"Your Sick" by Kelly Magee and Carol Guess

~
. . .
          When I got to the hotel I tried to page you. I repeated your name over and over. No one at the hotel had ever heard of you. I paced the lobby, trying to decide what to do.
           I decided to eat dinner in the hotel restaurant. The waiter sat me near the kitchen, which bothered me until I realized I could see everyone in the room: suits and soldiers, families and prostitutes. At first I didn’t notice you in a chair by the window. Lipstick, and you’d dyed your hair. You were talking to a very beautiful woman. The wine was the wine you’d sent to my room.
           I finished my dinner. As I left the restaurant I dropped my check on your table and smiled at your date. You wore a nametag, but it wasn’t your name. You looked up at me and your eyes glazed with panic.
           Later that night you knocked on my door. Just to be sure it was you I called out your old name and your new name, both.
           It’s me, you said. I wasn’t sure which me you meant, which name to use, but it didn’t matter. You ran your fingers through my hair. You pressed me up against the sink and things happened which weren’t supposed to happen, now that we weren’t together. . . .
  
--From "Your Sick," a short story by Kelly Magee and Carol Guess, Anomalous, Issue 11, pp. 28-33.