Boxes are lined up in every room. As I wait for leftover pasta to heat in the microwave, I walk through the dining room that doesn’t even have a table yet, down the hallway, trailing my fingers along the wall and running over the closet door and then the bathroom door, past the staircase, into the living room as my phone pings. I ignore it and circle back to the kitchen.
My new place is simple, just like the leftover pasta. It’s hardly enough to appease my appetite, but it’ll be enough to sleep at least. Opening the fridge door offers a stream of light, and the sight of an empty fridge apart from a bottle of creamer for my coffee.
With a sigh, I shut the door and then consider opening up a cardboard box I know has nonperishables in it. Pushing the hair out of my face, I decide not to do anything else. I need to sleep, not rearrange my kitchen at nearly five in the freaking morning.
Rubbing my eyes, I move without thinking.
The cabinet door opens, and I resign myself to a bedtime ritual I’ve used countless times in recent years.
I won’t do anything that’s going to keep me up any longer, but I put water on for tea. Chamomile will calm me down and help me sleep.
With my hands gripping the edge of the counter, I find myself looking out the kitchen window as I try not to think about the day. This lease is for a corner lot on a busy street. It’s cheap, though. The building across the street has a yoga studio on the ground level. Through a crack in the curtains I can see the polished wood floor, which takes me right back to gym class in middle school.
To Declan Cross and the first time I spoke to him, well the first time I wanted to. To the man I know is going to keep me up at night.
I can still smell the lemon polish of the floors and hear the echo of voices in the large gym.
It’s crazy how much time has passed, yet how it still feels like yesterday.
So many years ago. Our shoes squeaked on the floor as the teacher herded us out into the sunshine; it must have been late spring or summer, because it was so warm. I dip the tea bag in the hot water, remembering. Declan sat by himself. He had dark circles under his eyes and a haunted look to his face that was there more than it should have been. Even as a kid I knew, but then again, there were whispers about him and his brothers. Everyone knew.
That day in particular, his expression was ragged. I knew his mom had died, and he just wouldn’t do what we were supposed to do for class. Jump rope. We were supposed to count the jumps. The smack of the rope hitting the pavement, the chatter around us—it’s all there in my mind, just as it was then. And it all means nothing now, just like back then.
I swung the rope over my head and counted. One. Two. Three. Nobody went near him. They were afraid of him, because of his brothers. He was all alone in his hand-me-down clothes. Like mine, because all of my clothes came from my older cousins. He wasn’t so different from me.
He was wrecked. He was alone.
It hurt to look at him, so I looked down at the rope. And at my feet on the ground. One. Two. Three. But I couldn’t look away from Declan for long. That was the other thing about him. We weren’t so different, but I felt this pull to him. A similarity between us. I was afraid of the Cross brothers, just like all of the other kids, but I thought … if I could talk to him, maybe we’d understand each other.
I stole a glance at him as the rope came over my head and found him looking my way. He stared right at me, as if he’d heard my thoughts.
A shiver ran through my body. He’d caught me.
The rope fell from my hand and I could hardly breathe. He didn’t look away and I knew I had to say something. His mother, I remembered. His mother died. “I’m sorry,” I whispered, but the sound didn’t make it to him. We were too far apart. I hated to see him look so down, but I also knew it was beyond me to fix it. The fact his mother was dead … it was too much for me. How could I ever help? But I wanted him to know he wasn’t alone.
Because being alone is the worst thing there is in the whole world.
A whistle screeched to my right, scaring me and ripping my eyes away from Declan. The coach rattled off statistics about the number of jumps and who’d gotten gold and who’d gotten silver and bronze.
As if I cared and as if any of it mattered.
When I looked back at Declan, he wasn’t there anymore.
I turned in a slow circle, looking at all our other classmates, but he was gone.
My phone pings again and snaps me back to the present. With my tea in one hand, I grab my phone in the living room, once again wishing it was Declan, but it’s a string of messages from Scarlet.
Scarlet: Did he hurt you before? Hello? Hey, where did you go? You okay? You sure it’s okay?
Braelynn: Sorry. Just made some tea for bed. He didn’t hurt me, Scarlet, I promise
Scarlet: I thought you might have passed out. If he did, you would tell me, right?
Braelynn: Of course
Braelynn: I just … there’s a difference between being a waitress and doing other things. Not that I’m judging
Scarlet: Wear black. Just tell them no. Trust me! The guys that come in know they won’t leave alive if they hurt us.
I don’t tell her I already know to wear black. Declan told me as much. Instead I take the phone with me back to the kitchen, back to my tea.
I tip a sleeping pill out of the bottle I keep in the cupboard and wash it down with a sip of hot chamomile. The ceramic clinks on the counter as I stare out of the window again. The roads are empty. I probably shouldn’t text her back what I really think, which is that those men standing guard while women sleep with clients is exactly why I’m not sure I can go back. The Club isn’t the real world. It’s too involved with illegal shit.
The safer thing is to send her back a heart emoji, which I do before heading to the living room.
Then I pull the blanket over my lap, settling back into the sofa, and reach for the TV remote. I’ve got the TV set up on a little console, but the living room is full of stacks of boxes just like every other room in this place. Not much is unpacked yet, just like the bedroom.
I flick through the channels one after the other. It’s a bunch of infomercials and late-night stuff that doesn’t catch my attention. It’s too hard to tell what’s on, and I can’t focus anyway, so I turn it off and sip my tea.
My laptop’s on the coffee table, plugged into an outlet across the room. It’s a long enough cord to pull it into my lap. When I open it, all my old searches are waiting for me in the tabs of my internet browser.
It’s just like that day at gym class. I’m looking for him, but I can’t find him. There’s not much on the internet about Declan Cross or his brothers. If you ask anyone on the street, they could tell you more than what’s available online.
The only concrete information that’s searchable are the deaths he endured, one after the other. His mother passed while we were in middle school. His brother, Tyler, in high school. Shortly after, his father died. I skim through their obituaries, which are sterile funeral home notices without much of a personal touch. It’s as if someone has left these records just so there’s something to find. It’s weird, in today’s day and age, to find nothing but an obituary online, especially for people like the Cross brothers. I run a few more searches. Declan Cross. Carter Cross. Cross brothers and Fallbrook.
They went from poor kids on the bad side of town to the men who run it, seemingly overnight. My mind reels, wanting to know what happened. What happened to Declan Cross?