Claimed

by Pratt, Lulu

The night started well, I remember that much. I was drinking normally — that is to say, not a lot — and the four of us were giggling as we hopped out of our Uber and disembarked on Sunset Boulevard, the night already in full swing. There was a block-long line for OnePart, but I was the doorman’s yoga instructor, so he let us in without a problem.

  Blaire had whispered in my ear, “Oh my God, you’re so cool.”

  We laughed and entered the club. The place was pulsating with pink neon light that flashed off the walls and reflected on our faces, which were shiny from highlighter and bronzer. OnePart has a strict dress code, so I’d gone to the trouble of throwing on my sexiest LBD, with mesh cutouts that left opaque fabric covering only my most essential goodies. I’d topped it off with a pair of black stilettos that could put an eye out, if need be.

  Blaire, a stand-up comedian, is like me, she rarely makes an effort with clothing, usually settling for jeans and a flannel shirt. Last night, even she’d shimmied into a sexy little number that her husband-to-be had apparently “mistrusted on sight.” Sheila and Morgan, as per usual, looked hot as hell. Both were Instagram influencers with thousands and thousands of followers each, which meant that they were usually the ones who got us to the fronts of lines.

  We made an odd little group, a sort of Sex and the City for today. Was I the Charlotte? And, dear God, who was the Miranda?

  I digress. The music was bumping, and some guys let us take their VIP booth while they went to dance, probably hoping that we’d eventually join them on the dance floor, or at least humor them with some flirting. Jokes on them. All in the group but myself were engaged or married.

  Ah! That must have been it — the thought that started me down my whole of mopey despair that ended with a wicked hangover. I must have started thinking about how everyone in the group was in a serious relationship, save for me.

  See, I’ve been in tons of relationships. I was that kindergartener who already had a serious boyfriend, who knew what flowers she wanted at her wedding. But then I’d broken up with my last beau a year back, and the flow of men had just stopped. Out of nowhere, no warning. It was like the stream just dried up.

  This isn’t to say that I’m not capable of being a strong, independent woman, but I like having a partner in my life. I missed that kind of intimacy, and thus far, all of my one-night stands had only gone to show me that I did, indeed, hate sleeping around with strangers. Unfamiliar men have no idea what to do around a clitoris.

  All these self-pitying thoughts had raced through my head, each one a little slap across the cheek. My friends were so happy, so carefree, and though I hate to say it, I wanted what they had. We were in a fancy club at a VIP table, looking hot as hell, and all I could think was how seethingly jealous I was. Not cute.

  “So that’s when the shots came,” I said aloud.

  Ah yes, the shots. Some guy had come around and deposited a platter of murky shots on our table.

  Blaire, already drunk, piped up, “Oh, I don’t think we need these, I think we’re—”

  Before she could finish, I had a glass in my hand and was throwing its contents down my throat, anxious to forget how annoyed I was at my friends’ perfect lives.

  She raised an eyebrow, then turned to the man and said, “Never mind, leave the shots.” To me, “You good?”

  I nodded, then added with an over-pronounced smile, “I just wanna have a great time.”

  “Same,” Sheila cheered. She and Morgan grabbed drinks, clinked glasses and took the shots. Blaire knew me better than any of them, and could probably tell that something was off, but without a word, she took a shot of her own. That’s a true friend. Someone who doesn’t chide you for random heavy drinking, but rather joins you.

  We’ve established that I don’t usually drink much, right? Because I really, really don’t drink much. So don’t look so skeptical when I say that, after six drinks, I was smashed.

  The music started to seem one beat out of sync with the real world. The lights were too bright, and the glitter that caked every visible surface was shimmering with menace.

  “Let’s dance!” Blaire cried, and moved out of the booth and onto the dance floor. Her voice reverberated in my eardrums, the sound distorted.

  She grabbed my arm and tugged me onto the floor. I paused, turned back to the table, and took another shot.

  “Okay,” I replied, wiping my mouth. “Now I’m ready.”

  We made our way to the floor, which was a writhing sea of sexy young things, and squeezed in somewhere between two gay guys having a steamy make-out session and a girl who wore a mesh shirt with no bra, her nipples fully exposed.

  “Happy bachelorette party!” I screamed in Blaire’s direction.

  Her voice, happy and alcohol-drenched, came back. “I love you all, like, soooo much!”

  The beat drop, and the entire club began to thump as people jumped in time with the music. I bounced on the balls of my feet, but couldn’t make it to a full jump.

  Would I ever have a bachelorette party of my own? Would my friends ever organize a special last night of singledom before seeing me off into marriage? After years of certainty that I’d be the first one married or settled down or even the first one with a baby bump, would I now become the one who never quite made it down the aisle?

  I shook my head, and snatched a glass out of a nearby dude’s hand. He made a noise, but I shrugged it off. I know they say drinking just makes you more depressed, but I was fully prepared to test that theory. Besides, it’s not like anything could make me worse company than I already was.

  “Did you just have another drink?” Blaire shouted in my ear.

  “Uh, hell yeah,” I replied. “Why, did you want one?”

  She shook her head. “No, I just wanted to make sure you’re good.”

  Morgan and Sheila were looking in our direction, so I nodded frantically. “Yeah, totally,” I said. “This is amazing. I love it. Are you having a good time?”

  She grinned. “Duh. You girls are the absolute best.”

  I gave her a sloppy kiss on the cheek, and she laughed. “Well, somebody’s in their cups.”

  Desperate to keep up the spirits for Blaire’s night, I threw my hands in the air, the universal symbol for ‘let the good times roll,’ then began to twerk with abandon.

  Morgan began to chant, “Go Cybil, go Cybil, go Cybil!”

  I was young, wild and carefree. Or at least kinda young-ish, very wild, and full of cares but trying pretty hard to feel otherwise.

  Stuff started to really blur right about then. Maybe it was the extra shot, or the twerking, or the chants, but somewhere along the way, my vision seemed to tilt sideways. The last things I definitely remember were my girlfriends huddled around me, screaming along with the music and tossing their gorgeous manes around.

  Well, that’s not exactly true. There are a few memories after that, but they’re blurry, and I’m not sure if they can be totally trusted. It’s like the way that you remember a dream just as you wake up, then immediately forget it, hazy around the edges. But for the sake of transparency, I guess I’ll tell you.

  The last things I kind of remember are a pair of dark brown eyes, so brown they might have been black, rimmed by thick, definitively black lashes that moved slow, too slow for the frantic anxiety of the club, like a cat waiting to pounce. Lips, curled up in a smirk. And two arms covered in a maze of tattoos so deep you could trace them for years and never find your way out.

  And that’s all.

  Chapter 3

  Cash

  AH, LAST night.

  About last night.

  It’d been a long day at work, and by a long day, I mean a long day of nothing. The only people who had walked in had been a boy and a girl, both clearly underage — something I’d known without even looking at their licenses — hoping to get the boy tatted with a drawing of the girl’s face. Young love. I’ve done my share of arguably stupid shit. Don’t worry, we’re getting there, see ‘about last night,’ but I coul
dn’t let this kid fuck up so hard, not on my watch.

  “Sorry,” I told him. “We don’t do minors here.”

  His peach fuzz had contorted around his lips, and he’d replied, “I’m not a minor.”

  I grinned. “And not much of an actor, either. I know when I’m being lied to, kid.”

  That had really raised his hackles. “I’m not a fucking kid!” he attempted to growl.

  “Okay, great. Show me your license.”

  With a big show of reaching into his wallet — which was, you guessed it, made of silver duct tape — he’d pulled out an ID, and passed it into my hands.

  “This is fake,” I said immediately, not even bothering to look down. “It’s a fake, and not a good one either.”

  I’ll give him this, he was a brave little fucker. He squared up with me, puffing out his chest and saying, “Oh yeah? Call the police, ask them if it’s real.”

  I mean, really, credit where credit is due, telling me to call the police was a ballsy move. Though in retrospect, he was a scrawny teenager, so I’m guessing he knew he had nothing to lose by calling the police. Hell, they’d probably give him a pat on the back for making such a daring play.

  But anyways, by that point I was over the whole interaction. I played my ace in the hole:

  “Listen, kid. I’m ex-military, special ops. I call the police over here, tell them you’ve been giving me problems… let’s just say they won’t be happy. Savvy?”

  His pock-marked skin paled, the red draining from all his inflamed acne.

  In a scratchy voice, he choked out, “Oh, uh, uh I just remembered I have somewhere to be actually… right… yeah, okay I’m out. I’ll be, uh, back though. Just so you know.”

  His girlfriend whispered something to him angrily under her breath, but the kid just grabbed her hand and pulled her out the door. Smart boy. Though now he’d probably go to one of my less reputable competitors a few blocks down the road and get a real hack job done on his bicep — his girlfriend’s face would end up looking like gum on the bottom of a shoe, squished and melting.

  So it had been a long day. I closed up shop at ten, then headed to the club next door. Normally, it wasn’t my kind of scene. Too loud, too many people… too many chances of something going wrong. And even setting aside the litany of potential triggers, well, then I came down to the brass tacks of the thing, which is that OnePart is a bore. An upscale, self-indulgent bore.

  But, counterpoint, they served liquor. Plus, the people watching was kind of entertaining, like a live-action Kardashians but with a few more brawls and way more drugs. A beautiful cast, a gorgeous setting and alcohol. It was a recipe for excitement, even if it was of the mindless variety.

  The guys around the back of OnePart let me in. I’d offered them half off tats when I’d first opened my shop, and since then, they’d been some of my best customers. At this point, each of them were close to Yakuza-level full-body tattoos.

  “Hey, Cash,” Rick called out, stomping the ground with his lead-sole cowboy boot. “Why you comin’ round here tonight?”

  I shrugged. “Nothing better to do.”

  Fred spit out his toothpick. “Long day?”

  “More minors,” I said by way of explanation. They all worked the door at OnePart. They were more familiar than anyone in town with just how annoying spoiled kids could be.

  Bill grabbed the handle to the back entrance, and flung it open. “Go on in,” he said. “You need it. Larry’s on bar tonight, tell him we sent you.”

  “Thanks, gents,” I replied, and with that, ducked into the black tunnel of the door.

  The scene I emerged into was a yawn. Agents and managers mixed with the sparkly young things who vied for their attention, “influencers” flirted with bankers, start-up employees lingered in dark corners with creative types. Everybody wanted something from everyone, and none were afraid to admit it. Whatever happened to subtlety? In a town built on romance and fantasy, we’d just about lost all of it in favor of blatant social climbing.

  I found Larry at the bar. Or rather, he found me.

  “Yo, you Cash?” he called above the uproar, a wide brimmed black felt hat pulled down over his eyes.

  I nodded, knowing my voice wouldn’t carry far in a place like this.

  He immediately turned away from the spritely blonde who had her elbows and tits on the counter, sloshed over like a keening ship. As he walked in my direction and threw a towel over his shoulder, she made a noise of annoyance. He said, “You’re the one who does the tattoos.”

  I nodded. He didn’t seem to be looking for a conversation.

  “Then what can I get you?”

  Well that was easy. “Whiskey, neat.”

  He smiled, white teeth flashing against dark skin. “Good man.”

  Moments later, a perfect crystal cup with a spherical ice cube was placed in front of me and top-shelf whiskey dribbled over, running in droplets down the ridge of the ice.

  “You didn’t have to treat me this well,” I said appreciatively, eyeing the glass.

  “Sure I did. Besides, the rest of these people—” he gestured to the clubgoers around him, “are too drunk to warrant the finer stuff.”

  I raised my glass, silently toasted my buddies who didn’t make it back home, and tipped its contents back into my mouth. Ahh. That was better. The bar was beginning to get too crowded for my liking, so I dropped a ten on the counter, signaled my thanks to Larry, and walked deeper into the room.

  The whiskey was excellent, but it wasn’t doing enough to dull my senses. If anything, as the mass began to surge around me in time with a beat drop, the alcohol was heightening my awareness. I could feel panic coming on like a specter on the horizon, shadows blotting out the sun.

  I needed to find quiet.

  Glass in hand, eyes kept low, I left the dance floor proper and made my way down a couple of halls that were covered in graffitied pictures of the French aristocracy, pre-guillotine. Chandeliers and low lights made each hall sparkle in different hues. I was the prince, escorting an invisible princess to dance away the night, before her father would find her slippers worn in the morning.

  And then, at the end of the hallways, my hallways, as I’d come to think of them, I saw a woman. I blinked twice. That couldn’t be right — no one ever came down here. Who else would look for quiet in a club famed for its noise? I wondered for a moment if she was a hallucination, a floater in my eye. But no, it was clear from her disjointed swaying that she was real. Real, a little drunk, and very beautiful.

  Her hair was a sea of honey blonde down her back, her lips a perfect red beneath a button nose. However, when she turned to look at me, her eyes were almost black and she had delicate features. She looked Asian. It was hard to tell under the dim lights. Her arms had distinctive, individual muscles, which reminded me of the powerful women I’d served with, tough broads who didn’t take shit from a man. Something about her movements suggested she might’ve been quite graceful, if she weren’t so wasted. Her gaze found mine, and I noticed reflexively the flick of a black cat-eye at the corner of her lids, smudged now but once done with incredibly steady hands.

  “Hey,” she said.

  “Hey,” I replied, trying to hide my amusement. “What’s up?”

  She tilted against the wall, her back arched, her slender hips sticking out in my direction. “I’m bored,” she drawled. “Bored and sad and lonely. And I don’t wanna be. How about you?”

  My breath hitched in my throat. It’s hard to say what exactly about this nameless stranger made me want to spill my guts. Maybe it was just her piercing honesty. Maybe I, too, was just bored and sad and lonely.

  “It’s been a long day,” I said, my voice uneven. “You’re about the only bright spot in it.”

  Her red lips spread open, revealing white teeth. “How often do you get to use that line?”

  “Never,” I said in a low tone. “Doubt I’ll ever use it again. I suspect it belongs to you now.”

  She pushed
away from the wall and walked up to me, her steps jerky like a baby deer but her back perfectly upright. “Say that again,” she murmured.

  “It belongs to you,” I repeated. My breath was coming faster and I could feel my cock hardening. I said ‘it,’ but the word should’ve been ‘I.’ I belong to you.

  She blew a strand of hair out of her eyes, and her shoulders sagged as though she were visibly letting down her guard. Had I won her trust?

  “Does this place, like, suck?” she said with a laugh.

  I nodded. “Yeah. It does.”

  Her eyes narrowed, as if suspicious of my immediate agreement, and then widened again. Without warning, she bent down and swiftly removed her black high heels, taking up one in each hand. I wondered if she was planning to use them against me, but then she returned, “Wanna take me out of here?”

  I looked around. “Me?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, boy genius. You.”

  My heart pounded. Okay, Cash, you can’t take her to your house. She’s drunk, you’re not gonna sleep with her. I could take her somewhere else public though, right? That seemed kosher enough. My parents had raised me to be a gentleman. I knew I would never touch a lady without her permission.

  But what was open at this hour? A thought popped into my head. “I have a tattoo parlor a few doors down. Will that do?”

  Her lips pursed into the shape of an ‘O.’ “I’ve never been to a tattoo parlor,” she breathed.

  I smirked. “It’s not scary, I promise.”

  She sniffed at the comment, replying, “I’m not scared of anything.”

  I thought that might well be true.

  “Okay,” I said, fighting to keep the smile from my lips. “Very badass. Do you need to tell your friends that you’re heading out? They can give me the smell test, if you want.” Girls who looked like that never traveled alone. They hunted in packs.

  She shrugged. “Nah, they’ll figure it out, or I’ll text them. Or… something. It doesn’t matter. Get me out of here.”

  Good enough. I held out my hand and replied, “Let’s go.”

  Her blood-red fingernails caught the overheads as she snaked her fingers through my own. I squeezed them tightly, needing to make sure that she was really there, that this was really happening. Sure enough, her soft, warm skin was pliable beneath my own. She squeezed my hand back.