Just a Crush Page 4

  “Think we should warn him?” she asks.

  I shake my head. “Nah, he was a dick back then. Let’s just consider it karma.”

  She stifles a laugh. “I’ll take your word for it.”

  I pause once more, somewhat enamored by her playful eyes and peculiar smirk. “Anything else?” I ask.

  Her eyes shift toward me and she bounces a shoulder. “Nothing quite as scandalous as that,” she says. “But it’s the Plaza. Sit here long enough and you’re bound to see something unique.” Another smile. Another far-off glance into each corner as she sighs. “Might not seem the same to you,” she says.

  I lean back against the counter. “Why not?”

  “You grew up here,” she answers. “You have an almost permanent room upstairs but the rest of us? Some people go their whole lives wishing they could even set foot in a utopia like this.”

  I let it sink in. “Utopia?” I repeat.

  “I always liked that word,” she says. “Rarely get the chance to use it and... I don’t know. I think it kind of fits.”

  I look out at the lobby again from a different perspective than my own. She’s not wrong. It’s easy for me to forget how fortunate I am. Sure, I strum my guitar with a tattooed arm and sleep all day but the only reason why that dream is possible is because I could afford to live that way. I have options and choices far out of reach to the average person.

  I withdraw my notebook from my pocket again and flip it open. I try to scratch down a note but the pen draws a blank line in the paper. Dead for good now.

  “Got a pen?” I ask as I toss it into the trash can beneath the desk.

  Marla grabs one from the cup on the desk and hands it to me.

  “Thank you,” I say, quickly turning to write down my thought screaming between my ears.

  “Everything okay?”

  I glance at Marla and barely nod at her concerned face. “Yeah.”

  I flip the notebook closed but another thought rushes in, begging to be written down. I hop off the stool and take wide steps toward the desk’s exit. I swing out into the lobby and pause, quickly turning back toward Marla.

  “Can I keep this?” I ask, holding up the pen.

  She nods. “It’s got your name on it, right?” she quips.

  I tilt it in my hand and chuckle at the golden Botsford logo on it. “That it does.” I twist away and take multiple strides toward the elevators before my manners pull me right back to her. “Thank you, Marla,” I say.

  She stands still, her posture tall and respectable. “It’s just a pen,” she says with a laugh.

  “No, I mean...” I pause to let my thoughts clear. “It was nice talking to you tonight,” I say.

  Marla smiles, her dimpled cheeks turning bright pink. “It was nice talking to you, too,” she says, sweet and sincere. “Jonah,” she adds.

  “I gotta go,” I say, backing up. “I’ll see you around.”

  Her smile dips as she nods and says, “You, too.”

  And with that, I spin around and beeline toward the elevators. By the time I reach the 25th floor, my fingers are itching for the feel of guitar strings but they’ll settle for this pen instead.

  I park it on my chair once again and the lights of Las Vegas dance in front of me as I start a new verse. Then another.

  And another.

  Four

  Marla

  Oh, my god.

  This was the best night ever.

  It’s been hours since Jonah left and I still can’t wipe the grin off my face. Why the hell would I even want to? I might as well die like this because I honestly can’t see any night for the rest of my life topping this one.

  The sun rises over Las Vegas. With all the flashing lights around here, it really is a blink and you’ll miss it kind of thing. Suddenly the blank, blue sky turns a dusty gray and the next thing you know, it’s orange. A new day has dawned.

  But it ain’t gonna top the last one.

  Never not ever.

  “Good morning, Marla.”

  I blink out of my trance as the building manager, Oliver, steps out from the office hallway behind me. I heard him clunking in from the parking garage a few minutes ago but it’s always best to let him get a little coffee in him first.

  I smile at the half-full mug in his hand. Safe to engage. “Hey, Oli,” I say.

  “Busy night?” he asks.

  “Not really. Tame, for the most part.”

  He raises a brow. “Which part wasn’t so tame?”

  I roll my eyes. “The part where some guys got a little… verbally rough.”

  He piques with interest. “You okay?”

  “I’m fine. Luckily, Jonah just so happened to be walking by and he took care of it.”

  “So, be on the look-out for the official complaint from corporate about some lippy guy in a beanie. Gotcha.”

  I laugh. “Something tells me they won’t bother.”

  Oliver sips his mug as he looks out across the lobby. With his dark features and square jawline, it was surprising to find out that he wasn’t actually a Botsford. He worked his way to the top from the bottom floor to earn his place among the Botsford brass and that’s more than enough reason for Kingston to treat him like a son.

  “Hey,” Oliver pauses and looks back at me. “Wasn’t tonight your last night?”

  I nod. “Yes, it was.”

  He slips a hand into his breast pocket of his blazer and withdraws a white envelope with the golden Botsford seal emblazoned on the corner. “That must be why I’m carrying this around…” he says, offering it to me.

  I take it, my curiosity officially spiking. “What’s this?” I ask.

  He shrugs a shoulder. “Just a formality.”

  I slide my nail along the flap, gently breaking the golden sticker holding it in place. The size and shape of the paper inside are already a dead giveaway before I even pull the check out but I blink in surprise regardless.

  “Do formalities usually have this many zeroes on it?” I ask, quietly shifting.

  Oliver smiles. “They do when one of our best employees quits two months before holiday bonus season.”

  I close the flap. “Thank you but I’m not sure I can accept this…”

  “Bullshit,” he says, making me chuckle. “Just think of it as an advance on your first check for when you come back. And I do mean when. Give me a call anytime, I’ll find a place for you. All right?”

  I swallow hard. Out of every job I’ve ever had, this one was by far the hardest to walk away from. “Thanks, Oli.”

  “You’re welcome.” His eyes drift to the lobby again. “So, where you off to now?”

  “I’ll be around,” I answer, keeping it vague. “Just gonna focus on school for a bit. Feeling a little behind, honestly.”

  “I remember those days,” he muses. “But you know who took care of me?”

  “The capital B,” I answer with a smile, having heard it before.

  “That’s right.” He sets his mug down on the desk. “Get on out of here. You’re relieved of duty.”

  I pinch my envelope tightly and take a step back. “Thanks again, Oli.”

  “You can leave your badge and gun on my desk,” he jokes as he straightens up and greets a customer walking over from the entrance.

  I laugh and take one last look around my work area in case I left anything behind. It’s strange to think that this could be the last time I see the Plaza from this angle. I think of my first nights here and how difficult it was to remember everything from which direction the fitness center and spa was or how to access the rooftop pool. I think of that feeling of relief the first time I badly screwed up and Oliver patted me on the shoulder instead of ripping me a new one.

  I think of Jonah’s electric smile last night.

  At least it all ended on a high note.

  The bus drops me about a quarter mile away from my street. I grip my handbag a little tighter as I hop down to the sidewalk and take the rest of the journey home on foot.

/>   I adjust my earbuds to keep them from falling out and gently crank the volume up a little bit as I walk. Down Down Baby’s catchy melody radiates through me for quite possibly the millionth time and for that millionth time, I focus more on the background vocals than the talented front man.

  Because hidden somewhere deep in the track, beneath the melodic guitar and echoing piano keys is Jonah’s deep growl.

  Down down baby…

  I shudder with a smile.

  I reach the front stoop of my house, a quiet, well-kept bungalow amongst not-so quiet or well-kept bungalows in the cirrhosis-laden liver of Las Vegas. I’ve spent my entire life here, praying for better things to come my way but the farthest I got was the lobby at the Botsford Plaza.

  But dammit, let’s not think about that.

  I had a good night.

  I push the door open and the sounds of two crying children overwhelm the music in my ears.

  “Marla! That you?”

  I pop the earbuds out. “Yeah, Mom!” I shout over the warzone across the house.

  “Thank god. Get over here and help me.”

  I kick off my shoes and follow the crying to the kitchen doorway. I find my mother sitting at the table with dribbles of milk sprayed down the front of her waitress uniform. Her arms are outstretched with one spoon in each hand but neither of them connects with the screaming mouths of my three-year-old brothers, Scotty and Dave.

  “Need some help?” I ask.

  “Yes, please.”

  I march forward quickly and sit down in the last empty chair at the table. “Okay,” I say as I swivel Scotty’s chair in my direction and take his spoon. “What are we screaming about this morning?”

  “His cereal was too wet, apparently,” Mom answers. “So, I poured out some of the milk and then Dave thought I was going to take away his, too, and that’s about where we are now.”

  I chuckle. “All right. Scotty.” I get his attention with a few funny faces and shove a spoonful of his rice cereal into my mouth. “Mmm!” I feign a delicious face. “That’s good. You want some?”

  He stops crying, his interest now on the spoon.

  “You want some?” I ask again. “Because I’m gonna eat it all and you’ll get nothing.”

  I bring the spoon to my mouth again and he whines, making me turn it toward him instead.

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought. Open up, bud.”

  He accepts the spoonful of cereal, officially over his bout of crying and Dave follows suit.

  After a few quiet moments of chewing, my mother sighs. “Thank you,” she says to me. “I never know how to handle them when they start screaming over each other like that.”

  I shrug. “Eh, they’re just kids.”

  “How did your last day go?” she asks.

  My lips curl on their own again. “Eventful,” I answer.

  “Really?”

  I reach into my pants pocket with my free hand. “Oli gave me this,” I say.

  She takes the folded envelope and peeks inside, her eyes growing wide as she reads the check. “Whoa, kid. Good for you.”

  “Good for us,” I correct. “This should help us stay afloat. Maybe even enough to keep the boys in daycare a bit longer.”

  Her face stiffens and she sets the envelope back down on the table. “No,” she says.

  I straighten up, readily prepped for this argument. “Mom, we need this money.”

  “That’s your money. I don’t want you wasting it.”

  “Putting the boys in daycare isn’t wasting the money,” I say. “Or paying down the credit cards. Or getting the car fixed again so we both don’t have to keep taking the bus.”

  “I can handle all of that myself.”

  I take a breath. “No, you can’t, Mom.”

  She doesn’t reply to that. Her lips press together as she offers Dave the last spoonful of his cereal.

  “Mom, Oli told me that I can come back any time I want,” I say. “I figure I can leave school and—”

  “No,” she says over me.

  “Just for a little while until we can—”

  “You’re not dropping out of school, Marla. You’re going to stay there. You’re going to get an education.”

  “But Mom—”

  “I don’t want you to be like me,” she says. “All right?”

  I exhale slowly. I’m not sure what else I was expecting her to say. No matter how many times we have this exact same conversation, it always ends up the same way.

  “Fine, I’ll stay in school,” I say, “but you’re taking this money.”

  She eyes the check on the table for a moment before reluctantly nodding. “Deal,” she says.

  “When is your shift?” I ask, gladly changing subjects.

  “In about twenty minutes.”

  “You go. I’ll get the boys cleaned up and I’ll drop them off at daycare on my way to class. You pick them up after work and I’ll come straight home to make dinner.”

  She rises from her chair, looking stiff and far older than her age; a mere sixteen years more than me. “Sounds like a plan,” she says.

  “Mom,” I say, drawing her attention. “Everything is gonna be okay.”

  She scoffs, gently patting her boys on their shaggy heads. “I’m the one that’s supposed to be telling you that,” she murmurs.

  I smile partially, feeling a deep sting in my chest as she turns and wanders off down the hall toward her room.

  As soon as she’s gone, I throw on a wide grin to distract the boys and reach for the nearest towel to clean the various spatters of milk off the table. “All right, kiddos,” I say with a sigh. “Who wants to put on some clean clothes?”

  Scotty blows a raspberry at me and Dave copies him, as always.

  I nod. “Yeah, me neither.”

  Five

  Jonah

  I slump over my notebook once more, scribbling a bunch of quarter notes along the equally-scribbled staff so I don’t forget them. My fingertips are calloused and ink-stained but it’s easy to ignore the little things while something so epic is happening in spite of them.

  I drop the pen and un-palm the guitar pick I had squeezed within and rest it along the strings of my acoustic propped up on my knee. A quick strum or two and I’m back in, surrounding myself in a blanket of impenetrable—

  “Well, if isn’t my pride and joy?”

  I glance up from my notebook for an instant — but that’s all. “Hey, Mom,” I murmur as my focus turns right back to the quick plucking of strings.

  It’s brief and a little rude but I know that my mother is the last person in the world who would take it personally. She fostered this headspace from day one, encouraging me to fully embrace my talent and chase it wherever it led me and she did so fearlessly in full view of my father’s sneer.

  She wanders into my bedroom deep within Botsford Manor, the house I grew up in. Her eyes constantly shift around as she wanders and I nearly lose track of her silent step beyond my tunnel vision as she stalks around to hang above my shoulder near the bedpost. This would bother the piss out of me if it were any other person but I make an exception for her.

  Criminal Records wouldn’t be here today without Fiona Botsford’s guiding hand.

  “What is this?” she asks, obviously reading.

  “A song,” I answer after a few moments.

  “You’re writing a song?”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  “And here I thought you’d forgotten how.”

  “Nope.” The pads of my fingers burn a bit as I scoop up my pen again. “Just needed the right… inspiration, I guess.”

  She rolls her petite shoulders back as she straightens up. “Does this inspiration have a name?” she asks, her words heavy with assumption.

  I flatten a finger along the guitar’s neck, silencing the lingering notes. “No,” I say a bit too punchy but maybe she won’t notice.

  She hums once. She noticed.

  I’m not surprised. Fiona Botsford notices everything.<
br />
  I shift focus back to the notebook, flicking through several pages of lyrics I spit out overnight. I can’t be sure what did it but I’ve had a tune in my head all night, gnawing and pleading at me to put down on paper — the reason why I rushed over here to my childhood home for my guitar at seven in the morning.

  My mother squats down in front of me, her narrow eyes pinched together in such a way that exposes her barely-there age lines. “You didn’t sleep last night,” she says, stating fact.

  “I slept all day yesterday,” I say. “Mostly.”

  “I thought you were taking a break.”

  “I am.”

  She chortles. “You know, for all your attempts to not become your father, you certainly vacation the same way he does.”

  I furrow my brow. She raises hers.

  “And maybe if you hadn’t have agreed to host a production meeting here on Friday, I would have been able to enjoy that vacation. Instead, I have to bring new material I don’t have, so I have to work.”

  “That meeting was happening with or without my guest house, honey,” she says. “I suggest you redirect your ire elsewhere.”

  “You’re right.” I flick my pick with my thumbnail. “Sorry. I’m… under a lot of pressure.”

  “And wonderfully lost in a cloud of new inspiration in the nick of time.” Her eyes wander my face as she smiles. “I’ve missed this, you know.”

  “Yeah. Me, too.”

  “Must have been quite the spark to bring you all the way out here so early. Are you still coming to dinner on Wednesday?”

  “Of course,” I answer.

  “Alone?”

  “Probably. Yeah.”

  She reaches out and gently plucks my E-string as she effortlessly stands again. “Have you eaten today?” she asks.

  “Y—” I start to reply but quickly change my answer when I realize that I’m not actually sure. “No?” I say.

  “Would you like me to fix you something?”

  My stomach cries yes but the undeniable urge to continue working holds me back.

  Before I can answer, my mother kindly smiles and gives me an understanding nod. “It’ll be ready when you are,” she says.