Chapter 5
Felix
The phone buzzed on the bedside table next to me, and I nearly jumped out of my skin as it cut through the quiet I had been getting so comfortable with in here.
I stared at it for a moment as it continued to let out that shrill cry, and then reached over to answer it, wondering who it could be.
As far as I knew, nobody was really aware of where I was staying unless I told them...
"Hello?”
"Hi, is everything okay?"
"There’s someone at reception who wants to see you," the woman on the desk told me. "Dina. She says it’s urgent."
I raised my eyebrows. Urgent? I had to admit, I was kind of surprised to hear that she was at the hotel at all, given the way she had brushed me off when I came to the diner.
But I guessed something must have gotten through to her, because here she was, ready to pick up where we had left off. Or, at least, so it seemed.
"Sure, tell her she can come up," I replied, and I hung up the phone, quickly heading to the mirror to run my hands through my hair and make sure I didn’t look like too much of a mess.
I had stopped by the Plot Twist book store the day before and picked up a few new novels, and I had planned on spending today hanging out at the hotel and working my way through them. Just something to keep my mind busy.
I opened the door and stood there as I watched the elevator at the end of the hallway.
It opened after a few seconds, and there was Dina; I couldn’t read the expression on her face from where I was standing, but she made her way towards me quickly, as though whatever was going on was of the utmost urgency.
"Hey," I greeted her, as she reached the door way.
I stepped aside, gesturing for her to come in.
She hesitated for a moment, looked around, and then followed me into the room.
I wondered if she was still worried about people talking if they saw us together.
Clearly, whatever was on her mind was important enough that she had been willing to overlook that.
"I didn’t expect to see you," I told her bluntly, and, as I looked her up and down, I realized that she was holding an envelope in her hands. "What’s that?”
She glanced down at it, as though she had almost forgotten she was holding it. But then, her face steeled with resolve, and she looked back up at me.
"This is the money you put on our account at the grocery store."
I sighed, rubbing a hand across my face. I supposed I should have expected something like this. I had just wanted to do something nice, something decent, to show her that I appreciated the time she had given me, but she wouldn’t even accept that much.
"You don’t need to do that," I told her gently, reaching out and pushing the envelope away.
"No, I don’t want to owe you anything," she replied. "I – I know you were just trying to help, but I think it’s best if you take this money and then we can be even."
"You don’t have to settle up with me," I assured her. "I wasn’t doing this so you would reach out to me again or anything. I just wanted to show you...well, how grateful I was."
"What, for letting you pay for dinner?" she replied, raising her eyebrows. "I’m sorry, Felix, it just doesn’t make sense to me. I know maybe this kind of money doesn’t mean much to you, but it means something to me, and I wouldn’t be comfortable taking it from you."
She pressed the envelope into my hand, and I looked down at it for a long moment, wondering if I should just accept this and get it over with.
But I didn’t need that money, and the way she had made it sound the other day, she could really use a little boost like that.
I couldn’t wrap my head around why she was so insistent on taking it this way.
"Please, Dina," I told her softly, trying to get her to see this from my perspective. "I just wanted to help. It sounds like you’re working your butt off all the time to support your family."
"I am," she replied, and then she widened her eyes and looked away from me, like she wished she could take back what she had said. "I mean...I like working hard to help them out. It gives it all meaning, you know?”
"Yeah, but stressing out over this stuff all the time isn’t exactly going to help you in the long run…"
"Felix."
She stopped me in my tracks, her eyes softening as she studied my face for a moment.
"What is it?”
"You never had to worry about money growing up, did you?"
I shook my head.
"No. My family...my dad’s company really started to go international around the time my eldest brother was born. By the time I came along, it was in full swing."
Her gaze was a little hazy, as though she was struggling to imagine what something like that might have felt like.
"I’m so glad you got to grow up that way," she told me. I snorted.
"You don’t have to…"
"No, I’m serious," she corrected me, furrowing her brow. "You’re a really...a really great guy, Felix. And it’s clear that you have your heart in the right place. I don’t think I’ve ever met someone who’s so generous. Not just with money, but with yourself, too."
My chest tightened. Hearing her speak like that, it was almost as though we were getting to the point where she might admit that she wanted to give this thing between us another shot.
"I don’t care about the money," I told her, trying once again to get through to her. "That’s what I’m telling you, Dina. If I can use it to help people..."
I trailed off as the look on her face shifted slightly, and I could tell I had once again pressed on a raw nerve.
"I’m not looking to be your charity project," she told me sharply. "I’ve been perfectly fine till now, and I don’t need someone stepping in and playing hero."
"That’s not what I meant."
She let out a deep breath, and turned to place the envelope on the small table next to the door.
"I’m going to leave this here," she told me. "Please don’t try to pay up any of my accounts again. I appreciate the effort, but...but I don’t want it. Not like that."
And all I could do was stare at her as she walked out the door, feeling utterly deflated as I watched her vanish back to her life once more.
It didn’t seem to matter how I tried to handle this, every time, I stumbled upon the exact way of saying something that would make it sound like I was patronizing her with all of this.
I thought about going after her, trying my best to explain what I had really meant by it, but I got the feeling it would only have made things worse.
Try as I might, that’s all I seemed able to do, and it was driving me crazy that I couldn’t seem to get myself in hand the way I wanted to.
She did something to me, flipped a switch in my brain that made it impossible to think straight, and as a result, I just kept on walking straight into more trouble than I could handle.
I locked the door once more. I was due to stay in town for another couple of weeks, and I just had to hope that I would manage to avoid her the rest of my stay here.
Not because I didn’t want to see her, far from it, but because I knew that, if I did, I would likely somehow stumble into making a fool of myself just like I had done before, and that was the very last thing I wanted.
I flopped down on the bed, reaching out for the nearest book. Best thing I could do right now was lose myself to fiction. And hope that I could find a story that was a little better than my reality.