Staying True - A Contemporary Romance Novel (8 page)

“Tell me.”

“Oh, well, you know, you pitch the
idea. They let it marinate, and meanwhile I offer them a trial period. They
perk up and feign a little disinterest even though I can see the wheels in
their brains turning, imagining a staff fully relaxed and engaged in their
work. It just takes time.” I stopped myself from babbling further.

“Well I’m sure you’ll charm your way
into many corporate offices in no time,” she murmured.

“Yes, it’s just a matter of time.”

“Hmm.” Nadia paused. “So let’s say
Friday night the lounge again?”

“Friday night it is.”

She cleared her throat. “I’ll see you
then.”

“Right. See you then.”

After hanging up, a giddy rush
coursed through me. Talk about a sweet distraction.

Chapter Six

Ruby

I contemplated asking Grampa if I
could live with him. I didn’t want him to view all of his hard work raising me
as a failure though. So, I slept in my car for the next three nights. Each
morning, I simply entered a new gym and asked if I could take a guest tour.
Each one allowed me access to it all, even the showers. For food, I volunteered
at soup kitchens. I could handle this homeless thing. No rent. No furniture
required. Shower and eat for free.

On the fourth morning, after
scrunching up into a ball for six hours, I woke up with another stiff neck and
not being able to wriggle my toes. This scared me. I loved my toes.

Placing my pride aside, I called
Marcy and Rachel.

Just like loving family, they
welcomed me to live in their home with them.

“You can have this room on the left,”
Rachel said, escorting me down the hallway of her and Marcy’s condo. “It’s got
a nice view of the water.”

“I can’t thank you enough.” I placed
my luggage down near the twin bed.

“I changed the sheets so they’re nice
and fresh for you.”

I looked around my new bedroom, a
sunny room with tangerine-colored walls and paintings of the sea. I handed her
the five hundred dollars I had borrowed from Grampa. “I hope this is enough?”

She placed it back in my hand. “Keep
it. When you’re working, you can pay us.”

That very day I went job searching
again. This time, I applied at retail stores, at pet stores, at garden centers,
even at the breakfast restaurant where I ate with Grampa on Sundays. I went to
the beauty supply shop and applied there, too.

The receptionist wore pink braces on
her teeth. She smiled and her mouth looked like bubblegum.

“I love your braces,” I said.

“Thanks, hun.” She scanned over my
application. “My younger sister is a breast cancer survivor.”

“Younger?” This girl couldn’t have
been more than twenty-five.

“Yup. She just turned twenty-three
last month. Her boyfriend discovered the lump, and next thing she had a double
mastectomy.” She continued scanning my application as though she just told me
that grass grew green.

“Poor thing.”

The girl stopped scanning and just
stared at me. Her jaw hung and her pink braces sparkled under the reflection of
the overhead fluorescents. “Her new ones are beautiful.” She glanced down at
her flat chest and shrugged. “A hell of a lot better than mine.”

“Will she be okay?”

“She’ll be fine.”

“That puts things into perspective.”

“Yep.” She twisted her mouth and
studied my history.

I prayed she’d look right over the
unemployed part. “I mean just this morning, I stressed about my frizzy hair.
How foolish, huh?”

She dropped my application to the
counter and picked up a bottle. “Just stick some of this Moroccan oil on it,
and it’ll be good as new.” She opened up the lid, squirted a few drops into her
palms and massaged them together. Before smoothing onto my hair she sniffed it.
“Smells like eucalyptus.”

How could she think about shiny hair
at a time like this when she sported pink braces and mouthed the words cancer
and sister in the same sentence?

“So do I get the job?”

She shrugged and picked up my
application again. “Not sure, Ruby.” She placed heavy emphasis on my name as
she scanned my application. “Why did you leave your last job? You left that
blank.”

“Looking for a better opportunity,” I
blurted out.

“Here?” Her lips curled up into a wry
smile.

I glanced around at the chaos of hair
and nail products. “Well why not?”

“Says here you are a masseuse. You’re
never going to like it here.”

“Of course I will.” I leaned into the
counter.
Hire me, damn it!

“A better opportunity, huh?”

Adrenaline pumped through me. “Yes.”

She tossed the application back down
again. “The boss will never hire you. You’ve got too many credentials to work
here. A masseuse doesn’t leave her massage job at a fancy day spa to come work
in a supply shop.”

I flushed. All of my needs suddenly
buried me. I stared her down.
You don’t understand. I need this job. I’m
taking money from my grampa. I just moved out of my car into someone’s spare
bedroom. Please.

She pointed to a bulletin board
behind her. “There’s a new job posted. The Della Norte Day Spa has an opening
for a massage therapist. Walk right in and earn forty-thousand dollars a year
with that position. At least that’s what the girl said. Apparently the existing
masseuse took a job in Florida and is leaving her clientele behind to the next
lucky one.”

I had already applied to that one and
they never called back. I secured my pocketbook strap over my shoulder. “I’d
rather work here.”

“We’re not going to hire you.”

My fragile pride unraveled in front
of me, leaving me vulnerable to her sarcastic grin. “Then, fine. I’ll apply to
the spa. Thanks for the tip.” I couldn’t disguise the anger in my voice.

I walked away and looked back as I
exited, unable to leave a mess where I might one day need to return for
supplies should I ever get my life back on track. “Sorry about your sister.”

“Thanks,” she murmured.

I brushed past the window on my way
to my car, and through the thick glass, with all the posters claiming the
biggest savings, I could still see her pretty pink braces smiling back at me.

* *

When Friday night arrived, I walked
into the Gateway Suites lounge with butterflies. Shawna busied herself with
mopping the floor behind the bar. She was attractive. Her body rocked, and I envied
her thick hair. A sadness haloed around her. An uncertainty. A constant,
look-over-the-shoulder-type apprehension.

“She’s running late,” she said from
behind the bar.

I eased onto a stool. “Nadia told you
I was meeting her?”

“She tells me everything.”

“So you and she are close?”

“You could say that.” A playful smile
danced on her rosy lips.

“You have a crush on her, don’t you?”

“I admire Nadia. That’s it,” she said
with a completely straight face hindered by a blush.

I grinned. “You are totally crushing
on her.”

She scoffed and rolled her eyes.

“So, why is she so stressed?” I
asked.

Her eyes flew open. “You know I can’t
answer that.”

“I won’t tell.”

Just then, a couple of guys entered
and sat at the table next to me. Shawna approached them, and they sneered at her,
looking her up and down. Then, the bigger of the two grabbed Shawna’s arm.
“What are you, a fucking dude?” He laughed along with the bald, fat guy sitting
across from him.

Shawna blushed a deep red and tears
sprang to her eyes.

Whoa. Hell no are these fools going
to bully her with me standing right here. I stood up. I wrapped around the
table and grabbed this burly man’s arm and dug my fingernails into his skin.
His eyes popped. He released his grip on Shawna.

I dug deeper. “Apologize to the
lady,” I said to him.

Shawna cradled the tray to her chest.
“It’s okay. No need to cause a scene,” she said to me.

I dug my nail again. “Apologize or
leave.”

“I’m not going to fucking apologize,”
he said.

His friend stood. “Let’s just get out
of here.”

“What’ll it be?” I asked the guy.
“More pain?”

He stood up and flung my arm away
from him, pushing me against the table. I pushed him right back. He grabbed my
shoulders and lurched at me. His friend plucked him off of me.

He glared at me and Shawna. “Freaks.”
His spit hit my face.

“Go on, get out,” I said, pointing to
the lounge door. “Take your ignorance and go elsewhere.”

He shoved off with a grunt and his
friend followed, pulling up his pants over his gut, and waddling away.

I turned to Shawna. Her face burned
red. Little blotches popped up all over her chest and arms. I pulled her into
my arms and hugged her. “I’m so sorry they were such jerks.”

“It never gets easy.”

“Next time, dig one of those nails
into his arm like I did.”

She chuckled. “You’re all right.”

We shared a friendly grin.

“Thank you for standing up to him for
me.”

“I’d expect nothing but the same from
you. Call it a mutual trust among women.”

Shawna sat down on the stool next to
me, placing her empty tray in front of us. “People don’t generally trust me.”
She fiddled with the lip of the tray, spinning it now. “You know?”

“No, I don’t know,” I said,
mesmerized by her ability to spin the tray in perfect rotations with just a
finger. With that kind of strength and control, she’d heal a lot of people as a
masseuse. “People always trust bartenders.”

A wistful look swiped across her
angular cheeks. “Not bartenders like me.”

I leaned in. “Like you? What does
that mean?”

She blushed. “You do see that I’m not
like you, right?”

I hovered over her question. I didn’t
know the appropriate response. “You’re a beautiful woman stuck in the wrong
body. Doesn’t give him the right.”

“So you’re not bothered that I’m
transgendered?”

“Are you bothered that I’m a
lesbian?”

She swallowed a readymade comeback
that I rendered senseless now.

“See, not very comfortable being
asked such a question, is it? Yet, here we are justifying ourselves.”

She toyed with a napkin, wringing it
up tightly. “It’s not easy being transgendered.”

I had never met a transgendered
person before. I had so many questions. They sat on the back of my tongue
waiting to pounce. “It’s not easy being anything. Yet, here we are, surviving
it all.”

She offered me a sideways glance. “I
bet you’ve got a lot of questions, don’t you?”

You bet I did. I wanted to understand
her. I wanted to know when she realized that she wanted to transition. I wanted
to know what she looked like under her clothes. Did she still have a penis? Did
hair grow on her chest? Did she enjoy wearing lacy undies like I did? Did she
trim her hair down there or let it run all wild like men often did? How did she
smooth out her Adam’s apple? Why hadn’t her voice changed to more female? “I
would never ask you such personal questions.”

“Ask me.”

“Really?” I asked.

“Do you have any questions?”

“Abso-freaking-lutely,” I said.

She giggled and her cheeks relaxed,
balancing on her face like chiseled art, shining to life. “Go ahead and ask me.
I’m an open book to you now that you used your fingernails as a loaded weapon
for me.”

“Really?”

“Abso-freaking-lutely.” Her eyes
twinkled.

Where did I start? “When did you
choose to be a woman?”

She clenched her jaw. It quivered
under her teeth grinding. I hit a nerve. This girl needed to talk. “I didn’t
choose to be a woman.”

I scrunched up my face trying to
figure this one out. “Huh?”

“I am a woman. I was just born in the
wrong body. Since I can remember, I’ve always felt like a girl inside even
though I have a penis. I never felt like a boy.”

“Do you get attacked often like you
did tonight?”

“It’s been a while. We get a lot of
regulars in here and everyone is always nice and respectful for the most part.
Just every once in a while a drunk jerk comes in and stirs up shit. Most people
just accept me here.”

“And that’s why you love it.”

“That’s why I love it, Ruby. That’s
exactly why I love it.”

She spun her tray with the tip of her
finger. We both took up refuge in its spin. A few stragglers sat at the bar
with their backs to us sipping on beers and eating the complimentary peanuts.
Candles lit up each table casting a tranquil and serene blanket over the
lounge. I glanced to the bartender behind the bar who was wiping down the
counter and laughing with a skinny, unshaven guy.

I needed to segue into something more
comfortable. “So, anyone special in your life?” My voice crawled out weak and
shallow.

“You ask that as if I have a choice
in that.”

“Why wouldn’t you?”

She sat up taller on the edge of her
stool. “You have a beautiful view of the world, little miss sunshine.” Pain
etched across her face.

“I don’t follow you.”

“I’m stuck mid-transition.” Her face
blanked. “I’m not exactly girlfriend material. I prefer solitude over the
inevitable awkward moment.”