I shifted my weight from my left foot to my right.
It was the fifth time I’d done that.
Right now, time was a meaningless construct.
My violet cotton bed sheets were rumpled and twisted. Everything was out of place. My fox pillow, one of my favorite thrift finds to date, something I always set on the chair at my desk before bed, was on the floor. My knitted comforter, another thrift, was on the floor at the end of my bed in a heap, as if someone had pushed it off with their feet. My pillows were in disarray, and there was a man-sized dip on the right side of my bed—a side I never slept on.
Swallowing the glass in my throat, I dared to look down at my naked body for the third time. My breasts, heavy and uneven, were hanging as they always did, but on the left one, there was a small bruise around my nipple. From sucking and nibbling.
He’d done that a lot. Couldn’t get enough, in fact.
The memory of his low, hungry growl flooded me then, sending a wave of goose bumps down my arms. I shivered, pulled my focus from my soft stomach, and wrapped my arms around myself. My eyes went right back to that spot on the bed, the place where he passed out, holding me as if I was the most precious thing in the world.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
He blinked and stared at me. Clearly, he wasn’t expecting to see me here at Astoria’s watering hole for the depressed and washed up: The Buoy. “It’s good to see you. Are you doing okay?”
My eyes drifted from the indention on the mattress to the one in the pillow.
My room—my entire shitty little apartment—reeked of him. His expensive cologne and the rum he’d been consuming at a feverish rate last night. My curtains shifted by my large window—the only reason I tolerated living in this box. It stretched from my room into the living room. A rare luxury for a girl like me. In the distance, a barge sounded its horn, announcing its arrival to the Columbia River as the morning breeze flowed into my space. As the salt air filled my nostrils, the damning realization that my space was no longer my own settled on my shoulders.
He’d been here.
I brought him here.
I let him in.
I gave him my body.
And it still wasn’t enough.
My eyes began to sting, and I let my head fall back. My long, pin-straight hair fell over my shoulder, the ends tickling the small of my back. I inhaled a deep breath, holding it as the first tear fell. Then the second and third. Within moments, I was silently crying, and as much as I wanted to brush this off or shove it down, I knew it wouldn’t do any good. Bottling things up never did me any good. My life and the shit I was still dealing with at twenty-nine years old were a testimony of that. So I let the tears fall onto my cheeks, running down my face, my neck, and all the way down to my chest, where they eventually dried out over my heart.
My phone dinged on the nightstand.
Cardinal.
I was supposed to clock in at Rossy’s thirty minutes ago.
As I carefully released the air in my lungs, the kitchen phone started ringing.
That would be Rossy, the owner of Rossy’s Books. I wouldn’t call him my boss. Sarah ran the shop for him. Sarah was my boss. Rossy was just…well, Rossy, a widowed middle-aged British man who dressed like Giles fromBuffy the Vampire Slayerand was currently working on his high-fantasy novel. He was also the only human being on the planet who had the number to my kitchen phone.
On the third ring, I moved. As my feet carried me down the hall, across the small living space and into the kitchen that would put low-rent New York City apartments to shame, I ignored the fact that the leather jacket he’d thrown on the back of my lime green couch was now gone.
I pulled the phone off the receiver mounted on the wall. “Hello, Rossy,” I greeted, my voice monotone.
“Are you okay?” he rushed out in a panic. “Carrie cannot get a hold of you and Sarah is seconds away from going to hunt you down.”
I turned my head, staring at the dishes in my sink. “Yes, I’m fine. I just slept in, is all.”
“Yes, well, I tried to tell the girls you have been a little overbooked with mid-terms.”
I hummed, not confirming or denying.
My last mid-term wasn’t until Friday, and I was more than prepared for it. I’d been studying for weeks. Then, the week after that, I had a meeting with my adviser. We were going to plan out my final semester of college and then set a graduation date. I was just a few credits away from having a bachelor’s degree in business. I had no idea what I wanted to do, but at least having a degree would allow me to feel some sense of value.
“Are you all right to come in for your shift?” Rossy gently asked.