Desert Rain (Rbmc #5)

Chapter 1

SIENNA

The fluorescent light above my cubicle had developed a personality, and unfortunately, that personality was hostile.

It buzzed in uneven little bursts—zzzt, pause, zzzt—like a trapped wasp slowly losing its mind over my head.

Not loud enough for anyone else to care.

Just loud enough to drill behind my right eye and turn my last functioning nerve into dust.

I stared at the spreadsheet on my monitor: water toxicity reports, runoff impact projections, ground contamination models.

Rows of numbers. Columns of percentages.

Color-coded charts created by people who believed pale blue made environmental collapse seem less alarming.

My entire life had been condensed into cells and formulas.

Projected nitrate contamination.

Sexy.

I leaned back in my chair and let the cheap wheels squeak beneath me.

Was this it? Was this the grand reward? Bust your ass.

Earn the degree. Save the world. That was the fairy tale they sold you when you were nineteen and still believed passion paid interest on student loans.

The reality was less inspirational. Saving the planet apparently meant resizing tables in environmental impact reports while my loan servicer sent emails with subject lines that sounded like hostage negotiations.

A shadow fell across my desk. I didn’t have to look up. The perfume hit first—vanilla cupcake with notes of office gossip. Marcy from accounting hooked her arms over the cubicle divider and chewed her gum like it had betrayed her in a past life.

“Happy hour,” she said. “You coming?”

I blinked at the clock. Five already. The day had somehow managed to both crawl and disappear, which felt scientifically rude. “No.”

Marcy squinted down at me. She had perfect eyeliner, acrylic nails sharp enough to strip bark, and the natural confidence of a woman who had never once Googled the phrase income-based repayment plan at midnight.

“One day,” she said, “you’re gonna wake up thirty-five with stress wrinkles, an ulcer, and no stories. ”

“I’ll have spreadsheets.”

“That is the saddest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“I work in environmental compliance. Sad is our brand.”

She laughed, snapped her gum, and vanished behind the beige partition.

I looked back at my monitor, where cell J-47 continued glowing with patient cruelty.

My chest tightened in a slow, familiar way, like invisible hands cinching a strap around my ribs.

I minimized the report and opened my banking app.

Thirty-eight dollars and nineteen cents.

Rent due in six days.

My laugh came out small and ugly. Environmental science. Saving wetlands. Protecting watersheds. Couldn’t even save myself from a negative balance and a dinner assembled from pantry scraps.

By the time I made it home, the sky had bruised purple over the rooftops, and my boots dragged up the sidewalk like my bones had been packed with wet cement.

My apartment building squatted between a laundromat with two permanently broken machines and a corner store that sold lottery tickets, cigarettes, and bananas that looked like they’d survived a hostage situation.

The front door stuck unless you shouldered it in exactly the right spot.

The lobby smelled like old radiator heat, stale carpet, and ramen seasoning that had bonded to the paint on a molecular level.

The neighborhood wasn’t dangerous if you minded your business, and I was excellent at minding my business.

Head down. Keys ready. No lingering near the alley.

No making eye contact with the guy who always smoked under the flickering security light and called every woman sweetheart like he was doing the world a favor.

I climbed the narrow stairs with one hand on the chipped railing and stopped outside my door when I saw the gray stray waiting for me again.

He sat near the peeling doorframe like an unpaid landlord, one ear bent, ribs showing under dusty fur, green eyes fixed on me with the exhausted judgment of a creature who had expected better from humanity and kept being disappointed.

“Well,” I said, lowering into a crouch. “Look who remembered my schedule.”

His tail flicked once. Not affection. A transaction.

I dug through my tote and found the packet of gas station turkey slices I’d bought two days ago when my blood sugar crashed and my dignity went with it.

The edges had dried out, but the cat didn’t seem like the kind of guy who required artisan charcuterie.

I tore off a piece and held it out. He sniffed the meat like a food critic with a grudge, then took it delicately between his teeth.

“You’re welcome,” I told him. “And for the record, you’re the only male in my life with follow-through.”

He rubbed against my ankle, claiming ownership of my boot, my hallway, possibly my soul. I fed him another strip and unlocked my door before he could make me sentimental, because sentiment was expensive and I was already over budget.

Inside, my apartment looked exactly as defeated as I’d left it.

Thrift-store couch with one sunken cushion.

Secondhand table wobbling on a folded index card.

One lamp with a shade that leaned permanently to the left.

No dishwasher. No central air. No meaningful insulation from my upstairs neighbor’s nightly furniture-moving ritual, which I’d started to suspect was either CrossFit or a haunting.

The only art on the walls was the water stain spreading across the ceiling in a shape that looked increasingly like the eastern coast of South America.

I dropped my bag near the door, peeled off my cardigan, and stood in the middle of the room while the silence closed around me.

Not peaceful silence. Cheap-apartment silence.

The kind that came with refrigerator hum, pipe knocks, distant sirens, and a man arguing with someone on speakerphone two units over.

My whole life felt like it had been assembled from clearance items and endurance.

My phone lit up on the table.

Mom.

I stared at the screen for two rings, then answered and put her on speaker while toeing off my boots. “Hey.”

Wind rushed through the phone. Music played somewhere behind her, bright and percussive, all sunshine and steel drums. The sound made my apartment feel even smaller.

“We’re in the Bahamas!” Mom announced, delighted and breathless.

Of course they were.

Good for them. Really. They had sold the house last year, bought into cruise life like they’d joined a cheerful nautical cult, and disappeared into permanent vacation mode.

My father had discovered linen shirts. My mother had discovered rum punch.

Their retirement photos looked like pharmaceutical ads for joint mobility.

“You sound tired,” Mom said.

“Long day.” I walked into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator, because apparently I enjoyed confirming my own despair. Half a jar of pickles. Two eggs. Coffee creamer. A takeout container I was afraid to open. Glamour, thy name is adulthood.

Dad’s voice boomed in the background. “Tell her about the dolphin excursion!”

Mom laughed. “Your father almost cried.”

“I did not,” he shouted, sounding exactly like a man who had absolutely cried near dolphins.

I smiled at the refrigerator light. They sounded happy.

Genuinely, beautifully happy. I wouldn’t be the daughter who dragged debt, mold spots, and career panic into their sunset years.

They’d earned ease. They’d earned bad cruise buffet desserts and matching sun hats and the right to believe their only child was doing just fine.

“I’m good,” I said. “Work’s good.”

“Apartment good?”

A bead of moisture gathered at the swollen edge of the ceiling stain. I watched it tremble there, fat and indecisive. “Yep.”

“You eating?”

“Constantly.”

That was technically true if thinking about food counted as a metabolic category.

“Dating anyone?”

A laugh came out before I could stop it. Sharp. Hollow. “No.”

“Well, honey,” she said, her voice softening in that way mothers had when they wanted to touch a bruise without admitting they’d noticed it, “don’t work your life away.”

Too late, Mom.

After we hung up, the apartment seemed to inhale the silence and hold it.

I made toast from the last two slices of bread, scraped peanut butter over them, and ate standing at the counter because sitting down felt too much like surrender.

The gray cat appeared on the fire escape outside my window and stared through the screen with all the entitlement of a retired judge.

“No,” I told him. “You already had turkey.”

He continued staring.

“I respect the hustle, but boundaries matter.”

He blinked.

My phone buzzed again. This time it was Lena, my old roommate, back in town for one night and apparently determined to drag me into the world of the living.

Loud, reckless, beautiful Lena, who had once convinced me to skip a graduate symposium because “your thesis will still be boring tomorrow, but karaoke waits for no woman.”

Her text filled the screen.

COME OUT. NO EXCUSES.

I KNOW YOU’RE HOME BECAUSE YOU’RE ALWAYS HOME.

I stared at the message, then at my sad toast, then at the freezer.

Behind a bag of frozen peas and an ice pack I didn’t remember buying—sat the coffee can where I kept emergency cash.

Not real emergency cash. Poor-person emergency cash.

The kind that got you through a copay, gas, or the emotional collapse that required pad Thai.

I opened the freezer and pulled out the can.

Life had officially qualified.