Chapter Thirty-Three
Juniper
I blocked the number.
I should’ve blocked it the second that first text came in.
But I was so desperate for it to be Reena, to be someone who actually knew me in a world where I knew no one except a barista, that I didn’t want to think that the wrong number response was real.
Then they’d kept replying, and it was like a lifeline.
A completely off, kind of psycho lifeline. But it was more than I’d had in forever, so I’d impulsively kept texting until that last message kicked me back to reality.
I knew I’d done the right thing, but still….
Those texts.
They were almost familiar, though I couldn’t pinpoint why.
All I knew was that it’d been two years.
No texts, no calls, no undeliverable or out-of-service error messages. Just nothing.
Who kept a phone on for two years and didn’t use it? It made no sense. I’d sent hundreds of messages after that day at the stupid cell phone store. She hadn’t replied to a single one. That wasn’t like the Reena I’d known. But then again, what had I’d actually known about her?
Next to nothing.
Except that we’d met at an Italian restaurant. I was washing dishes, and she was the cheerful hostess. I lived in a pay-by-the-hour motel, and she had a house. We both had a caffeine addiction. Okay, I did. She humored me. And put up with me. And was like the light to my dark.
Kind of literally.
When you compared her shiny gold hair to my dark chocolate locks—well, dark chocolate when I was having a really good hair day and hadn’t used a gallon of dry shampoo that dulled it to dingy brown. Whatever, it’s not like that dishwashing job had been glamorous. But it’d kept me out of sight from the front of the house. And any job I could get under the table that gave me a meal per shift, paid cash, and didn’t require me to interact with people was a win. The bonus had been meeting Reena.
She’d been nice. Like, no-ulterior-motives, legitimately nice.
I hadn’t known nice before.
Our first shift together, when I took my staff meal out back, she joined me, and we ate together by the dumpster. She didn’t even complain about the smell. A week later, she declared us besties, even though all I knew about her was that she wanted to be a nurse. But hey, she didn’t know anything about me either—not the real stuff, which I never told anyone.
For six months, we saw each other almost every day at work and texted on our off days. We even hung out when we both had the same shifts off, not that we ever did much. I was too broke and too embarrassed to admit it, and she had next to no furniture and no TV in her place after renovating it. So we’d grab a coffee or walk around South Beach. It’d almost been like the kind of friendships I’d read about in books or saw in movies.
Or it had been until she’d announced she was getting married, quit the restaurant the day before she left, then dropped off the face of the earth.
Coincidentally, the same day Reena had quit, I’d gotten myself fired for crashing in the stockroom of the restaurant for one measly night. Payday hadn’t been until the following afternoon, and I’d spent my money on a new battery for my Jeep, so I’d been short on funds for the no-tell motel I’d been staying at. Telling myself I needed someplace safer to crash than my car and too embarrassed to ask Reena if I could stay with her temporarily, I’d opted for the storage room of the shitty Italian restaurant.
When the owner’s son found me at the crack of dawn with my ass on a pile of flour bags and a folded stack of clean tablecloths under my head, he’d promptly canned me.
Couldn’t blame him, but still.
The irony wasn’t lost on me that I’d wound up in my car anyway.
Now I was staring at my phone two years later, wondering how my shit life had gone from bad to worse.
Maybe those texts had been from Reena’s Charlie—whoever he was—and he’d been screwing with me. But more likely, her number had been recently disconnected and recycled, and I’d been texting some rando all my thought vomit.
Awesome.
Turing the stupid phone back on, telling myself it was to check the time, I leaned forward in my sauna of a car and pulled the sweat-stuck shirt from my back.
My cell powered up and told me I had just enough time to get to my fave coffeehouse before my craptastic new job.
Well, new, new job.
Customer service rep. Online. It paid more than minimum wage, only needed a laptop, an internet connection, and the patience of a saint.
I had two out of three.
Okay, I had a ten-year-old laptop that had been a hand-me-down when I’d gotten it, but it still worked, and I could scam Wi-Fi from the coffeehouse or use my cell to make a hotspot if I absolutely had to. Ignoring for the millionth time that I still wasn’t paying for my cell phone, and that I didn’t know where the bill went—yay for being too chickenshit to ever go back into a cell phone store and ask—I pitched the thoughts into my mental not today box.
Turning the key to my 1998 Jeep Grand Cherokee Limited in Forest Green Pearl, refusing to think about the past, I said my car-start prayer. “Come on, Mr. Jeep Man. Be a stud and start for me.”
The decades-old engine turned over, and I sighed in relief.
“Thank you.” Patting the dash like my car was a dog, I threw it in Drive. “Let’s go caffeinate, then earn some coin.” I pulled into traffic, and a car honked at me.
Flipping the hater the bird, then putting the window down because the air conditioning was on its last leg, I reached for the radio to play music lottery.
Pat Benatar’s voice blasted through the kick-ass speakers. They were the one accessory I’d splurged on after I’d bought the old Jeep with cash years ago.
Singing at the top of my lungs to “Heartbreaker,” I pulled up to Cafecito Del Cielo and parked. With a few swipes on my cell, I quickly checked my pathetic bank balance on the app out of habit or maybe wishful thinking. Either way, it didn’t change the facts.
I’d already spent all my cash.
Justifying another dip into the savings to cover my addiction, at least for today, I transferred ten dollars to the checking. Then I shoved down the fact that I’d once again be sleeping in my car tonight as I grabbed my laptop and giant purse before heading inside.
My favorite barista greeted me with a smile as the smell of dark-roasted espresso heaven filled my lungs. “Juni!” She glanced at my laptop. “The usual?”
“You know it.” Setting my computer on a table in the corner, I told myself not to look at the bakery case, but my traitorous gaze instantly went there, and shit . Were those… “Oh my God. Is that a pumpkin muffin with chocolate chips?”
“Yep.” Hailey raised her eyebrows like she didn’t know I was the kind of poor that was bordering on destitute. “Last one. Do you want it?” She glanced at the big clock on the wall. “I can give you a discount.”
I wanted it like I was a freshly woke hibernating bear, but I forced myself to glance away as I smiled. “Looks amazing, and thanks, but I’m good with just the coffee. Using the bathroom real quick. Be right back for my fix.”
“Gotcha covered.” Hailey smiled her easy smile. “Double-shot, double-whip, double-salted-caramel iced latte. I’ll have it ready.”
“You’re a rock star.” I could practically taste that creamy-sweet infusion of the double-caffeinated dopamine hit already.
Hailey’s cheeks blushed the same color as her hot pink hair. “You’re ridiculous.” She lowered her voice. “And I left the door unlocked for you in case, you know.”
“Now you’re a rock star and a saint.” If you could mix those two. “I mean it, truly.”
Hailey shook her head as she started my espresso shots. “And now you’re being doubly ridiculous.” She nodded toward the back. “Go. I have art to create.”
“Yes, artista-barista-rock-star saint.”
Her sweet laugh followed me down the hall.
Bypassing the public restroom, I let myself in through the promised unlocked door that led to another short hallway that ended at the very reason I spent half my meager earnings at the best coffeehouse ever.
A full bathroom with a huge walk-in shower.
The owner, Hailey’s second cousin once removed or something like that, had put the bathroom in when they originally opened the place, and the adjacent back room that was now storage used to be their studio apartment. After the place took off with the locals, Hailey’s cousin moved out, opened up a few other locations, and now just managed the business.
Personally, I’d never want to move out if I owned a coffee shop, but that was probably because I didn’t make the coffee. I just drank it.
Locking the door behind me, I took what felt like my first deep breath of the day, then closed my eyes as I exhaled.
Peace.
For one single moment.
A safe, clean space. A shower if I needed it, which I did, but I wasn’t going to take it until after Del Cielo’s closed up. Then I’d use my small cache of toiletries that Hailey pretended I didn’t leave here, grab my shower, and emerge freshly clean just as the best barista ever was finishing her side work. She’d hand me whatever bakery item was left over from the day, and I’d pretend that I wasn’t starving for the gesture or the sugar rush. We’d say an awkward good night because both of us were loners, then she’d go to her car, and I’d go to mine to watch until she drove off. She probably headed home to a nice bed, and I’d head to a night of… whatever. It was what it was.
But until then, I was taking these few precious seconds of safety and comfort any way I could get it.
And washing my hands… and apparently glancing in the mirror because I was a glutton for punishment.
Ugh.
I never should’ve looked.
My dark brown hair was as listless as I felt, and it matched the circles under my eyes. I grabbed my washcloth, and a memory of the stupid text from the very big elephant in my head that I was trying to avoid popped up uninvited.
What’s Reena saving the world from?
The sentence echoed through my veins, and suddenly I wasn’t seeing a woman named after an evergreen that was known for surviving harsh conditions.
I was staring at my past.
My hair had a chunk missing, my cheeks were sunken in, and my shoulders were tight with fear. But it was my eyes that had truly scared me back then.
They’d been vacant.
Worse than dead, they’d been void of everything.
No fear, no alarm, no sign of life.
Just resignation.
That’s when I knew I only had two choices left.
Get out or die.
A week later, I was homeless, hungrier, dirtier, and more sleep-deprived than I’d ever been, but I was free.
I had been ever since.
Or so I’d told myself.
But for the past two years, my cell phone bill was being paid by a Blond God, I slept in my car, and I was reliant on a bighearted barista for Wi-Fi and showers. And I occasionally broke into a house that wasn’t mine to take advantage of the air conditioning.
That wasn’t free.
And the woman staring back at me didn’t look much better than the one who’d run for her life seven years ago. In fact, she didn’t look different at all. She just looked heavier.
“Because your food isn’t being monitored and used as a weapon,” I whispered, right before flipping the bird at myself and the stupid mirror. “Whatever.”
I walked out of the bathroom.