Say You’ll Stay Read online

  Say You’ll Stay

  Carrie Lomax

  Contents

  Say You’ll Stay

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Say You Need Me

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Say You’ll Stay

  Previously Titled Holiday Heat

  © 2017 Carrie Lomax.

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  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

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  This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission of the author, except as provided by United States of America copyright law. For permissions contact: [email protected].

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

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  Cover by Velvet Madrid.

  Ebook ASIN: B075M814T7

  ISBN: 978-1-7321531-0-3

  Created with Vellum

  For Anna

  1

  The buzzer shrieked like a jet roaring down a runway, startling Alyssa as she reached to set her wine on the side table. The glass missed the edge and fell, shattering into a constellation of razor-sharp pieces across the scuffed wood floor.

  The noise came again, insistent. Alyssa picked her way carefully over the field of shards to the almond box on the wall. She smashed the button bearing a scratched picture of a key. It had better work because she wasn’t going down six flights of stairs to open the door manually. Her mobile phone lay amongst the splinters on the floorboards. She’d knocked it off the couch while trying to save the glass. Gingerly she brushed away the fragments. 12:43 AM.

  He’d left her dangling for nearly five hours. Was Zach dead in a ditch?

  That afternoon, Alyssa had splurged on a salon blowout. Then she’d come home and painted a dark stripe above each eye, dabbed perfume on her wrists and neck, dressed and waited. Eight o’clock had come and gone. It had been the only available time slot months ago, back when they’d started talking seriously about getting married. He’d insisted the engagement had to happen at this restaurant, even if it meant missing Christmas Eve with her family in Florida.

  Now Zach, her boyfriend, had stood her up on what was supposed to be their engagement night.

  He’d blown her off before but never for something important. Not like this. If there was one time when she needed reassurance about where she ranked on his priority list, then tonight was it.

  At a minimum, he could’ve texted her to let her know he’d be late. Or that dinner was off. A little courtesy shouldn’t be too much to ask from someone you were about to pledge your life to.

  He was here now, stomping up the stairwell, his steps staggered. Drunk again, though she was hardly in any condition to pass judgment.

  His fist landed on the door three times. Resolute, Alyssa flicked open the locks. If she hadn’t burned through all her anger hours ago, she might feel a little more prepared for this confrontation. She hoped he hadn’t brought some extravagant gift, like he usually did to smooth over major fuckups. Alyssa wasn’t letting him buy his way out of this mess.

  “Babe, I am so sorry,” Zach slurred. “Merry Christmas.”

  Happy fucking holidays. “Zach. What are you doing? We were supposed to get engaged tonight, remember?”

  He nodded. “Cold feet.”

  She stood there, waiting for the explanation that didn’t come. “That’s it?”

  “I’m not ready to get married.” Zach shrugged, his blue eyes unfocused and wary.

  “Getting married was your idea. It was never something I pushed for. I told you repeatedly I’d rather wait.” She backed up a step as he shrugged out of his coat and hung it on one of the hooks behind the door.

  Pent-up frustration fueled a new spurt of anger, her voice rising. “I can’t believe I was worried about you. You might’ve been hit by a car or something! I called your parents. I almost called the police. I missed Christmas Eve with my family because you insisted it had to be at this restaurant, and you can’t even be bothered to show up?”

  Freed of his fine cashmere arm-prison, Zach slumped against the door. “I’m here to make it up to you now.”

  The fool probably thinks he’s getting laid tonight.

  Alyssa turned away, staring out the one window her tiny apartment boasted. The sliver-view of Central Park, framed between two buildings, was the pad’s only selling point. Well, that and the fact it was cheap enough not to need a roommate. The microscopic hole had served its purpose for the past six years, but she was beyond ready to move out. As soon as she got married.

  Now she wasn’t getting married.

  She’d never been excited about the idea, but Zach pushed and pushed until she gave in, the way she always did with him. For months, she’d ignored the warning signs that things weren’t right between them, but this was outrageous even by Zach’s standards. No way was she locking herself into a lifetime of this crap.

  After a few steadying breaths, Alyssa turned to face her boyfriend like a mature, rational adult. “You said you’d go to your end-of-year work party for two hours and come get me at eight for dinner at eight-thirty. Instead, you show up hours late, and drunk. We’re supposed to be at the airport for a 6 AM flight. Do you remember any of this or are you too wasted?”

  Zach was silent, scowling like a schoolboy enduring a lecture from a teacher.

  Alyssa took another deep breath. “Do you have any idea how frightened I was? Why, after insisting that we get engaged, would you stand me up for the event that you planned?”

  “Babe,” he slurred, pushing off the wall. “I’m sure I texted you. Check your phone.”

  “I just looked at it. There’s nothing.”

  He shrugged off the lie. “I knew you had reservations about getting engaged so sue me if I wasn’t eager to get here tonight. I need to know you’re a hundred percent into this. Besides, the more I thought about it, I realized if we got married…the sex might get...boring.”

  She and Zach hadn’t had sex since…before Thanksgiving? Longer. Wrapped up in work and holiday preparations, she’d hardly noticed, which spoke volumes about the state of their relationship. Of all the pointless excuses.

  She hated how he did this so easily, turning situations where he was completely in the wrong into her fault. This time, she wasn’t letting him get away with it.

  He stepped closer. Alyssa backed up one step, then another. Zach, several inches taller than her five-foot-seven, loomed over her.

  “No,” she said forcefully an instant before his mouth landed on hers. Sputtering, Alyssa pushed him away and stepped backward.

  “Ow!” she yelled as a shard stabbed her heel.

  “I hurt you?” Z
ach stared, confused, as she bent to check her injury. Zach didn’t even offer his arm to lean on. He could be such an insensitive jerk sometimes, and he was on a roll tonight.

  “No. Yes. I broke a glass.” Grimacing, Alyssa hopped awkwardly toward the bathroom. As if on cue, the neighbor downstairs started banging on his ceiling, her floor.

  The white Swiss-dot stockings she’d spent big bucks on because they went so well with her dress had a run halfway to her knee. They were covered in blood, and she’d never even worn them out of her apartment. She pushed the door almost closed and hiked up her skirt.

  She stripped off the ruined stockings and tossed them into the trash can. She lifted the ankle of her injured foot and placed it on the opposite knee to examine her heel. “Could you bring me a paper towel?”

  Her erstwhile boyfriend barged into the bathroom to proffer a wad. Alyssa reached up to the sink and ran water over it. Teeth clenched, she took the dagger of glass between her fingernails and ripped it from her skin. Blood puddled on the tile.

  Zach blanched. “Babe, we gotta talk.”

  “Please go now.” The drops fell one after the other, great globs of bright red. At least something in this apartment was a festive color. She pressed the wet towels to the wound and grimaced.

  “Leave the key. Box up the stuff I have at your place and send it to my parents’ house. I don’t want to see you ever again.” She wanted to feel pride in standing strong, but one glance at Zach’s expression and unease curdled in her stomach.

  She ripped a Band-Aid out of its protective covering and plastered it across her heel. It soaked through in an instant. Alyssa reached for a threadbare but clean towel. Pressing it to her foot, she rummaged in a drawer until she found a tube of expired Neosporin and an Ace bandage with crumbling elastic.

  “Babe, you might need a doctor. I don’t want to leave you alone.”

  “I wish you’d considered that five hours ago.” Alyssa limped back out wearing a makeshift bandage like an extra from a zombie movie. Her boyfriend was still in her living room. Ex-boyfriend. What about get out was so hard for him to process?

  “Aly, call me when you get to Florida. You’ll get your ring. I’m just not ready to get married.”

  Alyssa closed her eyes, picturing her hands reaching through the collar of his cashmere coat and strangling him with his Burberry scarf. She opened them. “Me neither, Zach. Please go.”

  He nodded. “I don’t want to lose you.”

  “You just did,” Alyssa said tiredly.

  He finally left, clomping down the stairs like a Clydesdale with coordination problems. The door slammed shut, which started the downstairs neighbor banging again. Alyssa spent maybe two nights a week in her own apartment, and most of the time all she did was drop into bed. Her usual good nature fractured. She stomped on the floor, hard. Pain radiated up her leg.

  “Fuck!” Wincing, she fell onto the couch.

  The floor remained strewn with sharp glass. She’d booby-trapped her own apartment.

  Alyssa stared out her window for a moment trying to summon the energy to clean up the mess. It was never truly night in New York City. Ambient light washed the landscape in dirty ocher. It wouldn’t matter if she never set foot into this apartment after tonight. Her life in New York—she was done with it.

  Her body sagged into the ancient IKEA couch, worn out from an evening that had turned emotional for all the wrong reasons. In hindsight, she shouldn’t have agreed to skip Christmas Eve with her family. Being so far away, she didn’t get to visit as much as she’d have liked, and in recent calls with her sister Janelle, something had seemed off. She’d been weirdly fixated on the engagement.

  Alyssa hauled herself up and hobbled around, sweeping up glass. She should’ve asked Zach to do it before kicking him out, though she knew he couldn’t wield a broom and dustpan.

  The Louis Vuitton handbag Zach had given her for her last birthday sat on the desk that doubled as a table. She didn’t care for the style, but she’d carried it every day because he’d enjoyed buying her expensive things, and she’d been a little too willing to accept luxury goods as a substitute for genuine affection. She growled and upended it over the battered table.

  She couldn’t vent at Zach, but anything he’d given her was fair game.

  For the next few minutes she sorted the contents into either the garbage can or a stack of things to keep: phone, half a package of gum, dental floss, mascara, several receipts she still needed to submit for reimbursement at work, her zippered Coach wallet still in decent shape despite four years of abuse, and two tubes of lipstick. Oh, and the notebook she never used.

  Then she limped to the tiny closet in the alcove she used as a bedroom and took down a cheerful pink Coach bag. The set had been her reward to herself for landing her first job out of college. She carefully placed the pile of items to keep inside.

  The Louis Vuitton went into its dust covering and onto the shelf. A fifteen-hundred-dollar bag sitting in a nine-hundred-dollar-a-month studio apartment—how much sense did that make?

  It was time to go. Alyssa zipped up her coat and extended the little handle on her wheeled suitcase.

  In the foyer, she learned why Zach had taken the stairs. The elevator was out of service. Again. She bumped her luggage down all five flights of stairs, too upset to care about how much noise she was making. No one emerged to yell at her. Most likely, everyone was away visiting family. Except her downstairs neighbor, of course. He would have to be the one to stay home.

  Outside, the suitcase wobbled drunkenly for a whole two feet before snow packed the wheels and it turned into a sled. Alyssa hoisted it and trudged on. Gray slush piled up along the sides of the road. The city was cloaked in a haunted, almost eerie silence. A familiar form hunched in the corner of the subway stairwell.

  Alyssa squinted against the glare of the brightly lit subway station. “Gina? Is that you?”

  A woman huddled in the stairwell with two large, battered suitcases forming a barrier around her body. She glanced up. “Yeah, it’s me, all right. Aly?”

  “Didn’t you get an apartment?”

  “Had it, but soon as I got the housing voucher set up, I lost the lease. The landlord rented it to someone else. How’s that for luck? Got the money to pay but no place to rent.” Gina’s deeply crinkled face belied her relative youth.

  Chronic homelessness had a way of wearing you down. Despite this, Gina usually had a ready laugh and a wide grin. Once, Alyssa had laughed at some joke Gina had cracked, and they’d been talking off and on ever since. Gina’s police officer son had died of a gunshot wound, and she’d lost her job a few months later. Though life had spiraled quickly out of control, Gina was tenacious in trying to drag it back on track.

  “What’re you doin’ out this time of night?” Gina asked.

  Alyssa leaned against the grimy subway wall. “Taking the train to JFK. Got an early flight home to Florida.”

  “Long trip.”

  “Yeah. I have time, though.” She’d had a bad evening, but at least she’d never been homeless on Christmas. “Hey, Gina. Are you going anywhere to celebrate today?”

  “Nah. Might see some friends at the shelter. I’ll get a there bed tomorrow night.” She sniffed. “The holidays are rough. I like to be alone.”

  Alyssa bit the fingertip of her glove to pull it off, tasting wet wool. She fished in the pocket of her handbag, past the laptop in its snug blue neoprene case and her toiletries neatly bagged for security scanning. Her fingers were cold and slow as she unspooled a set of three keys. The woman in two coats and a skirt worn over untold other layers watched her guardedly.

  “I have a better idea. No one should be homeless on Christmas, Gina. The big key gets you into the front door of my building. The gold key is for the deadbolt. Silver key is the front door. I’m not back until January first. You can stay until then, if you’ll bring in the mail.”

  Gina eyed the key set like she might snatch it away. “You sure you want some
nutty stranger staying in your apartment?”

  “You’re not crazy. You just have terrible luck. It’s sitting empty otherwise. There’s laundry in the basement and detergent under the sink. There’s a change jar on the closet shelf with quarters for the machines. The man below me doesn’t like it when you make noise.” She reached for Gina’s hand and folded the keys into her palm.

  “I’ll be quiet as a mouse.”

  “Great, you’ll fit right in with the real mice.”

  Gina barked a laugh. “Why’re you doin’ this?”

  Good question. Because Gina was her secret friend, someone in her life that Zach didn’t know about. As if he’d ever look twice at a homeless woman. It was a small good deed to mark her newfound freedom.

  “How long have I seen you here in this subway stop? Four years? Five? I trust you.” She shrugged. “The apartment isn’t much, but it’s a better place to sleep than a subway station, and you’ll have all the alone time you need to get through the holidays.”

  She made Gina repeat the address twice. Together they carried her heavy suitcases up to the street. Alyssa flagged a cab and handed Gina two twenties.

  “Merry Christmas.” She waved.

  “An’ Happy New Year!” Gina bellowed out the window as the cab pulled away. Alyssa stood there grinning like an idiot until she realized her feet and fingers were numb. Her happiness at performing a small good deed melted faster than a snowflake on a radiator.

  Alyssa’s stomach tried to tie itself into a knot. Her parents were going to lose it when she told them the mortifying story of how she’d spent her Christmas Eve. They were in awe of Zach, and Janelle fawned over him like Prince Charming personified.