Mate of Honor

Mate of Honor ch. 3

 

           Roxie was in heaven. That was the best way to describe the room she was being put in. Her bags dropped like rocks in a river from her hands to the plush red floor. Never before had she been allowed to set foot in a room as elegant as the one she would be staying in for two months. Her hands hovered over the curtain hanging around the king size bed with enough pillows for every single one of Derrick’s ‘girlfriends’. Giddy as a child on Christmas morning she jumped onto the bed giggling as she sunk into the soft mattress.

            “This is not real.” She murmured into the silky sheets that had been turned back for her. “It’s like a presidential suite or something.”

            “Enjoying yourself?” Miranda’s voice was quickly becoming familiar to Roxie’s ears.

            Sitting up, a bit of red tinting her cheeks as she blushed, Roxie waved shyly. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to mess anything up.” Her eyes traveled down the rumpled bed that had been made so perfectly and her blush depended. “Maybe you have a simpler room, not to be rude; I just don’t want to… mess anything up.” She winced at the reuse of the phrase but she had no better words.

            Miranda tilted her head to one side. “Dear, don’t you worry about a thing; it’s your room for the next two months. Besides it’s not that fancy. To tell you the truth the bed isn’t even that expensive. We may be rich but we don’t overdo anything. I enjoy a simpler life than huge mansions and maids and expensive cars. The sheets I spent money on but that’s for comfort. There’s nothing in here that’s valuable to a deathly extent. Go ahead and smash every window, art, and mirror if you want. It’s your room do what you like. Dinner is in an hour. The pack can’t wait to meet you two.”

            “Ok- wait pack?” Roxie jumped off the bed to follow as Miranda walked out but the door shut ending the conversation. “Weird…” 

            Spinning in a slow circle to take it all in again from the red walls slightly lighter than the carpet and the two large windows on one end with heavy looking curtains draw to the side on either side she sighed. This was all too much. While it was wonderful to look at Roxie didn’t feel like she belonged in such. A pang of home sickness hit her as she tried to compare her room to this one. In their house Roxie and Rosie shared a small bathroom between their rooms. Here Roxie could see a bathroom the size of their bathroom and her closet at home put together, maybe even larger.

            The walls in her room at home were a light blue, the floor a brown that had probably once been an off white. Her bed was a twin and there certainly wasn’t a walk in closet. Her closet at home opened with a small sliding door that revealed a small hole behind it where her clothes hung and her shoes sat on the floor. In truth almost all her clothes had fit in one suitcase. But that was the life Roxie had worked hard for. It could be a lot worse. Roxie and Rosie had been dropped out of the system at eighteen with a small amount of money and no place to go. Sure, they’d been given suggestions of places to look for work and for shelters to stay at but those were not acceptable to Roxie.

            They’d taken the money they had saved up and the little left over from their parents and gotten a one room apartment where both had worked from dawn till a few hours before dawn the next day. Working off a few hours of sleep they had fought for what they had. What had these people had to do to get what they had?

            Roxie scoffed imagining how much ‘hard work’ the Armoon family had done to get the two story house with guest bedrooms aplenty and a big yard and money to spare to support other people’s houses and throw weddings. “Rosie won’t have to work another day in her life.”