Bare Her Soul (James Patrick March x reader )

Thirteen

Liz admired your elegance from afar as she watched you walk through the lobby of the hotel. From this distance, it seemed very fitting that you were a dancer. Her eyes followed as you opened the front doors, the morning light streaking in for a moment, before you disappeared and took the sun with you.

The air changed. With you gone, Liz breathed in only the stale scent of cigarette smoke that clung to the upholstery, and the tinge of death that, to the practiced nose, remained no matter how many sprays of Detol Iris used.

With a sigh, she flipped up the lid on her pocket-mirror and raised it high enough to see her blue eyes. Her mascara had smudged somewhat, and it clung to the creases in the papery skin of her under eyes. You had only nipped to the bar to say hello, it wasn't long enough to notice Liz had been crying moments before.

Liz was glad, because you'd have surely asked what was wrong - and telling you her lover was dead would be harder than telling anybody else. She knew you'd listen.

The Countess was a cruel mistress, but then Liz already knew that. If you stayed as long at this wretched hotel as she had, you had to learn to expect pain. Liz reminded herself of that every time she came close to wallowing in her grief. She knew the score.

"I don't get why he won't just kill her."

Liz didn't startle at the voice. She'd had years of ghosts materialising out of thin air.

Sally, who was now seated at a stool infront of her, puffed a long steak of cigarette smoke across the room. It coiled and settled into the velvet of the red armchairs surrounding the bar.

Liz sighed.

"You realise that if she comes back in - having forgotten her my-little-pony or whatever - James is going to make your life hell."

Sally frowned, a mascara tear rolling from her perpetually crying eyes "my life is hell"

"Oh don't be like that Sal, self-pity isn't your shade."

The woman chuckled then, a sound closer resembling a snarl "right. It's just a pain in my ass to have to evaporate every time the chick's out here. I hardly drink with John anymore. This is where we first met! At this bar."

"I'm sure John's devastated" Liz drew out the 'ev' part of the word, and snapped her mirror shut. She slipped it back into the pocket of her emerald kimono.

"You know I feel sorry for her." Sally scoffed "the bitch actually hugged him yesterday. I saw it- it was sick. I don't know what kinda cat and mouse game he's playing..."

"The one you're playing with John I'd imagine" Liz answered in a bored tone, but her thoughts lingered on you.

She heard Sally remark "well the difference is I love John" but she wasn't listening. Liz was thinking about the conversations you'd had down here with her, in the days since Sally had been 'exiled'.

As a fundamental rule, Liz did not stick her nose where it didn't belong.  Videlicet - in the business of James Patrick March.

But after Tristan, Liz didn't have a lot - if anything - to lose.

So she was halfway to your room now. She'd left Sally downstairs with a Hemingway Daiquiri on the house.  They had a new resident check in that morning, his room was only a few down from hers, and Liz excused herself on the pretence that she'd left her door unlocked, and this man could simply be anyone.

You wouldn't be in your room of course - gone to read your book in the park. But Liz was curious. Perhaps she'd find something in there that wouldn't make her feel quite so awful about letting you befriend her. About knowing during every smile and 'hello'  that you were going to die. Or perhaps she'd wait for you to return, so she could tell you once and for all to run, and to never look back.