Chapter Two
The smooth, white expanse of the sheet felt cool as Kayla passed her palms over it, sucking in the bleach-y scent. She’d always loved fresh, clean sheets—she’d had them so rarely in her life.
“Hey.” The voice behind her made her flinch. “No sitting on the beds.”
“Right, sorry.” She got up and shook out the somewhat less clean duvet over the sheets, re-covered the pillows and put everything back together before grabbing the bag of garbage she’d collected from the room. “I’ll swipe down the bathroom,” she said, not meeting the eyes of her co-worker. As part of her probationary period in this crappy job, she’d gotten paired up with one of the hardcore, long-term cleaners and, to a person, they hated her guts.
“Yes, do that.” The woman flopped into the chair by the open window and fired up one of those smokeless cigarette things. “Make it fast. You know, how I showed you yesterday.”
“Right.” Kayla pushed the cleaning cart into the dingy alcove between the bed space and the bathroom. As she stared at the filthy sink area, overflowing with empty beer bottles and pizza boxes, she gave herself the usual mantra-like reminder that this was her life now.
Employed. Drug-free. Poor as shit, but other than that, without any real worries.
“Don’t fuck it up, K,” she said under her breath as she shook out a fresh garbage bag and started scraping the detritus of what looked like a nice party into it. The bottles clinked together as wafts of old beer and pot filled her senses, triggering her synapses even as she used all her mental power not to grab the bottles and turn them up into her mouth.
Once the sink was cleaned out with near straight bleach so strong she’d gone home the last few nights with her fingertips faded, she turned her attention to the toilet and tub. With a sigh, she put on fresh gloves and picked up three used condoms, an empty tube of lube, more beer bottles. The tub was disgusting, ringed with dirt, while the fiberglass shower walls were streaked with God knew what. She sprayed, wiped, splashed hot water all over it, then set herself to the task of cleaning the toilet and the floors.
“Hurry up in there,” her minder called.
She emerged, eyes streaming and nose running from the strength of the chemicals. “What’s the worst thing you’ve ever found in a room?”
“Girl, you do not want to know that.” The woman heaved herself up from the chair and checked her clipboard. “Come on. We’re behind. You’re taking too long on those toilets.”
“It was pretty gross.”
“They’re all gross. People are disgusting. Ask any hotel room maid.” The woman tucked the clipboard under her arm and glared at Kayla. “But we’re on the clock, and the manager doesn’t pay overtime. Let’s go.”
Kayla nodded and pushed the cart out of the room, after looking back once, recalling all the times she’d disgust-i-fied a hotel room, leaving behind way worse than what she’d found in this one. Shutting the door on the room, and the memories before she allowed them to take hold and pull her into a mire of longing for those days, she turned, resigned to another long day of sheets, bleach and berating.
“Hello, I’m looking for Kayla Hettinger.” A stranger was standing on the balcony of the one-and-a-half-star no-tell motel where she now worked. The stranger was a strikingly beautiful woman with long black hair and light-brown skin, a Latina, Kayla figured, but without a trace of any accent.
Her minder turned toward the newcomer, her usual frown etched deeper into her dark skin. She took a quick look at the other woman and launched into a barrage of rapid-fire Spanish which was met with a response in kind. Kayla stood between them, waiting for the angry conversation to end, studying her ragged fingernails and jonesing for a hit, a pop, anything to get her through this day that stretched out in front of her like an endless, empty highway.
“Come with me,” the strange, gorgeous woman said, grabbing her arm and tugging her away from the cleaning cart.
“Um, what?”
“You go with her, you’re fired, do you hear me, girl?”
“Hang on a second,” she said, yanking herself out of the other woman’s grip. “What the hell is going on? I don’t know who you are or what you’re doing but I need this job right now, lady.”
The woman sighed. “I’m sorry, Kayla. I’m Melody Rodriguez.” The woman waited, as if seeking acknowledgment of this fact of her name. Kayla blinked at her, feeling her boss’s gaze on the back of her neck like a pair of lasers.
“Yeah? So?” She took a step back, hand to her neck. Bleach smells filled her nose.
“I’m… I know your brother, Trent. And I think he’d love to know you’re alive. Much less working here in Grand Rapids.”
“My brother.” Her voice remained flat as she allowed her brain to open that tiny room she’d shut off long ago. The one where she had a brother, a house, a mother. A life.
Her supervisor-slash-tormenter made a throat-clearing noise. But Kayla barely heard it. “I don’t think…”
The other woman—Melody—smiled at her. “I run a bar. The FitzPub, over at Fitzgerald Brewing. Come with me and we can talk about a job, maybe?”
Kayla recoiled from the woman’s outstretched hand. In her near forty years of life, no one had ever offered her a single kindness, one iota of helpfulness without an ulterior motive. She stared down at the cracked concrete balcony for a few seconds.
“You don’t want this one working at your bar,” her minder scoffed. “She’s a junkie. She’ll drink up all your profits.”
Kayla glanced over at the woman. Her pulse raced. Her mouth felt packed with cotton.
Melody spat something in Spanish at her supervisor, who called her a whore. Kayla knew enough Spanish to recognize that word. “Come on, Kayla,” Melody said, turning slightly to indicate Kayla should precede her away from the dirty hotel rooms and hateful fellow employees.
“Don’t come back,” her former minder grumbled behind her.
Kayla kept her gaze pinned to Melody’s dark one. Her heartbeat hammered in her ears. She tried to swallow past the lump in her throat.
“It’s all right,” Melody insisted. “You’re safe with me.”
The woman behind them harrumphed again. Kayla peeled off her latex gloves, tossed them into the rolling trashcan and followed Melody without looking back.
“We did you a favor. Don’t come back here looking for any more charity.” The sound of the hotel employee’s voice followed her across the balcony, down the steps and to Melody’s car. She hesitated, her fingertips resting on the door handle.
Her brother. She was going to see Trent.
Tears burned her eyes but long years spent not giving away any emotion stood her well. She blinked them back, got in the strange woman’s car and stared straight ahead. Luckily, she’d also had plenty of practice getting into strange cars on a whim, or in search of something better.
Melody turned to face her. “I’m…um…dating your brother,” she said, her pretty face flushing at the words. “He may kill me for doing this, but after he told me about you I went off on my own to track you down.”
Kayla raised an eyebrow, amused and yet anxious at the same time. “So, he doesn’t know I’m here, back in town?”
“Nope, not yet anyway.” She put the car in gear. “But he loves you and was so worried and I…well, I guess I wanted to do something to make him happy.”
“Lucky guy.” Kayla couldn’t even picture him anymore, much less as a grown man with a grown woman for a girlfriend. He’d only been eleven when she’d run away—escaped—from the hell she’d been inhabiting.
“Yes, well, he’s had some troubles, too. He has a daughter. She lives with him most of the time. Taylor. She’s seventeen, you know, going on thirty.”
“Hmm,” Kayla said, her mind spinning as her skin began to crawl with a need to escape. She couldn’t handle this right now. She’d moved back to Grand Rapids without a thought to even contacting Trent, even as her subconscious mind reminded her daily that she should reach out to him, to let him know she was alive, and more or less well. As she squeezed her fingers together, she started her inner counting trick.
Count to a hundred. Then two hundred. If you still want to bolt after that, do it.
Nine times out of ten, she didn’t.
It was that tenth time that always got her in deep shit.
Breathless, even after a two hundred count, she defaulted to her old faithful method, pressing her short fingernails on her left hand into her right upper arm, triggering the pain. The blessed, mind-calming pain.