So Much for Boundaries (Shower & Shelter Artist Collective Book 3)

  So Much

  for

  Boundaries

  By:

  Brooke St. James

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form or by any means without prior written permission of the author.

  Copyright © 2017

  Brooke St. James

  All rights reserved.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Epilogue

  Other titles available from Brooke St. James:

  Another Shot:

  A Modern-Day Ruth and Boaz Story

  When Lightning Strikes

  Something of a Storm (All in Good Time #1)

  Someone Someday (All in Good Time #2)

  Finally My Forever (Meant for Me #1)

  Finally My Heart's Desire (Meant for Me #2)

  Finally My Happy Ending (Meant for Me #3)

  Shot by Cupid's Arrow

  Dreams of Us

  Meet Me in Myrtle Beach (Hunt Family #1)

  Kiss Me in Carolina (Hunt Family #2)

  California's Calling (Hunt Family #3)

  Back to the Beach (Hunt Family #4)

  It's About Time (Hunt Family #5)

  Loved Bayou (Martin Family #1)

  Dear California (Martin Family #2)

  My One Regret (Martin Family #3)

  Broken and Beautiful (Martin Family #4)

  Back to the Bayou (Martin Family #5)

  Almost Christmas

  JFK to Dublin (Shower & Shelter Artist Collective #1)

  Not Your Average Joe (Shower & Shelter Artist Collective #2)

  Chapter 1

  I had been going to Fran's Beauty Shop since I was a kid. I was raised by my grandparents, and my grandmother, God rest her soul, went there once a week like clockwork to get her hair shampooed and set with rollers. Fran would tease and spray my grandmother's hair into a non-moving but beautifully designed mass on the top of her head, and she would wear it like that for a week until she came back to Fran's to have her do it again. She was among the multitude of women her age who participated in this type of beauty regimen. There was a cut and a perm involved every three months or so, but Fran's bread and butter (as she called them) were weekly "shampoo sets". It was a generational style, which unfortunately, had fewer and fewer customers by the year.

  Fran had owned the place since she was a young woman, fresh out of beauty school. It was a modest one-room shop that was connected to the side of her house. It was a simple, no-frills operation. Fran had a barber's chair with a mirror and dresser over on one side of the room, and a shampoo bowl and two dryer-chairs on the other.

  Fran worked alone, but she specialized in perms and weekly roller-sets, and in the salon's heyday, both dryers were constantly occupied and usually there was someone waiting. Fran's business had slowed over the years as the ritual of weekly hair styling became obsolete, but it was good timing for her, anyway, since she wasn't far from retirement.

  Today, it was just myself along with Ms. Betty and Ms. Hilda. We were all talking about the big, scary set of plans that lie before me as Fran finished clipping the last roller into Betty's hair.

  "She's only got two thousand dollars to last her till she gets a job and gets on her feet," Fran said as she and Ms. Betty headed across the room to put Betty under the dryer.

  Hilda was sitting next to me in one of the padded chairs that lined the wall, and she shot Fran a you must be kidding me expression. "Two thousand dollars! That's a lot!" Hilda said.

  She was so old that her voice came out weak and warbly, and it always took her a long time to finish her sentences. I never asked, but I knew she must be in her nineties—maybe even a hundred. Fran was Hilda's granddaughter, and I remembered celebrating Fran's fiftieth birthday back when I was in high school, so basic math and observation skills told me Ms. Hilda was old—she was really old.

  Fran let out a laugh at her grandma's shock. "No it's not, MeMaw. Two thousand is not a lot nowadays—especially in New York City. You could probably spend that on a hot dog and a Coke."

  "Well, for Heaven's sake!" Ms. Hilda said (slowly), staring at me with a look of confusion. "Why do you want to go all the way to New York?"

  I couldn't help but smile. "I'm moving there," I said.

  "To New York?" Hilda put her hand to her chest. She was completely devastated by the news.

  I smiled again as I nodded. "Yes ma'am."

  Fran swiveled the empty barber chair and patted the backrest, indicating that she wanted one of us to go over there. I knew I was there for a haircut, but I wasn't sure if Fran was gesturing to me or her grandma, so I pointed at my own chest, and Fran nodded to let me know I should come over.

  "MeMaw, I told you Zoe was moving. Remember? She'd been taking care of Randy, and he passed on, so she's leaving for a while."

  "Randy passed on?" Hilda said, even though she'd been at my dad's funeral. (He was technically my grandpa, but I grew up knowing him as my father, so that's how I thought of him.)

  "Yes," Fran said. "They had that nice ceremony at the church, remember? That's why we had that big art sale in here."

  "That's why we had what in here?"

  "The art sale," Fran said, speaking in a loud clear tone. "Remember the paintings I had hanging everywhere?"

  Hilda looked around as if searching for the paintings that had been all over the walls for the last month or so. "Where'd they go?"

  "They all sold," she said. "That's how Zoe paid for Randy's funeral."

  The town had come together for me when Dad died. I had tried to sell a few of my paintings in Fran's shop in recent years, but up until then, no one had really been interested. Once it came out that my Dad owed a small fortune in back taxes, Fran and her customers did what they could to help me. This help came in the form of the town's people paying anywhere from five to fifty dollars for each of the paintings I had done in recent years with whatever dollar-store supplies I could get my hands on. I had at least a hundred of them in the attic, and I sold them all.

  Dad knew it was my dream to be an artist, and on his deathbed, he told both me and the preacher that his dying wish was to see that I was taken care of and had the chance to show the world my art. He made me promise I'd leave and chase my dreams. Pastor Bill was so touched by Dad's words, that he took it upon himself to find the appropriate church members who could help me settle Dad's estate in the most painless, affordable way possible.

  Unfortunately, this was still a daunting task since my parents were in more debt than any of us expected. None of it came to light when mom died a couple of years before, so I didn't know the extent of their dilemma until Dad passed. Even after selling their house and possessions, there wasn't enough to cover their debts and dad's funeral. I had to chip in my own money.

  For the past seven years, I'd been working as a grocery store cashier. I was smart with money, and although I didn't make a lot by some people's standards, I had been managing to save some. By the time I paid for the funeral and all their debts, it was literally a miracle from God that I broke even. I was selling my car on the w
ay out of town, and the two thousand dollars I would get from that transaction was all the money I had in the world. I closed my checking account an hour ago on the way to Fran's, and there was sixty-three dollars in it, so I'd have two thousand sixty three in total once I got paid for my car.

  "Did I buy one?" Hilda asked.

  "Mama bought several of them." Fran said. "She brought them down to the Beaumont Hobby Lobby so she could have them framed like I did mine. I'm sure she bought one for you. It's probably hanging in your apartment."

  Fran spritzed my hair with a water bottle and I jumped a little when the mist hit my face. She combed and sprayed without paying attention to me or my flinching. She'd been cutting my hair since I was a baby.

  My real mom, a lady named Angela, was thirty-six when she got pregnant with me, and she ended her own life before she turned thirty-seven. She took off with the carnival when she was in high school, and my grandparents didn't see her until she came back when she was nine months pregnant with me. Half the town said she knew she was gonna kill herself when she came home to have me, and the other half said it was the post-partum that got her. Either way, she committed suicide right after I was born, and I grew up thinking of my grandmother as my mom.

  The only thing Angela stuck around long enough to do was name me Zoe, which as far as everyone around here was concerned, was the strangest name they'd ever heard—especially since she didn't spell it with the Y at the end the way it sounded. Several times I overheard my grandmother tell someone she wasn't very fond of the name, but she kept it since that's what my birth mom wanted.

  I was raised in a very small town, and there was a lot of mystery and intrigue surrounding my birth mom and her post-partum suicide. Apparently, my real mom had a wild streak, even as a teenager, and there were stories of her climbing the water tower and crazy things like that. From what I heard, she was a really beautiful person on the outside, but she just couldn’t stay out of trouble.

  I knew a lot of things were said behind my back in speculation about her and my biological father, too. One of the most popular theories was that my mom grew up to be a high-profile groupie, and my father was some famous rockstar. He wouldn't believe her that the baby was his, thus the reason for her tragic suicide. One of my friends in middle school told me that's what her mom said happened, and everyone standing around at the time agreed that it was the story pretty much the whole town believed.

  It didn't really matter to me what people thought. Truth was, I knew nothing at all about my real dad and very little about my mom, but Nina and Randy had done their best to raise me, and that was fine with me.

  I had a simple life. I went to work as a cashier at the local grocery store during my senior year of high school and had been there ever since. Over the years, I moved up to frontline manager, but it was just something I did to pay the bills. My heart wasn't in it. If my heart was truly in anything, it would be painting, but I didn't get to do it as much as I'd like. I took care of my aging parents, worked full time at the grocery store, and when I could find the time, I painted.

  Mom always thought of painting as child's play, so I didn't do much of it until she passed away, but in the last couple of years, I'd been exploring it more and more. I used mostly watercolor because it was something I could easily get my hands on at the dollar store, but I bought acrylic paint and tempera paint every once in a while, and I liked it all.

  I never was great at drawing with a pencil, but there was something about working with a brush. The only way to put it was that I had an innate understanding of how to use a paintbrush. It felt like an extension of my fingers. I knew in my heart I had something natural, but I also knew I had a lot of growing to do and there was a whole world of artistic mediums out there that I knew nothing about.

  I understood that there was more to the world than I'd seen in my little Texas town, but honestly, between taking care of Dad and work, my exposure to any of those things was limited to what I read in books or saw on TV. I knew there was more to the world; I just never had the time to go see it.

  Until now, that is.

  Today was the day that was all changing.

  The town's people had helped me clear my parents' debts, and I was leaving with a fresh start. Today was the first day of the rest of my life. As soon as I finished this haircut, I was heading to the bus station in Beaumont where I would begin my journey to New York with two thousand sixty three dollars in my pocket.

  Fran pushed my head forward, forcing me to tuck my chin to my chest as she combed my long hair over the cape. She wasn't necessarily the gentlest of combers, but she didn't mean any harm, so I just tried not to cringe as she worked. Since way back when I was in high school, Fran had been trying to get me to go over to Beaumont or even Houston to a "real salon" as she called it. But I assured her all I needed was a straight-across cut to get rid of the dead ends, and we all knew Fran was perfectly capable of doing that.

  "I don't know what you need to go to New York if a hot dog's two thousand dollars," Hilda said dazedly.

  "It's not, MeMaw," Fran said. "I was over exaggerating."

  "How much is it?" Hilda asked.

  "Probably about ten."

  "Ten dollars!" Hilda said, sounding shocked. "For a hot dog?"

  "I don’t know, maybe six or eight."

  "Eight dollars? That's still a lot. Why's she going to New York?"

  "Because she wants to study art. She's going to that refuge place."

  "That refuge place," Hilda repeated. I couldn't see her, but I could tell by the way she said it that she was skeptical. "What's that?"

  "Bonnie and Frank went to New York on vacation, and they told Zoe about that place where artists can stay for free. They took pictures of it and everything. They were real impressed. It's a free program for young artists like Zoe."

  Fran continued to snip away at my ends, and Hilda made a noise of understanding, but there were a few seconds of silence before she spoke again. "Zoe's going to art school?" Hilda asked as if trying to put all the pieces together.

  "Yes, ma'am, kind of," Fran said. "She's going up to New York to stay with some other young artists."

  "That's nice," Hilda said after taking a few more seconds to think about it.

  Fran patted my shoulder again before manually adjusting my head to a tilted position. "She promises to call and check in… let us know how she's doing."

  "She better call and check in or Randy's gonna have to drive up to New York, looking for her," Hilda said.

  Fran and I glanced at each other in the mirror, and she gave me an apologetic smile. I shook my head, letting her know it was fine even though I felt like I wanted to cry at the mention of Dad driving up there to look for me. I smiled and blinked away tears, and Fran turned me away from the mirror, which was a welcome distraction.

  "Dale got your Cadillac up and running MeMaw," Fran said, changing the subject. "He said he'll drive you home in it when you're ready."

  "When are you going to art school?" Hilda asked, since the question was already formed in her mind before Fran tried to change the subject.

  "Today, MeMaw," Fran said. "That's why she stopped by… to get a last-minute trim on her way out of town. She's headed to the bus station after this. Headed to New York."

  "Today?" she asked.

  "Yes, today."

  Hilda was quiet for long enough, that it took me completely off guard when her quiet, old voice busted out with, "Start spreading the news!" She sang the lyrics to the popular song in her best alto voice with all the spice and pizazz a hundred year old lady could muster.

  "I'm leaving today," she crooned.

  "I'm gonna, da, da, de, da, da…

  New York, New York!

  Those sugar town blues…"

  "Sugar town?" Fran asked, giggling at her grandma as we both stared at Hilda.

  Hilda didn't seem to notice us. She just kept right on singing.

  "…Are going awayyy…

  …Make a start of it.
<
br />   New York, New Yooork!

  I want to da, da, de, de,

  city that never sleeps.

  De, de, de,

  King of the hill,

  Cream of the heap,

  Da, da, de, de.

  De, de, de, de.

  …It's up to you,

  New York, New Yooooork!"

  Chapter 2

  My trip to New York was not turning out to be as glamorous as Hilda's song made it sound. Fran had prayed this epic prayer before I left, asking God to guide my steps. She even said in the prayer that she wanted me to live at this artist center until I found a rich, handsome husband. Between her prayer and Hilda's song, I thought I was going to sashay out of town and have the world on a string by midnight.

  It hadn't quite worked out that way. I had been on the road for a day and a half now, and I was pretty sure my deodorant wasn't doing its job anymore in spite of two additional applications. I had changed buses three times and stopped at more bus stops than you can imagine. I didn't even know there were that many bus stations in the world.

  I had limited internet access back home, but I had done a little research before I left, and I knew I would have to apply for a spot at the artist refuge Frank and Bonnie had told me about. It was called Shower & Shelter Artist Collective, and it was exactly what I was looking for—a safe, comfortable place for young artists to grow and thrive. I saw pictures and a description of the flats—one-room apartments with a mini-fridge and a single bed. The tenants shared communal toilets and showers. It was nothing fancy, but it was free, and at this point that was just about all I could afford.

  Apparently, it was the owner's very practical way of giving back to the art community since he was an artist himself and had once been in need of a comfortable place to shower and seek shelter. There was even an art gallery where the residents got to sell their pieces. I had looked at Frank and Bonnie's pictures of it, and it was just about the coolest place I had ever seen. It would be an absolute dream come true to have my art on display in a place like that.