Christmas Kisses

8. Christian

8

CHRISTIAN

M y eyes pop up from my phone when a creak sounds through my ears. It isn’t the warped hinges on the bathroom door. It is the groan of a woman confident she is on the verge of death.

Angel looks exhausted, and in under a second, it drags up memories of how unwell my mother was after her chemotherapy treatments.

“Bed. I need my bed.”

Although I should relish her getting her just desserts, I’m not a man who can miss a white flag being waved. She’s been punished enough. The groans that vibrated through the air vents of the apartment announce this without fault.

With Angel’s legs too weak to match mine stride for stride, I meet her at the bathroom door before scooping her into my arms. Her failure to protest that she can walk announces how unwell she feels, much less the clamminess of her skin when I pull her in close to my naked torso.

I’m still running a fever, so I skipped the heaviness of the suit combination I was wearing earlier and opted for sleeping pants instead.

I notice a droplet of sweat beading on Angel’s temple before asking, “Are you sure you only licked your thumb? You’re still burning up.”

I brush away the bead as she slowly stammers, “Food intolerance. Sesame. Seeds.”

“You have an intolerance to sesame seeds?” When she nods, I shout, “Then why the fuck did you bring them into your home?”

The bean dish I selected was coated in sesame seeds. I felt every pesky bump of their exit from my body since they were the only substance not in a liquid form.

“Not. Just. For me.” Her eyelids droop as she struggles to lift her eyes to my face. “This. Is. Their home too.”

Curiosity echoes in my tone. “Whose home?”

Before Angel answers me, her head bobs off my chest. She takes in the massive four-poster bed and floral bedspread before burying her head back between my pecs.

“Not. This. Room.” She waves her arm behind us, its flap barely the flutter of a fly’s wing. “Room. Next. To bathroom.”

“You don’t sleep in the primary suite?” I ask while twirling back around and heading in the direction we just came from.

As we enter the secondary bedroom next to the bathroom, she answers, “No.”

“Why not?”

I walk faster when she murmurs, “Hurts.”

I have a feeling not all of her reply centers on karma. The way she clutched her chest before speaking her one-worded reply makes it seem more like an emotional pain than a physical one.

While balancing her on one hand, I tug down the bedding on a double bed. It looks as unused as the king-size bed in the primary suite. Even the pillows appear untouched.

Like a stack of bricks falling down on me, the truth hits me when I place her onto the unwrinkled sheet.

She was the shadow under the bathroom door lip all night. I thought it was the base of the large hallway table outside the bathroom, but now that I am more lucid, I remember how it shifted a second after the DoorDash driver rang the doorbell.

But why? She refused my numerous requests for a bucket, which forced me to stick my head into a toilet I’d desecrated only minutes earlier, so why act like she cares?

My words trail off when I unearth a cause for her backflip. Baring a handful of necessities, her apartment is bare. I’m not talking a little light with ornaments and knickknacks. I mean bare bare.

“You don’t have a bucket, do you?”

Angel sighs so profoundly that it rattles through my chest as well. “No. While I was attending a funeral, they took everything but the bulky furniture.” Her chest rises and falls three times, mimicking mine. “I doubt it would still be here… if they could have moved it themselves.”

“They?” My interrogation could wait, but the lack of pause between each of her words clears my conscience enough for a bit of prying.

She speaks slowly, as if it hurts to talk. “Mrs. Richler and her”—a half-yawn, half-gag separates her reply—“husband.”

“The building supervisor removed your belongings without your permission while you were attending a funeral?” I thought something was off with Mrs. Richler’s story when she updated me on her efforts to remove the non-paying lodger from the apartment I wanted to purchase, but I would have never suspected this.

Nodding, Angel snuggles deeper into her pillow. “Uh-huh.”

“You know that’s illegal, right?”

Even if Angel hasn’t paid a dime in rent in years, they can’t touch her belongings. Laws that protect occupants are why landlords bring in companies like Jimmy’s. He moves them on in a “legal” manner by making them believe it is their choice to leave.

“Yep.” Angel breathes out slowly before her chest’s subtle rises and falls slacken. “But that can of worms can wait until after karma has finished kicking my ass.”

Within seconds of hugging her pillow, she is out cold.

I scroll to a recent contact I made at Florida’s residency and tenancy agency just as fast.