Gravity

by Liz Crowe

  Melody’s eyes widened. She glanced at Kayla for confirmation. Kayla nodded, her guts roiling. Everyone knew about her—about how disgusting and filthy she was. She shivered, picturing herself in one of many hotel rooms, waiting for whatever man was paying her stepfather. “I need to go.” She stood. “Now that we’re all clear here.”

  Melody motioned for her to sit then turned to face her new husband. “Trent, that is a serious betrayal of Kayla’s trust. I don’t blame her for being mad at you.” Her nostrils were flaring. Kayla could tell she was keeping a tight rein on her anger and admired her for it.

  Trent sighed and slumped into his chair. Kayla almost forgave him then. Last thing he deserved was both his wife and his sister ganging up on him. But then she recalled how Brock had looked at her after she’d thrown herself at him for that last kiss in the rain. He’d been sickened by her. And she knew why now.

  “Don’t worry about it, Melody. Trent and I will work ourselves out.” She sensed Trent’s gaze on her. But she refused to meet it. “You guys should go on home. You probably need to get off your feet.” She elbowed Trent, knowing he’d leap to attention if he thought Melody was overtired or otherwise taxed. As she figured he would, he flew into bossy mode, demanding that Melody stop playing at psychotherapy and get home to rest, pronto.

  “I haven’t seen or talked to him since that night,” she blurted out as the two of them were headed out of the door. “If that’s any comfort to you, brother.” She emphasized the last word, still furious with him, but figuring it for the best—as Brock had said that night.

  “It’s not, K. I don’t want you to be unhappy. And I told him that night to go up to the house and find you, talk to you, work through it. I take it that he didn’t do that.”

  She twisted her fingers together. At night, before she drifted into restless sleep, she could hear his voice, calling her name. His fist, pounding on her bedroom door that night until he’d given up and had gone away, leaving her in peace. “He tried,” she admitted.

  Melody touched her cheek. “I hate to see you so upset, chica.”

  “I’m a grownup, Melody. I’ll sort out my own shit. Now go on and rest, enjoy your married life back in Michigan.” Things were out of balance again, now that they were back. It was making her antsy. It was making her want Brock even worse—just to see him, hear his voice, know he was around. But he’d steered clear of her and she didn’t have the nerve to ask Evelyn about him, not after that God-awful wedding. No matter how badly she wanted to, or how worried she might be about his mental state. She’d gone back to her old meeting place, the crappy community center near her just as crappy halfway house, thinking—hoping—he might join her. But of course, he hadn’t.

  He knew her worst secrets. She had no doubt, based on his disgusted reaction to her after their last kiss, that he found her as filthy as she was. So at least she knew that much about him. That if she’d gotten around to telling him everything, he would have bolted in horror. So maybe she should be thanking Trent for saving her some heartache, not shunning him, unable to even look him in the eye without wanting to scream.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Two weeks later

  “Fuckin-A I can’t do this anymore!” Brock dropped the weights, letting them take an illicit bounce on the rubber mat. “You’re a God damned torturer. You’re fired.”

  His trainer, a sixty-year-old dude who had no right looking as good as he did, smiled and pointed to the treadmill. Every muscle and sinew in his body screaming for mercy, Brock limped to the device, climbed aboard and started running. Twenty minutes later, he lay on the massage table, while some burly chick dug into his calves and hammies with what felt like knife-shaped knuckles.

  “Ow,” he said, over and over again. But it fell on deaf ears. By the time she’d finished with him, he was a limp noodle, well past exhausted, which is exactly how he liked to spend his evenings—so tired he couldn’t even lift a soup spoon or a sandwich before he fell face-first into bed.

  Tonight, he took a long shower in the gym’s fancy spa-like locker room after a thirty-minute soak in the hot tub, then headed for the juice bar, figuring he might as well drink his dinner. The cute girl behind the counter tried her usual hair-flip, eyelash fluttering mating dance on him but one other advantage of working out six days a week until he could barely walk was an inverse reaction to this sort of behavior. He flirted, of course. That much was ingrained in him. He’d consider it an insult to a beautiful woman if he didn’t. But his body remained unaffected. His brain blank.

  As he watched her throw his dinner replacement smoothie together, he flipped his car keys around in his hand, antsy for some reason. He kept hearing sirens from emergency vehicles as they screamed past his gym. The first one when he’d been almost finished with the treadmill, and the rest while attempting to relax under massage torture. And now, there were more. It was as if the entire city of Grand Rapids were on its way to some kind of a crisis.

  “Oh, wow, check it out,” the girl said as she handed over his drink. She was looking up at one of the many flat screens in the facility, angled so that you were never in any position not to see one. “Where is that?”

  Unnerved, Brock ignored the outstretched smoothie and turned to take in the news, hoping it wouldn’t hamper his commute home from this suburban oasis of hell. What he saw on the screen took him a few seconds to comprehend, but once he had, he ran flat-out for the glass doors, the images etched onto his brain.

  “Large warehouse fire on city’s south side consumes uncertified and illegal living spaces. Many already feared dead as firemen battle the blaze.”

  He leaped in behind the wheel and screeched out onto the quiet street, realizing he was a solid twenty minutes on a good day away from that warehouse. The place Kayla refused to move from, no matter how hard Trent had tried to convince her otherwise.

  After their violent confrontation and now-shared knowledge about Kayla, he and Trent had stayed in close touch since he’d returned from his honeymoon. Although Brock had gone out of his way to assure the man that he had no intention of ‘dating’ Kayla, or of anything else. Their situations were too fraught, too complex, carried way too much proverbial baggage.

  The truth was, Brock missed her so much it kept him awake most nights, pondering what he might have done differently in his life, to deserve to be the man she needed. It had been a brutal set of weeks as he did all he could to avoid her, in direct opposition to how their relationship had been progressing before the wedding. He’d lurked a bit, making sure she worked her shifts, observing without being observed, out of loyalty to Trent, he self-justified. Which had not helped his psyche one bit.

  He’d skipped meetings for a couple of weeks, burying himself in work. The water clean-up program did not require his direct oversight or presence, but he gave it anyway, as he researched the foundation’s next beneficiary—Boys and Girls Clubs of Greater Grand Rapids. While he had not gone off meds—something he’d been guilty of before during times of high life-stress—he realized after missing the routine, he needed it, so he resumed his spot in the church basement, listening, sipping coffee, offering support where he could.

  When his therapist suggested that he drop one of his twice-weekly sessions with her and attend a sex addicts anonymous meeting instead, he’d agreed. So now he got the church basement scene twice a week—once with the drug junkies and once with the perverts.

  He skidded to a stop at a light and touched the ‘voice call’ icon on his car’s fancy media screen. “Call Trent,” he demanded. As he waited for the guy to pick up, he pressed his fist against the steering wheel, still hearing the sirens echoing in his brain pan.

  “Hettinger,” the voice came through the car’s fancy speakers.

  “Fire,” Brock blurted out. “Where are you right now? Can’t you hear the sirens?”

  “What? Why? I mean…what fire?”

  “Fuck, man. It’s Kayla’s building… It’s burning the hell down. I’m trying to get the
re but I’m stuck in fucking…suburban…traffic…hell!” He hit the horn with each of his last four words, urging the soccer moms and stay-at-home dads through the damn traffic signals.

  “Her…building?”

  “Yes. I don’t know if she’s working, but I don’t think so. It’s Thursday, usually her day off.”

  “I’m on my way. Coming from downtown.”

  “You’ll make it before me then. Ask Melody if she’s there.”

  “Yeah. Got it.” The call ended before he could say anything else. He cursed and honked his way through the suburbs and hit the expressway at ninety miles an hour, willing some cop to try to stop him.

  As he was exiting, he could see black smoke rising into the evening sky. His entire body seized up in panic but he kept the pedal mashed to the floor and ran three stoplights to get through the long stretch of auto dealerships between downtown and the south side, where Kayla’s building was going up in flames.

  The scene was out of some nightmare movie version of a five-alarm fire. A half-dozen ladder trucks were assembled, all directing as much water as possible onto the blaze. Another dozen or so support vehicles ringed the building, with an outer phalanx of cop cars forming a barricade. Ten ambulances were lined up, their staff in varying degrees of helping survivors or staring, helpless in the face of the inferno.

  Even stopped as far back as he was forced to, the heat was unreal, like standing inside a furnace. He could make out Trent’s Jeep a few cars ahead of him but couldn’t see him anywhere. As he shoved his way forward, determined to get closer and see if Kayla was one of the people being treated outside, praying that she was, and realizing that he may have hesitated and lost his one shot at happiness, he could hear Trent’s voice. Loud shouts of anger interspersed with increasing threats of physical restraint filled his ears as he snuck around one car and saw what was going on.

  “My sister is in there, you fucking asshole. Let go of me!” Trent gave a final wrench of his arms, stumbled forward past the line of ambulances, and right at the burning building.

  “Fuck,” Brock muttered as he snuck closer, getting glimpses of the soot-stained victims being given oxygen, some being loaded into the rigs, as more waited to take their place. He prayed that Trent had enough sense not to run into the damn building.

  It would appear, however, that he did not.

  As Brock watched in horror, Trent sidestepped a line of firemen, barreled right over another line and headed for an opening where the door used to be. “What a…hey!” A hand clamped around his upper arm. He turned to find himself face to face with a sooty fireman. “Sorry. I… I know that guy and…”

  “I’m sending someone in after him, but I don’t want to do it. We’ve gotten everybody out we can. That building has about fifteen seconds before it collapses. Now, get the hell out of the way. Back there.” He gave Brock a none-too-gentle shove. He moved but stayed as close as he could, keeping tabs and praying harder than he ever had in his life.

  Three firemen scrambled forward, following Trent into the building while the rest kept dousing the place with streams of water. He counted to twenty, then thirty, and the building stayed upright. When he got to seventy-five, he saw the upper floor flattening in slow motion, pancaking down and collapsing the lower floor under its weight. The flames shot up higher, singeing his eyebrows.

  But there, out of the rolling smoke, he saw three figures emerge. The firemen, with a body draped over one of their shoulders. Without another thought, he ran toward them, terrified to see if it was Trent, or Kayla. The medics rushed forward, slapped the body onto a gurney and raced to an ambulance.

  “No time! No time!” one of them was yelling. “Full saturation. We’ve got to get him to the hospital.”

  “Move! I’ve got to cut a trach. He’s crashing!”

  “Wait, watch out for the swelling. You’ll cause a PE.”

  Brock stood, helpless, while the medics tried to save Trent’s life, wondering if the world had lost two Hettingers even as he understood that it was now up to him to find Melody and tell her.

  The ambulance doors slammed shut in his face. His knees gave out and he dropped to the hot pavement, gasping for breath. Hands helped him up and guided him to another ambulance but he broke away from them, coughing even as he insisted he didn’t need anything. He had to leave. He had to find Melody.

  “Wait! Sir! You should let us…”

  But he ran from the hellscape toward his car, ignoring everyone and everything in his panic. As he drove like a bat out of hell toward the brewery, not knowing what else to do, he said, “Call Austin” to his onboard computer. But his voice was hoarse and he broke down coughing so long and loud the computer lady voice said, “I’m sorry but I didn’t get that. Who am I calling?”

  “Forget it,” he muttered, swiping his lips and noting that the back of his hand came away black with soot.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  “God but you are a lifesaver, yet again.”

  Kayla smiled at Melody, shrugging off the compliment as usual. “It’s not like I have anything better to do,” she said as she grabbed a clean FitzPub shirt from the rack and headed for the employee bathroom. She’d come in to cover a shift mid-afternoon, thankful for the distraction. And when Melody had rushed up to her, panicked because two of her best servers had called in sick, which made them short for a private party in the FitzHall—the large rental space that backed up to the other side of the kitchen—Kayla had been doubly relieved.

  Covering parties in the Hall was pretty easy money, most times. And she was eager to grow her tiny savings to hit a milestone that would allow her the wherewithal to move. Of course, Trent had been after her like a dog with a bone to get her into someplace safe. But she was still in polite mode with him, unwilling or unable to admit that she had to do this first step herself. If she could save the three grand she needed for a deposit and first month’s rent on a tiny studio she’d found, it hit a major goal in her independent life. Her life as a normal, non-using adult.

  It had taken Melody’s firm—and loud—insistence to get Trent to back off, which he had done. Although he’d kept trying to work his way back into her good graces, something she’d continued to resist.

  Tonight’s tips, unexpected and welcomed, would put her almost to the point at which she’d feel comfortable pulling the trigger on a new lease. She changed out of her beer-splattered shirt and into a clean one, pulled her hair back and splashed water on her face. Operating most days on three or four hours of sleep did not make her the sharpest of tacks by the evening, but she’d tough this one out. She needed the money. She craved the distraction. Time alone was not her friend. Time alone meant memories of Brock, which always led to a wave of disgust at herself.

  The event was a big one—a going away party as best she could tell. By the time she joined the fray, the food had been consumed and ninety percent of the attendees were past the point of no return. Unsure how to deal with some of them, as she’d been trained not to serve anyone who was so obviously over-served, she sent a quick text to Melody, asking for her to step in and make the call.

  Together, they poured pitchers of water and fought tiny battles with drunk assholes until they decided that it was time to confiscate everyone’s keys. Kayla climbed up on the bar to the sound of catcalls and let out a shrill whistle. “Okay, people. The only way we are going to serve another beer to any of you is if you put your car keys in the bowl that my boss is bringing around.”

  Loud complaints and curses followed.

  She waited. “Anyone in here want another beer?”

  The crowd roared. “I thought so. Give up your keys. We’ll pour one more round for each of you then I’m calling cabs for everybody.”

  “Party pooper!

  “Bitch!”

  She smiled. “Yes. All of the above. Keys, boys. Or no nightcap.”

  Melody took the bowl of keys to her office and locked them up, then returned to help the overwhelmed staff. “Jesus, remind me ne
ver to let this guy book a party again,” she muttered as she began the daunting task of cleaning up while four male bartenders encouraged, poked, prodded and in some cases dragged people to the side door to wait for their taxis.

  It was almost ten p.m. by the time they had it all cleaned up, and Kayla had been on her feet for almost twelve hours straight. Her back and knees were screaming for mercy and her stomach rumbled, reminding her she hadn’t eaten for almost that long. She half sat, half fell into a chair, propping her feet on another and taking a proffered glass of water with a grateful smile.

  “I’m ordering us some food, chica. You sit tight and let me handle it.”

  “I should get home,” Kayla said, but she didn’t move. She didn’t think she could right then.

  “After we feast. Bean burger, right?”

  “Right. Thanks.” She finished the water and lifted her arms over her head, trying to stretch out the many kinks and knots in her back and shoulders. She’d been stuck in this windowless room for so long she felt a strange surge of panic.

  Brock. She needed to see Brock. The need was so strong it forced her to her feet and across the empty floor to the bar where she’d left her phone. But a quick touch to the screen revealed that the damn thing was dead. Her ears rang. Her pulse raced. Her mouth was so dry she lunged for the pitcher of water and drank the rest of it down in greedy gulps. As she swiped her lips, Melody appeared, bearing plates of food that smelled so good, Kayla’s mouth watered.

  But she was shaking as she took hers and the first bite tasted weird in her mouth, almost like smoke or ashes. Melody groaned and put her feet up as she picked at her food. “I thought I was hungry,” she said, echoing Kayla’s reaction. She put the burger down and wiped her lips as the ongoing sense of panic made every inch of her skin crawl.

  “Melody!” a voice called from the kitchen. “Telefono!”