Part 1 (1/2)

Hard Rock Arrangement.

The Lonely Kings #1.

Ava Lore.

Chapter One.

I excel at only two things in this world: the first is feeling sorry for myself, and the second is housework. The first inspires the second, and my whole family knows it. This makes it difficult to hide my feelings, but it doesn't stop me from trying. If I can't clean out in the open, then I have to do it stealthily, after everyone has gone to bed. I'm like one of those shoe-making elves, except instead of making shoes I scrub the c.r.a.ppers.

Even c.r.a.pper-scrubbing elves, however, sometimes give themselves away. Bright and early one Monday morning, one week after I had showed up on my older sister's doorstep and begged for a place to crash, Rose stumbled out of her bedroom in search of coffee and found me on my hands and knees on the kitchen floor, grinding borax and lemon juice into the grout with a toothbrush. I'd forgotten that she had to go into work early this morning, and I started guiltily when she cleared her throat.

”Rebecca...” she said, crossing her arms and sounding just like our mother.

I was caught red-handed, but I still tried to cover things up. ”Haha!” I said. ”Just getting some housework done.”

”I see that,” she replied. ”I appreciate the effort. And yet I can't help but wonder what you aren't telling me. What time did you wake up to clean? Don't look at the clock.”

Dammit. ”Five-thirty?” I hazarded.

”I see,” she said. ”You mean five-thirty last night, yes? Because it's only five o'clock right now.”

Double dammit. ”Sorry, I meant, er, four-thirty.” I tried to meet her eye while I lied my a.s.s off, but unfortunately Rose is not like me, always thinking the best of people and getting s.h.i.+t for her trouble. Rose is the go-getter sister, the one that doesn't take c.r.a.p from anybody, the one who went to law school and is now an excellent lawyer who mows down all who seek to oppose her. I'd always hung back and tried not to screw things up.

That's why Rose landed a sweet job as an a.s.sociate at a prestigious law firm here in LA, dealing in entertainment industry contracts and I was a s.h.i.+ftless-and now homeless-bartender whose last known residence was a studio apartment in San Diego. So while I can smell vodka on someone's breath, Rose can smell a lie from a hundred yards away. Sometimes she can even sniff one out over the phone. I didn't stand a chance.

I only lasted a few seconds before I dropped my gaze. ”I didn't go to bed last night,” I muttered. ”But it's okay! It's the least I can do since you're letting me stay here rent free!”

Rose shook her head. ”Rebecca, I let you stay here free because you are my little sister and I'd be a terrible person if I didn't. I don't need you to clean my apartment.”

I couldn't stop myself from saying it. ”Actually,” I said, ”you, uh, kind of do.”

She closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose, and I knew it was all over. She knew I was in a Bad Spot, and now she was going to help me in her usual go-getter Rose sort of way.

”Rebecca, I'm afraid it's time for you to get a f.u.c.king job,” she counseled.

Yeah. That's Rose.

”I'll get a job,”I said. ”I promise.”

Rose dropped her hand and stalked across the floor. Bending over, she grabbed my wrists and hauled me to my feet. ”No you won't,” she said. ”I know you. We are going to find you a job now. Whatever s.h.i.+tty personal thing you're working your way through, it will help if you have something else to think about. And stop cleaning!” She grabbed the toothbrush out of my hand and tossed it in the trash and I felt a pang lance through me.

”Hey,” I protested, ”I was using that!” My despair at losing my precious toothbrush was very real. I'd been in the zone. I'd been about to conquer the forces of entropy. I didn't need a job, I needed a n.o.bel prize, or at the very least some grant money.

Rose didn't care. ”When was the last time you showered?” she demanded, steering me into her room. ”The last time you had a decent meal? The last time you talked to someone besides all those dumb parents on Supernanny? They can't hear you, you know. They're in the TV.”

I opened my mouth to reply, but honestly I couldn't think of the answers to any of those questions, and Rose's face told me she knew it.

”See? You need something to take your mind off things. Therefore you are getting a job today.”

Defeated, I let her have her way with me. Rose sat me down in front of her computer, pulled up Craigslist, and found every listing in the downtown LA area for a bartender. Then, because those listings were slim, she looked for 'housekeeper' and 'maid'.

”What?” I said in protest. ”What makes you think I'd be a housekeeper?” I preferred my own messes, or the messes of those I was well-acquainted with; the thought of having to deal with the filth of strangers made me itch.

Rose rolled her eyes and ticked off her fingers. ”Because A, judging by how fanatically you clean my apartment, you'd be good at it, B, the pay is better than fast food, which I don't think you'd get into anyway, and C, it doesn't pay as much as tending bar, but it's an honest living.”

Says the woman with a law degree, I thought, but I sucked on those sour grapes in silence.

With a click of her mouse, Rose sent no fewer than ten job openings to her printer, seven of which were for a maid or housekeeper. Then she shoved me into the shower and supervised me while I got dressed to make sure I was actually going to drag my carca.s.s out of the apartment.

As I pulled on clothing appropriate to a bartending gig-which were totally inappropriate elsewhere-she typed numbers, information on companies, and addresses into my phone. When I was dressed to my satisfaction, she pressed fifty dollars into my hand, gave me a bus schedule and a file full of the printouts and shoved me out the door.

I stumbled into the light of the rising LA sun. It was going to be another beautiful day in southern California, and I was pretty sure it was going to just go downhill from there.

”Have fun!” Rose called from the doorway. Then she went back inside and slammed the door.

”Thanks,” I said.

She meant well. To Rose, the right job could cure, in one fell swoop, my broken heart, my wrecked life, and my degenerate homelessness, though she only knew about the last bit. I hadn't shared the other parts with her. I'd burdened her enough already. Still, she suspected. She wouldn't pry, but the cleaning gave me away.

I can't help it. I want there to be a place for everything and everything in its place, and since I clearly couldn't acheive that with my personal life I had to make do with ordering my surroundings. I mean, you can't clean the toilets often enough, I always say...

Okay. Maybe I did need a job.

With a sigh, I shoved the file folder into my messenger bag, checked the bus schedule, and started down the street, determined to, if not find a job, then to at least try.

After all, who knew? Maybe the right job would cure all my problems.

I walked into the rising sun.

When I opened the door to the lobby of office suite 305-my final application of the day- fifteen well-coiffed heads whirled around. Fifteen pairs of shrewd eyes narrowed as they scoped me out. Fifteen noses lifted higher in the air when they processed what they saw. Then a tiny bit of tension melted away from fifteen pairs of smartly dressed shoulders as, almost in unison, the other applicants turned back around, dismissing me from the compet.i.tion for the job.

It was a bit unnerving, to tell the truth, but I really should have twigged to the fact that somewhere, somehow, some wires had been crossed. After all, every single applicant was dressed in some variation of a business suit. Pressed, prim, and utterly proper in dark fabrics, white s.h.i.+rts and polished shoes. Each one had a s.h.i.+ny leather briefcases with gleaming bra.s.s buckles, and some of the briefcases even had those little spinny numbers on the locks.

Me? I wore a sparkly black- and silver-striped tube top, skinny jeans from the sale rack at H&M, a ratty pair of Chuck's that I'd had since my senior year in high school, and an old white polyester tuxedo jacket pa.s.sed down to me by my grandfather from his '71 wedding. The b.u.t.tons had long since fallen off the sleeves, so I wore them rolled up to my elbows. It was my bartending uniform. You had to look somewhat hip to land the good gigs at places where rich yuppies liked to go, so it's safe to say I was severely underdressed compared to everyone else.

So yeah, that should have tipped me off. Unfortunately I had been awake for almost thirty-six hours at that point, so my only thought was, Holy c.r.a.p, all this for a lousy part time housekeeping job? This economy sucks.

...I'm serious. I was tired.

Besides, I had just been witnessing first hand exactly how terrible the economy was so at the time the situation made perfect sense to my sleep deprived brain. I'd been on my feet all day, running all over downtown LA looking for a job I didn't really want. I mean, I needed a job-that much was obvious-but after a whole morning of job hunting I remembered why I'd been so reluctant to do so in the first place. Job hunting is brutal. And I'd recently been through the wringer. Subjecting myself to the Rejection Roulette was just cruel.

I'd had no luck at all yet. I'd spent the morning riding the bus and walking from place to place getting rejected, so by the time I walked into suite 305 I was tired, bruised in spirit, and in no mood to get scrutinized by a bunch of yuppie wannabe housekeepers.

Still, the place seemed like it might be a nice place to work-you know, if I managed to not get laughed out of the building upon first contact with HR. I didn't even know the name of the business I was applying to-the notes in my phone said it was a software consulting firm-but I had to admit it looked sw.a.n.k as h.e.l.l.

The lobby was decked out in cool, modern furniture, all sleek lines and irregular curves and angles that ended abruptly. The couches and chairs were pastel pink with lime green accent pillows, and the walls had been painted in cream and turquoise stripes, as if the sixties had vomited all over an Ikea. Large frosted gla.s.s doors with brushed steel handles stood at the entrance to the rest of the office, and next to them the secretary, a middle-aged woman with bottle-blond hair and steely gray eyes, sat at a hammered steel desk typing away at a slender computer that probably cost more than my last car.