Chapter Four

~McKenna~

I yawned as the subway came to a stop and I shuffled off with the rest of the overnight people who were trying to get home and in bed before the sun rose. We were like a heard of apathetic zombies, shambling our way through the city with dark circles under our eyes and cold coffee in our hands. I had never seen so many scrubs and cleaning uniforms in one train car, and yet that was our story every night.

The first rays of sun were just beginning to poke over the horizon, turning the onyx sky into a myriad of purples while the stars faded back into obscurity just as I reached my apartment complex’ door.

I struggled with my keys for a moment, sleep really beginning to clutch at my brain, but managed to get in without giving up and slumping to the floor there. Once I was inside, I dropped my purse and keys by the door and shuffled straight towards my bathroom.

I turned the water up as hot as it could go in my standing shower and disrobed, throwing my cleaning uniform into my laundry basket to inevitably be worn again before I washed it.

I stepped in, and some of the stress slipped away, washed down the drain in a deluge. It wasn’t quite enough to forget everything that weighed so heavily on me, but it helped.

But the water grew too cold too fast and I had to step out before the warmth within me switched to shivers. But without the sound of water, my tiny studio was oppressively silent, and I was reminded that I had no one and it needed to stay that way.

I didn’t want to go to sleep on such a depressing thought, so I went about prepping my uniform and socks for the next day. I really was lucky that I had been able to find a full-time job that paid as well as mine did along with benefits while under a fake name. I had never thought I would get away with it, but it was my second week, and no one had said anything, so I was pretty sure I was in the clear.

But still, the two months I had spent searching had quickly bled through all of my savings. The biweekly pay was killing me, as my first chunk had just been completed and now I just had to wait for the check to come in the mail in a week.

I groaned headed to my mini-kitchenette. I had thought that kitchenette was as small as it could get, but my studio went a step down and only had a sink, a tiny fridge and a single counter piece that I crammed my microwave, blender, coffeemaker and toaster on.

Shuffling around in my fridge, I looked to all of the food I had left until I got paid. All ramen and old deli meat with stale bread. Fantastic.

Well, at least I had food. I had already dropped down a couple of pant sizes in a year and I didn’t want to lose any more weight so unhealthily. I forced myself to think of the positive side and went about making myself a sandwich and a side of cereal bar that was only… a month expired.

I somberly finished up my food and then shoved it back into the fridge in my battered lunchbox. It was so easy to get down on myself if I looked at all of the unpleasantness in my situation. Sure, I was lonely. Sure, there were water spots on the ceiling and my bed was a mattress on the floor of my living room. But it was better than where I had been before, and it would be improving very soon. I just had to wait for that first check and things would get a whole lot easier.

My sleepiness was really starting to get insistent, so I went about my nightly routine. Brushing my teeth with a toothbrush that needed replacing, washing what few plastic dishes or cutlery I had used to make my lunch, drinking water and refilling my filter-less pitcher, then brushing my wild, fiery mane with a brush that was missing a few too many bristles.

It was in these moments of silence, with only monotonous routine to fill my mind, that I wished I had someone I could trust. Someone who I could talk about my day with and tell them all the crazy things that happened at work. Not that anything crazy ever happened at work considering I interacted with a total of three people every day, but still. It would be nice. I missed knowing that I was loved, and that I had people who cared if I got up in the morning, or if I was healthy.

It was so tempting to just roll over and message some of the friends I left behind, but I couldn’t. That would open a door that I had worked so hard to close and I didn’t have the strength to shut again.

Although it didn’t feel like it, things were better this way. I just needed to remember how bad it could be before I was lured in by the greener grass on the other side of the fence. I was McKenna O’Grady, I was twenty-eight years old and a proud, independent woman. I could do this.

But as I laid in bed and sun started to trickle through the beige-stained venetian blinds, I couldn’t help but be lonely. Despite everything that I had gone through, I still missed someone beside me in bed. There was a certain warmth that I craved and, although dancing made me forget about it for a short while, it wasn’t enough to last through the night.

It didn’t help that it was the off-seasons on all of the shows that I liked to watch so I couldn’t even distract myself with television. I couldn’t read any new books considering how broke I was and signing up for a library card was a no-no, and I didn’t feel like rereading any of my well-worn adventures.

No, I was trapped in reality and it was a sucky one at that. I just had to hope that tomorrow would be better, and each day would be on the up and up. Just four to five more days until I got my check.

I just had to survive.