Change of Heart (5 page)

I’m left barren, absolutely empty, the hot body beneath me my only remaining grip on reality. I fold into Rich, forgetting all my worries as I lie satiated in my pleasure and the feeling of the man lying beneath me.

Chapter Three

A bang from somewhere in the dark startles me from my sleep. My eyes shoot open. My whole body tenses when I remember where I am. Not at home. I’m in an unfamiliar bed. In… Rich’s apartment.

That understanding comes quick but I don’t have time to dwell on it. My thoughts are interrupted by another loud bang. It sounds like someone knocking on the door.

Bang-bang-bang! Bang-bang-bang!

Yes, I can definitely hear it now. There’s no mistaking what it is. But who would be knocking at this hour?

I glance over at the slumbering male next to me. He has one arm over his eyes, the other hanging off the edge of the mattress. He looks stunning, even in the dark. His entire upper body is exposed, and his skin is prickled from the cold. I watch his chest rise and fall with the deep breaths of a contented sleep.

Bang-bang-bang!

The sound jolts me from my reverie. I put a hand on Rich’s shoulder to shake him awake. “Rich?” I say. “Rich, I think there’s someone here.”

“Hmm?” he groans, half-asleep. He rolls away from me, fluffing up the pillow beneath his cheek. He mumbles something indistinctive that sounds a lot like, “Go back to sleep.”

Bang-bang-bang! Bang-bang-bang!

“Rich, don’t you hear that?” I ask, starting to feel a little uneasy. That knocking… it doesn’t sound friendly.

Bang-bang-bang-bang! Bang-bang-bang-bang-BANG!

“Rich, seriously.” I shake him harder. “There’s someone at the door!”

He sits up, running a hand through his hair, and looks at me sleepily. “Penny,” he says, “why can’t you just go back to slee—”

Bang-bang-bang-BANG! Bang-bang-bang-BANG!

His eyes widen as he finally picks up on the knocking. He’s out of bed in a flash. “Shit,” he curses. “Shit, shit, shit!”

“What is it?” I bring the covers to my chest in a defensive motion, like a small girl trying to hide from monsters in the night. The knocking grows louder in the background.

Rich fumbles for his jeans, and pulls them on quickly. He looks around for something on the floor, then, finding it, picks it up and tosses it to me. My clothes. “Put those on,” he hisses as he ducks through the collar of his shirt.

I clutch my clothes to my breasts, too afraid to move. I’m freaked out by his reaction. “Who is that? Rich, do you know who that is?” My voice shakes as the banging becomes even louder.
BANG-BANG-BANG! BANG-BANG-BANG!
“What do they want?”

“Never mind. And keep your voice down! I don’t want them to know I’m inside.”

“You weren’t expecting anybody?”

“No, I wasn’t
expecting
anybody,” Rich snaps, glowering at me. I shrink back, all of a sudden uncomfortably aware of how precarious my situation is. I’m in some random guy’s apartment in an unfamiliar part of town. I have no money for a cab. My roommate got us evicted. Even if I
could
afford the ride, I’d have nowhere to go. I don’t have any family or friends nearby. And the guy I’m with—the guy I know next to nothing about—seems intent on ignoring the late-night knocking at his door.

Rich catches my cringe, and sighs. “Look, I’m sorry. I don’t want to scare you. But you—“ he points at me, “—and me—” he points at himself, “—are not supposed to be here right now.”

“Not supposed to be here?” I repeat, almost at a loss for words. “This is your apartment, isn’t it?”

“Of course it is,” he chastises, then moves to quietly open the window.

Bang-bang-bang-bang! BANG-BANG-BANG-BANG-BANG-BANG!

“What are you doing? I hiss at him.

“What does it look like I’m doing? Getting out of here.” He waves me toward him. “Come on! Are you coming, or not?”

“Through the window?” I ask flatly.

He nods impatiently.

“With you?”

He nods again.

I start to consider my options, when a fierce voice rises from behind the door. “Richard! Richard, I know you’re in there! Open this fucking door before I break it down!”

My eyes dart to Rich. He’s frozen in a crouch by the window. The voice at the door definitely does not belong to a friend. “Would he really do that?” I whisper urgently.

“Does it
look
like I want to wait and find out?” Rich lifts one foot over the window sill. “Come on! There’s no time to explain. Get your clothes and follow me!”

“I’m going to count to ten,” the deep voice from outside roars, “and if this door is not open by then, so help me God, I will tear it down with my own two hands! ONE! TWO! ...”

The countdown breaks me from my indecisive stupor
.
I scramble to throw my arms through my shirt.

“…FOUR! FIVE! SIX! ...”

My pants fly on and I jump from the bed. Just before reaching Rich, I pause, and look back.

“What are you waiting for?” he whispers urgently.

“My sweater,” I say. “You didn’t throw me my sweat—”

“Oh, for the love of God…” Rich grabs my hand and yanks me after him. I yelp as I’m jerked off my feet.

“
…
EIGHT! NINE! …”

I hop over the windowsill. The metal escape ladder is cold and painful against my bare feet. Rich follows after me. When we’re both out, he carefully lowers the window. At the moment it presses closed, a splintering crash sounds from within the apartment.

My heart jumps to my throat. I duck down and press myself tight against the brick wall. “What was
that
?” I demand.

“Sounds to me like the door,” Rich grumbles. He starts down the ladder.

Another crash sounds from inside. I risk peeking through the window.

At the far end of the apartment, a light shines through a gaping hole in the door. I can make out the silhouettes of two men. One of them is holding something that looks like an enormous blacksmith
hammer.

I know I should get away from the window, but I can’t move. I’m completely stupefied by actually witnessing something like this in real life.

I feel an urgent tug on my ankle, and look down to find Rich below me. “Come on,” he says. “We don’t want to be anywhere close to here when they break in.”

I nod, swallowing my fear, and start the long climb to the ground after him.

***

“What the hell was that?” I demand of Rich as we rush through the parking lot to his car. He hasn’t said a word to me since hitting the ground. Instead, he’s been looking in all directions to avoid running into anyone unaware. I wasn’t opposed to his precaution while we were out in the open, but now that we’d reached the underground parking lot, demanding an explanation seems the only reasonable choice. “Richard, who were those men at your door?”

He shakes his head, avoiding looking at me. “The less you know about it, the better.” He unlocks his car—a maroon red Ford pickup—and gestures for me to get in.

I plant my feet and cross my arms. “Rich, I’m not going another step with you until you tell me what’s going on.”

“Look, I don’t
know
what’s going on!” he curses, exasperated. He takes a deep breath, and his voice softens. “Or, not exactly. Not yet. It’s a long story, Penelope. But as long as they don’t know you were with me, you shouldn’t be in any trouble.”

I give a bitter laugh. “Oh, that’s comforting.”

“It should be.” He frowns. “Now, get in. We’re wasting time.”

I huff but follow through. It’s not like I have many other options. “Where are we going?”

“I need to make some calls.” Rich starts the engine and backs up. “We’ll go somewhere safe, somewhere public. Figure it out there. Maybe once I get a better understanding, I can explain things.”

“Fine,” I nod. Then I feel a sudden constriction in my chest. “Oh my God. Shit! I forgot my purse!“ All my possessions were in there: my cell phone, my now-useless apartment key, my wallet, all my identifications, and—most precious to me of all—a tiny locket with a faded picture of a young man cradling a baby in his arms. His head is down so you cannot see his eyes. That picture means the world to me—it’s the only piece of my father I have left. “Do you think they’ll take it?”

Rich scoffs. “They’re not thieves.”

***

Twenty minutes later, I’m sitting at the bar of a breakfast diner, cradling a warm cup of coffee between my palms. Looking over my shoulder, I see Rich still talking to somebody on the payphone by the far wall.

I sigh, and take a sip of my drink. Rich has been on that phone from the moment we walked in. He’s spoken softly the entire time, so even though we are the only two customers, not a single word of his conversation has filtered over to me. I know as little now as I did when the banging woke me up.

The woman behind the counter gives me a commiserating smile as she refills my cup. I wonder what she thinks as she looks at me. I know I must look like hell—but I feel even worse. I’d been running on pure adrenaline and lust during the hookup with Rich. Now, all the fatigue from the long week is catching up to me. My entire body feels sapped
.
My mind starts to wander, and I find myself thinking about how Abby’s holding up.

Probably better than me
, I decide with a bitter snort. With the way things have been going recently, it seems like just my luck to get caught in the middle of something like this.

I sigh again and take another long sip, trying to extract every last bit of energy from the drink. I need my mind clear right now, not groggy. Exhausted as I am, coffee seems like the best solution.

If I had somewhere to go, things would be much simpler. I could just ask Rich to drop me off and forget about all this. But, thanks to some severely short-sighted decisions I’d made in my recent past, that wasn’t an option.

In hindsight, maybe the move from California to Oregon with a girl I’d only known for a few weeks hadn’t been such a great idea. But, I’d been desperate to get away—and so had Abby.

We met at the orphanage. She’d run in one rainy night, bawling her eyes out. Once she calmed down, her story came gushing out. She said she’d found her boyfriend cheating on her with her step-mom. She cried about how much she’d loved him, and how horribly betrayed he’d made her feel.

In that unspoken moment I felt a bond flare between us. I’d experienced something similar in my life. Jeremy, the only boy I’d ever loved, my first and final boyfriend, crushed my soul when I walked in on him making out with our eleventh grade algebra teacher. I ran out of there, shocked. I tried to deny what I saw at first, to pretend it was some misunderstanding, but the image of Jeremy running his hands over our teacher’s body had been imprinted in my mind forever. I can still remember the disgusting way they groped at each other on the floor of the afterschool detention room.

I walked in on them… and cried for hours after. Worse, it wasn’t like I could just get away. Jeremy and I lived in the same orphanage, went to the same school, and had the same classes. Awkward didn’t even begin to describe the tension between us in the following days. That was the point in my life I’d decided that real love was a sham. It was just a way to expose yourself to getting hurt.

I’ve kept my heart locked tight ever since.

So, when I heard Abby’s story, I knew we had something in common. That had been enough. As a kid growing up with no parents, you learn not to probe too deeply in the pasts of other orphans. Abby seemed to understand that, too. Our friendship developed with only a cursory knowledge of the other’s history.

We started hanging out around the point I finished my last month of high school. I was close to aging out of the orphanage. I had to start a life of my own. When Abby suggested attending a little community college in Northern Oregon, I jumped at the opportunity to go with her.

That
had been a drastic mistake.

It didn’t take long for Abby’s behavior to become suspicious. Even though we’d signed up for many of the same courses, I rarely saw her in class. Even though she’d told me she had a few thousand dollars' worth of savings she’d use for rent, her payments were always late. Even though she’d promised she’d go job-hunting with me our first week here, somehow she never made it.

And while Abby looked pretty and prim on the outside, she lived like a pig. Dirty clothes would be thrown all over our apartment no matter how many times I asked her to keep them in her room. Unwashed dishes and moldy take-out cartons started piling up in the corners, under the couch, everywhere. I didn’t mind so much at first, but when all of my attempts to clean up the place became rendered obsolete by the following evening, it had started to become grating.

It took two weeks of living together for me to understand Abby was not who she pretended to be. At first, it was the little things: some of my clothes going missing, opening my wallet to find fewer dollar bills in there than I remembered. I ignored the troubling signs at first, hoping they would peter out. They never did. More and more of my things disappeared, until I had to resort to locking everything in my room each time I left the apartment. If I asked Abby about it, she’d just deny it, of course, and then bat those fake eyelashes and pretend everything was perfect.