Damon:A Bad Boy MC Romance Novel(43)

Not everyone who came through the doors of the Gateway were like that,  of course, but way too many were. We had our fair share of families,  businesspeople, truckers. But for every guest who left the room in a  decent state, there were two prostitutes, pimps, drug dealers,  alcoholics, or other such devils who took it upon themselves to make my  job as hard as humanely possible.

And I never held anything against those people for what they did. If  you're a lady and you need money and you don't mind letting someone give  you the old in-out to get some, go on with your bad self. Got a  drinking problem and can't drive home? By all means, keep everyone safe  and stay at the hotel. Need to "figure stuff out" through a drug-fueled  weekend? Not my place to judge.

But, goddam, a little decorum would be nice to see once in a while.

"Gabriella, Rosa is taking her break now, can you make sure 215 is ready? Early check-in," my walkie-talkie crackled on my hip.

"Already checked it, boss, all good," I said, pushing down the ‘talk'  button and hoping that my manager would actually hear me for once  instead of badgering me about why I "didn't respond". The woman was a  sweetheart, but she was deaf as hell and the flask of vodka she sipped  on all day didn't help her comprehension skills.         

     



 

As I heaved my cart down the hall, legs already aching from all the  bending over and crouching down my job demanded, I tried not to think  about what would happen at the end of my shift. To be honest, as much as  I hated playing nursemaid to the lost souls of the world, tidying up  after them, wondering whether that puddle was vomit or melted ice cream,  there wasn't a whole lot to look forward to once I was done for the  day, either.

It was late June, when it's really only just beginning to warm up in the high Rockies.

Maybe it's a good night for a barbeque, I thought idly, until I opened  up the door to the next room and my list and remembered that it was  raining lightly. No use stopping at the store on my way home for  hamburgers and potato chips.

Maybe I'll make lasagna, I thought. Lasagna is good for a rainy day. Jeremy loves my lasagna.

Lasagna was a safe bet. Anything that I already knew Jeremy loved was a  safe bet. Anything I wasn't sure about was a gamble. And if I made  anything that he'd told me once, even if he'd said it years ago in a  conversation that I had no reason to remember, I was treading on ice so  thin it might as well be paper.

Yeah, lasagna, I thought, thankful that this room, at least, wasn't as  bad as some of the others I'd seen that day. As I pulled up the covers,  balling them up with the sheets, ready to throw them in the hamper, I  made a quick mental inventory of the room. I was looking for chargers,  cell phones, socks, shoes, a ski goggle, anything that a rushed guest  might have left behind on their way out the door.

You'd be surprised what people leave behind in hotel rooms. Usually it's  just crap, but sometimes you find interesting things: photographs,  mysterious pills, strange powders in baggies, gold jewelry. Some of the  girls I worked with, I knew, were prone to taking such finds home with  them instead of bringing them to the front desk, like we were supposed  to. I didn't hold it against them, but I always brought anything I found  straight to the clerks to hold onto or dispose of as they saw fit.

It wasn't worth the risk of getting caught, for me. And besides, I  didn't do drugs, and I didn't need jewelry. Jeremy, though he had many  flaws, was an excellent provider. Or, I should say, the police force he  worked for was an excellent provider. We didn't want for money. The fact  I had this job at all was due to one of his whims.

After we'd married, three years before the shit hit the fan, he didn't  like the idea of me "sitting around at home" all day. Unfortunately, he  also didn't like the idea of me getting a job that would be "too  mentally taxing" or take up "too much time". Really, he just wanted me  to get a job where I'd come home too dog-tired to do anything but put up  with his shit, and working for housekeeping at the hotel was the  perfect mix of physical labor and mind-numbing repetition.

"But what did I get a degree for, if I can't do anything with it?" I'd said, still so naïve.

"Well, I don't know what you got a degree for, I sure as hell didn't  tell you to get it. I mean, what can you even do with a degree in  philosophy? You'd have to go to grad school if you want to make anything  of yourself, and we can't afford that right now. Besides, if you went  back to school, you'd have your nose in a book all the time again, no  time for me. I waited two years to have you all to myself, I don't want  to wait another four," he'd replied, appealing to that sappy part of me  that loved him beyond reason.

"I guess you're right," I'd resigned, not wanting to have the same  argument again for the third time that week. After our honeymoon, that  had been our first major issue. The first of many, I'd like to add.

So I'd started looking for a job. With almost no work experience, it was  tough. I could flip burgers, but that seemed beneath me, and with a  degree I was way overqualified, anyway. I wanted to take a position as a  secretary at a law firm, but Jeremy had thought that would be too  stressful for me, with crazy hours and demanding lawyers to cater to. He  was the only man I should be catering to, in his opinion.

So, I'd taken the gig as housekeeper at the Gateway. I'm pretty sure I  was only hired because I looked like I could speak Spanish. Which I  can't, by the way. Well, I can, but only curse words. Plus, my name,  Gabriella, is only one "l" away from the traditional Hispanic spelling  of the same name, blurring the line even further. Being half Puerto  Rican and half Italian, I'm what they call "ethnically ambiguous", which  is a nice way of saying "no one knows what the hell you are right from  looking at you."         

     



 

With large, almond-shaped, dark chocolate eyes, a deep tan complexion,  and crazy, kinky, black hair that does whatever it wants at all times,  I've been mistaken for a Jew, a Mexican, a Filipino, and even, on one  occasion, a Hawaiian. My body, though, is pure Latina. I blessedly  missed out on the dark body hair and stick-thin frame of my Italian  mother, and got my paternal grandmother's luscious hips, large, C-cup  breasts, and wide, womanly thighs.

Not that I always appreciated that, mind you. In fact, when I was with  Jeremy all those years, I hated it. He was as Irish as they get, pale as  the moon and thin as a rail. He always made me feel like I was fat.

He'd buy clothes for me, intentionally buying sizes too large, because  he knew that it made me think I belonged in the "plus" size section.  He'd make little backhanded compliments about my roly-poly tummy, which  never seemed to shrink no matter how much I tried to diet or exercise.

Now, of course, when I look at myself in the mirror and see the slight  pudge in my stomach, I know it's just a necessary evil of being what  they call "voluptuous." But back then? I did all I could to hide my  body, thinking that, since it didn't look like a fashion model's, it  wasn't any good.

But that was just par for the course when it came to Jeremy. I was never  good enough, never pretty enough, never smart enough or funny enough.  He never ceased to remind me, in little ways, never outright, how he'd  "settled" for me because he loved my personality, not my mind or my  body. And how much could he have loved my personality, anyway,  considering how much he thought I screwed up on a daily basis?

As I went into the bathroom, gathering towels and making note of what  toiletries needed to be restocked, I instinctively paused to check  myself in the mirror.

I'll need a touch-up soon, I thought, brow furrowed, hand gently  touching the tender spot above my left eyebrow where my concealer was  just starting to look splotchy. You could just barely, if you looked  hard enough, make out the dark purple markings underneath my make-up. I  flinched under my own touch, the spot still tender although it'd been  three days.

Here's something you should know about humans, if you are one.

None of us are of one mind.

Or, maybe I shouldn't be so broad. But I've met a lot of people, and  there's always two sides to the coin. It's not like some old, tired,  trope, like good and evil or black and white. It's just … there's the  "you" that you've always believed yourself to be, the one you want to  be, and there's the "you" that you'd like to ignore, that you don't want  to take ownership of.

I don't tell many people about that time in my life, because in that  time of my life the latter "you" was in charge of me. I thought of  myself as feisty and smart, with a spitfire wit and a take-no-prisoners  attitude. The way I'd been raised, in a household that was half no  mames, guey! and half fangul!

But, of course, that wasn't who I was. I was  –  and this pains me to  write  –  a "battered women". Ugh. What a horrible phrase. It makes me  think of cake, or cookies. When, in reality, there was nothing sweet  about my marriage. Jeremy, love him though I did, was a gigantic  asshole. A disgraziat. A so pendejo.