It wasn’t anything compared to that.
But it was something.
It was mine. It was all I had left to make me feel like I could do something for someone that was about making their life easier and not harder.
I walked through the doors.
I got to the kitchen to see my bags unceremoniously dumped on the stainless-steel counter, and Heath prowling around the industrial-sized kitchen like a caged animal.
I debated addressing his presence again, or more accurately, questioning it when he seemed like he’d be anywhere but here, but with his general demeanor, I didn’t know how well that would go. I didn’t know how well I would be able to survive it.
Plus, the whole point of this shelter was peace.
It was my favorite in the city.
I had volunteered at three before this one. All were run badly, crammed in people, treated them like cattle at some kind of feeding trough, didn’t clean the facilities and didn’t offer any kind of help.
It wasn’t the fault of the people running them—well, not entirely. Our system was not designed to help these people. The undesirables. We ignored them on the street, shook our heads without making eye contact if they approached us, held our collective breath in the hopes they wouldn’t interrupt our lives.
Which was pretty much what the country as a whole did. Because homeless people were at fault for their own situations. Drug abuse. Alcohol abuse. Bad behavior.
It was not because they were in abusive relationships, or because they had mental health issues left untreated, or they were kicked out of a bad home environment, or because they lost relatively high paying jobs and the economy meant they couldn’t get another one and they burned through savings and loans until they had nothing left.
No, that couldn’t be right. Because that could happen to anyone when the circumstances lined up just so. And we couldn’t believe that these people had one day been one of the collective mass walking past them on the street. So we made assumptions in order to keep ourselves sane, to lie to ourselves about how easy it would be to become the one begging for help instead of the one ignoring the pleas.
This place was different. Largely because Jay, the man who ran it, had lived on the streets for seven years before someone took a chance on him. He was now the CEO of some multi-million dollar company. Well, more than one. All very serious and businesslike hence me not ever remembering the specifics.
He could’ve easily left the streets behind. Especially because of the scars he’d left on his soul. Scars I only knew about because of one night with a lot of tequila. And because people seemed to talk to me.
I invited confessions.
Maybe because I never judged anyone. Maybe because it seemed like I lived life so honestly. So chaotically.
When in reality, I was the biggest fraud of them all.
Jay didn’t know that.
So he told me the horrors he’d endured. The horrors that made him seem cold, cruel, and intimidating in ten thousand-dollar suits, five hundred-dollar haircuts, a handsome face. He wasn’t warm. Didn’t smile. He wasn’t the face of the shelter. No, he was barely ever here.
We’d met on chance.
When he’d been at another shelter, looking about buying the space out for some kind of commercial project. I hadn’t taken to this well, because no matter how poorly this place operated, it still operated. It still fed hungry people, it still gave beds to those without them.
And when I’d tried to speak to him, he’d turned on the ice.
I hadn’t cowered away from him like I’d guessed a lot of people did. I smiled in the face of his grimace. I didn’t let him scare me off with clipped answers and a cold stare. And I eventually somehow gave him the idea to convert another building he owned into a shelter if I helped pick the staff and gave him input.
He’d tried to pay me.
I’d refused.
“I don’t do this for money.”
“Don’t be stupid,” he said. “Everyone does everything for money. Or image. Which is the currency in L.A.”
I smiled. “I guess you’re right. But I’m not everyone and taking money for doing this would go against everything I stand for. Helping human beings in need isn’t something I should charge for. It’s something everyone should do without expecting a paycheck.”
“You might be the only one in L.A. of that opinion, present company included,” he said, pointing to his own chest.
I raised my brow in disbelief. If he didn’t care about helping people, he could’ve shut me down, ignored me when I started lecturing him about the residents of the building he was converting into some condo space.
He wouldn’t have offered another building and to provide staff and renovations.
I didn’t say this because most people didn’t want to hear the truth about their worst personality traits. Others, like Jay, who’d convinced themselves that they were some kind of cold and bad person, did not want to hear about their good ones.
So I stayed silent on that score.
And I’d taken him up on his offer.
We found a handful more people who didn’t expect to be paid for helping others. I made sure they weren’t people looking for something on their resume or their social media account. A lot of them were friends from the loft or at least people I knew ran in similar circles.
Jay was impressed.
Impressed enough to buy fancy tequila and get drunk enough on it to open up to me.
So we were as close to friends as someone like that could be. And he took my opinions, he let me contribute to the shelter. Now there were people that came in to help the residents get ready for job interviews, we partnered with charities to give donated clothes for these interviews. I ran a meditation class once every fortnight. There were separate dorms for women and children. Therapists for battered women. Drug and addiction meetings. Classes on things like how to get good credit, apply for an apartment. All the stuff high school never taught you. What parents were supposed to teach you.
Jay paid for it all out of his own pocket.
It was a deep pocket to be fair, but he didn’t cut costs. The shelter felt more like a high-end dorm room than a homeless shelter. It was the most sought after in the city.
It was a warm and welcoming place, offered as much peace as these broken souls were able to grasp. It was that for me. When I finally found it. When I found I could help people even when I couldn’t help myself.
And now Heath was here.
Dripping his hate and anger all over the place. Knowing him like I did, and all the men that had surrounded me since birth, I knew speaking to him, asking him to leave wasn’t going to do any good. So I decided just to pretend he didn’t exist.
A laughable concept when someone like Heath took the very oxygen from the room, from my bones.
But I managed to do so by unpacking the food, lining up what I needed, mentally thinking of a recipe since I didn’t ‘do’ recipe books. I didn’t like to follow rules.
Luckily more volunteers filtered in, offered me a bright hello and a questioning glance toward Heath, who offered them a slightly subdued glare.
“That’s Heath, he’s security for the day,” I said with a faux bright tone, as if he wasn’t glaring and my heart wasn’t breaking.
Chester, the youngest volunteer, still in high school, who wore all black down to his eyeliner and nail polish, raised his brows. “Since when did we need security? We barely have stabbings anymore now that you’ve instituted that no weapons rule.”