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I took the room. It was the right thing to do. She’d been in a towel with a stranger for half an hour; she deserved her room back.
The porter brought up a key for 417. Priya walked me to the door with the towel clutched to her chest.
“For the record,” she said, “you could have stayed.”
“For the record, I’m now regretting it.”
She laughed, kissed me quickly on the cheek and closed the door.
Room 417 was smaller, at the back, overlooking the bins. I showered, finally. I lay on the bed in the hotel robe, flicking channels, wide awake and replaying every second of the last half hour. The towel. The thigh. The way she’d looked at me over her glass.
At twenty to one there was a knock on my door.
Soft. Two taps. Then a voice I already knew.
“Liam? It’s Priya. I, um. You left your phone charger in my room.”
I looked at my phone, plugged into my own charger, sitting on the bedside table. Then I looked at the door.
“Also,” she said, quieter, “I might have used that as an excuse.”
I got up. My heart was going hard. Through the spyhole I could see her in the corridor, a hotel robe belted loosely over what was very obviously nothing at all, her hair down now, a charger cable dangling from one hand.
I had a choice. And I’d spent my whole life making the sensible one.