Page 12 of XX Love Affair
No, get a job. The less she had to depend on finding someone, the better. Wasn’t like she couldn’t quit a job, anyway. She had done it before. The hardware store. The taco truck. The soccer youth camp. Most of them were jobs Helena quit halfway through her employment.
They didn’t need her. Not any more than she needed them.
She was in the middle of checking local job listings online when someone knocked on her door. It was too late in the day for housekeeping.
Helena’s hair stood on the back of her neck. Who the hell is it? She cautiously approached the door, careful not to make a sound, as someone knocked again without announcing themselves. Even if it wasn’t Irene or Josh in the flesh, it might be someone from the hotel’s front desk, paid to deliver a message on their behalf. She wasn’t exactly quiet. Helena had merely presumed that the couple wouldn’t care enough to chase after her.
She peered through the peephole. A woman in a hotel uniform waited on the other side.
“Yeah?” Helena left the chain on the door as she cracked it open. “Can I help you?”
The thirty-something woman with an unremarkable face perked up at the sound of Helena’s voice. “Ms. Pierce, I presume?”
“Yeah…”
An envelope appeared before the door slit. “This is to be personally delivered to you.”
I knew it. With furrowed brows, Helena accepted the unmarked envelope. “Thanks.” She closed the door without offering a tip. The woman had already been paid by whoever wanted to harass Helena.
She waited until the woman had left before turning away from the peephole. The envelope was not sealed, and there was no name anywhere on the piece of hotel stationery now in Helena’s hand.
“I’m in town for a conference. Contact me if you want to talk.”
She didn’t recognize the handwriting at first. She definitely didn’t know the phone number written on the bottom of the paper.
Still, Helena had a sinking suspicion. She knew it wasn’t Irene or Josh. This wasn’t their style. Neither of them would be so indirect.
Once Helena realized who it was, she crumpled up the paper and tossed it into the bin. That way, there was no temptation to reach out.
Where was I? She sat at the table by the window and perused job listings on her tablet. When she tired of that, she swiped left and right on her dating app, completely unimpressed with what this city had to offer in terms of “normal” people. None of them could give her the long-term thrills she was after. Not even if they promised her the world for one night.
She stopped when she saw a familiar face.
Delia.
How delightfully perplexing. Rarely did Helena see one of her club hookups in the dating apps, since most of them were rich and sometimes famous enough that they couldn’t be caught on the likes of Tinder or Bumble. Yet here Delia was, no last name, but familiar enough in her office wear and bronze hair pulled behind her head.
Helena flipped through the older pictures. At first, she wasn’t sure it was the same woman since Delia had a habit of dying her hair every few months. Pink hair. Purple hair. Blond hair. The dark blue with green bangs was somehow striking.
She turned her phone over on the table and gazed out the window again. Helena wasn’t looking at anything in particular. Just the faraway sight of her memory, where she lay on a bed in a windowless room and took whatever Delia gave her.
Maybe she should take a break from job hunting. Her fantasies were getting away from her.
Chapter 5
Even on a Thursday, this place was too crowded for Delia’s tastes. Which was insufferable, because the trendy brunch spot sported not only indoor dining, but a bar that wrapped around the center fountain spraying refreshing water across everything Delia attempted to order for lunch.
And a freakin’ courtyard for good measure. That’s where she and Tiffani had wanted to eat their brunch, but it was booked for the hour. The only seat they could score while they waited for something to open up was here at the bar, where they drank watered-down mimosas and nibbled on a hummus platter. A very damp hummus platter.
“He keeps bugging me to go out with him again,” Tiffani whined over her second mimosa. Delia built a tiny fortress out of cloth napkins to protect her hummus and vegetables. “We only went out a handful of times last fall. You know, the guy I brought with me to the cancer charity dinner? The one who overplucked his eyebrows?”
“Uh-huh.” Delia gave up making her appetizer edible. This is what I get for my two-hour lunch. Her last meeting of the morning had been canceled, giving her time to text Tiffani and ask her if she wanted to grab brunch. If I had known it would be like this… She would have gone home and taken a nap instead. “I thought you broke it off with him because he always whined after sex.”
“Oh, God, so much whining. I don’t know why he did the deed if it gave him so much heartburn and indigestion.”
“Maybe it was just with you.”
“Thanks, Deel.”