and when they kept calling, she changed her phone number. Her editor got back in touch to say that her piece had gotten another wave of traction, this one bigger. “Our server crashed, twice!” she had written, unable to hide her delight, though she had tossed in a half-hearted “Thinking of you” at the end.
The editor asked if Cait would write another piece for the website, and she wasn’t alone. Editors who had ignored her emails from a few months back suddenly flooded into her inbox. They all feigned interest in the pitches she’d sent, but really, they wanted to know one thing: would she write a response to Patrick McRae, and could they publish it? Cait could imagine the ad revenue signs flashing in their eyes, like a cartoon dog’s at a slot machine. “No, thank you,” she typed out, over and over. “I’m focusing on other work.”
The only people who didn’t want a piece of her were the Sisters of Service. “I think it might be good if you lay low for a couple weeks,” Lisa said to her. “It’s too dangerous to have you out in the lot right now.”
Cait had begged her to reconsider, even though she had known deep down that Lisa was right: she was a liability. But her work with the Sisters of Service was the only thing of value she did in her life, and it felt in darker moments like the only thing keeping her tethered to reality. She didn’t know what she would do if she lost it. Eventually, Lisa took pity on her and gave her a desk job back at the office. “We could use your writing skills in our communications department,” she said, making it sound like a promotion rather than a banishment.
And so, for a few days, the situation felt manageable. The calls stopped. Her work at Sisters of Service continued. She kept turning up to the bar and slinging beers, and when her shift finished, she went back to her apartment and locked the doors and felt a moment of something approaching calm, or maybe it was just exhaustion.
But now all of that was gone. They knew where she lived. They could be at her apartment right now, breaking down the door and trashing the place. Or worse, slipping in unnoticed and hiding. They would wait until she went to sleep and then they’d slither out from under the bed and murder her. Or worse.
“I need to go on break.” She didn’t wait for the other bartenders to answer, just pushed past them and ran through the staff door and out the back entrance into the muggy night air. It was late October, but Austin was under the spell of an Indian summer, and temperatures had been in the nineties all week. She pulled her phone out of her pocket and sent a text to Alyssa: “Can I crash at your place tonight?”
She smoked a cigarette while she waited for a response.
“My sister’s in town so she’s already claimed the couch but you can bunk with me if you want? Are you okay????”
Cait closed her eyes against the response. She saw herself arriving at Alyssa’s apartment after her shift, sweaty and tired and smelling of stale booze, and the two sisters looking at her with pitying eyes. She couldn’t face it. “Don’t worry, everything’s fine—but I’ll just stay at mine tonight. Have fun with your sister!”
“Let me know if you change your mind! Drinks next week?”
“Def xx”
She shoved the phone back in her pocket and made her way back to the bar. Stacy was waiting for her, arms folded, mouth turned down into a deep frown. “You need to ask permission before you go on break. You can’t just leave the bar like that.”
“I know, I’m sorry. It was kind of an emergency.”
Stacy didn’t soften. “I don’t care if it was an actual emergency. You still need to ask permission. I know you think your shit doesn’t stink because you took in the most money last week, but there are a dozen girls who would kill to have your place behind that bar.” She reached up and tapped the brim of Cait’s Stetson hat. “Use that pretty little head of yours, will you?”
Cait had to shove her hands in her pockets to keep from punching Stacy. It was moments like this when she wished the boss had never caught JB pleasuring himself in the manager’s office. He was a creep, sure, but a lazy one,