AllFreeNovel
Share Us
1
Nikki
Reality is a devil. No one can outrun it. It always catches up to you.
“Nikki? Nikki?” a young man calls from behind the counter, scanning the small crowd waiting for their orders.
My eyes read his name tag—Jeff. I wonder what Jeff’s life is like. Does he have a family? A girlfriend? A boyfriend? Does he ski? Does he secretly have an obsession with serial killers? Does he—
“Nikki?” he calls out once more before my brain finally registers the name.
You would think that after all this time, I would be better at responding to that name, but here I am, looking like an idiot as I approach the counter. Grabbing the pizza from Jeff, I offer a smile that I’m sure shows my embarrassment.
But he brushes me off without a glance or a word, grabbing the next order to hand out. Everyone else might be offended or upset to be forgotten so easily, but not me, never me. A ghost is what I became all those years ago and a ghost I will remain.
Hiding in the background is a skill that I acquired after three years of practice. And I walk out of the pizza parlor with the same permanent sinking feeling that lives in my gut, one that will stay with me until the day I die. Or the day he does.
Because every face has his eyes. Every shadow has his profile, his figure. Every laugh is an echo of the past. Every scream is my voice, and every minute of my future is stolen.
One day, no matter how hard I resist, death will come, and he won’t come knocking. He will come with rage and fury that would make the Devil jealous, and when he sees fit, he will kill me and bottle up my screams as a keepsake.
My feet carry me out of the building in precise steps, one after the other. Taking a deep breath, I turn toward my shop, Nikki’s Coffee. My free hand slips into my pocket and grabs my keys, fiddling until it wraps around the one I need.
As I approach the door, my phone starts ringing, and I slide the key into the top dead bolt and unlock it, ignoring the sound going off in my pocket. I repeat the same steps on the next two dead bolts and let myself inside. My phone quiets at the same time the door seals shut.
Silence envelops me, calm, reassuring, deafening silence. Most people can’t stand it. They have to sleep with a TV on, a radio on. They have to have some form of buzzing around them to drown out their thoughts. It gives them a sense of comfort. But this is my comfort.
Silence is my friend. It protects me.
I walk toward the restrooms and unlock the door to my loft, pulling out my phone. Chloe’s name pops up next to Missed Call.
Chloe is my best friend, my little trust fund baby, who moonlights as my hero. I got out of Oregon as fast as I possibly could. I drove to what I thought would be the quietest town I could get to at that day and time. I watched her enter her house alone and thought she might be able to point me to the homeless shelter or at least give me a place to crash for the night.
But when I showed up on her doorstep, quite literally, bruised black and blue, she didn’t bat an eye, and she immediately took me under her wing. She seemed to sense my fear and desperation, and she saved me. She is the sole reason for me being where I am right now, both physically and mentally.
She didn’t hesitate; she ushered me inside and refused to let me leave until I opened up to her. Trust me, I tried to leave. I was terrified that I couldn’t trust her, that she might know him. That she would believe him because of who he was. But she didn’t, and she didn’t care who he was or the power and position he still held. She risked everything to help a stranger she owed nothing to. She became a stranger I would owe everything to. She gave me a chance at life again.
After I enter my loft, I lock the door, which takes longer than you might imagine. I start at the top with the chain lock, moving downward to two dead bolts, a swing bar, then a custom barrel bolt—ten inches in length—and last but not least, the open bar barricade. Which is a fancy term for a two-by-four, held in place by two metal brackets.
Ding. My phone rings in my pocket. It is Chloe’s text, which always follows a missed call.
She is a bit older than me. She’s twenty-nine, and I’m twenty-two. Our relationship bounces between a mother and daughter to sisters to best friends, depending on the situation. At times, it can be confusing, but I swallow the discomfort because I owe her everything. This coffee shop might have my fake name on the door, but it has her real one on the lease.
The same goes for my car, my phone, my debit cards. I don’t exist. I am merely an extension of Chloe Dupont.
It was her idea for the coffee shop. She wanted a business adventure of her own, outside of what her family does, and I was the perfect built-in worker.
The Duponts are filthy rich. They own Zonama, the largest online retailer. I’m not talking millions. I’m talking billions. They influence the entire economy with their platform. It’s equal parts impressive and intimidating.
Why they had picked Duluth to headquarter in surprised me. Why not pick, like, California or a major US city? But Chloe said that her dad wanted to keep it in a smaller town, and no one questioned his decision. Apparently, he had spent a lot of time here when he was younger and wanted to move back.
I’ve only met her parents one time. They were nice and incredibly down-to-earth despite the empire they had built and the wealth they had both been born into.
Ding. The follow-up reminder that, two minutes ago, I got a text.
Chloe: Hi! Did you eat tonight?
I type out a quick response.
