It was silent in the car. I was anxiously chewing on my fingernails, taking deep breaths that didn’t calm me as much as I wanted.
I had lost my father, and I was about to lose my mother, all in one night. I couldn’t let that happen.
“Please drive faster,” I pleaded, checking my phone to see that I had just three minutes left out of the seven minutes to be at home.
The driver picked up his speed, thankfully, but I couldn’t tell if we could make it in time.
“What’s the matter? I could always call my boss to sort it out for you,” he offered.
“It’s fine, I’m fine. You’ve both done enough. This is more than enough,” I declined.
Dragging strangers into my mess, even at their insistence, was not something I wanted to do, especially when I knew that my bad luck never ended. They could help me this one time and the next thing to happen to me would be even worse. I didn’t need that on anyone.
“It’s really not a problem. He told me to let him know if you need any help, which you seem to do right now,” he pushed, tempting me with the urge to break down and open up.
“Right there!” I pointed at the apartment as he turned on our street, hopping out of the car as soon as we reached the apartment.
I ran up the stairs and towards our unit. The door was wide open, and some of our neighbours were standing in front of the door and muttering to each other.
“There she is,” they chorused when they took notice of me.
I ran into the apartment, scanning the place. The entire living room had been flipped around, the couch upside down and everything that had once been standing upright was now out of place or broken.
“Mom?!” I called out, running into her room to find it empty and just as rough as the living room. “Mom!”
I ran into my room to find it just as rough as I had left it earlier.
“Where is she?!” I shouted, returning to the living room and facing the neighbors who were now moving back and looking around at each other.
“A group of men took her,” someone answered.
“No,” I said to nobody, shaking my head.
“I heard she stole drugs.”
“I guess her addiction got the best of her.”
“…about a million dollars.”
“…considered taking her to rehab?”
“Is your dad still at the hospital?”
“Shut up! All of you!” I screamed, fed up with their words. “Leave!”
As if they hadn’t heard me, they shared looks and stared back at me.
“Just go away!” I shouted, retreating into the living room and finding a pillow to throw at them.
When they wouldn’t go away as fast as I wanted them to, I picked up the syringe from the floor and ran out, causing them to scatter in the directions of their apartments.
“Call 911!”
“She’s gone crazy!”
“Does she do drugs too?”
When the last of the doors closed, I threw the syringe back on the floor and collapsed in the doorway, crying.
I didn’t know how long I stayed there and cried, but I ended up falling asleep sitting between the living room and the hallway.
“Goodness, what is this?” I felt something poke my thigh. “Lauren Walter?”
The snapping of fingers beside my ear forced my eyes open, and I looked up to see Ms. Harlow, the landlady.
“Oh, Ms. Harlow.” I stood up in a hurry, wiping the drool off the corner of my mouth. “Good morning. I was just—”
“Pray tell, Lauren; what is good about the morning? Why should I accept such a greeting from you?!” she snapped loudly.
“What?” I frowned.
Doors were starting to open and the neighbors were now spilling out of their houses at Ms. Harlow’s voice to see what was going to happen.
“I barely slept last night. My phone rang all through the night as I received complaint after complaint about you and your mother. I heard that your mother stole drugs worth a million dollars and you chased the neighbours with a syringe?! Goodness, look what a mess it is in here. Your father is still in the hospital, I assume. It’s really bad for you, but there’s nothing much I can do. Bad things happen to everybody.” She sidestepped me and walked into the living room, looking around with a horrified look on her face.
“All of this mess you and your mother have made while you haven’t paid up to four months' worth of rent?!” she yelled, causing the neighbours to gasp and start muttering.
“I’m sorry all this happened. I just…I’ll pay up the rent. Just give me time—”
“Don’t you think four months is more than enough time?” She walked up to me, glaring at me as if daring me to respond to that. “You have one week to pay up the rent and vacate this building.”
“No, you can’t do this to me. Please, Ms. Harlow, you know I don’t—”
“I don’t owe you anything, Lauren. You can’t tell me what I can and cannot do to you, especially with the amount of money you owe. You shouldn’t be doing this to me.” She sighed. “I have contacts within the police force. If you attempt to run away with my money or remain in this place after one week has passed, you will find yourself and your mother behind bars.”
As she walked away, I recalled the envelope in my purse and called out to her.
“Wait!”
I picked up the salary I had gotten yesterday and handed it to her. She took it and counted the bills in it with a frown on her face.
“Is eighty dollars supposed to make a dent? You’re owing me for four months, remember?” she scoffed.
“I’ll get the rest, I promise.”
“Remember to leave and return my keys once you pay up. I have no interest in keeping you here any longer.” She walked away after that.
I was now left with nowhere to go.
As if I didn’t already have nature against me, I realized that there were only two places I could go—Conrad’s or Shirley’s.
Shirley had moved in with Conrad. I had only found out about it when I went to Shirley’s apartment, where her neighbors told me that she had moved just that morning. I found myself in front of Conrad’s door later, only to be met with Shirley opening the door. She was wearing a blue shirt of his which almost matched the shade of her eyes, and her blond hair was up in a messy bun. “Wow,” I mouthed. If I were seated in front of a screen and watching myself going through this, I would be laughing at just how impossibly shitty my life was. “Lauren, I…” she trailed off, possibly out of excuses to make. “You don’t have to worry about the apologies, Shirley. I already wished you two good luck yesterday. That’s not why I’m here,” I assured her. “Who’s at the door?” I heard Conrad’s muffled voice from inside the house, followed by his footsteps as he finally made his way out to find me. His brows scrunched in a frown as he
Pain exploded within my legs as the car hit me before the driver could fully swerve to avoid me. I was pushed so far back, my legs going high up in the air for only a split second before I felt a pain in my head as if my head had been cracked open, and that was when I realized that I had landed on the floor and had hit my head against the asphalt. My vision was blurry, and the sounds around me were muffled, as if my head had been dunked underwater. “Mom,” I croaked, trying to see if anyone would understand what I meant – I needed to get to my mother. As if a movie I was seeing had an abrupt end, my vision went black.~ “Mm,” I hummed and groaned as light filtered into my eyes, causing an immense throbbing in my head that would not leave even after I shut my eyes and rubbed my head. There was a rough-textured fabric wrapped around my head, and I only started to take note of it when I had rubbed my head long enough. “What is...” I paused
“What…what?” I stuttered, whipping my head in the direction of Damien, who still had his eyes on the road as if he had not uttered the most life-changing words to me just seconds ago. “Your rent, your mother’s debt, I can help you clear them,” he said again. At the second offer, I came to the cruel realization that none of that could come for free. One thing my father taught me before he died was that humans lived off of transactions – give some, take some. “What’s in it for you?” I asked the question that was hanging in the air the whole time, and I heard him chuckle in response. “You’re a smart one, Lauren,” he commented. “I’m not going to ask for much from you,” he spoke. “I’m only going to protect you from everything that’s happening. You will be taken under my wing as my fiancée to the public eye, and you will separate yourself from everything that binds you to your mother because you’re only going to get destroyed if you keep going around like
Before I could ask Damien about Conrad, he quickly pulled away from me. “I have to take this,” he said, walking away and placing the phone against his ear as he started to speak to Conrad on the phone. I couldn’t hear what they were talking about properly, but the last thing I wanted to do was sneak up on him because I wanted to listen in on the conversation. “Just because I know a Conrad doesn’t mean he can’t know one,” I reminded myself. There were thousands – millions, even – of people who had the same name, and it was only a coincidence that Damien knew someone called Conrad, right? When Damien was done with the call, he returned and carried on with the conversation. “As I said earlier, I want you to turn in your resignation letter to your boss or your manager. The last thing I want is for us to be caught in the ruthless rumours of the business world. If you get to be known as my fiancée, people will want to keep tabs on you from the press. I don
A long and awkward silence filled the table following Katarina’s admission to what Damien did to her. “I don’t hold it against him, by the way.” She raised her hands in surrender. “I mean, it would have been better and less embarrassing if he had just told me before the wedding, don’t you agree?” I silently agreed with her, but I was too lost for words to say a thing. I could feel Damien looking at me, but the last thing I wanted to do was make eye contact, so I settled for looking down at the delicious pastry and popping little pieces of it into my mouth as Katarina kept going. “Anyway, enough about me. That’s in the past, anyway. I wish you two the best of luck in your future marriage. Just…show up this time, Damien. Don’t embarrass the little girl.” “I’ll be on my way now,” she sighed, getting up and checking the watch on her wrist. “You were right, Damien; I do have somewhere to be. I must have forgotten.” My eyes trailed her as she left,
“What uncle?” I asked, frowning at Conrad as I walked out of the kitchen with him to prevent the assistants from hearing us and finding out what exactly was going on. Damien couldn’t possibly be the uncle that Conrad was talking about, it didn’t make any sense. “What do you mean your uncle owns the place, Conrad?” I asked as we got to the privacy of the living room. “Where is Uncle Damien, and what are you doing in his house?” The truth hit me with a pang in the chest, and I could barely keep my feet grounded as I stared at Conrad, hoping to open my eyes all of a sudden and find myself in bed to realize that I was only dreaming, but nothing was going on. “He went out for a business meeting,” I answered his first question, shoving his second question aside, even when I knew that he was not going to let it slide that easily. “What are you doing in my uncle’s house, having breakfast, Lauren?” he asked again, glaring at me. “I… He’s sheltering me.
“You seem to have made up your mind so quickly,” Damien observed, and I didn’t know what it was supposed to imply, but I nodded at him in response. “I thought about it as I went over to work. I realised that it’s not the right thing to do. I don’t want this to turn into something that it’s not. I know how fast this could turn awkward, just the way it was earlier. I don’t want it to be this way,” I admitted. “As much as I’m not one to help you make decisions or force you to take mine, I’ll have you know that I don’t see Conrad very much, and you won’t have to. If that’s what bothers you so much, I just thought to let you know about it. Besides, you only have so much time to think about it. You have nowhere to go right now, Lauren.” “I know that, but I’m going to keep working and—” “And how much does your job pay you in a day for you to get by? You can’t up and find an apartment right now, Lauren, and we both know it,” he carefully reminded me of my st
My eyes widened as I opened the text and read the words over and over, a triumphant smile making its way out of my mouth. Mom: Send proof that you have the money to help your mother out. I’ll decide when and how for you to get the money to us after that. Cash only. “I still don’t know if you’re excited or just completely horrified.” I jumped at the sound of Damien’s voice, as I had forgotten that he was there with me. “I just got a text from the people who took my mom away, look.” I showed the phone to him and waited for his eyes to scan the phone before he handed it back to me with an understanding nod. “We better get into action as soon as possible. People like this rarely trust others, and I’m sure he probably thinks that you’re only trying to deceive him. I’ll make a call to the bank and get the money so that we can show them that we’re serious about this.” I stared at him, partly shocked that he wasn’t fazed by the amount of money we were suppos