“I’m coming home.”

An hour ago I was rolling out of bed, bringing my fist down on my alarm clock, killing the insistent chirping from that bastard for what I hope is the last time.

Now I stand alone in a hotel room, wearing an apron that is obviously way to tight for my body and rubber gloves that almost reach all the way to my elbows, wringing the dirt from a large soapy sponge into the bucket at my feet. It is almost mesmerizing how the water quickly dilutes into a murky, dull gray color.

That’s my life, I think. The dull gray of an overcast sky, a portent of a bleak future with a telltale sign of a lingering, misspent past, the image of a present halted in its progress.

For the first time in maybe forever I begin to wish I was hearing that distant chirping of the alarm clock, that this might be a dream I could wake from. But like I said, an hour ago I think I killed it both literally and figuratively.

Coming home … is this any better?

I had tried to make it on my own, like I was supposed to do, like we all are. I wanted to make a difference in the world but when it was all said and done I never got much further than living out of my car, surviving on a daily diet of ramen noodles — not that there is anything wrong with that; it was a staple of my student life.

Maybe that had been my problem. Perhaps I was never able to truly shake off my student years, that way of life. Is that what has left me in this hotel room, idly philosophizing my progress in life as I empty a bucket of filthy water into the toilet and flush — hell if I’m going all the way back to the utility room — oh and hey, there’s a great metaphor for my life, too. Bonus.

The water from the bathtub faucet patters the bottom of the bucket as I glimpse myself in the mirror across the way. There I am, just sitting on the edge of the bathtub, and yup, I was right, this apron is way too small. It’s so tight on my body it makes me look like I’m trying to be sexy but instead coming off all obvious — and probably more than a little embarrassing.

But it is me in that mirror, and for a second I had almost expect to see my college self reflected back, but those few years since my graduation has added a few new brush strokes it would seem. I still have the same long, tumbling blonde hair, but right now it seems a little flat which I’m going to put down to the great life examination ongoing in my head — I can imagine that kind of depression goes straight for the roots.

Yet there I am, maybe a little heavier because I love my food and no one is going to take that away from me, and besides I was never what you’d call a thin or skinny girl, but the ghost of me is there in that reflection, just plain old average Stacy Bradley with her usual big ass and frumpy look.

I blow the hair out of my face with a loud, defeated exasperation that echoes around the bathroom. With the bucket filled with water again, I shut off the faucet and move back into the main room. I shake my head, grab the sponge and drop to my knees.

Room 5E, twin double beds, probably even more guests than its supposed to accommodate. I sigh and begin to scrub at whatever kind of alcohol stain they left on the carpet, making sure to mix in some of the solvent cleaner from the collection on my cleaning cart.

It probably goes without saying that my parents wanted a completely different life for me.

You want to know the real cherry on top of this humiliation? My family’s name is on the building outside. Bradley Hotel. That’s right, my father is Thomas Bradley, and he owns the entire chain. I don’t want to oversell it, my father’s hotel chain isn’t that famous, but a chain of hotels is what my family has going and it’s a very profitable business.

And here I am, Thomas Bradley’s only daughter, gathering dirty sheets and scrubbing toilets and who-knows-what stains from the carpets and upholstery. But you have to start somewhere right? It’s a pity they never tell you when you have to start.

Start at the bottom and work your way up, Stacy. That’s the only way. It’s the right way.

My parents have been saying that to me ever since I was a child, hell I wouldn’t doubt if it started immediately after my mom saw the blue line on her pregnancy test. So of course, when I came crawling back home asking for some help, a job, anything, my father wouldn’t even allow me to apply to work the front desk. I had to start at rock bottom or not at all.

I’m coming home.

I let the words repeat in my mind as I scrub the stain harder, which seems to be finally coming out. That was a difficult call to make, and one I had to make from a friend’s phone to boot.

And here I am just a few weeks and a long cross-country drive home later, scrubbing the stains and folding the sheets. It takes me another good ten minutes to at least make the carpet look like its original color. A hell of a lot of cleaning product, too.

I stand up and look around the room, running through the usual mental checklist as I gather up my cleaning supplies and toss them back into the cart. Sheets are done, pillows adorned with those delicious little mint treats — we have a huge supply of them downstairs in the basement, and I definitely do not have any idea what happened to the missing boxes, whatsoever — and, as I wash my hands in the bathroom sink I gaze into the mirror again and realize that I forgot to give its glass a wipe down.

Dammit.

With a sigh, I pull my rubber gloves back on, grab the glass cleaner, spray, wipe, remove the smudges, toss everything back in my cart and exit the room well within sixty seconds which leaves me feeling really good about myself as the door closes behind me.

It’s not that I hate the job, I like it. I don’t love it, of course, but it’s a job and better than nothing. And I do respect my parents outlook on life, that they are willing to help me out even if on the outside I’m cursing them for making me clean rather than work the front desk or something a little cushier. Deep down inside, I know they are doing the right thing for me, as parents, doing their best to pass on a notion of responsibility and character building.

Even though it is still early morning the corridor is all but deserted and I’d usually have to nod and smile to at least a few people on their way to check out. Yet the corridor, stretching off in both directions and brightly lit from the row of overheads, appears momentarily empty save my own presence, and despite that shining light from above, it recedes into darkness.

It’s all so spooky, I tell myself.

This was true, even though I had only worked here a few weeks and had spent a lot of my youth visiting my father’s hotels, the buildings still strike me as spooky. Maybe its just imagining all the lives that have moved through the building over the years, the stories, the emotions. Or maybe its just all the horror novels that I’ve read, coming back to haunt me from beyond the library.

I’m slowly pushing the cart down to the next room and I make a mental note to get the wheels of my cart fixed because the squeaking they have begun to make is starting to grate on my mind. The door stands silent and I stand there listening for a few seconds because I’ve had some awkward experiences in the past where the guest exits just as I’m about to enter.

The silence continues for seconds more and I guess the coast is clear, as it were. There’s no sign hanging from the door so it’s safe to enter — ‘Never enter a room with a do not disturb sign’, I had been told by Susie, one of the other maids, and she had this look in her eye like she had seen shit no one else should.

The light flicks from red to green and the electronic lock releases when I slide my card through and I enter as gingerly as I can, letting the door creak slowly open which brings flashes of many horror movies to my mind and I brace myself to possibly see a ghost on the other side when it opens fully.

But there isn’t a ghost of course, just an empty hotel room that needs a good cleaning, so I wheel in my cart and shut the door behind me.

I look over the room to assess the damage and I’m surprised to find that there isn’t much, if any at all. I move over to the bed and inspect it, finding that the sheets have been straightened, the bed already set and in fact the only thing I find that needs my attention is some miscellaneous junk in the bedside trashcan that I empty into the receptacle on my cart.

With a puff I blow the hair out of my face again. It’s an odd feeling to have, but I’ve been cheated out of something, my expectations foiled. “What a conundrum,” I mumble to myself.

“Stace?” a voice whispers from behind me.

Like a reel of motion picture going awry, I freeze for a second, the time stretching into an eternity, then my body goes into turbo and I spin around on my heels to find a man standing in the bathroom doorway. My hand slaps against my mouth to stifle a scream, the action belated to an almost slapstick comedy.

Mason Lockwood.

His back is to me but I can see his face in the bathroom mirror and I recognize him instantly. One of my father’s oldest friends. Businessman. Billionaire. What the hell is he still doing here? I had heard from my father a few days ago that Mason was visiting the hotel for some business discussion but I hadn’t managed to run into him anywhere in the bowels of this darn building. He was supposed to have been checked out yesterday but yet here he is, standing before me while I stare at him in silence, my hand still covering my face.

I suddenly become aware of myself.

“You scared the shit out of me,” I blurt and instantly regret.

“So it is you,” he says, staring at my reflection in the mirror. “I was hoping we’d run into each other, Stacy. Tried to get your dad to organize a dinner for all of us, but you know how it is: everyone’s schedule is tight.”

I stare at him as he adjusts his tie. “I’m sorry,” I say, “I’m not supposed to cuss in front of the guests…” My cheeks sting from the blood bursting into them.

Mason laughs and turns away from the mirror to face me. “I won’t tattle, I swear.”

I scan him up and down as he steps out of the bathroom, my eyes are drawn like magnets to his dark gray suit. He’s adjusting his red velvet tie with his powerful hands and I can tell immediately that he still works out. He hasn’t aged a day since I last saw him at my high school graduation, with the slight exception of silver hair poking out of his brown locks, giving his head the slightest shimmer beneath the lights.

I try to compose myself. “I’m sorry, Mr. Lockwood. Would you like me to come back later?”

He smiles and raises his hand. “No, no,” he says. His smile deepens the lines that run his chin, aging him somewhat but in the most handsome way possible. “I was just on my way out. You can get started.”

Mason steps across the room and I look up at him as he does so, his immense presence towering above me, sending waves of vulnerability throughout my body as he passes. “Your dad mentioned you were working here now,” he says, reaching into the closet for his jacket.

“Unfortunately.”

“Well, if you don’t mind me saying, you can certainly pull off the uniform.”

I look at my feet as blood rushes to my face. “Thank you.”

My eyes fall upon him again to see that he is stepping toward me with one hand reaching into his jacket pocket as his other arm wrestles its way into a sleeve. “I have to rush to a meeting, but I’d like to catch up with you some more while I’m in town.”

“How long are you staying? My dad said you were leaving yesterday, I think.”

“Through the weekend now, some business got complicated.” His hand comes out of his jacket pocket and I instantly see that its gripping a stack of cash — large bills that make dollar signs flash in my eyes like a damn cartoon, and for a few seconds, I am almost mesmerized to inaction. “Let’s have dinner tonight,” he says.

I simply nod in disbelief. “Where?”

“Here,” he says. “I’ll order room service. Remind me — how do you like your steak?”

My mouth waters and I laugh out loud, almost breaking the spell that seems to have settled into the room. “I don’t remember the last time I had one, to be honest. At least, a good one.”

“Medium rare it is, then,” Mason says and flashes another smile at me as he counts out one hundred dollars in twenties and lays them in my open hand.

I stare at the money. “Mr. Lockwood, I can’t accept—”

“Yes you can,” he argues and steps a little closer to me, so close I can smell him. “I expect my room to be in impeccable condition when I get back. Not one item out of place. Extra pillow mints, too.”

I laugh with him. “Thank you.” Then I watch as he slides his eyes down my body and my guts twist with feverish delight.

“Don’t forget, I’ll be in the penthouse again,” he says while he motions around us. “Not this room.”

I look at him inquisitively.

He smiles again. “Let’s just say some business discussions didn’t go so well and the penthouse became suddenly unavailable last night.”

The stubborn nature of my father’s business practice comes to mind and I nod my head in understanding; whatever it was the two of them were cooking up it didn’t seem to be working out so well.

“I’ll see you tonight, Stace,” he says. “Eight o’clock.”

“Eight o’clock,” I confirm weakly as I watch him turn on his shiny heels and exit into the hallway. The door closes automatically behind him and I hear the electronic lock shift home. I stand rooted to the spot for a few seconds before I stumble backward and park my ass on the edge of the bed.

What the hell just happened?

I close my eyes and take a deep breath, centering my thoughts. The powerful scent of his cologne lingers behind him, hanging heavy in the air, a mark of his presence. He’s always used the same brand ever since I was a kid. I remember hugging him at my high school graduation and burying my nose in his shirt collar. It entered my nostrils and traveled all the way down to my core, igniting a throbbing heat wave that terrified me. I couldn’t look at him for days after that. I forced myself to quell every bad impulse I had; every naughty thought that entered my brain was shut down and discarded before it could take seed. A girl can dream, can’t she?

I had seen him less than a dozen times after that due to my aforementioned attempt at breaking out on my own, and in fact, I hadn’t thought of him in quite a while. But here I am, sitting on the edge of the bed that he slept in last night, pondering how exactly I got to this point. A few hours ago I was fast asleep in bed, dreading coming in to make up rooms in my father’s hotel.

Now I have a date with Mason Lockwood.

Wait, was it a date? He did say it was just the two of us, for the purposes of catching up, surely. That’s not a date, Stacy, I tell myself. He just hasn’t seen me in a long time and he wants to catch up. Yes, that’s what he must have meant: catching up.

I try to convince myself of this as the last three minutes of my life replay in my head on repeat, trying to enhance every subtle detail of the encounter. Suddenly aware of my body I go into the bathroom and stand before the mirror and look at myself, finding I am at the frumpiest level of frumpy.

Well, that’s just great, I think. I run into a billionaire that wants to buy me dinner and I look like the dictionary definition of ‘frump’ itself.

I hold my hands up in the air and regard my rubber gloves then look in the mirror and see the image of myself doing so, as if I’m trying to curse the heavens, fate, anyone who might be responsible for this great betrayal of appearances.

Curse you, alarm clock!

My eye catches the bottle almost instantly as I turn to leave — his favorite cologne. I feel the smile on my face as I reach for it and pick it up. I can smell it already, even before I pop the lid off and bring it to my nose. I inhale a deep breath and I hold it in, letting my olfactory nerves dance for as long as possible before I suffocate.

My mind races with possibilities and doubts and second guesses but I simply decide to say fuck it, life owes me as I dab a spot of the cologne behind my ear so he can follow me around for the rest of my shift. And here I thought this job was going to be the worst thing that ever happened to me. Two weeks in and I’m having dinner with a billionaire.

Mason Lockwood, our oldest family friend, and all I can think about is his face between my thighs.