by Ryan Schow
I lean in close to him, keeping the extra pressure on his wrist and say, “If I break this wrist, you’ll have to switch hit when you’re beating off, right Spanky? But you can’t scroll with the mouse and jerk off with your navigation hand can you? I mean, think of all the fun I’d be taking away from you.”
“What the hell is your problem?” he snarls, violently pissed off that a hundred and fifteen pound girl is controlling him. His burst of rage, however, is tempered by his pain.
“I have a world to save and right now what I need is to clear my mind.”
“Your ID is illegal,” he says, entirely missing the point.
“Of course it is you block-headed knuckle-dragger.”
“Why are you so strong?” he says, looking up at me with bulging eyes and red, red skin. The sweat is now rolling down from his temples, down his forehead. “And why are your eyes black?”
I smile at him, a sexy little grin that has him considering my looks. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you, but believe this, you’re my bitch now, Spanky.”
“You’re evil,” he says.
“Not usually.”
“What did I ever do to you?”
“You said ‘no’, my friend. No is the opposite of what you needed to say to me.”
“If you let go of my wrist,” he says, his shoulder smooshing down painfully in his socket, “I’ll say ‘yes.’”
“You’ll say whatever I want you to say, Spanky, or I will take away your pride, your dignity and your personal entertainment.”
“I said I’d say ‘yes,’” he says, tears giving that extra shine to his eyes. I feel the fight in him break in that moment. He is complete surrender. He is malleable. He’s mine.
“Good,” I say, letting go of his wrist, and his colon, “get up.”
He gets up.
“Something’s wrong with you,” he says, rubbing his wrist and ushering us through.
“There are about a million things wrong with me, Theodore,” I say, using his real name. “But you won’t fix any of them tonight.”
His nostrils flare with disbelief. No one has called him Theodore since his mother died. His mother’s last gasping breath held those eight letters, that name, her final plea. He thinks about his mother, and he is afraid of me. He doesn’t know what I am. But he’s scared.
He should be.
“Remember my three friends,” I say.
He doesn’t say anything, but I know he’ll let them through because his mind is turning a hundred miles an hour trying to figure out what just happened. If he had been a nice man, not an abusive bully who was wholly despised not only by many of his co-workers but girls like the one he just turned away—a girl who was actually twenty-two but young looking—I would have used my charm. That works, too.
But you know me by now, I freaking hate bullies.
The club is absolutely jumping inside and Netty and I are certainly the standouts. Maybe we’re too sexy. Did we overdo it? I look at Netty but she’s mesmerized by the décor, and by the people. This club inside is amazing. But there are also some good looking guys around. None as heart-stoppingly beautiful as August, but a few are somewhat close.
“My God,” Netty says under her breath.
“Drinks first,” I tell her. “Take the edge off.”
At the bar, I ask the bartender, “How are you with your drinks?” Downstairs, the music is thumping, but up here, even tame, it’s kind of loud but in a thrilling way.
“If they’ve got a name for it, I can make it,” he says, making eyes at me. Like really making eyes at me.
“Two drinks then,” I say, looking at Netty and then back to him: Brandon. “I’ll take a Short Trip To Hell, and she’ll take a Juicy Lucy.”
He looks at me for a second, then it clicks and he says, “Almost forgot what a Short Trip To Hell had in it.”
“But you have it now?”
He grins and says, “If it has a name…”
“Then you can make it,” I say, finishing his sentence.
“I’m Brandon, by the way,” he says, reaching out to shake my hand.
“Of course you are,” I tell him, taking it. Looking over at Netty I say, “And this sexy little number is Netty. She’s petite and sweet when she wants to be, but when you get the real her, she’ll pack a hell of a punch, hard enough to make you forget you ever wanted my name.”
He looks at me and in my head I say, Look at her.
“I can see that,” he says, shaking Netty’s hand.
Netty says, “What’s a Juicy Lucy?”
“Vodka, gin, Blue Curacao liquor, orange juice, and Sprite. It’s good.”
She lets go of his hand and says, “If you just sit here and stare at me all night, you won’t make any money.”
“Right,” he says, smirking to himself, “Juicy Lucy and A Short Trip To Hell.”
When he’s gone I turn to Netty and say, “Sounds like an Indy film, right?”
“He’s hot AF,” she says.
“Totes.”
He brings us our drinks, but Netty’s got her beautiful eyeballs on this guy and his friend. His friend isn’t terribly cute, but he’s cute enough. They head downstairs and I ask, “Do you want to chill up here or go down there?”
“What’s down there?”
“The DJ’s spinning, obviously.”
“Down, please,” she says, grinning.
“Driver, follow those boys,” I say and her laugh is melodious.
It’s always so surprising how this wound tight anti-hero feels when she’s relaxed. It always has the same affect on me: it makes me want to be a better person, not this person. It makes me not want to have this life. It makes me want to be a normal teenage girl.
I follow Netty downstairs where the EDM is on tap. The huge floor is all bodies grinding out to techno-dance music. It’s progressive house music, which is giving everyone that feeling like they’re somewhere more angelic than here, like they’re floating through space on a cloud of fairy dust with nothing but the beauty of life to fuel them through what feels like a drug-free acid trip.
Netty’s in the mix, arms up, dancing. I follow her, imbue myself to the beat, let it carry my body. I’m here with strangers, but we could all be soul mates; this isn’t the kind of music that makes you want to release your inhibitions, this is the kind of music that makes you feel like you’ve never even had inhibitions. Is this what it’s like to live? To be free?
I see Netty moving toward the guys she followed down and I stay put, letting the hypnotic ocean of music guide me.
Some guy moves up against me, works his way in front of me, and I feel him, his soul. He’s clean. Nervous. I walk him to the dance floor, give him my attention. It’s easy to find his groove. I ride it with him, letting go. My hands caress my body and suddenly I’m remembering Netty’s almost lesbian girlfriend and how she took me and showed me what it felt like to be the music, to pull it into you and let it have its way.
Chloe. I feel her. Which is super weird.
Is she here?
That’s when I look up and see my three other besties walking down the stairs with drinks. My heart soars as the music changes. I turn to the guy in front of me, run my hand down his chest, but my eyes are on my friends. I see Netty with the guy, glass in the air, her body in sync with both him and the music, and suddenly everything is right with the world.
“What’s your name?” the guy asks, leaning in.
“What do you want it to be?” I say.
“Piper,” he says, enjoying the game.
“It’s funny that you say that,” I say, leaning close, my body doing things I didn’t know it could do with the beat, “because Piper is my name.”
“Really?”
“Who do you want to be?” I ask him.
“I feel like my parents should have named me Rohan,” he tells me.
“Lord of the Rings fan?” I ask.
“And here I didn’t think you could get any sexier than this,” he says. �
�But there you go, proving me wrong already.”
“Well, Rohan, it’s nice to meet you,” I say. The song changes again, but my feelers are on all my friends.
Rohan and I find our way closer to each other, keeping to each new beat through each transition and he says, “How are you here right now?”
“Right place, right time,” I tell him, my body with him but not my mind.
“Are you with someone?” he asks.
“I’m with you,” I say, my eyes focusing.
“No, but I mean, are you with someone with someone?”
“Oh that,” I say. “Yes.”
I feel his energy waning, like he thought we made the connection and was letting himself imagine something more happening between us. But there is no more to be had. This is it. He is my escape tonight, and I am his for as long as he realizes I’m not going to kiss him, swap numbers and then date.
“Where is he?”
“Texas.”
“Does he know you’re here?” he asks.
“I’m not a dog on a leash, Rohan,” I say, cute and sassy, “and he doesn’t need me to be.”
“What’s he like?”
“Are you asking so you know what a girl like me wants in a guy?”
The beat transitions again, seamless, and I look over at Netty, whose body is against the guy’s she likes and I’m really happy for her. I take a bump off her emotions and she’s let go of all the things plaguing her: her fears of boys, her lost baby, her mother’s child with Dante, her anger at me for leaving her.
“It’s funny,” he says after a moment, “I didn’t know that’s why I was asking, but then again, I didn’t know it consciously.”
“I’m good like that,” I say, most of me stuck in the gravitational pull of the rhythm, and just enough of me out and willing to converse with him.
“I guess,” he says, letting go again.
“It’s not looks,” I hear myself say. “Even though looks are important. It’s confidence, I think. It’s a guy who doesn’t get his dick in the dirt over every little thing, a guy who can go with the flow in parts of his life, a guy who creates that flow in other people’s lives.”
“That’s interesting,” he says, and I can tell he’s interested.
“I think a sense of humor is more important than a paycheck. Although girls like me are shallow and expect that you should make a lot of money. This means that job you have right now needs to go because sixty-eight thousand a year just isn’t going to cut it.”
I say this smiling, but his face falls flat and he says, “How do you know that?”
I just do.
Looking away from him, leveling him with that mysterious grin, I say, “Tell me a joke,” and this is his chance to be funny, but he’s put under the gun and—what the hell?
The smell of the air changes from mixed colognes and perspiration to a sort of sandalwood infused charcoal. Under that is the smell of man and earth. Just beneath that is the coppery hint of blood mixed with a dab of clearwood, which is a cleaner smelling patchouli scent. Individually it would feel like it works, but together, the scent is mesmerizing, haunting, dirty.
I follow my eyes and see a man walking toward Georgia. He moves in the shadows, but the way he moves is freaking sexy.
Interesting.
He’s tall and muscular, but not in a body-builder type of way. It’s like a Hollywood build. The kind where you can wear normal clothes. He radiates raw sexuality and arrogance, but it’s some of the underlying scents about him I don’t understand.
Why am I smelling this? And why can’t I see him?
“Are you okay?” Rohan asks me. Rohan’s real name is Noah, but he doesn’t like it because it makes him feel like an old dude on a boat and no one ever said they wanted to get drunk and get boned by a prophet.
“Yeah, good,” I say, pulling back to him. I realize the beats have transitioned again and I’m off. “I just saw an old frenemy and I’m trying to remember how we left off.”
“So you’re from here?” he asks.
“We went to school together a few years back,” I lie, “but I think maybe I need to say hello because I have a feeling the guy trying to game her is no good.”
“Bad boy no good, or date rape drug no good?” he asks. Noah has great hair, big blue eyes and the features of a new man in his early twenties. He wants to go with me, but he’s feeling like if I leave, he’ll be left here.
He will be.
I lean in, give him a long, warm kiss on the cheek and say, “If I wasn’t already taken, I’d let you to have me. I’d want you to have me.”
“I think maybe that hurts worse,” he says with a smile. “But thank you.”
“When you meet a girl named Sarah, she’s going to make you forget about me, and then you’re going to get her pregnant,” I say. “Just stay with her, Noah. You’ll be happy that you did.”
His face goes slack, but he recovers quickly, which surprises me. “Are you some kind of psychic or something?” he asks.
“Yes,” I say. “Piper the psychic.”
“Sarah you said?” he asks.
“Sarah.”
And then I leave and head straight for Georgia. Georgia who doesn’t know me. Along with Tempest and Cicely who don’t know me either. I buried everything about me so deep in their memories it would take a fleet of backhoes months to extract it. Unfortunately it’s left them all with some strange gaps in time, gaps they’ve discussed. They all chalk it up to having been changed by Gerhart who’s become Holland, but they also know that’s not it.
They just can’t think of any other explanations.
As I’m walking over there, I’m missing everything about Brayden…August. I’m missing him and feeling him missing me, too. He’s so madly in love with me it’s got me level inside. But when I bump off him, I feel the connection falter, like the last breath of life falling from my mouth for just the briefest moment.
When I left him, he was talking with his father, telling him about his exploits. The two of them were feeling good together. They were feeling fine.
The reason I cut my connection short is because his step-mother is bringing them drinks, and unfolding inside of her at an alarming pace is the insatiable desire to be with him.
A quick bump off August’s dad tells me he feels her feeling it, too.
He’s looking at her and knowing his wife (who married him for money) is now flowering with need at the sight of his new son. August is no stranger to the affections of older women, so he’s feeling it, too, and for the first time, this kind of attention is making him uncomfortable.
He’s finally understanding what it means to sometimes suffer the lust of others, something he never had to know as Brayden.
He was always attracted to his step-mother as Brayden, but now that he’s feeling that discomfort in the air, he’s realizing he needs to cut his time here short.
That was about the time I pulled out.
Now all I see is Georgia.
Looking out on the floor, I see Tempest and Cicely dancing and I see the crush of guys looking to snag their attention. Seeing them working it, I realize these two girls are now comfortable with the attention of others. They have their force fields up, though, like they see the looks they’re getting but it has no more meaning to them than the name of a song, the color of a shirt or the taste of water.
Back to Georgia.
I slide up to a seat nearby with a group of people I don’t know. I look at them looking at me and say, “Hi, I can only stay a minute.”
“What’s your name?” a girl says. I look right at her and my heart damn near stops. I see the eyes, the face, the body, but it’s all different. Not modified like me, just…refined.
“Savannah,” I say.
“I was just going to grab drinks,” the girl says, “do you want to come?”
Bumping off Georgia and the new guy, a guy I know will be too much for Netty, I say, “Yeah, I could use a lift.”
What is this f
eeling? I wonder.
When we get out, the girl is stunning, exuding the same kind of soft but insistent need for me that plagued Rohan.
She reaches out her hand and says, “I’m Chloe,” to which I say, “You look like a Chloe.”
Pleased with my answer, she says, “What does a Chloe look like?”
“Every Chloe I ever met was gorgeous, so with those high standards, I expect you to be hot, and you are. My God, what did you do to yourself?”
“Do we know each other?” she asks.
That’s when I realize I was Abby when I met her before, Abby when she took me on the dance floor and kissed me. She was my first girl kiss when she was nerdy cute with her glasses and her plain hair. But now she’d come into her own and damned if it wasn’t working.
“Maybe it’s just me,” I say. “I feel like I should know you.”
“If you keep talking like that,” she says, “I’m going to insist you buy me a drink.”
“You do the first round and I’ll do the next,” I say.
At the bar, she turns and says, “Have you ever had Sand in the Crack?” and I’m like, “Isn’t that a bit personal?”
“The drink,” she says, amused.
“No on the drink, yes on the real thing. I summered in Huntington Beach.”
“You sound uppity when you say it like that.”
“It was supposed to be endearing,” I tell her, not wanting her to think I’m some snob. Why did I say it like that?
When the bartender approaches us, he says, “What’ll it be ladies?”
“Sand in the Crack for me, Hop Skip And Go Naked for her because she likes the beach,” Chloe says.
When she turns to me, I say, “Are you trying to get with me?”
“Of course I am,” she says, and it’s flattering.
When she kissed me before, it was the softest most sensual kiss I’ve ever had. I remember thinking, only a woman can kiss like that, even though back then Chloe felt like a girl. Now she feels like a woman coming into her own and for some reason this is so very attractive. Maybe I want what she has. That easy confidence. Her peace. She’s with friends, falling in love, not staking the world on it, not wanting anything more than what she already has now.
