Little Secrets (ARC)

by Jennifer Hillier

  She disconnects but keeps the phone in her hand. Figure what out? J.R. was obviously thinking she could get from Derek what she got from Paul, but maybe that was never the way this was going to go. She blew this one, big time.

  Her building is nothing special to look at from the outside, but the lobby and hallways are always kept lit. The sensation of eyes crawling all over her is still there as she gets to the lobby door and sticks her key into the lock. Only when the heavy door closes behind her does she allow herself to exhale. She might not have seen anyone, but that doesn’t mean there was nobody there.

  The elevators work, but they’re slow, and her apartment’s on the second floor. She’s fast on the stairs and is at the last step when the door to the stairwell opens. It’s Tyler. By the looks of it, he’s heading out to work; he’s wearing his good jeans and a white T-shirt that shows off his olive skin. He’s a bartender who works nights, and she’s a barista who works mornings. When they’re not working, they’re in class. Still, they used to be able to make time for each other. Tyler hates that Derek is married.

  Married men have a way of ruining friendships.

  “Hey.” Her roommate skips past her, careful not to let their shoulders brush. He avoids her gaze.

  “Hey to you, too.” Kenzie pauses at the top of the stairs to look down at him. This is ridiculous. They’ve been living together for two years, goddamn it. She uses his hair paste. He eats her granola bars. They both still use his ex-boyfriend’s Netflix login and password. They should be able to work this out. She wants to tell him about Derek, but not here, in the stairwell. “I owe you a breakfast. Free tomorrow?”

  He stops and looks up. “Breakfast? Seriously?”

  “Or lunch?”

  He shakes his head and continues on his way. “Buford puked in your bed. It’s all over your sheets so you’ll have to wash everything. I think he’s been eating the flowers.”

  She groans. The cat only does that when he gorges. “Wait. What flowers?”

  “Someone sent you flowers this morning. I put them in your room.” He pauses and looks up again. “And forget breakfast and lunch, we’re doing dinner tomorrow, bitch. You’re taking me somewhere nice.”

  She catches a glimpse of his grin before he’s out of sight, and just like that, some of the day’s awfulness lifts. She’s not going to screw this one up. Ty wants nice? She’ll give him nice. She’ll treat him to the Metropolitan Grill, using a bit of the cash Derek gave her. They’ll order steaks and cocktails and share a tableside bananas Foster for dessert, and she’ll let Tyler tell her what an asshole she’s been for the past six months. Hell, while she’s there, maybe she’ll drop off a résumé. The servers must kill it in tips.

  Buford is yowling the second she opens the apartment door, so she feeds him a can of Iams before she heads into her room. Cat vomit is drying in several places on the bed, and it’s green-tinged. She spies the reason—the small bouquet of spring flowers sitting on the dresser. They’re pretty, but not exactly romantic. Maybe Derek isn’t a dozen-red-roses kind of guy. Her heart palpitates as she reaches for the small white envelope nestled into the flowers. Please please please, let these be from him. The penmanship on the card inside the envelope is elegant—obviously someone at the flower shop has beautiful handwriting—but the message is depressing. And it’s not from Derek.

  Happy birthday to my sweet girl. Miss you. Love, Mom

  The guilt consumes Kenzie then. Her birthday isn’t for another four months, which can only mean that her mom is getting worse. Sharon Li has been a resident of the Oak Meadows Assisted Living Facility in Yakima for two years now, and her early-onset Alzheimer’s seems to be progressing at a more rapid pace. This is the second bouquet of birthday flowers she’s received from her mother in the past three months.

  The cat jumps up onto the dresser, nearly knocking over the vase. She catches it just in time.

  “Buford!” she snaps. The cat swishes his tail arrogantly in return. She can see where he’s been chewing leaves, and there are bite marks on several of the stems. “This is why you barfed on my bed, you little shit. And now I have to do laundry again when I just did it the other day.”

  She shouldn’t be yelling at the cat. Right now, he’s the only friend she has left. She gathers up the soiled bedsheets, shoving them into a cloth laundry bag. It only takes up half the space, so she empties the few items from her hamper into it as well, then heads back down the stairs.

  The laundry room is in the “bowels” of the building, which is the nickname Tyler assigned the basement, not because it stinks, but because it’s dark, damp, and you’re happiest when you’re coming out. Also, it’s spooky. The basement is kept dimmer than the rest of the building, and there’s a long hallway from the stairwell to the laundry room, filled with shadows and strange clanking noises that make her nervous. Once again she feels her skin prickling with the sensation of being watched, but when she turns around, there’s nobody there.

  The laundry room itself, at least, is brightly lit. She darts inside, exhaling when the door shuts behind her. There’s a washing machine free at the far end, and she empties the contents of her bag into it and sticks her Coinamatic card into the pay slot. The little light beside the card reader flashes red. It’s supposed to turn green.

  “Shit,” she says.

  The digital display shows a card balance of two dollars. It’s $3.25 for a regular wash, which means she’ll have to dash back upstairs to get her credit card to reload it using the Coinamatic machine in the corner of the room. But her Visa and MasterCard are both maxed out, and she hasn’t used Derek’s cash to pay them down yet. And of course none of the machines accept actual bills. Sometimes technology sucks. You couldn’t even do basic things without a credit card these days.

  “Shit,” she says to herself again, trying to decide on the best course of action.

  “A little short on funds?” a raspy voice says, and she nearly screams.

  She whirls around to find Ted Novak, the superintendent who lives on the first floor, standing behind her. She didn’t notice him come in, or hear his footsteps as he crossed the laundry room floor toward her. He doesn’t appear to be doing much of anything, and he’s holding nothing—no phone, no hamper, no fabric softener, no keys. He’s simply standing there, staring at her, like a fucking psychopath.

  She doesn’t like Ted. She’s never liked Ted. From the day she moved in, he’s given her the creeps for reasons Kenzie can’t quite articulate. He doesn’t say or do anything inappropriate. He doesn’t make suggestive comments or tell offensive jokes. He doesn’t leer. But when you’re talking to him, there’s . . . something missing. A light in his eyes that should be there but isn’t. If he smiles, which is rare, it doesn’t feel genuine. And if he laughs—which is even rarer—the sound is canned, almost forced, like he’s only doing it because social protocol dictates that he’s supposed to, even though he doesn’t exactly understand what’s funny.

  “I need to reload my card.” She starts backing up toward the door. She almost says, Be right back, but catches herself in time. What if he waits for her?

  He moves closer to her, pulling something out of his back pocket. His Coinamatic card. “Here. Use mine. Save you the trip back up and down the stairs. You can reload when you come back down to dry.”

  “Oh no, I couldn’t—” she says, but he’s already removed her card and stuck his into the slot in its place. The light turns green and the screen shows a balance of nearly a hundred bucks, the maximum.

  “Go ahead.” Ted steps aside. “Choose your cycle.”

  There seems to be no choice but to go with it. If it were anyone else, she would have been grateful for the neighborly gesture. But it’s not anyone else, it’s Ted, and she’s painfully aware that a pair of her pink lace panties are sitting right on top of the pile of clothes in the washer. She jabs at the button for the normal cycle, then slams the lid shut. The washer starts.

  “Thank you.” She forces a smile. “I owe y
ou three twenty-five.”

  She attempts to move past him, but Ted is still standing in the same spot, and he doesn’t budge.

  “No worries,” he says. Then he smiles, a second too late, and it looks as forced as hers feels. “Maybe give me a coffee sometime if I come into the Green Bean. What days do you usually work?”

  No way in hell is Kenzie telling him anything about her work schedule. She hates that he even knows where she works at all, and she’s not even sure how he found out.

  “We, uh, we get in trouble at work if we give people free stuff.” It’s half a lie. They only get in trouble if they get caught, which they don’t, because they all do it. Hell, giving free coffee to your friends is half the fun of working there. Favors curry favors. But Ted isn’t her friend. “I’m happy to stick the money under your door.”

  “That’s not necessary, Kenzie,” he says, and his dead eyes reveal nothing. She can’t tell if he’s being friendly, or if he’s insulted that she won’t tell him when she’s working. She doesn’t like that he calls her Kenzie. It makes it seem like they’re friendlier than they actually are. He should call her McKenzie, if he calls her anything at all. “We’re neighbors. We should help each other out. Besides, I’m older than you. If we were, say, dating, I would always pay, right? That’s what you like, right? Older men who pay for everything?”

  Kenzie stares at him, but he just stares back. It’s impossible to tell if he’s being serious. He doesn’t blink, and his voice is devoid of inflection. She doesn’t know whether she should laugh off what he said, react indignantly, or ignore it.

  “Thanks again, Ted.” With no other choice, she takes a big step to get around him, and hurries out of the laundry room, grateful her long legs can take the stairs two at a time.

  She’s out of breath when she reaches her apartment, half expecting Ted’s hands to grab her from behind before she can close and lock the door. In forty minutes, she’ll have no choice but to go back down to get her wet sheets and clothes and move them over to the dryer. With any luck, Ted won’t be there anymore.

  Feeling both depressed and frazzled, Kenzie pokes through the fridge, past the containers of leftover Thai and pizza (both Ty’s), until she finds a six-pack of Smith & Forge hard cider in the back. She plops onto the sofa, taking a long sip as Buford jumps onto her lap and settles in. She clicks into the Postmates app and orders food, using a credit she has on her account due to a mixed-up previous order.

  It takes twelve attempts to get a cute selfie of her and Buford on the sofa with her cider, captioned, No place I’d rather be. It’s a bullshit sentiment. She’d rather be anywhere but home alone with her cat, feeling the way she feels, but she managed to post it just before it was time to switch over the laundry. Seeing the likes and reading the comments eased her anxiety at having to go back down to the basement. Compliments from people she doesn’t know might be superficial validation, but hey, they’re better than nothing. Her photos of Buford are always popular.

  In the end, though, none of it means anything. Even the Postmates delivery guy who brings up her California rolls and fried rice seems to feel bad for her when she opens the door in her sweats, holding her cat.

  “Party for one, huh?” he says with a rueful smile.

  Perhaps it’s time to reconsider her life choices. If she doesn’t, she may very well die like this, drinking alone in her shitty apartment, with only her cat to bear witness to the last moments of her life. And Buford will probably eat her face after she’s dead, since they’ll be nobody home to feed him.

  By the time Kenzie finishes the last cider in the fridge, she’s drunk and stalking Marin Machado’s Instagram page, something she’d always promised herself she wouldn’t do. Her heart sinks when she sees the most recent photo.

  Marin is in Whistler, British Columbia. With Derek.

  Whistler is a five-hour drive from Seattle, and at some point earlier today, Marin and Derek were standing at the top of a mountain. The photo, posted a few hours earlier, shows them dressed head to toe in ski gear with their arms wrapped around each other. The caption reads, We needed this.

  The picture has fifty likes and four comments.

  furmom99: Good for you!

  hawksfan1974: Pow day! Tear it up!

  sadieroxxx: You guyyyys! So happy to see this! <3 <3 <3

  steph_rodgers89: You finally got Derek to take a vacation . . . you’re a superhero, MM! lol

  Oh god. Oh my god.

  Kenzie scrolls through more of Marin’s posts. They’ve been in Whistler for the past three days, which explains why Derek’s been AWOL. He’s in Canada. On vacation. With his wife. Based on the hashtags, they’re staying at the Four Seasons. They’ve gotten couples massages. They’ve been eating steak and lobster. They’ve been drinking Champagne by the fire wearing bathrobes. And not sparkling wine, either, but actual fucking Champagne. From Champagne, France.

  Because it’s their twentieth wedding anniversary.

  This is why he ended it with Kenzie. Derek is rekindling things with his wife. Which means there’s no place for Kenzie in his life anymore.

  Kenzie stares at her phone, her gazed fixed on one comment in particular. It was posted under the first Whistler picture, three days ago.

  furmom99: When you back? We should do coffee!

  marinmachadohair: @furmom99 Sunday! And yes we should! I’ll text you after the weekend! xx

  Sunday. Four whole days at the Four Seasons surrounded by snow-covered mountains and roaring fireplaces and Champagne. Kenzie continues to stare at the photo, and three things become crystal clear.

  It’s really over with Derek.

  Their house is empty until tomorrow.

  She knows the code to their front door.

  Chapter 19

  There’s a tipping point in any evening of drinking where you become intoxicated enough to feel like a bad idea is a good one. Kenzie has tipped over.

  She doesn’t take an Uber to Derek’s house, because Ubers don’t take cash, which is all she has at the moment. She catches a taxi on University Ave. instead. Without traffic, it only takes fifteen minutes to get from her place to Derek’s street. The address she gives the driver is for a house somewhere near his, and the driver is starting to slow down, his head swiveling back and forth between his GPS and the numbers he’s trying to read through the rain-streaked window.

  “Sorry, which house is it?” he asks.

  “Um, right here is good.” They’re a couple of doors down, but she doesn’t want the driver to know exactly where she’s going. Her head is fuzzy from the alcohol.

  He pulls over to the curb. “I can wait till you get inside.” The driver smiles at her in his rearview mirror as she fumbles with her seat belt. He’s retirement age, grandfatherly, kind. Normally Kenzie would have taken him up on his offer. Not this time.

  “That’s okay.” The last thing she needs is a witness watching her sneak into her married lover’s house. “I always use the back entrance, so you won’t be able to see me from the street. Thanks, though.”

  She hands him cash, tells him to keep the change, and opens the door.

  “Don’t forget your receipt.” He hands her a small piece of paper.

  “Oh, right.” It’s been a long time since she’s taken a cab. She stuffs it into her pocket.

  She hops out before the kindly driver can say anything else, and pretends to be texting until his taillights disappear around the bend. Derek’s house is across the street, a rebuilt Craftsman with a large porch that he once described as “not very big,” but which looks huge to Kenzie. She’s never lived in any place larger than nine hundred square feet, which was the size of the bungalow she grew up in.

  She hears a crunch behind her and whirls around, her heart leaping into her throat. She fully expects to find predatorial eyes shining at her in the darkness, but there’s only a squirrel peering at her from the base of a tree, its tail twitching. The street is dead. But she can’t shake the feeling that she isn’t alone
.

  It’s ridiculous, of course. She’s drunk, and it’s making her paranoid, and those are the two biggest reasons she should not be doing this.

  Kenzie isn’t supposed to know the code to their front door. She learned it by accident. A few months back, she and Derek were on their way to the airport to catch their flight to New York. Right as they were about to get onto the freeway, he realized he didn’t have his wallet. He’d stuck it in his gym bag, which, as far as he knew, was back at home. He told the driver of the town car to turn around.

  As they’d neared his street, Derek leaned over to her and brushed the hair off her face. Kenzie thought he was going to kiss her, but instead he whispered in her ear, “Babe. Do you mind slouching down?”

  “What?” she whispered back.

  “You know, stealth mode.” Derek forced a laugh, as if she were a child and this was fun, and they were just playing a game. She could see the driver’s eyes peering at them in the rearview mirror. He probably thought they were an odd pair. He’d picked up Derek first, here at the house in the fancy Capitol Hill neighborhood, then picked up Kenzie outside a shabby apartment building in the U District. Maybe she should have felt grateful that Derek had bothered to pick her up at all. He could have asked her to meet him at the airport.

  There was no way to protest without making it a bigger deal than it needed to be. Kenzie slouched down in the leather seat. The driver pulled into the driveway. As soon as Derek got out, she sat straight up in defiance, feeling the driver’s eyes judging her in the rearview mirror. She watched through the car’s tinted windows as Derek entered the code for the front door. She had a clear view of the keypad, and she watched his fingers press 1-1-2-0. November 20. His son’s birthday.

  The longer Kenzie stands in the rain, the more she sobers up, and she’s not sure whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing. Derek’s house is two stories, with large windows, and flanked on both sides by enormous oak and maple trees. A deep front porch spans its width. Lush, well-tended bushes add a bright pop of color to the earthy, neutral colors of the home’s exterior. It’s not an ostentatious house, nor is it one of those modern, gaudy McMansions springing up in other neighborhoods where new money reigns. This is a family home in Capitol Hill.