Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 75547 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 378(@200wpm)___ 302(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75547 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 378(@200wpm)___ 302(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
I laugh once, a cracked thing that still counts. A woman at the far end lifts her phone without meaning to, as if reflex calls her to offer it. She meets my eyes, then sets it down, and I’m absurdly grateful because I don’t know who to call. Not a mother who would say I told you, but picked up the pieces. Not a college friend who married and drifted. Not a co-worker—there aren’t any because my job was to be pretty in Brian’s foyer.
When my toes are an identical soft sand to my fingers, Trina flips the footrest down with a practiced click and helps me off the throne. “Facial next,” she says. “Mina’s ready. You want to pee first?”
I nod because I’m human, because my body kept functioning through catastrophe and that feels like betrayal. In the little bathroom, I stare at myself in the mirror. I look fine. That’s the hateful magic. Fine hair, fine skin, fine dress. The polish gleams neat as a lie. I touch my cheekbone. The girl in the mirror looks like the kind of person whose car gets towed because she confused entitlement with safety. I don’t like her, but I still have to take her home.
Mina is small and quiet and smells like rosewater. She leads me into a dim room where the air itself is a hush. “Deep cleansing?” she asks. I don’t know what I need, so I nod. She tucks a sheet over me, cocoons me, tips the bed back so I’m a swaddled offering to a god that might, for once, be gentle. Steam rises warm over my face. Her fingers are knowing on my jaw, my forehead, the points where worry sits and makes a nest.
“Breathe into it,” she murmurs. “Let the tight places loosen.”
I want to tell her the tight places aren’t in my face. They’re wrapped around a car, a phone number, a front door key that might not turn when I try it tonight. But my mouth says nothing because her touch is precise and kind and that feels like oxygen.
As the steam hisses, the world narrows to scent and sound. Somewhere far away, a motorcycle throws its voice down the street, low and insistent. It sneaks under the spa playlist and lodges in my ribs. My body responds before my brain does—heart quickening, not in fear the way it should, but in some other keyed-up way that I don’t have a file for.
“Sorry, is it too warm?” Mina asks, adjusting the steamer.
“It’s fine,” I say, reflex and also true.
She paints a mask on with a brush that whispers against my skin. Cool, then tingling. “We’ll leave this ten minutes,” she says. “You rest.”
Rest. I stare at the dark behind my eyelids and catalog my losses like a miser. Car. Phone line. The man who said I could leave any time and meant it like he was handing me freedom and not throwing me off a ship. My head wants to sprint to logistics—share ride with what? Call who? Walk where? Will someone even be home to let me in?—and then it catches on the rough rasp of Kellum’s voice telling me I’ll be back to pick you up in an hour like it was set in stone.
I don’t know him. That’s the bare fact. I don’t know him and I shouldn’t trust the way his hands steadied me. But I know what a lie feels like against my ear. I’ve been living under one long enough to recognize the temperature. Whatever Kellum is, he wasn’t lying.
The timer in Mina’s head is accurate. She returns like a tide, warm towel in hand, lifting the mask away, leaving a new surface I didn’t know I had. “Better,” she says quietly, more observation than question.
I swallow. “A little.”
“Sometimes we clean,” she says, patting in serum that smells like citrus and sleep. “And sometimes we just make room.”
I don’t ask for what. The ceiling could answer and I still wouldn’t know. My brain is all over the place and thinking much less processing a riddle of sorts isn’t something I can do right now.
When she’s done, I step back into the bright lobby. The clock near the hostess desk says fifty-eight minutes have passed since I ran barefoot into the sun. Trina sees me and her face does a small, proud thing that makes my throat ache.
“Massage?” she asks. “He said an hour.”
“He said an hour,” I echo.
As if conjured by the repetition, a new sound gains attention over the music. Heads lift, not because anyone is afraid, but because people always look when a storm arrives and chooses to wait outside.
Trina tips her chin toward the door. “Looks like your ride share’s on time.”
What kind of ride am I about to embark on?
Five
Pretty Boy
I roll up outside the spa on my bike right at the damn hour I said I would. Punctuality’s not about politeness—it’s about reputation and expectation. You tell someone you’ll be somewhere, you’re there. People stop counting on you otherwise.