"NO REFUNDS"

Heather, my fiancé, drove us through upstate New York. I sat in the passenger seat, my head pressed against the window.  We passed through one rundown town after another and I was loving how sleazy and quiet they looked.

It started to snow.

As we climbed the Appalachians, the snow intensified.

“It’s fine,” Heather kept saying. “We got this.”

My anxiety kicked in. I was sure we were going to crash and be stuck in an endless blizzard. Soon we would have to start drinking each other’s pee. And not in a fun kinky way.

I tried to convince Heather to pull over at a motel. She refused. I didn’t like that. I tried to hold in my anger. I’ve never been good at holding things in.

“This isn’t fair!” I shouted. “You can’t just force a man to risk his life like this.”

“It’s not that bad out,” she said. “Relax. We are doing fine.”

“This is just like how you forced me to live in Portland.”

“What the hell are you even talking about? What does that have to do with anything? You are so dramatic.”

“I knew living in that hipster hellhole was going to be a bad idea. My instincts told me I would be miserable there, but you made me live there anyway. Now my instincts are telling me that if we continue to drive in this weather, it’s going to be a mistake. And just like with Portland, you are going to make me go against my instincts. I have good instincts, but you always try to get me to go against them.”

“Well, we don’t live in Portland anymore. We’re moving, so you can stop complaining now.”

“Yeah, we finally got out there and now we’ll probably get caught in this storm and end up freezing to death.”

“Fine, you want me to pull over. Well, we aren’t near a motel anymore we might as well keep going.”

“No, I’m fine.”

“I thought you said you wanted to pull over.”

“Fuck it,” I said. “We’ve made it this far, we might as well keep on going.”

We drove on. Snow covered the road. I felt like we were bobsledding.

After an hour of this hell ride we reached Watertown, where our old college friend, Jonell lived. I didn’t want to deal with Jonell’s cats so I had us get a motel for the night. I got us a room at the Budget Inn.

I should have known by the card board sign that read “no refunds,” that his would be a bad idea. But I was sick of the snow, my nerves were shot, and I just wanted a room somewhere.

The room looked fine, at first. But then we noticed that someone had been using the shower as an ash tray and that the bed had been mutilated with cigarette burns. There were none of those cheesy,comforting, paintings on the wall. The only decoration was a glow in the dark cross that was held up by yarn and a thumb tack.  

“It’s nice enough,” Heather said. “It probably only cost thirty bucks right?”

“No, seventy.”

“Oh boy.”

We drove to Jonell’s. It was great to see her. Her home was cozy. I wished I had decided to brave the cat dander. I didn’t want to go back to the Budget Inn. An image of that sign kept flashing through my mind. NO REFUNDS. I had to stay there or I had wasted seventy dollars. I tried to just drink some of my friends wine and not think about it.

Jonell looked good. She had gotten curvy. This made her self-conscious but I thought she had risen on the boner scale considerably. Her hips and boobs and butt and even her belly looked twice as good as they had in college. She still had those long, smooshy lips though. And she still had those watery stoner eyes.  

We reminisced about school and gossiped. All three of us missed college in Vermont and had thought about moving back.

 The girls smoked weed and I drank the majority of the wine. It felt like old days.

I started pestering Jonell, begging her to show me her boobs. I made sure to do it quietly though. She still lived with her parents.  I’m sure they didn’t want to hear some fat bearded animal trying to check out their daughters naked ninnies. By the end of the night I even tried to bite them. She laughed.

“Oh Grimbol, you haven’t changed.”

“Yes I have,” I said. “It’s been so long since I have asked a friend to show me their boobs.”

“That’s not true.” Heather said, laughing. “You asked Laura to show you her butt last weekend.”

“I know but I never feel fully comfortable doing it. People get so annoyed when I ask them pull them out. Jonell doesn’t seem annoyed at all.”

“I miss you guys.”

We left at midnight. Jonell had to work in morning.

I didn’t sleep well. I kept hearing people in the parking lot. They sounded drunk. I didn’t know whether I should join them and keep partying or whether I should worry about them breaking into our minivan and stealing all of our shit.

I held the minivan key close to my chest. Occasionally I pressed the lock button. It would make the minivans beep and flash its lights. I hoped this would scare away the parking lot goblins.