HAZEL FINE SINGS ALONG (WATTYS 2022 Winner!)

Chapter 9: Love Song

"Hazel?"

Hazel rolled over and groaned as she pressed her phone to her ear. Her head was pounding, and she felt woozy. Shots. Fuck. Why had she agreed to that? She wasn't supposed to be drinking at all and she'd gone right to the atomic bomb of alcohol.

"Amber? Everything okay?"

"Girl, you cannot believe what Vern's been up to."

Hazel pulled a pillow over her head to block out the sunlight streaming through the shades they'd forgotten to close as Zoey moaned from her bed on the other side of the room. Hazel wasn't sure how either of them had gotten back from the bar. And did she almost kiss Benji? Oh, God. She was never doing shots again.

"Is he still a grade one asshole?"

Amber snorted. Hazel could imagine her, sitting in the small plastic chair she kept outside her room, her sore feet propped up on the metal railing, a cigarette waiting to be lit. "You have no idea. He threw out all the stuff you got to make your room nice, just pitched it over the balcony and let it sit there on the concrete until garbage day. And now he's rented your place to some guy who puts on a suit to go to work."

All her stuff! Hazel knew she didn't have any right to expect that it wouldn't get thrown out after she left the way she did, but it still made her sad. She'd spent a lot of time rummaging through garage sales to find the perfect five-dollar lamp, and that funky ten-dollar rug that only had one small questionable stain on it. They'd made her depressing motel room home. And now they were trash.

"A man in a suit?" Hazel said. "What's he doing there?"

"Lord knows. I went right out and asked him if he had any idea what went on in the Motel California, and he got all snobby with me and said something about cheap rent."

"Takes all kinds."

"Don't I know it. You ain't upset about your stuff?"

"It's just stuff."

Zoey got up suddenly and rushed to the bathroom. Hazel could hear her retching through the partially closed door. Her own stomach lurched in response. She should probably go and see if Zoey was okay, but she couldn't make herself move.

"Vern's an asshole."

"He is."

"I covered you," Amber said with a long exhale of her cigarette.

"What?"

"I paid what you owed."

Hazel almost burst into tears. "You didn't have to do that."

"He was talking about filing a complaint. Like with the cops."

"Oh, fuck, really?"

"Yeah."

That would have been a disaster. "I'll pay you back. Just as soon as I can."

But how was she going to do that? They got a hundred-and-fifty dollar per diem for the show, but that was it. She picked it up in an envelope from one of the assistants every morning. Whatever she'd managed to save over the last couple of days had evaporated last night. Today she was going to get an extra four-hundred and fifty dollars for appearing in an episode that would air. She'd been planning on spending it on a new outfit. But she didn't need all of that—or any of it —for clothes. She could wear something she already had. That meant she could give Amber six hundred and still have a bit left over. "How much was it?"

"Fifteen hundred."

"What? No."

"He said there were damages."