Reese licked her lips, her eyes drifting to the pot. For a brief second, Matty thought she was going to take the offer, but then she shook her head. “No, I’ve overstayed enough. Thank you, though.”
Disappointed, Matty nodded curtly. “Not a problem.”
They exchanged smiles, and Reese exited the apartment. Matty was left with the feeling that something had been left unfinished. She wanted to spend more time with this woman, and she wasn’t sure why, but she started searching for an excuse to speak to her again.
Snapping her fingers as an idea hit, she grabbed a pen and ripped a piece of paper from junk mail in just a few seconds. It felt very ’90s to be scribbling her phone number down by hand and then even more so by running out the door to wave Reese down as she was backing up.
The window rolled down. “Yeah?”
Nervousness suddenly filled her. What was she doing? She didn’t go after women. She kept them at a distance, but there she was holding her number out to Reese, who took it with a curious tilt of her head. Matty shuffled her feet as she rubbed the back of her neck. “Um, look, if you need someone to take a look at your shower, I would be happy to.”
“Oh, well, um, thank you. I’ll let you know.”
“Okay. Yeah, okay, well, I need to get back to the stove.”
She was halfway to the door when Reese called out to her. “Have a good evening, Matty!”
“You too,” she called back. She knew she’d spend the rest of the evening thinking about the turn this day had taken.
Chapter twelve
Chapter Twelve
“Fuck,” Reese huffed.
Her back was throbbing from all the reaching and tugging of items that shouldn’t be her problem but were. She had no idea how to classify what she was wading through.
It wasn’t items like she’d seen on the showHoarders. There wasn't a massive amount of food-filled containers or dirty sanitary items. No piles of animal feces. Her mother couldn’t stand pets. There were no childhood feline friends in Reese’s history. No cute puppy that she grew up with. She once asked for a bird. A little bluebird that she saw on television. Joyce had just scoffed and said she could go outside if she wanted to see birds.
Reese was surprised at the lack of bugs or mouse droppings. There were spiders, though. Which made her cringe. With all the clutter, she would have thought something else would have been hiding beneath the piles of yard sale items. The only items that really showed up on repeat were the empty cheap vodka bottles. Boxes of them tucked here and there. She could hardly stand to look at them, so those quickly became the items she got rid of on sight. Every bottle thrown out felt like a tiny bit of peace being restored to her life. A black-and-gold-labeled bottle, some plastic, some glass, littered her childhood just like they littered the little bungalow.
She had worked for hours in the living room. Somehow, she had managed to find the old burnt orange couch under a mound of more dolls and what could only be described as a shit ton of throw blankets and pillows. There had to be at least twenty blankets alone. All on top of and hanging off the side to form one massive mound. Children’s throws, full-size to king. She saw an old-school Cinderella and another with Barney. One with cartoon squirrels. A few hand-crocheted ones of all sorts of colors. The king-size one was striped sage and gold and had palm trees accenting the corners. It was absolutely awfuland felt stiff. She dug a little more and discovered an empty bottle of Coke, her mother’s favorite chaser, which was likely the cause.
Hunched over a box full of men’s shoes, some faded, and some smashed, she hefted it up. The groan that left her lips sounded louder than the music she was playing from a portable Bluetooth speaker. She had been listening to ’90s alternative rock all day. She tried not to think about the reason for it. Matty, her kindness, and those damned soft eyes had plagued her since she pulled out of her driveway yesterday evening.
As she hefted the box up, she didn’t realize that she had inadvertently pushed against a collection of brooms and mops tucked behind. They fell around her and the box, which was frustrating enough, but then she felt the pressure and stickiness of webbing. She dropped the box instantly to drag her hands over the spider webs that were covering her. A scream left her lungs. She didn’t know if there were spiders or not, but she imagined dozens of them crawling over her and panic ensued.
Her arms fought imaginary monsters as she clenched her eyes shut. Stepping back, she struck a pile of empty cat litter containers. Why Joyce had them was a mystery, and she fell backward, landing on the dirty, dusty carpet. A cloud of grime bloomed up around her as she inhaled at the exact worst time.
She choked, her airway struggling with the dust and the impact of hitting the floor. It was like it couldn’t decide if she wanted to intake or expel the air.
Exhausted and a little defeated, she lay there on the gross carpet waiting for her breathing to return to normal.
Her gaze landed on the lazy swirl of the ceiling fan above her. Its cloudy glass globes around the yellowed light bulbs were decorated in webbing as well, like a spider’s crocheted craft.
“Of course, that would need cleaning as well.” She rolled her eyes.
As much progress as she had made, it was like she was wading in a sandbox. For every shovelful she pitched out, someone threw two more in.
She just had to keep moving forward. If she kept going, eventually the house would be all hers and not the ghosts of the past.
As she was sitting up, her pocket buzzed. She fished it out to see Haley’s name.
“Hello?”
“Hey,” greeted Haley. She could hear the noise of a crowd, like in a stadium, in the background. “What are you doing?”
“I’m knee-deep in parental hoarding hell. I just found a lovely little section of spiderwebs and, for some reason, a huge box of men’s shoes.”
