a candle to a motel," I said.

"I bring a candle everywhere. It's the only way to make a place yours."

I was sitting on the edge of the mattress in my underwear, trying to figure out what came next. We'd finished maybe ten minutes ago. I'd used a condom, he'd checked the foil against his phone light like he was grading it, and afterward he'd laughed at something I said and I'd laughed too and now here I was, twenty-six years old, sitting in a stranger's motel room in the dark, completely out of my depth.

"You can stay," Noel said. "That's an offer, not a trap."

"I wasn't thinking it was a trap."

"You were thinking something. You've been thinking since you got here. I can hear it. It's very loud."

He wasn't wrong. Three weeks ago my ex, Dane, moved out with the good couch and half the record collection, and since then I'd been working nights at the cannery and sleeping days and generally living like someone who'd given up on decorating. The offer to stay was nice. It was also terrifying.

"Where would I sleep?" I asked.

"Where do you think?"

"I think you've got one bed."

"Correct." He rolled onto his back. "And you already used it once tonight, so."

I lay down. He scooted over and put an arm across my chest like it was the most ordinary thing in the world, as if we'd done this a hundred times, and I lay there stiff as a plank until my body got the message and relaxed.

"Sorry about the dog," he said. "He's usually on the bed. I told him tonight he had to be a gentleman."

"He's better company than most people."

"That's what I keep telling him."

I didn't sleep much. I kept replaying the whole night, starting from the bar, trying to figure out how I'd ended up here. It didn't track. Nothing about it tracked.

* * *

The bar was called the Rusty Cleat, which is the kind of name every coastal town has at least one of. It was a Thursday in late October. I'd come in on my night off with Greg and two other guys from the line, and I was drinking my second beer and not saying much, which is my default.

The new cook, that's all I knew about him. Night shift had gotten a cook, some guy named Noel, and the whole plant had formed opinions about it by day two. Mostly that the food was too good and it was making everyone suspicious.

He was at the bar. I clocked him and un-clocked him immediately. Not my kind of scene, that much confidence. But he came over anyway.

"You're the one who eats the fish stew every night and never says a word about it," he said.

I looked up. He was thirtyish, tall, dark hair going gray at the temples way too early, and a grin like he'd already won something.

"That's a weird thing to open with," I said.

"Is it? I've been watching you eat for a week. I take it personally when people don't talk."

"Maybe the stew doesn't rate a comment."

"Maybe. Or maybe you're shy." He pulled up a stool without asking and sat. "I'm Noel. I cook. I've decided you're going to talk to me."

Greg, from down the bar, made a noise into his beer. I ignored it.

"Ellis," I said.

"Ellis. See, that wasn't hard." He signaled the bartender. "Do you want another one? I'm buying."

"Why?"

"Because you're the most interesting person in this bar and it's depressing me that you know it and still sit here like a lamp."

"I'm not the most interesting person in this bar. You've been here four minutes."

"Five. And I'm the cook, I don't count. Cooks are furniture." He turned on his stool to face me. "Okay. Here's what I know about you. You work days on the line, no, nights. You eat the stew, you tip exactly fifteen percent, you read a paperback at the corner table during your break, and last Tuesday you gave your seat to the older lady with the cane and pretended you had to go check something."

I stared at him. "How do you know about the paperback?"

"Break room is next to the kitchen. You hold the book too close to your face when it's good."

"That's," I said, and stopped, because I didn't have an ending for that sentence.

"See? Talkative." He slid the beer over when the bartender brought it. "Look, I'm not trying to be a weirdo. I'm new in town, I don't know anyone, and you looked like the kind of person who'd tell me the truth when I asked where to get decent coffee. That's all. Everyone else in this town smiles at me like I owe them money."

"There's a place on Harbor Street," I said. "The one with the green awning. It's the only one that isn't burnt."

"See? Truth. Best coffee intel I've gotten all week." He clinked his bottle against mine. "To Harbor Street."

We drank. He kept talking, which was fine, because I'd discovered something strange about myself, which was that listening to him was easy. He told me he'd been a chef at a real restaurant in the city, a place with white tablecloths and a wine list, and he'd quit, and he wasn't ready to say why yet, and he was doing the food truck thing now, parked at the boat launch on weekends. He had a dog named Tank. He was twenty-nine. He was bi and he mentioned it the way you'd mention being from somewhere, flat, no weight on it.

Somewhere in there Greg came by on his way out and said, low, "You good?"

"Yeah," I said.

"You sure? You're smiling. That's concerning."

"Go home, Greg."

And then it got later. And then the rain started, real rain, the kind that comes sideways off the water, and Noel said the truck had a heater that worked and did I want to see it, and I said sure, which is how I ended up in a food truck at eleven at night, sitting on a milk crate, eating the best fish taco of my life while a golden retriever put his head on my knee like we'd known each other for years.

"This is a trap," I said. "You feed people and then they like you."

"Devastating, right?" Noel said. He was leaning against the prep counter, watching me eat with that same grin. "Ellis. I'm going to say something and you can tell me to go to hell."

"Okay."

"I'd like to kiss you. If that's something you'd want. If not, we finish the tacos and I drive you home and we stay friendly, and I promise I'm normal about it."

I put the taco down. My heart was doing something I didn't have a name for.

"Why me?" I asked. "You talked to half the bar tonight."

"Half the bar wasn't reading a book by flashlight in the break room. Half the bar wasn't hiding a good heart behind a bad attitude and doing a bad job of it." He shrugged. "And you're easy to look at. That too. I'm being honest, you said you wanted honesty."

I hadn't said that. But it was true, and he'd guessed it.

"You can kiss me," I said. My voice came out lower than I meant.

He crossed the little truck in two steps, tipped my chin up with one hand, and kissed me, soft, like a question. Tank thumped his tail against the floor, and Noel laughed into my mouth, and that was the moment I knew I was in trouble.

"Okay," he said, pulling back an inch. "So. Your place or mine? Mine's a motel with a candle. Fair warning."

"Fair warning about what?"

"That I'm a romantic and I'm not ashamed of it."

I looked at him for a second. "Mine's an apartment with a bare mattress and no couch."

"Then the motel," he said. "I'll drive. You keep looking like that."

"Like what?"

"Like that."

So we went. And that's how I got here, wide awake at two in the morning, a stranger's arm across my chest, rain on the window, a candle burning itself down on the dresser, trying to work out what happens next.

I woke up to gray light and a dog panting in my face.

"Off," I said. Tank did not get off. He put a paw on the bed like he was negotiating.

"He's got you trained already," Noel said from somewhere behind me. He was awake, I could tell by the arm around my chest tightening. "Tank, out. Let the man think."

The man was trying to remember the last time he'd slept next to someone. It took a while. Dane and I had stopped doing that before we stopped doing everything else, so call it a year, maybe longer.

Noel was warm. That was the entire thought I had for a minute. He was warm and the room was cold and the candle had burned down to a puddle in its jar.

"You snore," he said.

"I don't."

"You do. Little ones. Like a lawnmower that keeps almost starting."

"Great."

"I liked it," he said. "For the record."

The motel was the Harborview, forty bucks a night, radiator that clanked like it was angry at us specifically. I got up and found my clothes and put most of them on. Noel stayed in bed, propped on one elbow, watching me. I could feel him watching me.

"So," I said.

"So."

"Last night was..." I didn't have a word. The word inventory failed me.

"Good," he said. "It was good. And here's what I think. We keep it casual. No pressure, no weird timeline stuff. You don't strike me like someone who wants a plan handed to him."

"I don't have a couch," I said, which was not a response to that, but he nodded like it was.

"Casual it is. Coffee?"

"You have coffee in a motel room?"

"I travel with coffee. Real ones know." He got up, pulled on boxers and one of my flannels off the chair, which was confusing since it was mine, and put a kettle on the little bathroom sink setup he apparently carried. The guy had a whole kit. Candle, coffee, pour-over cone. He made two cups on a folded towel and handed me one and it was better than Harbor Street and I hated that.

We were on our second cup when the wind changed.

I've lived on this coast my whole life, all twenty-six years of it, and you learn the sound. Rain is rain. But before a real storm the wind goes flat and heavy, like the whole sky is holding its breath. I set the cup down.

"What?" Noel said.

"Listen."

He listened. His face did a thing. "That's not good."

"No."

"That's a nor'easter building. My truck is parked on a hill, at least. Tank, we're fine, buddy," he added, because the dog had come over and leaned on his leg.

By noon the rain was coming sideways. We tried once, got to the truck, and Noel's wipers just gave up in a way that felt personal, so we turned around and came back and that ended it. Stranded at the Harborview with a bag of coffee, a dog, and a deck of cards Noel pulled out of his duffel.

"You travel with cards too."

"You travel with a book you hold too close to your face," he said. "Everyone's got a thing."

We played gin rummy on the bed. He beat me six hands in a row and narrated all of them.

"You're terrible at this," he said.

"I'm fine at this."

"Ellis. I just won with nine points. Nine. You had the seven of clubs in your hand for four rounds and never used it. I saw it. You hold your cards like you're guarding a state secret at a kitchen table."

"I had a system."

"Your system lost six times."

I threw a card at him. He caught it without looking, which was annoying, and dealt again, and we kept playing, and somewhere in there he started talking.

It came out in pieces, between hands. The restaurant in the city had been his for six years, him and a partner, and the partner had done the books, and the books had been a lie for two years, and Noel had found out on a Tuesday and signed the place over rather than fight about it in court for a decade. He was twenty-eight when it ended. That was last winter.

"You just gave it up?" I said.

"I gave up fighting for it. Different thing. I was so tired, man. I'd stopped tasting food. I'd stand in my own kitchen and feel nothing. Then I get out and six months later I'm making a taco in a truck and a guy on the dock says, hey, that's actually good, and I almost cried in front of a stranger