Page 10 of Unexpected Hero

Stella squints at the screen. “Your face is red, Lettie. Ya good, hun?”

“Yep. Fine. Just trying to figure out how we took a five-month trip around the moon to get to the corner store. I didn’t need to know the town’s history in order for you to say you saw the arrest on the TC.”

She shrugs and pets her Pumpkin. Ick.

Fucking lizards.

I’m about to press her to explain what the charges were and what happened with Toby when my phone slips out of my hand and falls onto my face.

Whack. Crunch.

“Ouch!” I scream, intense pain shooting through my entire face.

“Oh no, girl. Did you drop the phone on your face? Are you okay?”

Ignoring the phone for a moment where it lies, I cup my nose, trying to rub the pain away, which only makes it hurt worse.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck. That hurts.”

I shake my head and blink a few times, then try to suck in a deep breath, only to feel something funny in my nasal passages. It’s wet, warm, and running down my face. Lots of it. Looking down at my shirt, I see it’s quickly becoming covered with blood. My hands are too.

“Fucking hell. My nose is bleeding!”

“Calamity Lettie strikes again. You and Nicole Boedeker are too much for me to handle. Did you know she broke the same ankle again? That’s the third time. The pair of you should wrap yourselves in bubble wrap and call it a day.”

Running to the bathroom, I try to catch the drops of blood. “Argh!”

Did I say drops? I meant rivulets. Streams. Rivers.

Nay. Waterfalls.

Yeah. That’s more like it.

As if the stinging agony of my face isn’t enough, the blood makes me queasy. Butter my biscuit, this is a lot of freaking blood.

My dad — err, grandpa — was right. The phone is the demise of my generation.

“Stella, I have to go,” I warble over my shoulder in the general direction of the phone on my bed. “I’ll call you back.”

“Do I need to call emergency services for you?” she teases.

“No, bitch. I’ll be okay. Just a bloody nose.”

“Okay, girl. Call me back or send proof of life. If I don’t hear from you in ten minutes, I’ll dust off the first draft of your obituary.”

I lean my face over the sink, watching the blood pour out of me like the freaking flume ride at Busch Gardens. It just keeps coming and coming.

Oh my gosh. It’s never going to stop.

I’m so glad they don’t have regular housekeeping here. If they did, I’d be arrested for sure. As the seconds tick on, it’s looking more like a murder scene.

And in this hotel? Homicide is a possibility.

But the downside of the lack of housekeeping is that I’m out of clean towels. Plus, they’re all white or were once upon a time. They’re white-adjacent now.

While frantically grasping for tissues or paper towels, I accidentally swat my toiletry bag, spilling cosmetics and face cream all over the counter. In my mad quest to stop the bag from dumping onto the floor, I send some of the items toppling into the sink. Now, my makeup brushes are floating in a pool of my nose blood.

I hate being a klutz.

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