I worked hard to keep my face serene, knowing she was looking for any sign that her words had some kind of impact.
“Chrissy?” I asked, nodding. “Sure. Salt of the earth.”
I could tell I’d accomplished my mission when she frowned.
“Love you,” I called, then rushed off before she could try again.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Alara
I was so distracted by the book that I nearly waltzed my stupid ass right through an active crime scene.
It was only as I felt the plastic strip of police tape against my arms that I stopped walking, looked up, and saw the cops gathered around an apartment building about a block away from the pawnshop.
I stuck the bookmark in between the pages, then glanced around at the crowd.
“What’s this?” I asked the first person who made eye contact.
“Murder,” she said, whispering it like if she said it too loudly, it might come for her too.
“Gang stuff?”
“No, it was a woman.”
“She’s so nice. Was,” another woman said, rubbing her hands up and down her arms as if fighting off a chill while the morning sun was kind of baking the streets.
“You knew her?”
“I mean, not knew her. But she was my neighbor across the hall. We talked sometimes. She was so young.”
I looked toward the building, figuring it was most likely some sort of domestic thing. Despite what it looked like on shows or even the news sometimes, people generally aren’t out getting murdered all willy-nilly in the city. There’s usually a personal or criminal element to it.
“Shame,” I said before making my way around the police tape and continuing my way up the block and around to head toward my apartment. It was only five in the evening, but Tuesday was historically the slowest day at the shop, so I gave myself half a day off.
“Hey, bud,” I greeted Tuna as I made my way inside.
He didn’t even lift his head to look at me.
“Nice to see you too,” I said, tossing the book on the kitchen counter.
My apartment was actually pretty roomy for the city. Which it owed me with how inconvenient it was to access.
And I’d spent a lot of time and pretty much any extra money I came across to fix it up.
Growing up, we hadn’t had much by way of money. There was certainly no money for painting walls or buying cute throw pillows. I didn’t realize windows could have more on them than cracked plastic blinds until I was almost a teenager.
So I’d been very intentional about decorating my first very own space.
When I’d moved in, the walls had been a traffic smoker’s teeth yellow, the windows had been so covered in grime that the sun could barely even peek in, and the kitchen had been straight out of the seventies. In all the wrong ways, with dark wood cabinets that made the whole space dim, orange backsplashes, yellow striped wallpaper, and orange and yellow linoleum floors that were warped and peeling up in enough places that it had been a total trip hazard.
The vibe I went with for the apartment was cozy, earthy, and repurposed/vintage.
Working in a pawnshop made me hyperaware that there was simply no need to go out and buy new junk. The world was already chock-full of enough crap to decorate everyone’s homes from now until the end of time.
So the only new things in my apartment were my couch and bed. Because second-hand material that couldn’t be put through a washing machine gave me the heebie-jeebies. No bed bugs in my home, thank you very much.
Also, it was hard to find a couch like this one. It was thick, wide, and covered in gorgeous dark green velvet.
