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)
The phrase pinches something inside me because it sounds like obedience and I am so tired of earning my keep with compliances. But Trina means it like comfort, not command. She wipes away my ruined cuticle oil, reshapes, buffs. The familiar rasp of the file steadies the shake in my chest. Her hands are sure—kind in a moment where I need kindness.
I stare at the little bowl of acetone water and think about the blank screen that told me no service. Brian didn’t block me. He erased the line between us like it was a whiteboard scribble and not over six hundred days of my life gone. He called to tow the car while I was soaking my hands, and it feels so exactly like him and not at all the man I love at the same time.
“Do you… know him?” I ask, because the image of Trina kissing Kellum’s cheek is lodged in my throat. “The tow truck guy?”
Trina doesn’t pause. “Mm-hmm.”
“Like… know him know him?”
She smiles without looking up. “We went to high school with some of those boys. They’re around. They look scary when you don’t know them. They look the same when you do, but the edges aren’t so intimidating.”
I sit with that, trying to match it to the way his arms felt—unyielding and certain—as he kept me from meeting the asphalt.
“He said he’d come back,” I say, to test the taste of it. “He doesn’t know me.”
“He will,” she answers, like she’s telling me the weather. “Kellum’s a lot of things, but he isn’t a liar. If he says he is going to do something, you can write that shit in blood as done.”
The certainty in her tone slides into my chest and lodges next to the fear. It doesn’t displace it, but it gives the fear a wall to lean on.
A woman across from us—older, silver bob, eyes kind—pretends to examine a magazine and says to the room at large, “We’ve all had something yanked out from under us one way or another.” She lifts her bare foot from the pedicure tub and points her toes like ballet. “Sometimes it’s a car. Sometimes it’s the illusion that someone loves you.”
I don’t look at her because if I do, I might cry and the one thing I have left is not crying in public. Trina nudges the conversation away like she’s redirecting a river. “So, Kristen’s doing the full package—mani, pedi, facial, massage. We’ll get her loose by the time she leaves.”
Loose. The word feels wrong and right. I don’t want to loosen my grip. I want to hold something so tight it can’t vanish. But there’s nothing in my hands except warm water and the smell of cucumber.
Trina paints with the kind of precision that makes it look effortless. Two coats, then top. She slides my chair to the dryer and tucks me in front of the tiny fans that blow out soft air. “Ten minutes,” she says. “Then toes. You want water?”
“Yes,” I manage. It tastes like nothing and feels like a miracle.
Under the dryer’s whisper, I replay the way Kellum said darlin’—not sweet, not mocking, just a functional bridge between orders. The world I live in runs on things like babe and baby and sweetheart, words dipped in sugar to hide the poison. Darlin’ sits different. It sounds like a man who knows his hands can either catch you or break you and chooses the first one today.
Ten minutes pass in dryer. Trina returns and steers me to the pedicure chair. The tub bubbles up around my ankles, heat taking the ache out of my bones I hadn’t noticed was there. She works with that same no-nonsense grace—trim, file, scrub, the rasp of the pumice like soft thunder. When she presses the hot towels around my calves, my eyes close on a sigh, reflexive and helpless.
“You okay, honey?” she asks, which is different from earlier, she’s concerned.
“No,” I reply, startling myself with the honesty I’ll have to pay for later. “He disconnected my phone I think.”
There’s a collective intake of breath in the room, subtle as a tide shift. “Well, let’s verify first. She pulls out her phone and dials my number. We are greeted by the operator stating what I knew in my gut. This number is no longer in service.” Trina’s hands pause a beat and then keep moving. “You got friends you can reach out to?”
I open my eyes to the ceiling, to the tastefully neutral light fixture that probably cost four figures because someone told the designer it should. “I think I forgot how to have them,” I remark, and the shame in that is a hot flare.
Trina’s thumbs knead an arch in my foot that sends relief up my leg like electricity. “Then we start a list,” she states. “Trina. One.” Her voice is dry, practical. “You need three to balance a table. We’ll find the other two as we go.”