Road-Trippers

Ten: Now I'm Here

"Well, guys. Look at us."

Fist underneath my chin, looking down into my Shirley Temple, back up at the crew. Lucy laughs, covering her lips with her fingers. Levi looks over at me and chuckles, shrugging. I take a sip of my straw one last time before standing up on my chair.

"That wasn't alcoholic, was it?" whisper-asks Levi to Lucy, who laughs again, taking a glance over at Emmett and Antione playing in the pool.

"I don't think s- Joey! Get down!"

I look down at my fellow road-trippers, all dressed up in their swimsuits, and smile. "Fine. I'm not the kind of guy that gives brilliant speeches to millions of people." Everyone peers at me, sardonically, and I bury my tired mien in my arms, smirking lightly.

As I raise my eyes from the peach-blurriness that is my arm, I sigh at the one thing I can see- the suit-wearing man standing in front of me. Glasses, brown eyes, skinny.

"Do I know you from somewhere?"

"I have very common facial expressions," replies whichever D-brother this is. He folds his arms across his clipboard, pupils warmly gazing over our party. "I'll be your waiter. Oh-" He snaps a metallic name tag onto his pressed button-up. Dom.

Lucy crosses her arms atop the distorted glass tabletop, away from her damp swimsuit. The plastic straw in her drink sways to the side as she says, "Dom. Funny. I thought you'd be a Daniel or a David. Maybe a Dustin or a Dylan."

"I see you've met my brothers," says Dom with a nod, peeking down at his sandals.

"Just for future reference, how many more should we expect?" asks Emmett from the pool, folding his arms over the pool railing, sopping with chlorine. He twists his small figure over the edge of the 8-foot mark, striped swimsuit dripping with pool water.

Dom bites his lip and looks up at the clouds, internally counting, I would assume. "Um... I always lose track. At least two, I think. We grew up in different houses, different states, but Ancestry DNA brought us together."

We all ineptly bob our heads, waves of water falling to the backs of those who have swum. "That website works miracles," chuckles Emmett with a guileless shrug, wrapping himself in a course blue hotel towel. The silence is interrupted by Antione belly-flopping in the pool for the first time, over the moon.

"Well," says Dom elongated, shifting his weight onto his left foot, back to his right. "Enjoy your stay. If you need anything, then just holler."

"Thank you," says Lucy with an uncomfortable giggle. "We'll be sure to." Dom walks off, smiling over at Antione from the walkway around the pool. After he's gone, Lucy looks me and then Levi straight in the eyes and whispers, "I'm freaked out. We should really find our room." I nod, and together we pry Antione out of the pool in the direction of our room.

646.

I look up from the keycard. "I don't see why it doesn't work."

"Maybe you're swiping it wrong." Levi takes the card from my fingers and slides it through the scanner, instantly lighting up the window at the top of the inky box. Red.

Emmett takes the card from the scanner and wipes it off with the corner of his finally dry towel. "Maybe you just have to-" Denied. "-dammit." He wipes off his face with the second corner of the towel, sniffing the pungent chlorine up his nostrils as he looks up to the ceiling.

"We should ask Dom-"

"We are not asking Dom," I snap at Antione, whose lenses are shielded by a thin wall of moisture and mist. He has swabbed little windows for his pupils with his pinky finger, which makes him appear a monster. I interrupt the newfound silence with a short whisper. "I'm starting to think there is no David or Daniel or Dustin or-"