by Sierra Rose
“So this one fairy tale didn’t work out. Don’t worry. There will be more. Just don’t pretend to be dating the prince of the castle.”
“I’m an idiot!”
I sniffed self-righteously as thick trails of mascara started pouring down my cheeks. With the skill of a veteran, Amanda pulled out a tissue and wiped them clean.
“Th-thanks,” I choked, taking another swig from the bottle. “Well, then, he took me upstairs and—”
All at once, her face got disturbingly grave. “Bex, tell me he didn’t try anything.” Her eyes flashed before I could say a word, and she made this jerking movement like she was about to storm back right then and there and choke him with his necktie. “I should have known the little prick was up to something. I swear, if he even touched—”
I shook my head quickly back and forth. “No, no. We went up to this balcony, and we had some champagne. And it was really nice—” My voice cut off in a fit of sobbing, and she stared at me in a total loss. Finally, she pried the bottle from my sweaty hands and placed it firmly back on the table.
“Okay, Bex, you’ve got to work with me a little here. What happened that was so bad?”
I jutted up my chin. “I was just coming to that. We were toasting champagne, when all of a sudden he set down our glasses, and leaned in really close, and put his hands on my arms—and his hands were really hot, Mandi—and then he said, ‘I have a proposition for you.’”
I finished with a grand relish and picked up the bottle again. Her eyes flickered disapprovingly, but she made no move to stop me. In fact, she was on the edge of her seat.
“So…what was it?”
I realized with a start that I hadn’t for one second paused to consider that question.
“I…I don’t know,” I confessed shakily. “I kneed him in the groin and ran.”
Her mouth fell open as her expression lightened to one of complete amusement and utter exasperation all at the same time. “Bex…” Her eyebrows pulled up in the middle, and I couldn’t tell whether she was going to laugh or sigh.
“What?” I asked, severely unbalanced. “They say, I have a proposition for you,” inflected like the love child of Tony Montana and Jafar, “and that’s when we run, right?”
“Well…typically, yes.” She gave me that look she got when I was testing out a lipstick that I thought made me look “modern,” and she thought it made me look like a fish. “It’s just…you don’t really know what he was going to say—it could have been anything.”
I scoffed drunkenly. “Like what?”
“Like…how about we swear to never tell anyone about the massive lie we perpetuated tonight in front of all my guests and business associates?”
It seems plausible…but at this point, irrelevant.
“I already ran,” I reiterated with intoxicated simplicity. “And kicked him…”
She snorted and grabbed the bottle from my hand, taking a massive swig herself. “Yeah, of course, you also had to kick him. The host of the party. Marcus freaking Taylor.”
“Yeah, what the hell kind of pretentious name is that?” I made a grab for the tequila, but she held on, looking at me doubtfully.
“Oh come on—you have to have heard of him.”
I thought about it. “Not until today. I’ve heard of…Bard Taylor.”
“That’s his father. He died last year.”
Whether it was the influence of the booze or just my over-emotional state, I found this profoundly sad. I thought back to the huge otherwise empty house, the endless grounds, and suddenly wondered if he found them as lonely as I would.
“Oh.”
She looked up sharply at my abrupt change of tone. “No, no. I know that face.” She got to her feet as I stared up at her obliviously.
“What face?”
“You’re sinking into swamps of sadness.”
I screwed up my forehead. “I am not.”
“The chasm of regret and despair.”
“Are these actual places to you? Do you go to these places when I’m not here?”
She took my wrists and pulled me to my feet. “Come on, shower, then bed. You’ve had quite enough excitement for one night.”
I swayed slightly as she capped the bottle. “Don’t limit me. You can never have too much excitement.”
She patted me sympathetically on the cheek. “You have a delicate system when it comes to these sorts of things. Now, come on. Into the shower.”
My eyes grew abruptly heavy with fatigue, and I glanced longingly at my room. “No, bed first. I’ll shower in the morning.”
She gave me a calculating stare. “If you breathe in all those chemicals in your hair overnight, it’ll give your kids gills.”
My eyes widened for a moment at the wondrous possibilities. Then I decided she was right and trudged off obediently to the bathroom. I flicked on the water and stared into the mirror as it slowly clouded with steam. A pale, teary face stared back at me. Following a weird compulsion, I forced my features into a watery smile.
I did have an amazing time tonight. Scary, breathless, precarious, amazing. Everything traumatizing was due one hundred percent to me. And everything good was due one hundred percent to Marcus.
I remembered the look on his face as he tossed me up into the air. A carefree delight that grew heated when he lowered me slowly to the floor.
A belated shiver ran up my calves, and I suddenly wondered if Amanda was right. Did my “single girl in the big city” programming kick in too fast and I jumped the gun?
What was he going to propose? Would I forever be haunted by the question?
A thick cloud of steam wafted over the glass, and the girl vanished from sight. My shoulders fell with a little sigh as I climbed into the warm water. No point in wondering about that now. The boy, the girl, the night of fantastical impossibilities…all that was over.
It was time to wake up.
Chapter 8
“It’s time to wake up!”
I opened my eyes to see a strange creature hovering over me. Half of Amanda’s hair was set in foam curlers while the other half hung limply to the side. In one hand, she held a long wooden spoon dripping with runny eggs, and in the other she brandished my alarm clock.
“You are going to be late again. You silly, irresponsible girl. You are going to be late.”
It sounded tired. I wondered how long it had been chanting.
She smacked it silent, a manic look on her face. “Guess what, dumbass, you’re late for work.”
“You definitely have anger management issues, missy,” I said.
She glared. “Get up! C’mon. You need to get out of here!”
I dodged a droplet of yolk, not quite understanding her frenzy as I rolled to my feet. “You know, you’re supposed to cook that. Not just carry it around with you.”
“Oh, thank you, genius. Well, I would be cooking it if you hadn’t overslept and forced me to abandon my post.” She scurried down the hall to the kitchen. “Barry’s coming for breakfast.”
Barry. The latest in a series of one-woman emasculations by Amanda Gates.
I pulled on my scrubs with a frown. “I thought that was one of those things you offered to be charming but it was never actually going to happen.”
“That’s what I thought too.” She sounded furious. “But lo and behold, I get a call this morning, and guess who’s on his way over?”
“Barry?” I asked wisely.
“Oh, get out.” She kicked at me with a slippered shoe as I grabbed for a yogurt on my way past the kitchen. Missed! I’d have to swoop around for another pass.
“Oh—and don’t forget to take our car. You need to drop it off at the shop at lunch to have it ready by the time you get out.”
Our car. That was generous of her. It was her car. Her car that her parents had gotten her, but she promptly deemed as ours. In the first two weeks, we’d trashed it like teenagers, filling it with music, candles, food, makeup, clothes—basically every bit of junk you could
imagine. Now it was running on fumes. Little bits of it spitefully falling away a week at a time. Good news was, I supposed we could realistically live off what was inside if we ever got desperate.
“Yeah.” I yanked on my shoes, making another grab for the yogurt. “What’s wrong with it again?”
“I don’t know.” She waved a hand dismissively and returned to her smoking eggs. “It’s the timing belt, the ignition fuse, the spark plugs—one of those. Whatever it was the nuns stole in The Sound of Music.”
“Got it.” I rolled my eyes. “That’s what I’ll tell them.”
I was halfway out the door when she whirled around, flinging curlers and bits of egg everywhere. “Bex?” she called. “What…what do you think he’ll think of me?”
My eyes swept the chaotic room and landed on my panicked friend. “He’s going to think you’re a multi-tasker.” I heard something hit the other side of the door as I hastily pulled it closed. “That’s a good thing!”
Still chuckling at my cleverness, I opened the top of my hard-earned yogurt only to realize I’d forgotten a spoon.
“Miss White.”
I froze with one foot still in the air—a cartoonish image of guilt.
Teller Hamburg (real name), aka my landlord, strolled casually out of his office on the second floor. His pointy little rat face was the portrait of “unassuming,” but I was sure he had been waiting in there for me.
“Miss White,” he smiled greasily, eyes sweeping me as he got closer. “I’ve been trying to get hold of you for days, but we keep missing each other.”
“Imagine that,” I murmured, hugging the wall as I tried to inch past him.
With a flourish I could tell he’d practiced, he pulled out a weighted sheet of faded cream paper and dropped it into my hands. I brought it to my nose for an automatic sniff.
“Is this parchment?”
“It’s your eviction notice.”
My mouth fell open as I scanned quickly through the document. Sure enough, due to a month and a half of back rent and “blatant impertinence,” I was being asked to leave. My face reddened as I stuffed the notice angrily into my purse.
“Blatant impertinence?” My eyebrows rose dangerously.
Hamburg smiled. “Legally, I can’t throw you out for that. But as long as I had you on the back rent, I saw no need why I shouldn’t slip it in there as well.”
“This is just for me. What about Amanda?” I demanded. “We share the apartment; you can’t just kick one of us out!”
“Miss Gates has never once been late with her rent check. It’s only you, Miss White.” He took a step closer, eyes widening ominously. “All alone.”
I shoved him back with a distasteful grimace. In my first week of living here, I’d politely declined a dinner invitation. Ever since, it had been a full-on Cold War.
“Don’t worry,” he grinned. “I’m sure you can live in that piece of shit car of yours.”
Don’t think I haven’t thought of that.
I smiled sarcastically and pushed past him down the stairs. “I’ll deal with this later. Some of us have actual jobs to get to. You know…not just creeping in the halls waiting for—”
The door slammed shut, and my voice trailed off. It was for the best. I was running out of things to say anyway. The eviction notice burned heavy in my heart as I trudged across the lot to the car. How was I going to magic this away? How was I going to come up with two months’ rent in ten days? Amanda could ask her parents to help me, sure, but I didn’t want to take money from them. Then again, half of my paycheck this month was already going to fix this damn car.
I yanked open the door and slid inside—closing my eyes and leaning back hard against the cracked leather seat. It smelled like curdled coffee and putrid french fries. Perfect.
Well…I’d just have to think of something. I always did.
I tossed the open yogurt in the back and held my breath as I turned the keys, praying that Amanda had been wrong and the “broken thing” was not the ignition fuse.
***
They puked on me at work. They laughed at me at the car shop. And after seven hours of staring at my eviction notice, I was beginning to think that even the cosmic forces were having a bit of a chuckle.
Having had my lunch hijacked by what turned out to be a leaking coolant system, I was absolutely starving by the time I finally pulled into the lot back at my apartment. I hopped out of the car with kitchen tunnel-vision, hoping there was still some leftover Chinese I could heat up before heading out to my open casting in thirty minutes. Amanda was no doubt already there, saving our place in line. Either that or her breakfast date with Barry had gone better than expected, and I was about to get evicted from my apartment twice in one day.
I was so wrapped up in these thoughts; I didn’t even notice the dark outline of the man until it was clear he was following me. My breath caught in my chest as my hands snaked down into my purse. I was too far from the apartment door to run for help. Too far from my car to double back again. My heartbeat thundered. Okay, I had to admit, I was scared shitless!
This cannot be happening. You have to be getting this wrong.
But the man obviously had me in his sights. I walked as quickly as possible without breaking into a run, but still he was gaining on me.
Take a breath. You’ve rehearsed this a million times in your head. You know what to do.
I slowly, deeply filled my lungs—keeping my eyes on something steady. The echoing footsteps grew louder, but it wasn’t until I could actually feel the warmth of the person behind me that I pulled out my pepper spray and opened fire.
…right into Marcus Taylor’s eyes.
Chapter 9
“For goodness’ sake!”
His hands flew up to his eyes. My hands flew up to my mouth. What did I just do? I wasn’t super close so he didn’t get the full blast, thank goodness. I don’t think that much got into his eyes, but enough to sting some.
Shit! I’m an idiot! “I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!”
He stumbled a few steps back, clutching at his face.
“I thought you were an attacker!” I dropped the pepper spray.
“You’re the attacker! I’ve never met anyone with such a violent streak!”
He pressed his fists into his eyes and cursed. Despite my guilty panic, and despite the fact that I had no idea how he’d found me here at my apartment, I resisted the urge to bolt. He was obviously hurt, and I couldn’t just stand there. My medical training kicked in, and I gently tried to pry loose his hands. “Here, just let me see.”
“Take your hands off me, Rebecca!”
Guess he wasn’t thinking my name was so beautiful now.
“I’m trying to help—I’m a nursing assistant.”
“I’m familiar with the Westwood facility. I’ve seen you there before.”
It seemed like a simple enough answer, but in fact, it raised a hell of a lot more questions.
I leaned back on my heels. “And how did you know I work there?”
“I saw you there last month. Remember the big meeting and all that Chinese takeout?”
“All those suits? Yeah, I remember.”
“Well, I was there. I saw you pushing an elderly lady who was crying. You were hugging her and consoling her, and I thought it was so moving. It really touched my heart. It was genuine and sincere.”
“Her husband had just passed away. My heart went out to her.”
“You were very compassionate.”
“I bet you’re not thinking that so much now.”
He laughed.
I led him blindly to the curb by my car and calmly lowered him down so we were both sitting. Once he was relatively subdued, I hastily rummaged through the backseat, emerging a moment later with a clean shirt and a bottle of Aquafina.
“Here,” I offered, soaking the hem and gently tugging on his wrists. He resisted for a moment, but finally lowered them—letting me dab the skin around his eyes. After a few seconds, the co
rner of his mouth twitched. I kept dabbing the skin until the inexplicable smile was too much to ignore. “What could possibly be funny right now?”
“It’s just a dangerous precedent we’re setting, that’s all.”
I couldn’t help but grin myself. “Not for me, apparently. Just for you.”
“Just wait,” he warned, “your time is coming.”
I tugged a little harder than necessary on his hair as I tilted his head back. “Now try to keep your eyes open,” I advised. “We want to rinse off as much of this as possible.”
With exceedingly delicate hands, I tilted his head back still farther and poured the remnants of the bottle up over his face. Little trickles snaked through his hair, streaking it silver in the light before pooling in incriminating circles on the sidewalk.
He’d shut his eyes almost immediately, but pried them open when I was finished, looking at me for bloodshot approval. “Well?”
“You survived,” I said. “In my professional opinion, you’re going to be just fine. You’re lucky I sprayed from a distance. It could’ve been much worse. And I really want to apologize again. I’m so sorry I got spooked. I will definitely have to buy you a cup of coffee. But not now because I’m running late.”
I had thought about Marcus Taylor a lot since we had first met in that coffee shop. But after he propositioned me, I didn’t have the same respect for him. I wasn’t some whore. But after Macing him, the least I could do was buy the guy a cup of coffee. I owed him that much.
“Is this what I have to do to get you to buy me a cup of coffee?” he said in a joking tone.
I smiled. “I guess the other guy at the coffee shop had it much easier.”
He made a disgruntled huffing sound, somewhere between a snort and a scoff. “I’m sorry I’m making you late.”
“It’s fine.”
He took a breath to slow the quick back and forth before it got out of hand. “I came here to apologize, firstly, for startling you at my party. I’m sorry if you got the wrong impression.”
I said nothing, chewing nervously on my lower lip.