by A. L. Woods
Well, y’know.
Not that my sisters took any issue with the spread. Beggars couldn’t be choosers.
I’d given all three of them a set of sweatpants and T-shirts that fit their respective frames differently. They looked less awkward on Maria, who was only a few inches shorter than me, though they still draped over her lithe frame. Livy had rolled up the legs of the sweatpants, so they looked more like capris trapped at her toned legs. As for Trina, she’d almost gotten lost in the fabric. She was the shortest of my sisters, closer to my ma in stature. Neither of them could have been over five-foot-one. Still, the clothes were comfortable and dry. Livy and Trina were twined together on the couch, Trina playing big spoon.
Despite how often they bickered and fought with each other, they were undeniably thick as thieves. No one could dispute their connection.
“I can’t believe they fell asleep,” I muttered, shaking my head at them.
Maria followed my eyes, a small smile lifting the corner of her mouth. “Trina hasn’t been sleeping much lately, and Livy never misses an opportunity for a nap.”
I didn’t reply, fighting that smarting of responsibility that sparked in my chest like a match. It was one thing for me not to be sleeping; it was an entirely different issue when it was impacting my kid sister, too.
“Do you know where she is?” Maria asked, her focus returning to the television screen. We’d settled in the living room, the glass-enclosed flames from the gas fireplace setting off a warm glow against her skin.
“She being…” my breath caught in my chest. “Raquel?”
Maria played with the string of the tea bag in her mug, her head bobbing with a nod.
Did I know where she was? As of two weeks ago, I did. I’d nearly broken Dougie’s arm when I’d asked him for an update and he tried to skirt around it. Something about promising her he wouldn’t say anything.
Hadn’t he learned that promises meant nothing to our friend group?
She’d gone to the one place she’d spoken of months ago at O’Malley’s when she felt abandoned and alone, about her vision—her grand plan to get away from it all alongside Penelope. She was in the Golden State.
I swept my tongue over my teeth before I spoke, my mouth growing dry. “California.”
Surprise painted Maria’s face and vanished as quickly as it arrived. “I see,” she murmured, gaze still transfixed on the screen. I found myself outnumbered on the movie pick. We were watching Twilight. Sparkly wholesome vampires and a love-struck teenaged girl whose desperation rivaled my own.
The look appeared less ridiculous on a teenage girl compared to a grown-ass man.
“Have you thought about going to see her in person?” she asked, setting her mug down on the coffee table.
I whipped my head in my sister’s direction, but she didn’t look at me. “I really thought you’d be overjoyed that things had ended between her and me.”
That pulled her eyes from the screen. Her lips pursed, brows dipping inward. “Look, I don’t watch Hallmark movies, but I believe in love as much as the next person.”
“Oh, yeah?” I said skeptically, searching her expression for an inkling of a clue. “With the guy you referred to in the bathroom?”
She kept her classical features unreadable. “Not the point.”
“What is the point, then?”
“If you love her, regardless of what anyone else thinks or feels, you’ll keep fighting for her until you’ve exhausted yourself.”
My heart quickened in my chest. “What are you getting at?”
She cleared her throat, tipping her head back against the couch. “You should speak to her face-to-face. Enough time has passed.”
“Maria, I can’t just show up there.” As much as I wanted to, I didn’t think that would be well-received. Still, the suggestion fed the seed of hope that existed inside me. The part of myself that still wished things could be different.
“Why not?” She looked at me seriously. “Why can’t you go after the woman you’re destroying bathrooms over? The woman that made you refuse to talk to your family?”
“I didn’t do any of those things because of her.”
“Oh?” Her left brow ticked an inch north. “So, you just renovated out of nowhere? You ignored us for almost two months because this is your idea of fun?”
I blew out a breath. “No, I guess not.”
Maria folded her legs underneath her, giving me a stern look. “Sean, love is…messy.” She tucked her hair behind her ears. “It’s inconvenient, and it’s hard, and sometimes it feels like it’s better to let go. But even if I said those things to you, if I told you to pick yourself up off the floor and move on? I don’t think you’d listen. You’re still unconditionally and irrevocably in love with her.”
“Did you just quote Twilight?”
“Shut up,” she warned, lips tilting to the right. “It’s not my fault it fit the situation.”
I cracked a half-smile as I fought to ignore the deafening drumming of my heart in my chest. “But I’m not a teenage girl.”
“Right. We’ll pretend that demolishing your bathroom is behavior emulative of a sane adult,” she intoned with a roll of her eyes. I tossed a pillow at her, but she caught it with an unbecoming grace that was annoying at times. Maria lived her life by what she could fit into compartmentalized boxes. If it didn’t fit, she removed it.
So why was she being so amenable? Why was she suddenly Team Raquel?
“What is with you? Seriously. Who was he?” I observed my sister, wishing like hell I could get just a glimpse into her world for a minute—but it was like she chose that exact moment to dial up the austerity on her exterior.
“Focus,” she said, snapping her fingers at me. “I’m trying to help you conspire so you can get the girl back with an epic grand gesture.”
“Showing up unannounced will not do it for her, trust me,” I said, threading my fingers through my unkempt hair. “She’s not impressed by grand gestures.”
“If you show up looking like a vagabond, it won’t,” she quipped, her lips folding into a tight line. “You could afford a shave and a serious haircut.”
I touched my beard gingerly. It had gotten out of sorts by my standards. I didn’t want to pay attention to the seed of hope that she planted in my mind. So, before it could grow and get out of control, I pruned it back with shears. “This isn’t a movie, Maria. This is my life. Showing up there is out of the question.”
“Coward.”
My shoulders punched to my ears, my eyes narrowing at her. She was calling me a coward?
“You won’t tell me who the guy was that got you all messed up, and I’m the coward?”
“I am a coward, yes. And because of my cowardice, the guy in my story found the woman he was meant to be with, and that woman wasn’t me,” Maria replied, her jaw working back and forth. Her fingers dug into the throw pillow I’d tossed her way that she now held pressed against her chest. “I let him go because I believed we weren’t a fit. That we were too different. That he wasn’t…” she inhaled sharply through her nose, concentrating on the ceiling, “…enough.”
Who the hell was this guy?
“I got in my own way, and I have to live with that regret for the rest of my life.” She leveled her stare at me. The austerity was long gone, and in its place, an unfamiliar sadness. I saw the ghosts of her regret spinning around her like dark shadows, her eyes tracing each one before she regarded me. “Don’t make the same mistakes that I did, Sean. It’s lonely on this side.”
I swallowed, her warning marinating over me. “How do I do this?”
Maria spoke, and I listened. I held on to every single word until I could conjure up an unspoken plan in my mind that I felt might just work.
CHAPTER TEN
I woke up to see a woman standing at the foot of my bed. At first, I thought it was a combination of too many consecutive hangovers and the horror movie I’d fallen asleep to playing tricks on me.
But when the woman ripped the blanket from me and started barking orders at me in another language, I knew this was as real as the pounding in my head.
Her lips moved, and words came out, but I didn’t understand a lick of it. There was something familiar about her inflection, but I couldn’t place the language.
Not that that was my priority right now.
Rubbing the sleep from my eyes, my features formed a pained grimace. “Lady, can you fucking read?” I snarled. “The sign on the door says ‘do not disturb.’”
Seriously, I’d gone almost two solid months sans a single interruption—why now, was I being bothered by this pain in the ass?
She didn’t give a flying fuck. “Dirty. Look at your hair,” she hissed, again in another language, waving a hand at me. She sniffed the air, her pudgy features crumpling. “It stinks in here.”
Well, I didn’t require a translator to figure out that part of what she was saying. Something we could bond over if I gave a fuck. I just wanted this broad out of my room.
She clapped her hands together, stomping her foot. “Let’s go! Get up!”
“What the fuck?” I pushed myself up on my elbows, my head screaming in protest. Motherfucker. This headache was wicked; I felt like I’d impaled myself with a pickaxe. “Get out of here!”
The woman just prattled off at an offensive volume, shaking her finger at me. She stormed away; the door loudly closing behind her, only to return seconds later, wheeling in a squeaking cart full of towels, cleaning products and God knew whatever else. She settled in the middle of the room, shooting me a look of hell and pointing toward the bathroom.
“You. Go shower. You stink.”
I cocked an eyebrow at her, surprised by the transition into a language we could both understand.
“So, you do speak English?”
She kissed her teeth at me, leaning forward to pop the corner of the bed linens from the mattress. She apparently gave zero fucks that I was still in the bed, and I didn’t trust her to not attempt to shove me into the laundry hamper affixed to the cleaning cart right along with the linens.
Scrambling from the bed, I observed as she ripped the blanket and sheets clean from the mattress, the pillowcases following suit. She was muttering to herself, stomping around the room like she owned the place. She stopped only to stare at me and demand, “What you waiting for?” She kicked her chin at me. “Vai, vai! Go wash yourself!”
How old was I again?
“Who the hell are you?” She reminded me of someone, yet I couldn’t place it. She was short and corpulent in the middle, the light blue cleaning attire a tight fit around her waist. A checkered kerchief held her curly black hair back, glasses catching on the bridge of her equally short and stumpy nose. She appraised me behind her bifocals with careful consideration before she hmphed and stomped toward the window, ripping the blackout curtains open.
The hot and blinding bright sun shone through, spearing me directly in the eyes. I hissed out a wince, throwing my hand over my eyes. “Jesus Christ, lady.” This must have been what vampires would experience if they were real.
“You,” she snarled. “You no talk about Jesus like that.”
As my eyes adjusted, I could make out the name on her shiny badge.
“Rosa,” I said, my tone sour. “I am the guest here. You are the annoying cleaning lady. Get out.”
That pissed her off. I might as well have just waved a red flag in her face like a matador, ’cause this bitch suddenly turned into a bull in a china shop.
She hit me.
Now, I’m not talking about decking me, although in theory that might have been better for my triggered self. No, she picked up the feather duster in her cart and whacked my hip with the handle with zero remorse and perfect execution.
“Ow!” I shrieked with surprise, placing a firm hand against the pulse that had formed there.
I had two thoughts at that moment, the first being that I was going to kill her. I was not about to get beaten by some lunatic maid with a feather duster in a motel room I was paying to stay in. Two, this bitch made it abundantly apparent that while I’d killed a fuck ton of brain cells since I’d gotten out here, I hadn’t completely lost my mind. You know what they call that? Growth.
Ruthless Rosa moved to clip me again, but I interceded, catching the handle this time with my open palm. I met her eyes when my fingers curled around it, jerking her forward a little. “Hit me again and I’m going to shove this thing so far up your ass it’s going to come out of your mouth, do you understand me?” I released my hold on the handle, shooting her a look of warning when I staggered away from her.
There was something nebulous in the way she watched me. I didn’t know what thoughts were germinating in her mind, but she held my stare. Plotting, no doubt.
“Go shower,” she repeated, pushing by me to run the feather duster over the television stand.
“What part are you not understanding—”
She spun around and struck me on the ass. Heat rushed up the length of my neck, my blood pressure ticking. I didn’t know what singed worse, my ego that she was stomping over with the soles of her worn sneakers, or the streak of pain that was radiating through my backside in a lethal combination with my emotions.
“Motherfucker,” I snarled. “I will kill you!”
Rosa looked delighted by my reaction, which was a solid ten on the histrionic meter. Her exaltation left me with the clear impression that she was the unhinged one in this room, not me.
“You are a lunatic.” Someone needed to commit her to a facility for the deranged. Hell, I’d fasten her straitjacket for her.
“And you…” she said, pinching her nostrils with the hand not wielding her weapon of choice, “…stink.” Satisfied, Rosa shoved the duster back into a holster on the cart, picked up a stack of folded towels, and grabbed a bar of boxed soap.
When she stepped closer to me, I leaped back. Bitch was crazy if she thought I was going to let her get too close to me. I didn’t trust her not to deck me. That pear-set diamond-encrusted amethyst on her left ring finger could inflict some serious damage.
She huffed out a sigh, closing in on me, holding the towels and soap outstretched.
“Go,” she said, shooing me. “I’m going to open the windows.”
Like I said—deranged.
Regardless of if I wanted to or not, I did as she said. I didn’t trust her to not try to beat me into submission with a bottle of cleaning product and then suck up my remains in a vacuum cleaner.
But I was sure to lock the bathroom door behind me.
Ruthless Rosa could haul ass in thirty minutes, let me tell ya.
I’d forgotten that motel rooms could look this clean. Steam escaped the bathroom when I swung open the door, one towel wrapped around my hair and another around my frame. The room was spotless—the stains scrubbed out of the floor, the bed made, the surfaces dust-free. My disorganized piles of mess were now sorted and organized, clothes folded neatly and stacked.
What got my attention, though, was the sealed package of paper near the typewriter I had ditched on the desk. My throat constricted as I tiptoed toward it. I hadn’t touched the antique since I unpacked it the day I arrived.
I gasped as suddenly, the lock on the front door released and the crazy nut job was back in my room, toting a lunch bag.
“I have food.”
My brow arched north. That was unnecessary. “I’ve got food.” I had access to some of the greatest dining establishments in this great nation. Jack in the Box, Taco Hell, Starbucks, McDicks, you name it, they’d all been efficient emetics many times in the past eight weeks.
She tsked at me, disagreeing with my assessment on fine cuisine. “Garbage.” She kicked her chin at the desk chair. “Sit. You eat.”
I blew out a breath. Even if I wanted to fight this madwoman, wearing only a towel made me vulnerable. She seemed unbothered by my state, and I didn’t trust her not to take advantage of my precarious situation if I put up a fus
s. Thankfully, there was no trace of the feather duster in the room, so it was safe to proceed. I just had to keep track of the whereabouts of that ring …something I was an expert at that.
Resigning myself, I lowered my ass into the chair, watching her over my shoulder as she unloaded a glass lunch container and popped it into the microwave. We remained silent save for the hum of the microwave and its conclusory chime. When she opened the microwave door, fragrant and rich spices hit my nose. My stomach grumbled.
She handled the glass container bare handed, not so much as flinching. This woman must be the embodiment of a demon from the fiery pits of hell; nothing seemed to get to her. She settled the container in front of me, and my mouth salivated.
Demon or not, her food smelled good. A thin cutlet of beef covered with sauteed onions sat atop a bed of rice. I didn’t know what the hell this was, but it smelled better than any of the trash I had been eating. In a weird, unexplainable way, the smell made me nostalgic.
“Coma.”
If that meant “eat”, I was all-in. For all I knew, she’d peppered cyanide all over this with a heavy hand as if it were a seasoning. I supposed there were worse ways to go, and the thought didn’t stop me from accepting the fork and knife she handed me from the lunch bag. I was too hungry to think and all out of fucks to give.
The meat tasted unbelievably good, and despite being microwaved, it remained tender. It delighted my tastebuds, being spicy, but not unpalatable. Reminiscent of something I’d eaten before.
I paused mid-chew, my teeth hesitating on the sinewy piece of beef. I flitted my eyes to her and saw her supervising me with a care that I wasn’t particularly deserving of.
Just like that, my memory snapped all the pieces together. The food. The romantic language. The fearlessness. The impetuous behavior.
I toyed at the rice with the edge of my fork, swallowing the semi-chewed beef as I speculated. Maybe my theory was wrong, but I wouldn’t know unless I asked. “Are you Portuguese?”