Bess
I turned to run my hand along his forehead, making my way to rub his ear, searching for tranquility in the warmth of his dark brown eyes. “Oh, Brooks, baby, we gotta get up,” I told my bed partner, but he looked apprehensive. Burrowed deep in my covers, I didn’t want to get out of bed either. A chill had come over the mountains.
But we had to start our day, so with a quick kiss to his furry brow, I nudged my ninety-pound black Labrador, Brooks Bailey, out of bed and through the door to do his business while I ran to do the same in my small powder room. It wasn’t long before I heard a paw scratch on the front door, and let the only man I had kept intimate company with in the last few years walk through the door. Of course, he was looking for breakfast.
The coffeemaker sputtered over the sound of my dog crunching his chow as I lifted the tiny blind above my sink and surveyed the day outside. A thick layer of fog had come over the mountains, enveloping my porch and limiting my already darkened view of the tiny brook that ran along the bottom of the hillside. Fall was officially here.
I poured myself a big mug of java and headed to my bedroom to get ready for my day, taking solace in the quiet I once despised. Nowadays, the calm serenity of rural living was the salve on my ever-present wounds, coffee the only drug in my house.
Not really a house or home, but a refuge from my past, I lived in a small two-bedroom cabin overlooking a rambling brook in rural Pennsylvania. It was a gift from my dad when I got out of rehab and decided to stay in the quiet rolling hills and lush forestry of Ligonier, close to the treatment facility. It was a crutch I didn’t use, but its presence nearby was comforting nonetheless.
I also didn’t want to go home to Pittsburgh and face whatever reputation I left behind. My past could stay right where it was. In the past.
As for my dad, he didn’t really owe me anything. I’d come to understand he did the best he could and we’d forgiven each other as I tackled the steps of recovery. But I took the house he offered me.
I owned all of my actions and indiscretions, and had learned not to place blame on others. But the man felt guilty enough over his shortcomings as a single dad—a little too late—and giving me the house provided him some peace of mind.
Turning on the shower, I let the water heat up. Steam filled the bathroom and funneled its way around me, allowing me to undress without catching a cold. After spending too long under the spraying water, I dressed in my usual worn-in and frayed skinny jeans, layered long-sleeved T-shirts to cover my mistake of a tat on my bicep, and Nike Air Force Ones. I’d traded in my go-go party boots and crop tops for a more practical wardrobe the day I left treatment.
These shoes reminded me of when I was happy, playing kickball in the alley with the boys around the neighborhood before I was old enough to feel the effects of not having a mom. In other words, before I fucked up everything. Before I substituted the lack of a mother’s affection with cheap beer and robotic teenage sex in the backseat of a car or in the twin bed of my youth.
But that was all back then, when I was constantly seeking to feel anything other than pain and discontent. Now I just felt nothing. I survived on little to no emotion, a baseline of honest work, the company of my dog, and the relaxing sounds of nature.
After applying a light layer of lip gloss in the hallway mirror, I let Brooks pee once more, throwing the ball down the hill a few times so he blew off some steam before I left him for the day.
And then I was out the door.
“Hey, May,” I called out to the head of housekeeping as I walked in through the back employee entrance to the WildFlower Resort and Spa.
“Hiya, Bess! How was the driving out there in the fog? Been here all night, but I’m gonna leave soon,” she responded.
“Oh, fine. You know, I’m a tough city girl. No fog is going to bring me down,” I yelled back, more for my benefit than May’s peace of mind.
As I shoved my stuff in my assigned locker, I had started to change into my uniform when a thought occurred to me. Actually, the tiniest thing could crack me in half. With my usual fatalistic attitude, I knew it was only a matter of time before my carefully constructed world would come falling down.
Although I used the staff locker room, I wasn’t a housekeeper at the WildFlower like the others who used it. One of my small circle of friends, May allowed me to use the locker room. The woman double my age was reliving her youth and had high hopes I would find myself a gentleman—her words, not mine. You’re certainly not going to do that in your waitress uniform, she’d said, so she encouraged me not to travel to and from work in that crappy outfit.
“What you got on there, girl? More of those ugly basketball shoes and ripped jeans?” May called after me.
“You know it, May,” I shouted back from the locker area, glancing back at her. Even in the ugly WildFlower housekeeping uniform, May looked beautiful. She was curvy in all the right places, her black hair cut in a short bob around her round face, and she was always smiling.
“Hope you didn’t come through the main hotel looking like that. You’re never gonna catch Mr. Right wearing that!”
It was the same daily banter we’d been having for years.
“Well, that’s good because I’m not searching for him,” I said as I walked out of the locker room and made my way into the staff corridor.
For the last three years, I’d worked in the resort’s fine dining restaurant, serving breakfast and lunch six days a week. The job kept my hands and feet and fingers and toes busy, and especially my mind.
I did finish my marketing degree via correspondence after rehab, but sitting behind a desk scared the living shit out of me. Too much idle time. So I got a job slinging dishes, and I liked it just fine. I made good tips and paid my bills.
Mostly, my coworkers had come to expect little more from me than small talk over coffee, a walk with our dogs, or grabbing a movie together. No late-night drinks or parties, never a suggested jaunt to an after-hours club, and definitely not a chance in hell for yoga with a DJ and a strobing black light.
Not that there was any of that in small-town Ligonier, another reason why I stayed on in Podunk, USA, after a sixty-day stint of drying out, getting clean, and learning basic survival techniques.
Garbed in my navy slacks and tight striped vest over a pressed white blouse, with my hair pulled into a ponytail and a few loose strands falling around my face, I tucked a pencil behind my ear and went over the specials on the blackboard in the kitchen. My stomach rumbled, so I grabbed a scone and a cup of coffee to enjoy while I chatted with Ernesto, the resort’s pastry chef, as I waited for the breakfast rush to start.
We might be in the middle of nowhere, but the WildFlower served as a major stomping ground for luxury conferences, executives visiting the booming factories nearby, and women looking for a mountain retreat or, as we laughingly called it, “glamping.”
Swallowing my last bite as the big hand hit twelve and the little hand six, I was out the kitchen doors. I took in the few people already lined up, waiting to be seated for breakfast. Shelby, the hostess, was struggling as usual to make it happen, so I decided to wade in.
I went over and started directing suits and a few spa ladies where to sit. At the end of the line was a tall guy with a full head of mussed jet-black hair. He was wearing a gray pinstripe suit and brown wingtips, and had his head buried in a newspaper, his wild hair such a contradiction to the rest of his expensively clad, well-heeled body.
“Excuse me? Do you want a table,” I asked.
He flipped the paper down, peering over the top of it, and his crystal-blue eyes sharpened. A series of expressions flitted over his face, first hurt or sadness, then morphing into what looked suspiciously like lust. In the end the man continued to stand there, saying nothing and looking bewildered.
Weird.
Unnerved, I stared back at him for much too long, but his gaze mesmerized me, capturing my body, mind, and soul in a way I wasn’t familiar with. It left me wanting to stare forever.
What the eff, Bess? Stare forever? Just seat the damn guy.
“Are you ready to sit for breakfast,” I asked, using my professional tone as a shield. I wasn’t on the menu, and definitely wasn’t one of the specials.
He cleared his throat and said, “Yes. Table for one.” Then he added, “Please.”
“Right this way.”
In the end, I didn’t seat him in my section. I had no desire to deal with his stuffy weirdness.