Holiday Stockings
Christmas Eve. Rain washed the windows in formless patterns, obscuring the motel’s parking lot. Behind the counter, the manager handed David a room key. “You’re, like, our only guest,” she said with a smile as fake as the tree in the lobby’s corner. She was too old to say like. “Sucks to travel by yourself at Christmas.”
With a fake smile of his own, David palmed the key and left. Around the back of the motel he noticed another car in the lot—guess he wasn’t the only one, after all. But the manager was right, holiday travel did suck. His partner Thomas had never come to terms with the time David spent on the road. Ex-partner, David reminded himself as he sprinted from his car to his door. Thomas’s last words summed it up: “I can’t love a man who’s never home.”
At the
