Chapter 2 Stormy #2
"This one's yours," he says, opening the first bedroom door. It's small. A twin bed with a plain blue comforter, a nightstand, a lamp, a window that looks out toward the Gulf. I can hear the wind rattling the glass. "Clean sheets, extra blanket in the closet if you need it."
I step inside and look around. I'm not looking at the bed or the lamp or the comforter.
I'm looking for the things that matter. The window as a second exit.
I could break it if I had to, but it's three stories up and the drop would hurt.
Probably break an ankle or leg. No exterior door.
The bedroom door opens inward. There's no deadbolt, just a push-button lock on the knob, the kind you can pop easily.
My hand drifts to the pocketknife in my sweatpants pocket. I touch the shape of it through the fabric and feel my heartbeat steady.
"The bathroom is across the hall," he says from the doorway. He's filling the whole frame, not on purpose, just because he's that big. "We'll share it. I'll try not to leave it messy but I make no promises. My mama raised me right but some lessons don't stick."
He starts to leave, then stops. Turns back around. His face shifts. More serious. Though serious on him still looks warmer than most people's friendly.
"Almost forgot. My house rules. Just two." He holds up a finger. "First. You got any drugs on you? Anything at all? Pills, weed, anything?"
I shake my head. No hesitation on that one.
"Good. Neither do I. We don't do drugs here. That's an easy one." He holds up a second finger. "Second. You got any weapons on you? Florida might be an open carry state but not in my bar. My house, my rules."
My hand is already in my pocket before he finishes the question.
Not because I'm going to use it. Because lying about it feels worse than telling the truth, and I've learned the hard way that getting caught in a lie can be bad.
I pull out the pocketknife and show it. It looks pathetic sitting in my palm.
Three inches of dull steel with a wooden handle and a blade that wobbles a little when you lock it open.
He stares at it. Then he stares at me. He shakes his head slowly, and the corners of his mouth are doing that thing again, the thing where they pull up and his eyes crinkle and the whole terrifying mass of him softens.
"That's not a weapon," he says. "That's a kitchen utensil. We need to get you a better knife. I meant guns, anyway. You carrying a gun?"
I shake my head again.
"Then we're golden." He nods at the knife. "Keep your knife. Everybody needs a good pocket knife. Or in your case, a bad one."
I put it back in my pocket. My hand stays there, curled around it.
"Kitchen's downstairs," he says. "Come on, let's get you fed."
We go back down to the bar kitchen. He opens the fridge and it's loaded full.
"If you're hungry, help yourself to anything and everything you can find," he says. "Any time of day or night. You don't need to hunt me down to ask permission to eat. Make yourself at home."
He opens a lower cabinet to reveal rows of liquor bottles of every kind.
"The only rule about alcohol is that it's off-limits unless you ask me first. I don't know your situation and I'm not asking, but I'm not going to put a stranger up in my house and give him free rein on the bar stock.
No offense. I might go broke in a hurry. "
I nod. I wouldn't dare touch his liquor.
He starts making sandwiches for us both.
I stand in the kitchen not knowing what to do while he pulls ham, cheese, lettuce and tomatoes from the fridge.
He stacks the bread high with ingredients then squishes it between another slice of bread with those massive hands.
He moves around the space, talking the entire time.
He tells me about the regulars at the bar.
A woman named Diamond who has been arm-wrestling men for drinks since the bar opened and has never lost. An old man named Preacher who delivers what he calls "sermons" from the end of the bar after his fourth bourbon that are apparently so profoundly strange that people have started recording them.
I don't mean to get pulled in but his stories are vivid and the way he tells them with big gestures and different voices makes the kitchen feel safer.
He never asks me anything. He doesn't try to pull me into the conversation or make me talk. He just... fills the space. Like he knows I need the space filled so I don't have to fill it myself.
The sandwich is the best thing I've eaten in forever. I try to eat it slowly so he doesn't see how hungry I am, but I think he sees anyway because he quietly slides his extra potato chips onto my plate when he thinks I'm not looking.
I'm always looking. I see everything.
After dinner, we head back upstairs. The staircase is narrow, and he's ahead of me, filling the whole width of it, and my hand finds the knife in my pocket before we reach the top. I hold my breath, waiting to see what happens next.
"We should get to bed early," he says. "Lot of work tomorrow before the storm hits." He says it casually. We. Like I'm part of this. As if my being here tomorrow is a settled fact and not a favor that can be revoked at any moment.
"Get some rest," he says, standing in the hallway outside my door. He's so tall that he has to duck slightly at the doorframe. "If you need anything in the night, I'm right next door. But I sleep like the dead, so you might have to bang on the wall."
I nod.
"You know, you don't have to nod at me like I'm your commanding officer," he says. "I'm just a guy with a bar and a big mouth. Get some sleep. Tomorrow will be a busy day." He slaps the doorframe. "Night, Stormy."
I want to say thank you, because even I know that what this man is doing deserves words. But my throat has closed around every word I own and none of them will come.
I just stand there, nodding like that's all I know how to do, and he seems to understand because he doesn't wait for more. I lift one hand. A small wave. It's the most I can manage and it's pathetic. I know it's pathetic but he just waves back.
He goes into his room and closes the door, and I stand in the hallway listening to the sound of him moving around.
The creak of floorboards under his weight, a drawer opening and closing, the muffled thud of those heavy boots hitting the floor one at a time, until the sounds stop and the apartment goes quiet.
I close the door and reach for the lock.
It's a push-button. I press it and try the knob and it engages, barely.
I can feel the give in it. The mechanism is loose, worn out from years of use.
I twist the knob harder, testing it, and the lock pops free with almost no resistance.
It doesn't work. It's not going to hold against anything, not a shoulder, not even a firm push.
The air goes out of me. Not all at once but in a slow, sick leak, like a tire with a nail in it. I press the lock again. Try the knob. It pops free. Again. Pop. Again. Pop.
It doesn't lock.
I scan the room. The nightstand is too light to do anything.
The bed frame is bolted to the wall. A smart choice for a room where drunk people sleep it off, a terrible choice for me right now.
The closet has nothing useful. There's a small wooden chair in the corner, the kind that exists in guest rooms because someone decided guest rooms need a chair even though no one ever sits in them.
I pick it up and wedge it under the doorknob. It fits. It won't stop a man his size but it might slow him down. It might give me three seconds, and three seconds is the difference between asleep and awake.
I turn off the lamp and get into bed. The sheets are clean.
They smell like laundry detergent. The pillow is soft.
The comforter is warm. It's the most comfortable bed I've slept in, or tried to sleep in, in a long time, and I hate it because comfortable is dangerous.
Comfortable means your guard is down. Comfortable means you've forgotten that a closed door without a lock is just a suggestion.
I slide the pocketknife under the pillow.
Three inches of dull blade against the biggest man I've ever stood next to.
The math doesn't work. If he comes in, and he decides to take what he wants, the knife isn't going to stop him.
I know that. I've done this math before with other men in other rooms and the answer is always the same.
I'm not big enough. Strong enough. Never enough to change the outcome.
But the knife is under the pillow and my hand is on it. It's the only thing between me and whatever comes through that door tonight. I don't turn it loose.
The wind is getting louder. The building groans and creaks around me, this concrete fortress that survived a Category 5 hurricane. I lie in the dark and listen to every sound. The rain against the window. The rattle of wood loose on the exterior — a sign, maybe, or a shutter.
And then footsteps.
I stop breathing. My fingers close around the knife handle so hard my knuckles ache. The footsteps are heavy. Everything about him is heavy and they're in the hallway. Moving. Getting closer.
They pass my door.
The door to the bathroom opens. Closes. Water runs.
The toilet flushes. The door opens. The footsteps come back down the hall.
They slow near my door and my heart is beating so hard I can feel it in my teeth.
I'm gripping the knife and staring at the doorknob and waiting for it to turn, waiting for the chair to scrape, waiting for the thing that always comes—
Please don't stop. Please don't stop.
The footsteps pass. His bedroom door opens. Closes. The floorboards creak once, twice, his bedframe creaks as he collapses on top of it, then nothing.
I don't relax. I don't breathe. I lie there with the knife in my hand and my eyes on the door and I wait.
I wait for an hour. I wait for two.
The storm is getting louder outside, the wind making sounds I've never heard wind make before, sounds like a train or an animal. The building holds. The door doesn't open. The knob doesn't turn.
At 2 AM, I'm still awake. My eyes are dry and burning from staring at the door in the dark. My hand is cramped around the knife. Every time I start to drift, my body jerks awake with a spike of adrenaline.
At 3 AM, the chair is still wedged under the knob. Nobody has moved it.
At 4 AM, I think about those brown eyes. The crinkles at the edges. His laugh when he saw me in his bar's clothes and how it didn't sound like any laugh I've been on the receiving end of before. How he put his extra chips on my plate when he thought I wasn't looking.
How he noticed me flinch and stepped back without saying a word. Didn't comment. Didn't get angry. Didn't ask why. Just gave me space like it was the most natural thing in the world.
Nobody does that. Nobody just steps back. Not a man as big as him.
At 5 AM, the sky is starting to lighten behind the rain clouds and the door hasn't opened. He hasn't come and I've been gripping this knife for six hours. My hand hurts and my eyes hurt from lack of sleep.
He didn't come.
I don't know what to think about that. In my experience, men who bring you home always want something.
The nice ones just take longer to ask for it, and the not-nice ones don't ask at all.
But he didn't come. He walked past my door, used the bathroom, and went back to bed. That's it. That's all he did.
I sit up and put the knife on the nightstand. My hand has a cramp in it so deep I have to flex my fingers open one at a time. I stare at the chair wedged under the doorknob. I feel a little better. Not completely, but it's better than I felt when I climbed into his truck.
I get up and pull the chair away from the door as quietly as I can and set it back in the corner.
I slide the knife back in my pocket. I stand in the room for a minute, listening to the absolute silence from the other side of the wall where a man the size of a small building is apparently sleeping like the dead, just like he said he would.
Maybe he told me who he was. I just didn't believe him.
I open the door and step into the hallway.
The apartment is dark and quiet. I sneak downstairs.
The bar is a mess from the previous night.
Glasses left out, chairs not pushed in, the hasty shutdown of a business that closed fast. I stand in the middle of it and look around, thinking about what I'm good at.
The list is short. The list has always been short, and the things on it aren't things I'm proud of, but there's one thing I can do that doesn't require being big or strong or brave or any of the things I'm not.
I can clean.
I find a broom and a dustpan in a supply closet behind the bar. Wrapping my hands around the handle, I start sweeping. The bristles swish across the hardwood floor in long, even strokes. The rhythm of it is mindless and it gives my hands something to hold that isn't a knife.
It's not much to offer. But it's what I've got.
And if he's going to let me stay here through this storm, I need to earn it.
Because if there's one thing I've learned in my life, it's that nothing is free.