Ruin Me, Daddy novel · Chapter 3 of 32

Chapter 3: The Lobby

Jessa sets out to buy herself free, and when Brady makes a scene at her hotel desk she tells the whole lobby about his bet; an hour later his aunt Lettie walks in with a job offer.

"A face," I said. "For my voice."

"For Honey's voice." Lyman let that sit. "You'll still record, of course. Nothing changes for you."

"Except somebody else gets to be me."

"Somebody else gets to be her, Honey. You never wanted to."

He was right, and I hated him for it.

"Have a good weekend," he said, and hung up.

I sat on the bed holding the phone until Marlee leaned in the doorway with her headphones around her neck.

"Who died?"

"Me, sort of. Five more years of me."

I told her.

She didn't yell. That was worse. Marlee only goes quiet when she's doing math.

"How much do you have?"

I opened my banking app and turned it around.

Nine thousand four hundred dollars. Three years of closet sessions and waitressing tips and never once buying the good shampoo.

"That's not sixty," I said.

"No." She sat down on the end of my bed. "But it's not zero."

"It's fifteen percent of sixty."

"Look at you, doing fractions." She took my phone and set it face down. "We're buying you out."

"With what?"

"I don't know yet. I'll sell a kidney. I'll sell your kidney."

"Marlee."

"You've got eight weeks, Jess. I've seen you record six episodes in a weekend with strep throat." She pointed at me. "We're buying you out, and then we're opening our studio, and that man is never going to call you Honey again."

I didn't believe her.

I let her say it anyway.

Monday I was back at the front desk of the hotel downtown, in my navy blazer and my name tag.

I checked in a dentists' convention. I found a lost rabbit, a stuffed one, for a crying four-year-old.

Under the desk sat a paper shopping bag.

Brady's spare key to our duplex. His gray college hoodie. The phone charger he always forgot.

I'd planned to mail it.

At eleven the revolving door spun, and Brady walked in.

Ledford Bourbon quarter-zip. The watch his father bought him. Sunglasses indoors.

He came straight to my desk and leaned on it with both elbows.

"You blocked my number."

"Good morning, sir. Are you checking in?"

"Don't do that voice." He kept smiling, but his eyes weren't. "You left me there with my dad. You made me look like an idiot in front of my own father."

"You did that."

"It was a joke, Jess. Guys say stuff."

A couple from Ohio was waiting behind him with their rolling bags. The bellman had stopped pretending to sort luggage.

Brady raised his voice, so they'd hear.

"She just walked out at two in the morning. Didn't say why. That's who you've got working your desk."

My manager came out of the back office and stood by the brochure rack.

I bent down, picked up the paper bag and set it on the counter between us.

"Your key," I said. "Your hoodie. Your charger."

Brady laughed. "Seriously? In front of everyone?"

"You like an audience."

I didn't lower my voice. I used the one that carries.

"You told me why I left," I said. "So I'll tell them."

The lobby was very quiet. The fountain by the elevators was the loudest thing in it.

"Friday night, at his father's house, he made a bet with his friends. Five hundred dollars that his dad would hear us having sex through a grate in the floor."

The woman from Ohio put her hand over her mouth.

"He won," I said. "He took the money. Then he told them I didn't know anything, and that was the best part."

Brady's face went a dark, blotchy red. It started at his collar and climbed.

"You're crazy."

"Then you won't mind if I read the messages out loud. I took pictures."

I hadn't. He didn't know that.

He grabbed the bag off the counter so hard the charger fell out on the marble.

He didn't pick it up.

The bellman held the revolving door for him, and very slowly let it turn.

When he was gone, the man from Ohio stepped up and set his credit card on the desk.

"Ma'am," he said, "I'd like a room on any floor that he's not on."

The bellman snorted. My manager went back into her office without a word, and I didn't know yet if that was good.

My hands didn't start shaking until I'd checked them in.

I picked the charger up off the floor and dropped it in the trash.

An hour later I was counting room keys when someone set a pair of reading glasses on a beaded chain down on my desk.

A tall woman with short silver hair and a canvas work apron.

She smelled like oak and caramel.

I'd met her at every holiday for two years. Lettie Ledford had once told me Brady was "pretty enough to make up for it."

She leaned on the desk with one forearm.

"Forrest told me about the bet," she said. "Not the details. Just enough to make me throw a skillet."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't you dare be sorry. My brother's an idiot and my nephew's worse."

She looked at me over the top of her glasses.

"I heard you at Easter, telling Brady exactly where to put that ham. Voice like yours, I'd pay to hear it read the phone book."

I didn't know what to say to that.

"We turned eighty this year," she said. "I need a voice for the anniversary audio tour. Ten stops, rickhouse to still house. Twelve thousand dollars. Clean work."

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