I looked away, passing by her, pushing the door open, and bursting out into the parking lot.
Air.
Space.
Freedom.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Well, now you’re in a fix, worst of your life. Are you going to make it better? Or make it worse?
Gambit, the Duke of Thieves
CRYSTAL
I hadn’t thought it was possible to hate myself any more than I already did. But seeing Gabriel fleeing the Platinum Pearl with a look of horror on his face proved me wrong. I’d done that to him. I’d set him up to face his worst nightmare. After he’d already suffered so greatly. I was cruel and selfish—a worthless bitch. If anyone deserved to be hurt, it was me.
It was just … it was just that he wouldn’t stop coming back, wouldn’t stop badgering me. Stop trying to justify it to yourself. Just stop. The real truth was that his unrelenting presence made me hope for things I’d given up on long ago, and the reminder of my own forgotten dreams had hurt in a way nothing had hurt in a very long time. The groping, the leering, being used, the dismissals, none of that hurt like Gabriel Dalton asking me to have coffee with him. Why? It was like he was dangling this delicious morsel of food in front of me—but directly out of reach—and I was hungry. God, I was starving. And he’d caused me to dwell on that, and it felt like a slow torture, the final crumbling of the very last intact piece of my heart. I knew that sort of hunger. I’d repressed it for so many years. Now I wanted things I could never, ever have. And I was tired, God, I was so tired of this empty life I led.
I sat at the top of my steps waiting for Kayla to arrive. My car was still in the shop but finally being worked on now that I’d paid my past-due bill. Thankfully, the part needed to fix it this time wasn’t too expensive. Still two hundred and fifty dollars I didn’t have, but I’d be able to come up with it if I was late with the rent next month. The vision of a notice stuck to a front door moved through my mind, my stomach clenching with the memory.
What am I gonna do now? Oh, Lord God, what am I gonna do now?
Bleakness fell over me as if the memory were a heavy, wet blanket. I attempted to shrug it off, but couldn’t manage it. Not today, not with Gabriel’s tormented expression sitting in the front of my mind.
My apartment was at the top of a three-story set of outdoor steps. What had once been a single-family home had been separated into three apartments, the set of rickety wooden steps to mine on the back side of the building. I gazed down at the concrete area below, the small parking lot that had once perhaps been a grassy area where children played. There were several small puddles from the rain that had fallen the night before, and another memory came to me. Mrs. Hollyfield holding my hand as I laughed and jumped from one puddle to another, splashing her with dirty water.
I closed my eyes for a moment, trying to block out the onslaught of emotion. God, why were all these memories, all these words suddenly running through my mind? I’d pushed them all away for so long and now, for some inexplicable reason, it was like they’d all shown up at my door at the very same time demanding to be let in, demanding I look at them when I really didn’t want to.
Still, the memory of the rain puddles persisted. I swore I could feel the cold water as it leaked through the holes in the bottoms of my secondhand rain boots, sense the distant rush of joy as Mrs. Hollyfield scolded me through her laughter and then pulled me into the comforting softness of her side and kissed the top of my head. I remembered gasping at the rainbows floating at the tops of the puddles as if they were magical, and Mrs. Hollyfield had agreed and told me there was magic everywhere if you were just willing to see it. I’d learned later that those rainbows were really nothing more than dirty oil floating on the surface of the water. And I’d felt deceived. What had seemed magical was really nothing more than grime. There was a metaphor somewhere in there about the direction my life had gone, but I was too weary to try to figure it out.
Sitting there, I felt the sadness that still lived inside me at the long-ago loss of Mrs. Hollyfield. I wondered how different my life might have been if she hadn’t died. But she had. Because that’s what people did. They died, they left without so much as a goodbye—eventually they all went away. If you got attached, if you hoped for love, it was your own stupid fault and you deserved the consequences.
Kayla’s car pulling into the lot snapped me out of my grim thoughts, and I stood, descending the steps.
“Hey there,” I said, sliding into the passenger seat of Kayla’s junky white Chevy. Her car was in even worse shape than mine, which was a true feat. I rested my elbow on the ledge of the open window as the car sputtered its way out of the parking lot.
“Thank God it’s cooler,” Kayla said, the cross breeze from the open windows streaming in as the car picked up speed. I just nodded.
After a few minutes of silence, Kayla asked, “You okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. I think I just need a break. Thankfully this is my last shift before I have a couple of days off. Just … I don’t know, burnt out.”
Kayla sighed. “Aren’t we all?”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
We arrived at the Platinum Pearl and both went to our dressing room to change and get made up. I felt like I was partially numb, merely going through the motions, which wasn’t exactly new. But I also felt both shaken somehow and especially tired.
“Hey, Crystal,” Rita said, walking into our dressing room a few minutes after Kayla had left. I hated nights like this where the three of us who shared the room were all working. I felt like there was nowhere I could be by myself, even for a minute or two. Some nights those minutes were the difference between keeping a smile plastered to my face and being the bitch Rodney had accused me of being.
“Hey, Rita.” I went back to applying powder over the foundation I’d just spread over my face.
“Think my boyfriend will be back tonight to give me another try?” Rita smirked.
Anger flashed through my system, but I kept my expression placid. Plus, the anger wasn’t really directed at Rita. It was directed at myself. “Doubt it.”
“What’s wrong with him anyway? Man that good-looking doesn’t like girls? A shame, isn’t it?”
“Who said he doesn’t like girls?”
“He acted like he was scared to death that I’d even touched him. Started breathing all crazy. I couldn’t tell at first if he was scared or turned on.” Sick shame moved through me slowly. I pretended concentration, attaching my false eyelashes, leaning toward the mirror and focusing intently on what I was doing. But my hands had started to shake, and I threw the lashes down. Useless. The lash strip lay on the table in front of me, looking like a sad, dead spider.
“I guess he just didn’t like you,” I tossed at her nonchalantly.
Rita glanced over at me as she pulled on a pair of bikini bottoms. She turned around and inspected her ass in the mirror. I looked away as she began adjusting her G-string. She spanked her firm, unblemished backside and laughed. “Nope. That can’t be it.” She laughed again. “But I’m willing to give him another chance to work up the nerve to enjoy my assets. Man that fine deserves at least one more. So tall and hard all over. Nice big … hands and feet. Mmm.” She winked, and I found myself wanting to literally kick her out of the room.