Chapter Text
“No, no, no!" Maysilee has to constrain herself from slamming her palms on the shiny counter like an undisciplined child. “You have to fix this!”
“We’ve—we’ve tried everything, Ma’am.” The clerk says, bottom lip trembling in response to her thundering order. “All flights are cancelled until tomorrow night due to the blizzard. There’s nothing we can do.”
“Like hell there is!”
It seems to be the only emotion she can tap into right now. Anger, swaddled with stress. How else was she supposed to react? She’d just been told her one-and-only flight to home wasn’t taking off. As if she hadn’t been through enough the past few days.
Now, if nothing were to change, she would be spending Christmas alone, with nowhere to stay, nowhere to go. Stranded in Pennsylvania.
Tears must have broken past the hardened look she was putting on, because her vision has melted into blurriness and she can feel a thick, possessive hand on her shoulder. “Just take a seat, Ma’am.” God, she hates being called that. “You’re causing a sc—”
She rips her arm away, nearly smacking the cop in the lips with her elbow. “Don’t fucking touch me.”
To avoid getting arrested, she quickly removes herself from the crowded space. Where dozens of others are making peace with the fact that they aren’t coming home for Christmas. She weaves between blobs of families and bundles of couples, trying her very best to ignore their judging eyes, pulling her luggage behind. She’s not new to being looked at like this, but it still sparks a fury in her chest, so she takes herself out into the cold.
The wind is rough and fast, as well as the snow that comes down with it. Squinting through the dashes of white, she spots a lone bench near the airport’s far brick wall; it looked to be protected from the weather due to some plastic gates that surrounded the tops and sides. Without anywhere else to run off to, she begins to make her way. Her hair is thrashed around the whole trot there, rippling and slapping into her dry eyes.
By the time she actually reaches it, her feet freezing cold within her patent leather boots, she comes to realize there is already someone here.
Maysilee wants to turn back, she couldn’t stomach the possibility of her tears of stress unraveling in front of yet another stranger, but it was too cold. She didn’t think her freshly done lashes could take a beating like that again.
The man doesn’t look up at her, even when her hefty heels crunch against the snow. He’s probably as depressed as she is over the flight, his coal black hair sticks to his temples. Eyes resting on everything but her. He doesn’t seem like the chit-chat type. That’s a good thing.
She takes her seat on the opposing side, and subconsciously glances up-and-down at his attire. Soaking in the freedom from the dagger-like snow.
Then her phone buzzes. Her heart sinks at the name that brightens her screen: Merrilee.
“Shit,” she whispers through her chattering teeth, fumbles off her gloves, and presses her lips together. “Hey.”
“Where on earth are you, Maysilee?” Her sister, miles away in Twelve Rivers, Kentucky sounds as panicked as their mother when she went without her valium for hours during their childhood. “I thought you were supposed to land this afternoon! Papa’s been at the airport for hours!”
“Oh my God, did none of you check the news?” Maysilee asks with an annoyance she can’t cage, she’s had a fucking day. Multiple days, actually. This one was just the straw that broke the camel’s back.
“No.”
“All flights in the path of the storm are cancelled.” She tells Merrilee, who she can hear softly gasp. “I tried, and fought… I’m not going anywhere.”
Maysilee listens to the squeak of a chair on the other side of the call. “So… first it was the night of the 22nd, then it was the morning of the 23rd, then it was the afternoon of Christmas Eve, and now not at all.” Merrilee retraces her steps of horror over the past few days, “got it.”
It sounds like she’s accusing her. Maysilee scoffs. “You seriously think this is my fault? I’m the one who’s been dragged around like a god damn ragdoll!” She thinks the man looks over at her now. “Back-to-back delayed flights because of the storm, then it got worse and now I’m stranded in Pennsylvania with nowhere to go! No car, no place to sleep, nothing!” She could feel her cheeks heating up, she’s so exhausted she’s yelling at her twin sister. Frozen breath hauling out in waves. “So, tell me again that it’s my fault. Really, I appreciate it.”
Merrilee sighs heavily. “It’s not. I’m sorry.” She says, “it’s just… you know how it is during Christmas here.”
She sure does. Bumping each other’s hips in the kitchen, which were met with loud irritated groans and sometimes curse words depending on the tension of the day. Maysilee and her mother snipping like they were sisters. Her Papa and Merrilee on the verge of exploding like hot glass under the stress of it all. Yeah, Maysilee never really got the whole “Christmas brings people together!” thing. Despite the fact that she’s gone through all this misery just to show.
“And it’s definitely worse without you.” Merrilee says, “like the first year after grandma died.”
Maysilee draws her hand across her brows and downward, her makeup smearing for sure. “Jesus, Mer.”
“Sorry.” She whispers, pots clank in the background. Silence. “Are you really stuck out there?”
“Yeah.” She answers, her knees are knocking together. She’s gonna have to go back into that lobby, and do nothing but wait for whoever knows how long. She feels sick. “Gotta sleep in the airport again, I guess.”
“That sounds awful.”
Maysilee almost laughs. It was just her luck. “Tell me about it.”
It isn’t so windy anymore, but the snow is still coming down hard in front of her. The roads that stretch from the airport’s entrance to the main highway are completely caked in white, like icing. “I’m gonna go. Tell everyone what’s happening.” Maysilee says, “make sure Papa gets home okay.”
“I will, Mays.” Merrilee promises, “Stay safe, please. Love you.”
She returns her words right back to her, and the line goes dead.
There’s a moment where she just wants to get up and run inside to succumb to her fate of discomfort and whatever else this failure of a trip had for her, but she only cries instead. Covering her eyes with her warm hands, secluding her sobs inside of her palms.
She wishes she was back home. In New York, where all of her fashion work was. Her rolls of fabric and sketches. Her cozy bed where she’s certain her baby Java is curled up on, impatiently awaiting for Maysilee’s co-worker and friend, Effie, to come and feed her again.
Maysilee peels her face out of her own tear-drabbled grasp, dragging her fingertips down her cheeks.
Then, an unfamiliar sight catches the corner of her eye. It’s the man on the opposite side of the bench they share, outstretching an open pack of Marlboro Reds to her. “Sounds like you need one.” His voice is quiet amongst the roaring snow.
She doesn’t even smoke. But she could not agree more.
The woman blinked at him slowly. The scarlet of her red lipstick cracking as she straightened out her lips, right before solemnly grinning. “Hell yeah, I do.” She takes one, sniffling. “A light, please?”
Wyatt nods with a hum, fetching for the flickback lighter in his pocket. His brother got the front plastered with a picture of his cat when she was a kitten for his birthday.
She looks down at his hand as he sparks it up for her, and she smiles at the image.
He hadn’t looked up at her when she’d emerged from the snowy winds, he hadn’t felt the need to. She had already made her presence well-known. With her faux fur coat, the glimmering of diamonds at her neck and ears. The dizzying scent of her amber perfume.
She’s leaning against the plastic window of the bench’s barrier now, long streaks of black run down her pale face. The gray smoke that’s reeling from both her mouth and the stubbed end of the cigarette twist up into the sky.
His eyes hadn’t migrated to her at first, but now he can’t seem to look away. Maybe it’s because, after listening to her on the phone, he’s having a hard time not feeling sorry for her.
Her sad, watery glint flicks to him, and he instantly looks back to the snow at his feet.
“Were you supposed to be heading home, too?”
Wyatt’s throat closes up at the interest. “No,” he says, “I was on my way back.”
His family never gets together on actual Christmas day anymore. Beau and Kennedy have whole separate families now, both living hours from home, so they all just celebrate on the 22nd instead. It’s easier that way.
Wyatt has his own high-maintenance job he has to rush home to (usually. Not the case this time. He might just ask for a half-off coupon from his brother every year rather than driving fifteen hours if it meant a mirage of delayed flights would get him Christmas off) And it’s not really all that high-maintenance. What near thirty-year-old man doesn’t know how to work on cars? His boss is just an asshole, but he needs the money after moving so far away.
Dark, smoggy Twelve Rivers where the burning smell of coal would wake him every morning. Living on the outskirts of town, untouching of anyone aside from his family. Only truly leaving his room when he was dragged out to the casino that was a good forty-five minutes afar, to be asked to sprout out the most complicated of odds for betters. It was fun, his Pa said it brought out the best in him. But it had to end.
The loose, frizzy hairs on the sides of her head have become clouded with snow flurries. They shift as she nods. “Kentucky?”
His gaze slips up to her once more. It’s an obvious yes; their planes were on the same track. But it left him somewhat touched. “Yes.”
The woman bows her forehead a little, the curve of her bangs blow forward—ones his Ma would more specifically call “blunt bangs”. He never could pick apart the difference—and then, she took one last drag of her cigarette, whiteness wrapped with red, and stubbed it out.
“Thanks for the Christmas gift.” She jests, he thinks she’s joking, at least. “Should head back in and rest now.”
He forces a smile, teeth knacking against each other inside his mouth. She brings herself to her feet, the mere movement seems painful for her. Her decorated hands slip up her back, underneath that heavy coat that’s surely keeping her as warm as pie under saran wrap. He thinks of how she mentioned sleeping in an airport again to whoever she was speaking to on the phone.
That would be his situation too, but he’s been stuck in Pennsylvania for two days in comparison to her one, and he’d slept in a motel last night. One right down the road. The only reason why he’s not there tonight is because he was promised this flight wouldn’t be delayed. Uh-huh. It is in fact shaping up to be his situation.
She curses under her breath, half shaking on her gloves, half handling her luggage. And she’s about to twist and turn back into the storm, sights set on sleeping under those blinding lobby lights when Wyatt pulls himself up. If he were her, he’d want someone to tell him about a better place to stay.
“Hey.” He says loudly.
She whips around, looking even more drained under the snowfall. “What?”
“There’s a motel.” Wyatt blurts out, and he can’t help himself from internally shrinking when she begins to close in on him. Stepping over heaps of snow, her heel piercing through the ice. “They’ve been delaying all week. Odds are they won’t actually get you home until the 26th. You shouldn’t sleep in there again.”
She seemed surprised by his abrupt waterfall of words. Her eyes are wide and desperate. “Where?”
“Down the road. I just checked out this morning.” He tells her honestly. It’s a small den. Multi-colored doors, golden numbers nailed right below the peepholes. Cheap, festive decorations poorly hung around. Plaid bedsheets and aging white walls. Kind of gross, but it was a place to sleep. “I can show you.”
She squints at him, and suddenly the rings on her ungloved fingers look menacing.
He would flash her the key if he still had it. “I swear. No games.”
“Fine. But you’re walking in front of me the whole time.”
“Okay.” He leans down to toss his own bag over his shoulders, his pack of belongings compared to hers was like putting an ant and elephant side-by-side. “Follow me.”
He walks along the same path he took earlier. Twirling around the backside of the airport, between trees and bushes. The soles of his boots remained on the trail that still had salt within the cracks of the concrete. Most of it had been recovered by snow now, though it was walkable, and that was what mattered.
The sound of the woman’s luggage echoes behind his heels, the wheels struggling. “How much farther?” She hollers.
He cranes his neck, meeting her eyes over his backside. She looks like she’s about to fall apart. “Not much longer,” he says, then skids to a stop, and she does the same, ending up right beside him. She’s nearly taller than him with her pumps. “See that orange light up there?” He points; she follows. Her breathing is pretty much all pants. “That’s it.”
“Alright... alright.” She says, after a second of recollection. “I can make it.”
Lemon scented Lysol is what burns her nose as soon as she steps inside the motel’s lobby.
The soft-spoken man who’d led her here stands in front of her still, not swiping off his hood. His cheekbones are as red as the paint on her nails and lips. “Just ring the bell. Clerk’s been working all day, she’s probably just sleeping.”
Maysilee nods, and soaks in the area’s visuals. The wallpapers are hideous and peeling, the lining of the ceiling is thumb tacked with rainbow Christmas lights drooping below. Some patches of the pool table green carpet are stained. She can’t imagine the rooms looking much better.
If it weren’t for the fact that her brain felt like it had melted into mush due to all the distress she’s endured as of late, she might’ve just ran out and slept in the snow instead.
“Have a nice flight home,” he shifts past her, his voice low.
She turns with him. “Hey,” she sighs right as his palm wraps back around the exit door. There’s a mysterious look in his eyes she can’t place but feels drawn to, it stands out to her in the midst of the dreadful decor around her. It’s her job to do things like this; pick out potential that no one else can see. “Did you just lead me into a roach’s nest?”
She’s joking, but his brow quirks up. He's really thinking about it.
“Mine didn’t have any. I checked for everything. But with the state of the place, the possibility of that being the case for every room isn’t high.” All of this rockets off his tongue, it makes her shudder a little. Not in disturbance or even interest, but fascination. “Just ask for mine. Twenty-three. It’s only three doors down from the staircase.”
And then he disappears, his mystery going with him. Before she can even ask for his name, or say thank you.
Her eyelids are begging to close under the motel’s flickery, unochrome lights, however they stay open as her mind dances through the past forty-five minutes.
The nameless man who she had no intention of speaking to until he offered her a cigarette at her stress, how he had listened (—slash eavesdropped) to her phone conversation with Merrilee and pointed her in the direction of a motel because he knew no planes would be taking off tomorrow anyway. It may have been the strangest experience she’s ever had. It’s gonna be one of the stories Merrilee would love to hear her retell over-and-over.
And Merrilee’s so intuitive, she might think Maysilee had encountered a ghost.
“Hello? You gonna keep me here all night?”
Maysilee snaps into the real world. Now staring down a wrinkle-faced woman with hair that had been bleached far too many times. “Excuse me?”
“I asked if you were gonna keep me here all night, Missus Money Bags.” It’s meant to be condescending, she could scope that out from a mile. A lot of older folks have spoken to her this way, and it’s a shame because all she sees when she looks at them is a reminder of the reward that will come to her eventually. She doesn’t fear it, doesn’t plan to slow down the process like how her co-workers back home are currently doing with needles and surgeries.
Maysilee only smiles, despite the woman’s nasty tone. Stepping forward and drumming her fingertips against the raggedy desk. “I will if you keep up with that attitude.”
The woman rolls her eyes, and flips her attention to the computer that sits at the same level of her abdomen. “You damned kids.” She says, typing furiously.
Now it’s Maysilee’s turn to sneer in annoyance. It seems the woman is already set on pissing her off, adding more fuel to her already fantastic Christmas Eve, so there’s no point in correcting her. It won’t matter. She’s too wrung out to think of another comeback anyway.
As she waits for her to finish whatever, she crosses her thick sleeves over her chest and glances out of the door’s spotted windows. Admittedly, trying to make out a figure within the snowfall.
“It’s forty bucks for your first night.”
God, this place isn’t even worth five. She digs in her purse, it’s slugged off her shoulder dozens of times at this point. Between landing in three different airports due to the storms and going through security, her spine feels crushed from leaning over so much to collect her belongings. The coins that slipped free, her mini perfume that shattered on impact…
Her wallet is fucking missing.
She digs until the bent bones of her fingers reach the padded bottom, the only things she finds are her checkbook, quarters and lipstick.
This is the worst day of her life.
What else could she do besides return to the airport and sob out of anger again? The answer was nothing—absolutely nothing.
“Where you headin’, Missus Money Bags?!”
It hurts so much to cry in the cold. It felt like nails were pooling down rather than tears. She’s sure she looks so hideous right now. And for someone who spends hours choosing the matching accessories that’ll correlate with her outfits, going back-and-forth between shoes, sitting on her porcelain sink so she can get her makeup just right with no smudges… it’s surprising, even to her, that she doesn’t care.
Maysilee jerks around the corner, and is midway to the airport when an outline almost stops her in her tracks.
It’s the nameless man again, leaning against one of the lamp posts that protrude royal orange rays, he’s got his leg propped up behind him, wrists resting on the knee of his washed-out jeans. Cigarette in between his fingers, fidgeting with something else in his pocket. Unaware of her presence yet again.
And also, yet again, she isn’t mad at that. Because she doesn’t think she can stomach telling him what had happened after he already walked her all the way out here.
Maysilee keeps her head angled to the concrete, maybe he won’t notice her. Her cheeks are burning like fire when she spots the reflection of his bud in her boot.
“What happened?”
He notices her.
She slows her steps only briefly. “Nothing.” She hisses, without looking back. And she can somehow feel he doesn’t believe her. That only makes her want to scream at him, so she does, stomping on her heel and whirling so fast she almost loses her balance: “I lost my wallet, okay?! Because the universe just wants me to hurl myself over a bridge! Why not add that to the mix after today? Why not?”
Her voice comes back to her in a reverb, and she sounds manic. But the man isn’t even phased, his brows pulled together only slightly. As if studying her. He may as well, she’s basically an open book at this point. And she’s so ashamed.
Tears are about to start flowing once more.
“Come on,” he says, nodding towards the motel’s parking lot.
Her arms rise and fall. “What? Didn’t you just hear me?” Her tone is wobbly as ever. She doesn’t think she’s heard herself sound like that since she was a stubborn little girl.
The man’s shoulders raise, though he seems as calm, as stoic, as a brick wall. “I’d like to help you.” He flicks his cigarette into the clumping snow, “if you want that.”
Maysilee doesn’t even blurt out anything. All she does is release a heavy, long huff, closing her eyes. And that must be enough to signal to the man that she says yes, because he’s already heading towards the motel by the time her eyelids reopen.
“You again.”
Wyatt bows his head quickly. “Me again.”
“What do you want?” The clerk’s foggy eyes drift to the still nameless woman behind him. “Why… is Missus Money Bags getting someone else to pay for her?”
He eyes her over his shoulder, and she appears to want to do quite literally anything else but talk. She must have been embarrassed, though Wyatt doesn’t really see why. Like many things it seemed, something flipped upside down on her. It was fine, it happened to everyone. Him, especially. Wyatt has used the “lost wallet” thing as an excuse many times.
Taking a step forward, he places his card on the counter to distract the crunchy-haired clerk from saying another thing about the damn money. “Same room, please. Twenty-three. Two nights.”
“You can’t just ask for a certain room,” she says, then fetches a pair of corroded keys on the back wall. “But whatever. You’re lucky business is slow on Christmas.”
Wyatt catches them when they’re thrown into his chest. Practically in the same motion, he leans to his right and outstretches them to the woman. But she doesn’t take them.
She’s been wiping the tear streaks off of her face. “Can you show me where it is?” She asks softly, “since you’ve… been here before?”
He hums in agreement, and something in her pupils change.
She follows him once again in a stable silence, yanking up her luggage as they climb the stairs. Wyatt gazes up at the snow as he reaches the top. Its intensity has certainly slowed, but it’s coming down in globs and man, is it cold. He’s sincerely dreading walking back to the airport to sleep, or maybe he’ll just sleep on that bench. Might die of hypothermia, but it’d be better than trying to close his eyes under those milky lights that made him twitch.
The recognizable sight of his past room slides into view, the golden numbers glimmer at him as he twists the key. After he pushes the door wide open, she takes them at last. They jingle as she playfully squeezes them.
She shimmies by him, shoves her luggage inside so it wheels off. He hears it hit the television stand, and he is washed over by nothing but confusion when she doesn’t trail behind.
She rotates leisurely on the balls of her heels to face him, and that look in her vibrant blue eyes is back. He’s never seen anything like it, but he thinks it’s something resemblant of relief; like she’s grateful he hasn’t left her yet.
At that, his stomach roils in a way that hurts. He has no clue how to handle someone looking at him like this.
“Thank you,” she says thoughtfully, and then, instantly afterward: “How can I repay you?”
“You don’t.” Wyatt tells her, head spinning. “I didn’t do that expecting you to give me something in return.”
She thinks this over, testing the taste of it in between her cheeks. “No one’s ever been this kind to me before.” She spits out, “just let me.”
He softens at that first bit, kindness hasn’t exactly been a thing he’s received regularly either. To him, it’s about as scarce as hen’s teeth. “You could tell me your name.”
She bats her eyelids a few times, the question brings some color to her face. “Maysilee.” She says without a stutter, “how about you?”
“Wyatt,” he sucked in sharply, getting a mix of both expensive perfume and outdoor musk through his nose. “Nice to finally put a name to your face.”
The lobes of her ears deepened into a shade of red that hadn’t come from the cold. “You, too.”
Now, there’s a prolonged stillness. One Wyatt always has trouble getting out of. “I should go.”
“To where?” She’s deflated all over again.
“The airport,” he breathes as he steps away gently. “It’s late. You should get your sleep.”
Wyatt doesn’t think she has anything else to add. He wouldn’t, if he’d gone through the hell Maysilee’d gone through in one single day. The fact that she’d spent so much time speaking to him just now was both shocking and concerning.
So, his legs start to carry him back to the top of the staircase where he’ll soon descend. His brain is already conjuring up memories of the once mysterious woman, with smeared-black eyelids and moonlight blonde hair. Maysilee, her name as fancy as her jewelry.
“Wait, wait, wait.”
Wyatt stops mid-step, wanting to shyly run a hand through his hair out of anxiousness as he now stares into her glint again. She’s removed herself from the room, the little braids of her hair flowing in the wind. It hadn’t even felt real; it was like he was standing in the midst of a movie. Or a dream.
“Just stay here.”
“What?”
“It’s the least I can do.”
He doesn’t even know what to say. His jaw clings shut in a way that insists it’s locked shut.
She doesn’t either, remaining silent for a moment too long. But unlike him, she brings herself back to life. “If I shouldn’t have to sleep in that airport, neither should you.” She argues, and uses her knuckles to push the door to its limit. The knob knocks into the wall. “Consider it a Christmas gift, or something. Even though you paid for it.” Her head snaps to the side. “Stubborn thing.”
A weak grin tugs on the corner of Wyatt’s mouth, he proceeds forward hesitantly. “Really?”
She nods before speaking. “I’d feel terrible letting you walk all the way back. So, yes.” It would be nice to finally take off his boots, he’d been daydreaming about kicking them off as soon as he got home. Arriving in his little place in the Vermont woods. Not gonna get that anytime within the next twenty-four hours. She pauses ahead of talking again. “Unless you, like, saw logs when you sleep.”
He shakes his head, chuckling for the first time in days. “No, no.” And Maysilee tiredly offers him a smile as he steps by her. “Only when I fake sleep.”