The hall was short and the door was cheap, the kind of hollow-core thing that should have rattled in its frame. It didn't. It swung open smooth and silent, and Tyler stepped through into the back room of Cut-Rate Dental with his bare chest goose-pimpled and his jeans loose around his hips, and he stopped.
The room was smaller than the front office. Colder. The dental lamp was on, one stark beam of white light falling on a cracked vinyl chair that sat in the middle of the floor like a throne or an altar, and the smell hit him—cold antiseptic and hot dust, the same smell as the room where he'd woken up, but sharper here, closer. The chair was wrong. He knew it was wrong before he could say why. The vinyl was cracked, sure, but that wasn't it. The headrest was too high. The armrests were too wide. There were brackets on the sides of the seat where things could attach, metal loops that didn't belong on a dentist's chair, and a dark stain near the base that could have been anything.
Renata was standing at the steel table against the wall. She had the drill in her hand.
She wasn't startled. She wasn't surprised. Her green eyes were already on him, steady and waiting, like she'd heard his footsteps on the linoleum three rooms away and counted them. The drill caught the lamp's beam, a glint of chrome and something darker at the tip, and she held it there for a long moment while he stood in the doorway and didn't move.
"You found the back room," she said. Not a question.
"I heard—" He stopped. Swallowed. His voice came out rougher than he meant it to. "I heard a drill."
"Did you." She turned the drill over in her hand, slow, like she was checking the weight of it. "That's funny. I wasn't running it."
The words sat in the room between them. Tyler's thumb started tapping against his thigh, a nervous rhythm he couldn't stop. He was shirtless and beltless and his keys were in a coat pocket somewhere he couldn't reach, and the woman standing by the steel table had just told him she hadn't been running the drill that he'd heard.
"You're cold," she said. "Look at you. Goosebumps all the way down your arms."
He looked down at his own arms like he'd forgotten they were attached to him. "I don't have a shirt."
"I know." She set the drill down on the steel table—a deliberate click, metal on metal, final—and walked toward him. Slow. Unhurried. Her pastel scrubs swished softly with each step, and her ponytail swayed, and the silver necklace caught the lamp's light, and she smiled at him with her dimples showing like she was glad to see him.
He should have stepped back. He didn't.
She stopped close enough that he could smell the mint on her breath, and underneath it, something sweeter. Something warm. Something that made his mouth water even as his heart picked up speed.
"You must have questions," she said.
He did. He had so many questions. What happened to his shirt. What happened to his keys. What happened to the hours he couldn't remember, and the taste under his tongue, and the tooth in his mouth that felt smooth and strange and not his. What happened to the money. What was going to happen to him.
"I don't—" he started.
She took his face in both hands.
Her palms were warm. Soft. She tilted his head down toward her, and he let her, because he didn't know how not to, and she kissed him.
It wasn't a gentle kiss. It wasn't a first kiss. Her mouth opened against his and her tongue slid in, and Tyler made a sound he didn't recognize—a small, strangled thing—and his hands came up to her waist before he could think about it. She tasted like mint and something sweeter, something he couldn't name, and she kissed him deep, her tongue stroking against his, and his body responded before his brain could catch up.
Her hand dropped from his face. It trailed down his chest, his bare skin, his stomach, and then her palm pressed flat against the front of his jeans, and he was already hard.
He hadn't noticed it happen. That was the worst part. His body had just decided, without asking him, without consulting the part of him that was scared and confused and standing in a back room he shouldn't have been in. His cock pressed against the denim seam, thick and urgent, and Renata's hand found it through the fabric and pressed, and Tyler's hips bucked into her palm without his permission.
"There he is," she murmured against his mouth.
She stroked him through the jeans, slow, deliberate, her palm running down the length of him, feeling every inch of what her kiss had done. Tyler's hands tightened on her waist. He should stop this. He should ask her what was happening, what she wanted from him, what the drill had been doing in her hand. Instead he stood there with his mouth open and his breath coming short, and let her palm work him through the denim, pressing the hard line of his cock against the seam.
"You feel that?" she said. "That's what you do to me."
He didn't know what that meant. He didn't know what any of this meant. She pressed harder, and his cock throbbed against her hand, and he heard himself make a sound like a whimper.
"Shh," she said. "I know."
She kissed him again, softer this time, a gentler press of her lips against his, and her hand stayed where it was, cupping him through the denim, feeling the heat of him. When she pulled back, her eyes were half-lidded and her lips were pink and a little swollen, and she looked at him like she could see straight through his skin.
"You're hooked now," she whispered.
The words landed in his chest like a hook actually being set. He felt them. He felt the truth of them in the way his cock strained against his jeans, in the way his hands wouldn't let go of her waist, in the way he'd walked toward the sound of a drill instead of walking out the front door when he'd had the chance.
She kissed him once more, softer still, a promise or a goodbye, and then she stepped back.
His hands fell away from her waist. He felt the loss of her like a physical thing, a cold space where her warmth had been.
"Friday," she said.
It wasn't a question. It wasn't an invitation. It was a closed declaration, a fact, a date already written in blue ballpoint on a receipt he hadn't been given back.
She turned and walked toward the door, her ponytail swinging, her scrubs swishing, and Tyler stood in the middle of the back room with his cock hard against the seam of his jeans and his heart pounding in his chest and the dental lamp burning down on him, and he watched her go.
At the door she paused. She didn't turn around. She just stood there for a moment, her hand on the frame, and then she said, "The door locks behind you. Front door's deadbolted. You know how to let yourself out."
And then she was gone.
The door swung shut behind her with a soft click, and Tyler was alone in the back room with the cracked vinyl chair and the steel table and the drill sitting on it, cooling.
He stood there for a long time. His breath came slow and shallow, and his cock throbbed against his jeans, and he didn't reach down to adjust himself, didn't touch himself, didn't do anything but stand in the lamp's beam and try to remember how to think.
Friday.
He didn't know what day it was. He'd come in on a Tuesday with his rent due in six days and his tooth cracked open, and he'd woken up in a dark exam room with a receipt in his pocket that said Friday in blue ballpoint. He didn't know how many days had passed since then. He didn't know if Friday was tomorrow or the day after or a week away.
He only knew that Renata had kissed him and touched him and called him hooked, and that she'd said Friday like it was already written somewhere, like it was already true.
He looked at the chair.
The brackets on the sides of the seat. The headrest too high. The stain near the base that could have been anything. The vinyl cracked and cool, the kind of chair you'd strap someone to if you wanted to make sure they didn't move.
He didn't know why he thought that. He didn't know where the thought came from. But it sat in his chest like a weight, and he couldn't shake it.
The drill sat on the steel table, silent, its bit catching the lamp's beam. She'd said she wasn't running it. He'd heard a drill. He'd walked toward the sound, and he'd found her holding it, and she'd said she wasn't running it, and he hadn't asked who was.
He turned and walked out of the back room. The hall was short and the door was cheap, and the front office was dark and empty, and the fish tank hummed in the corner, and he walked past it to the front door and put his palm flat on the cold metal of it and looked out at his Corolla sitting alone under the light pole.
His keys were gone. His shirt was gone. His wallet was in his pocket with his cash still in it, and the receipt that said Friday was folded in his front pocket, and his phone was dead, and his car was locked, and the door was deadbolted from the inside.
He could unlock it. He could walk out. The deadbolt was turned the way he'd left it, and all he had to do was turn it back and push the door open and walk across the parking lot to his car and figure out some way to get in without keys.
He stood there with his palm flat on the metal, and he didn't turn the deadbolt.
He thought about Renata's mouth on his. Her palm pressing the hard line of his cock through his jeans. The way she'd said his name like she owned it. The way she'd said Friday like it was already behind her.
He thought about the brackets on the sides of the chair, and the stain near the base, and the drill cooling on the steel table.
His thumb tapped against his thigh.
He didn't turn the deadbolt.
He turned around and walked back down the hall, past the exam room where he'd woken up, past the room where Dr. Mack had ridden him, past the door to the back room that he'd just come out of. He stopped at the end of the hall, where a door he hadn't noticed before stood closed, dark, with a handle that looked older than the rest of the building.
He didn't open it.
He just stood there for a long moment, listening to the fish tank hum, and then he walked back to the front office and sat down in the waiting room chair and stared at the deadbolt on the front door.
Friday, she'd said.
He didn't know what day it was. But he knew he'd be here.