The man picked me up at the airport with a kidney stone, we checked into a hotel with a kidney stone, we fucked with a kidney stone, we went to TGI Fridays and ate potato skins and drank Moscow mules with a kidney stone.
Our room overlooked the ocean. The floor was wood-grained linoleum; there was a large black refrigerator. The bedsheets, towels, and pillowcases were navy blue, and the walls were powder blue. We pushed two chairs onto the balcony, rested our feet on the railing, and watched an American flag on the beach below, whipped stiff by the wind. A dry storm flickered and strobed the clouds over the Atlantic. The light was red and warm gray and then, for a long second, yellow white. We went to the lobby and asked for restaurant recommendations. Tuna Shak, Claw House, Dead Dog, Creek Ratz, Drunken Jack’s, Wahoos.
Then it was night, and he was on his hands and knees next to a fire truck in the hotel parking lot, retching, immobilized. An ambulance came, took us to the ER. I saw him charm the doctor; he made him laugh, almost flirting. He was like Obi-Wan. I went still when I heard him lie to the doctor about not seeing a urologist, about not getting a prescription for painkillers. He looked at me. “I saw you hear that.” They gave him fentanyl in the gurney and Percocet to go.
Back at the hotel the next day, I put on a green bathing suit and asked for the truth. He didn’t have a bathing suit so swam in his underwear. He didn’t use sunscreen, and his legs turned a bright, searing pink when he dozed off in a lounger in a Roxicodone stupor. When he woke up, he jumped into the water to cool off, then laid out the plan to meet me in two days. “We’ll take the overnight from Fayetteville, baby,” he said. “Just let me spend Father’s Day with my boys.” Then he drove home. I went for a long walk and saw that nothing lined up.
I bought a baby-blue Myrtle Beach T-shirt. A bottle of water. Walked back from the boardwalk. Nothing lined up, and nothing was right. I dug for any cigarettes he’d left in the room and any sedatives I had in my travel case. I counted the hours I would be alone in the hotel. I called friends and left messages. In the lobby, I ordered a margarita, then sat on a striped lounger, staring at the dark sand. Everything I’d willfully convinced myself of, despite my instincts, drained away from me. I spent the night with my eyes open.
In the morning, from the airport, I spoke to my therapist. She said: “I told you so.”