Devon Hartford - Painless

Eventually, I heard Mom stomping down the hallway toward the stairs. She was leaving in a huff.

Fine by me.

A few seconds later, I heard my dad mumbling as he trudged down the hallway after her. My parents were flying out the next day anyway, so it really didn’t matter if they spent the night here or not. They could spend it in a gutter somewhere, for all I cared.

The front door slammed shut. Their rental Honda revved and drove off.

Good riddance.

I was just glad Christos and Spiridon hadn’t been around to watch my parents’ bad behavior.

I laid down on the bed and covered my eyes with my arm. I must’ve dozed off because the next thing I knew, Christos was waking me.

“ Agápi mou ?” he said softly. “What happened to your parents? Their car is gone and their room is empty.”

I slid my arm down to my chest. It weighed about a thousand pounds. I was going to need a crane to lift me off this bed, I was so depressed. Not even ten gallons of ice cream could move me now.

Christos sat down next to me gently. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“No,” I said flatly.

He smiled and nodded. My heart accelerated as I took in that beautiful grin of his. It melted my world every time. All the pain my parents had stabbed into me faded to a fuzzy pressure that was someone else’s problem. At least for now. For now, I was going to bask in the blue glow of Christos’ loving gaze.

He smiled more widely. “You sure? Talking it out will make it better.”

I had resolved to keep my emotions in check, but with all the love pouring off of Christos, I didn’t see the reason to hold them in. I sat up and wrapped my arms around him and cried softly. “Christos, agápi mou , my parents are evil. They want me to quit SDU and move back to D.C.”

I felt Christos suddenly tighten.

“What did you tell them?” he asked cautiously.

“I told them they’re crazy.” I felt him relax and melt against me.

“Thank goodness. I don’t think I could deal with losing you.” There was a tenderness in his voice that pierced straight to the center of my being. “I love you, agápi mou ,” he said, “I don’t want to live without you in my life. I can’t imagine waking up to an empty bed because, once you leave it, my bed will remain as empty as my heart until the day I die. Life without you would be a dull, gray, tasteless thing without meaning. I would rather die a quick death than live a vacant life without you by my side.”

Whoa. Swoon.

Yeah, my mom was totally out to lunch about Christos.

“Oh, agápi mou, ” I murmured, “I’m not going anywhere.”

Two days later, I was back at work at the Eleanor M. Westbrook art museum.

“Samantha,” Mr. Selfridge said, “I need to go out for a little while. I have a meeting with the Provost of Adams College. I’ll be gone for about an hour. Can you handle things while I’m gone?”

“Sure,” I smiled at him from where I sat behind the counter in the lobby.

“See you shortly,” he waved as he walked out the front doors.

I really loved my job at the museum and really liked having Mr. Selfridge for a boss. I only wished the museum could give me more hours. I’d asked Mr. Selfridge about it at the beginning of my shift today, but he had apologized that the museum had no more hours to give.

Now that Spring Quarter classes had started, and my remaining loan money had been eaten up paying the first of my monthly installment payments, I needed more cash in a hurry. I’d have to find a second job once again. With any luck my job hunt wouldn’t eat up all my study time. The last thing I needed was for my GPA to drop low enough that my loans got suspended.

With my parents back in D.C., I actually felt a sense of relief, despite my heinous financial predicament. My parents were just one more hassle that I wouldn’t have to deal with. I was going to figure things out without their help.

Somehow.

No customers had come into the museum today, so I had some down time. I pulled out my laptop and started searching for jobs online. As much as I hated the idea, it was time to suck it up and look for a math tutoring job. There had been tons the last time I’d looked for a job.

Unfortunately, it didn’t take long to realize that Sheri at the Financial Aid offices had been right. Jobs in general were scarce these days. The numerous math tutoring listings I’d seen a few months ago were all gone.

Great.

I sighed and closed my laptop. I’d do more job searching later. At least I had my museum job, which meant a little money coming in to offset my hemorrhaging budget crisis.

One of the glass front doors of the museum opened and Tiffany Nofun-Poophouse walked inside wearing a tight dress and platform heels. There went my good mood. Not that I had much of one to begin with, but she definitely knocked it to the bottom of a deep and dreary well, the kind of well with slippery slime on the sides you couldn’t climb back out of, the kind where they had to call the rescue crews to pull your muddied mood out.

“Hey, Tiffany,” I groaned as she clacked toward the counter in her hooker heels.

She smirked but said nothing.

“What brings you to the museum?” I asked blandly. At least I didn’t have to say “Welcome to Grab-n-Dash. How can I brighten your day?” And she didn’t have a big drink in her hand to throw in my face. I smiled as I realized there was little Tiffany could do to me here at the museum to actually ruin my day.

“I need a ticket,” she said brusquely.

“Are you an art major? Because if you are, you don’t have to pay.”

She slammed her huge purse on the counter and yanked her wallet out. There must have been more than a dozen credit cards inside. She peeled one out of the wallet and punched it at me.

“I didn’t know you liked coming to the art museum,” I said meekly, trying to make conversation. “It’s really nice. I find it very relaxing here, especially if you’ve had a bad day.”

She glared at me.

“Okay…” I muttered and rang her up. When she signed her receipt, I handed her a ticket.

She ripped it from my hand and walked toward the main gallery.

“Oh, um, Tiffany?” I called after her. “You need to leave your bag behind the counter.”

Tiffany stopped in her tracks and slowly pivoted to face me. I was expecting one of those horror movie reveals where her face suddenly looked monstrous, with dramatic up-lighting and dripping fangs, but it was just regular old Tiffany, not that there was a huge difference.

After sneering at me for about an hour, Tiffany stalked toward me and jammed her purse in my hands.

I squeezed it into one of the cubbies behind the counter.

About twenty minutes later, I realized I needed to go to the bathroom to change my tampon. Normally, Mr. Selfridge was always around and I could get him to cover the front desk. But he was still out on his errand.

How long was he supposed to be gone again?

I took a step and could tell I was on the verge of dripping. I hated how a tampon could up and quit on you without any warning like that.

Where was Mr. Selfridge?

I really needed to go to the restroom.

It wasn’t like I was going to change my tampon behind the counter. What if someone walked into the museum? If I had been wearing a skirt, I might have considered it. Might. But in jeans? Not bloody likely! I imagined how it would play out. I’d be squatting behind the counter, my pants around my ankles as I tried to plug a fresh tampon inside the hole in the dam, and BOOM! someone would walk inside and accuse me of public indecency.

No, thank you.

I bit my lower lip and used my ESP to will Mr. Selfridge to walk through the front doors. Where was he? I took a tentative step toward the waist high swinging door at the end of the counter, ready to make a run for the restrooms the second he walked in.