Chapter 3
Irelynn
I haven’t been able to shove the handsome stranger with danger in his eyes from my mind since I fled him Saturday night. I also haven’t told anyone about him. Not even Rae.
Well, that’s not entirely true. I’ve told Lucy.
I tell Lucy everything. He listens raptly to every word, those big Halloween-yellow eyes drinking me in as I do.
“There’s just something about him that haunts me. He’s like a—” I pause, and Lucy tips his head to the side. He’s listening to me. He’s also watching, waiting, as I scoop half the tin of gourmet kitty chow into his blue bowl. It’s adorably stamped with black kitty paw prints. A dollar store special. I decide, “A wraith! Yeah, he’s like a wraith. He’s been haunting my nightmares.”
Lucy lets out a long meow, as though to tell me to shut up about the wraith-man and get on with feeding him.
I lower the bowl to the floor, dragging my hand along his silky-smooth back to the very tip of his tail. “You eat better than me, ya know?”
The only answer Lucy deigns to give me is a rumbling purr as he stuffs his face with his favorite saucy salmon chow.
Lucy pushes into the scratch I give to that place where back meets tail, before I stand and set to the task of feeding myself. Two eggs, scrambled. A crack of black pepper and just a hint of salt. As the eggs cook, I slap peanut butter and jam between two slices of bread. I shove the sandwich into a baggie and slide it into my oversized, very well-used, cross-body satchel.
I watch Lucy stretch before he prowls across the small space where a very small, square table sits accompanied by a single chair, to my bed. I’d scored the table and chair from the dump bin a few months ago. It had needed a very serious clean, and one of the legs had been loose. But it hadn’t been anything I couldn’t fix with a little elbow grease and a multi-bit screwdriver. A small, six drawer dresser stands at the foot of my bed. I bought it for thirty bucks when the old lady two floors up passed, and Kenneth, the junk-lord, sold her belongings to clear the place for the next tenant. The drawer on the bottom fell apart every time I pulled it out, so I was careful not to use it.
Next to my bed sits another junk-lord buy. The nightstand surface is swollen with cup rings and topped by a thrift shop lamp. But it has two drawers, and storage is storage.
Lucy makes a rumbling meow as a bird, likely a magpie, swoops in front of my only window. His tail gives a twitch that makes me smile as he leaps from my bed to the cat tree—a splurge—that perches right in front of my window. I placed it there so Lucy can catch some rays while I’m at work. I just know he spends his days daydreaming about the birds he’d like to maim. Thankfully, those are just kitty fantasies. The birds are safe.
At least from my fur-ball.
I’d never chance letting Lucy roam the great outdoors of New York City. One day, we’ll get a bigger place. Until then, I just ignore the growing yellow stain of water damage in the far corner. I’ve reported it three times, and clearly, it’s a slow leak that Junk Lord Kenneth has little interest in concerning himself with.
Shoveling the eggs into my mouth, I hurry to the bathroom. Stripping from my jammies—an oversized t-shirt and panties—I step into the lukewarm spray. Clenching my teeth against a shiver, I hurry to wash my hair and body. The hot water tank that services the apartment is on the fritz more times than not. What I would give for a hot shower. Even better, a bath.
I haven’t had a bath since I was fifteen, and Mom and Dad were alive. The house I’d moved into after Mom and Dad were gone had only one bathroom, and although there was a tub in that bathroom, I’d never been permitted to use it. To conserve the water bill, a timer set to five minutes sat on the back of the toilet for every shower. Using the bathroom for any more than ten minutes resulted in a tongue lashing. Doing so was inconsiderate, considering it was the only bathroom in a house with multiple residents.
After I’d left my foster home, it had taken some time to find a shelter. Time I’d spent walking around in the hopes of finding somewhere warm and safe-ish to sleep. Because it’s never safe to sleep on the streets. Never.
Once I’d found the shelters, things got a little better. It was through one of the ladies who worked at the shelter that I got my very first job at the bowling alley. I’d been paid under the table until I’d been able to sort myself out enough to receive a legal pay-check. The guilt I’d felt leaving that job had been massive. They’d given me a chance when no one else would. Still, even though I’d sobbed as I handed in my resignation, Holly had pulled me in for a big hug and told me she was proud of me.
That hug had been my first hug since Dad’s parting hug—the hug he gave me the morning I last saw him before I left for school. Before he took the pills and fell asleep with an armful of Mom’s clothes.
If I closed my eyes, I could still feel the squeeze of his arms around me. I could still smell waffles…
Emotion thick in my throat, I push all thoughts of my past from my mind. It’s probably not a healthy way of coping, but it’s been working for me just fine. It keeps me from doing what Dad did, and just quitting.
A black blur darts past the bathroom, rustling the curtain I’ve hung in the place of the missing door. A playful kitty meowl sounds a second later, before a rolled ball of old socks tumbles into the bathroom, black kitty paws stretching under the curtain to catch the makeshift toy. I smile.
No matter how hard life becomes for me, I could never pull the plug and leave Lucy. Not ever.
He doesn’t know it, can’t possibly know it, but he’s saved my life more than once.
Sometimes, I think that’s what hurts the most. The glaring truth that I force myself to keep pressing on, no matter how hard life gets. And life is hard.
But I do it for Lucy.
For my cat, I do what my own father couldn’t do for me, his child.
Toeing the makeshift toy, I line it up and shoot it past Lucy into the living space. The sound of nails on peeling linoleum has my smile stretching wider.
I love him so much.
“You left the party early.” Mr. Bard leans into the reception desk, a wash of too-strong cologne blasting over me in a toxic wave I fight not to cringe against. “Not a party girl?”
I shake my head. “I wasn’t feeling well.”
A little white lie can’t harm anyone, right?Better to tell the man I wasn’t feeling good than have him think the money he spent on a party had been spent in vain. At least for me.
“Well.” His eyes sweep my face. “You look like you’re feeling fine now.”
“I am, Mr. Bard, thank you.”
“Hank, Irelynn,” he reminds me firmly. “Please, call me Hank.”
I force a smile. Even though I know it’s brittle and lacking any flicker of brightness, his eyes drop to it and linger until I let it fall flat. Male attention, for the most part, unsettles me.
Or, considering the fact I really have no friends aside from Rae, maybe it’s just attention in general that puts me off. After my father’s suicide, I did my best to stay quiet and out of the way. I’d been so afraid I’d anger my foster parents and be forced to uproot my life yet again that I’d just shut down. I clung to the shadows, to silence, everywhere I went in an attempt not to draw negative attention.
Then I’d been on the street, and any attention drawn to oneself out there is never good.
Ditto the shelter.
Now—well, now I think it’s just how I live.
“I’d hoped to talk to you at the party,” Hank tells me. Unease coils like a snake ready to spring inside my core. Anxiety pricks hot needles down the length of my spine.
I shift in my chair.
“Oh.” Please, just go away.
When I can’t keep eye-contact with him any longer, I look down to my desk at the phone that rings non-stop all day long. I will it to ring now.
It’s my luck that it doesn’t. Luck sucks.
“I’m curious, Irelynn.” He leans in even closer, trying to smother me in cologne. “Are you seeing someone?”
“Me?” Gosh, I sound like one of the squeakers in Mrs. Philips’ lapdog’s toy. The walls of my apartment may as well be paper thin for the things I hear.
Hank leers, eyes dropping to my chest as it rises and falls too fast to feign indifference. He has to see that I’m uncomfortable.
If he leans over the desk any further, he’s going to go ass over teakettle into my lap.
I want to hide under my desk.
Hank’s smile stretches wider, voice dropping to a pitch I do not like. “Yes, you. Are you seeing anyone?”
“Like—um—dating?” Did Rae put him up to this?
I mean, sure, she teases me about Hank and his sticky eyeballs—but, surely, she wouldn’t…
“Yes, Irelynn. I’m asking if you’re dating someone?”
“Um.” I feel dizzy as another little white lie slips out. “Um—yes.” I add a little more confidently. “Yes, I am.”
His brows lift. He’s surprised. “You are?”
I know, it’s unbelievable.
I dig my hole even deeper. “Yes. He’s—um—it’s new. We’re just seeing where it goes. But, yes, I’m s-seeing someone.”
My lie sounds so choppy to my own ears, even I don’t believe it.
As he leans away from me, grinning like I’ve just presented him with a challenge he likes, I think I should have just told him I don’t date co-workers.
But then maybe he would have solved that little issue by firing me.
I still wouldn’t have gone out with him.
But I would have been out of a really good job.
Life, like luck, sucks.