The old staircase creaks as I creep toward the kitchen. The house is three storeys high and I’m at the top. Two days here, and I still haven’t figured out how many rooms there are. The house is a lot bigger than the number of occupants, so no wonder they need someone else for the rent.
Digging around the bottom of the kitchen cupboard, I find my box of chamomile teabags. I also haven’t unpacked properly or taken the long trip to the local supermarket, but at least I have my essentials. As the kettle boils, I stand on tiptoes and look through the kitchen window. Below, the lights of the town shine like fairy-lights of an everlasting Christmas. I pour the boiling water into the mug and sit, hovering my face over the herbal scent.
A noise alerts me, and I hold my breath as someone comes down the creaking stairs. Alek steps into the kitchen, bare-chested with a pair of sweats sitting low on his hips. I hitch a breath; I’m not used to living with guys who walk around half-naked.
“Oh. It’s you,” he says.
I don’t reply and tear my gaze from his chest to my mug. Alek walks into the kitchen and crosses to the fridge. The room lights up as he opens the door and grabs a beer. I want to comment how late it is to drink beer, but I’ve no idea of the time and it’s not my business. Alek pulls a chair out and sits opposite me.
“You look like a ghost,” he says.
I don’t know how to respond. All I’m aware of is his bare chest, and I castigate myself for being such a cliché as I stare at the smooth, toned skin.
“If you don’t speak, I’m going to think you are a ghost.”
“I’m not a ghost.”
Alek takes a swig from his bottle. “Do you believe in ghosts?”
“No.”
He makes a small sound of amusement in his throat. “You sound very certain.”
“Do you believe in ghosts?” I retort.
“Yes.”
I swirl the teabag around in my cup, hyper-aware of the bare-chested, hot guy sitting across the table from me. Hot guy? Oh, please…Actually, I’m glad because he’s distracting me from a topic prickling shivers along my neck. I don’t believe in ghosts, but moving into a new place brings ghosts from the past.
This is only the second time I’ve seen him and the first time since I moved into the house. Stupidly, I expect some kind of hello or welcome, but he’s evidently too caught up in himself to offer one.
“Your hair is very blonde.” Alek says.
“Thanks, I never noticed.”
He ignores my sarcasm. “Almost white, it shines even in the dark.”
I wonder if he’s already drunk. Or high. Hair colour isn’t a normal topic of conversation for guys.
“I like it. Your hair.”
I shift uncomfortably. This is weird. He’s weird. The room is too dark for me to see his face clearly, and I wish I knew if he was hitting on me in a sarcastic way.
Standing, I cross to the bin and dump the teabag into the plastic bag. “Night, then,” I say.
Alek takes a long drink. “Night, Casper.”
I glare at him and he arches a brow. Without responding, I leave the room. My heartbeat remains as rapid as when I woke from my nightmare. No amount of chamomile tea is going to fix whatever just happened in the kitchen.
Chapter 3
Work. The disinfectant and stale food smell of hospitals, along with the sterility of the atmosphere around, bothered me for weeks. Friends were surprised when I chose to work here, amongst the sick and around the wards I spent so much time in. But everything else I try fails; until I’m a hundred percent well again, I have to take a job I can stick at
After I recovered from the accident, I worked in a restaurant. I got orders wrong and irate customers would accuse me of not listening to them, so I didn’t last long before I got sacked. Then I tried being a checkout chick, which was an even bigger failure. For some reason, ninety percent of the aggressive customers chose my aisle; despite my short stature and meek personality, the hostility was way beyond anything I’ve come across before. After one nasty incident, where a mother accused me of deliberately upsetting her two year old, screaming daughter, I decided enough was enough. Which is how I ended up here, as a hospital porter, hidden in the background, away from too much interaction with the general public.
Hospital porter is a million miles away from the job I studied for: primary school teacher. I qualified a month before the accident, but, physically and mentally, I’m not ready to begin my career in such a stressful job yet.