Page 46 of Good Girl

That was never the case with me. The hours I had spent on the bus, breathing in the stale stink of musk and going cross-eyed at the zigzag patterns on the seats, were my last hours of quiet bliss where I was Charlotte, the adventurous student sleeping with three professors and discovering that sex was fucking incredible.

As soon as I knocked on that door, I would become Charlotte, the disappointment who'd abandoned her mother to run an inn all by herself. The good girl who was never quite good enough and who had broken her mother’s poor heart when she chose to break up with her long-term asshole boyfriend and flee to the city for a better education.

It didn’t matter that I was studying teaching, a profession that my mother had encouraged. All she saw was my abandonment.

At the top of the steps, my hand hesitated inches from the door. My old reality was waiting on the other side, and I was not ready to face it. Unfortunately, fate was not prepared to wait.

The door swung open. A portly man with a wiry handlebar mustache and a strained waistcoat one deep breath away from popping wrenched open the door.

“Splendid service as always, Brenda. See you next month. Oh!” The man’s eyes went wide when he spotted me on the step, and a toothy smile broke out from under his mustache. “Charlotte!”

“Mr. Tomlinson.” The reflexive customer service smile slid onto my face within seconds. Mr. Tomlinson had been a customer here since before I was born, always staying here on his monthly trips that were supposedly good for his health. I had long suspected his mistress lived out this way, but it wasn’t good manners to gossip.

“Look at you. I haven’t seen you in many months.” Ever cheerful, Mr. Tomlinson patted my arm on his way past. “Next time, I hope to see you. Goodbye, Brenda!” he called back to my mother one more time then hurried down the steps. I could only spare him a glance as my mother’s piercing green eyes were locked on me from behind the oak reception desk.

“Charlotte,” she said with all the warmth of someone sucking on a lemon. “You’re late.”

“The bus had to take a detour. There was a crash on the—”

“I don’t care,” my mother snapped. She stepped out from the desk and smoothed her hands down her neat blue pencil dress. Unlike me, my mother was stick thin and her grey hair was tightly coiled on top of her head, secured with more pins than anyone could imagine. A gold cross sat upon her clavicle, and her wrinkled plum lips twisted faintly into a pout. “Look at you. You look dragged through a hedge backward. This ishardlya presentable look, Charlotte.”

“Like I said—”

“Behind the desk, now. I have three rooms checking out in the next twenty minutes, and I still have to finish dinner for the guests requesting it. One only wants to eat in their room, and while it’s against policy, they have been generous tippers, so I will gladly make the exception. I think the wife is pregnant, so it’s easy to accommodate.” My mother’s tirade continued as if I weren’t even there, barking out instructions, and when I didn’t move fast enough to set my suitcase down and hurry behind the desk, she grabbed my arm and ushered me along. Her thin fingers pinched at the flesh of my arm, and I bit back a wince.

Manning the front desk is where my mother would have me at all times if I hadn’t escaped to college.

“So,” my mother said briskly. “How is school? I haven’t received a report cardyet.”

“I told you, they don’t do things like that in college,” I explained for the umpteenth time. Behind the desk, everything was as I remembered. The hippo stapler sat next to the ladybird post-it note holder, and the mouse mat was still the same old faded panda it had been since my childhood. All were small gifts from my father to my mother when they had opened this place, and she refused to part with them.

“Well, how am I supposed to know how well you’re doing at that school, hmm? That I’m getting what I paid for?” She fixed me a hard stare, then her eyes drifted down to my elbows. She was burning to ask to see my arm, I just knew it.

“The fact that I pass each exam and get accepted into the next year should be proof enough,” I said, offering her a small smile. She didn’t reciprocate.

“How is Haley?” My mother darted into the next room before I could answer, and silence fell. Unsure whether or not to follow her, I ended up signing out two guests before she came bustling back and raised a brow, expectant of an answer.

“Haley is fine,” I replied.

“Is she still with that nice boy, Paul?”

Nice boy? As if. “Yes, Mother, she is.”

“You know, it would make me feel a lot better if you also found a nice boy to take care of you. I don’t like you out in the city all by yourself.”

I fought the urge to roll my eyes as she busied around me gathering papers and checking things on the computer. She had a sixth sense for these things.

“No, Mother, there are no nice boys.” Nice men, though... that was another thing entirely.

“Well, maybe if you lost a little bit of weight, they would start to take notice.”

“Mom!”

“I’m just saying.” She stopped next to me, and her roving gaze was like molten iron washing over me. The acidic air of her judgment caused my stomach to roll, and heat prickled down my spine.

“Losing a little weight never hurt anyone.”

“If that’s all someone cares about to be interested in me,” I snapped, “then I don’t want them.”

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