Claimed

by Pratt, Lulu

  And I was already running late, distracted by thoughts of my tattoo. When I got a look at the clock, I quickly threw on a pair of sneakers, snatched up my house keys and strode out the front door.

  I arrived, predictably, ten minutes late, by which point Blaire, Sheila and Morgan had already acquired a metal-grated table outside, underneath a striped umbrella. We were, as usual, the only ones on the patio. I sometimes wondered if our business was the only thing keeping the owners up and running.

  “Oh ho, look who managed to roll out of bed,” Blaire observed sarcastically. “What a feat!”

  “Brava, Cybil, brava!” came Morgan’s rejoinder.

  My friends all cackled and sipped at their drinks, and I groaned, “Can you be, like, possibly much quieter?”

  That brought on another round of snickers. Oh, it was no use — they were all going to have their fun with me, whether I liked it or not. I pulled out the chair, its metal legs scraping against the concrete, the sound scraping across my brain. My butt carefully found the seat. I winced all the same as they collided.

  “Sore?” Sheila taunted.

  “Of course she is,” Morgan interjected. “Did you see that girl go to work last night?”

  Blaire agreed, “She shook her ass hard enough I’m surprised some of it didn’t come off in the process.”

  Another round of giggles and a mimosa appeared in front of my eyes, with the firm instructions from Blaire to “drink it, and fast.” I obliged.

  “Okay,” Blaire said, when I’d polished off the first drink and was making headway into the tall glass of water before me. “So where the hell did you disappear to last night?”

  “What?” I asked mid-sip, then cursed as some of the water dribbled down my chin.

  Sheila hopped in. “You were gone, for like, ages.”

  “And then when we finally called you,” Morgan said. “You just shouted—”

  Blaire, imitating my voice, “‘I’m coming, I’m coming, God.’” She paused and returned to her normal voice. “I think you knew we’d drag you back kicking and screaming if you didn’t get to the club.”

  “When you finally showed up, running back shoeless from some direction vaguely to the right,” Sheila interjected, “you refused to say where you’d been, told us it was ‘top secret,’ whatever that means. We asked you about it the whole Uber ride back too, but you just sat quiet. Well, slept, really. But that’s it.”

  “So,” Morgan continued with finality. “Where’d you go?”

  My friends all stared at me expectantly, hooked to the edges of their seats and waiting for a good gossip sesh.

  “I think you all may know more than I do,” I admitted reluctantly. “After we got there, the whole thing kind of went dark.”

  Sheila nodded, her big blue eyes wide with sympathy. “We figured. You did have, um—”

  “A shit ton to drink,” Blaire offered, dispelling with euphemism. “Enough to intimidate the most seaworthy sailor.”

  “So you don’t remember anything?” Morgan queried. “That’s some night. Well, at least you seemed like you had fun.”

  I sighed, then replied, “I don’t remember anything. But I do have, err… a clue.”

  “A clue?” Blaire said. “I love clues.” She was, indeed, a voracious consumer of murder mystery podcasts. Maybe she’d be the perfect person to help me with this case.

  I looked around the patio, then remembered that it was, of course, empty. There was no one on the street and we were kind of hidden behind a large potted plant. With that, I stood up, turned around, and in a quick flash, pulled down my leggings and exposed my right ass cheek to the other girls. They gasped in unison.

  “Oh my fucking—”

  “What—”

  “When—”

  “How??”

  I pulled the pants back up and sat down as they broke into overlapping conversation, theorizing about the origin of my tattoo, the artist, the meaning.

  “Okay, enough, enough,” I said, cutting off their speculation.

  “Who is this new and awesome Cybil who gets drunk tattoos?” Blaire teased. “She’s the best, can we meet her?”

  I replied, “This new and awesome Cybil needs to figure out who the hell Cash is.”

  “Who?” Morgan asked. “What does that mean?”

  “It means,” I admitted, “that I’m pretty sure Cash is a guy’s name. And I’ve gotta figure out who the guy — Cash — is.”

  The table went quiet. They all looked to be considering this new challenge. Well, except for Morgan, who was standing up and carefully taking an overhead picture of her breakfast, to be later edited into oblivion and posted on social media.

  “What?” she said, self-conscious. “I’ve gotta make a living.”

  “So you have no idea where I went?” I pressed.

  “Sorry, babe,” Morgan replied distractedly, eyes on her phone. “Not a thought.”

  “Ditto.” Sheila gave me a sorrowful shrug.

  Only Blaire managed a fuller answer. “Maybe,” she suggested, “this should just stay a fun and crazy mystery.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  She hesitated before replying, “Some things are less awesome in daylight.”

  I ignored this, and asked once more, “So ya’ll don’t know anything about where I might have gone?”

  Blaire’s eyes flickered to the left, betraying her. I asked, “Blaire? You seem to be thinking of something.”

  She sighed, and responded, “Okay, okay. I did see you with a guy, but I thought nothing of it. You danced with so many guys… anyways. He seemed a little different. You were grabbing his hand, and kind of tugging him through the crowd. Honestly, it didn’t really even make a dent on my radar.”

  My heart skipped a beat. “What did he look like?”

  Blaire considered this. “Hot. Like, really fucking hot. Dark, curly hair, down to maybe his chin. Kind of soulful eyes. Or piercing, maybe. Oh, and tattoo sleeves on both of his arms. Those were hot, too.”

  So that was it. My last memory had been a true one. The eyes, the lips, the arms. Had that been Cash? He could’ve just been another handsome stranger in the middle of the crowd. And besides, this didn’t really help — tall, hot and tatted was a description that could apply to a lot of guys in L.A. Granted, the name Cash was rarer, but I couldn’t really even confirm that was his name.

  “Argh,” I groaned with frustration. “So at least I’m not going entirely crazy, I guess. But that doesn’t help me figure out what to do about the tattoo.”

  “‘Do’?” Morgan questioned delicately.

  Sheila tentatively said, “You know they’re… permanent. Right?”

  “I know!” I cried, and the girls recoiled. I immediately felt bad, and apologized. “Sorry, sorry, I’m just on edge. It’s just that… whoever this guy is, whoever Cash is, he must have been special. Or at least special enough that I got his name tattooed on my ass. It’s been so long since I felt anything real for a guy, and it kinda sucks to think that this one fell into my lap, and now I have to just forget about him, because he may not even exist.”

  My friends’ faces were blank, and I said, “Never mind, you wouldn’t get it. You’re all in relationships.”

  “Aw, come on, Cybil—”

  “Don’t be like that—”

  I cut off Morgan and Sheila. “It’s okay, really, I don’t mind. But like, it’s important to me that I find him. Whoever he is. I just have to know.” I paused, then added, “Also, I’m pissed that I got tattooed while blackout drunk, so at the very least, this mystery man has to answer for that.”

  The last piece seemed to register with my friends, who nodded their heads thoughtfully. Blaire twirled a piece of hair around her finger.

  “Yeah, that is kinda fucking wild,” she replied. “And what kind of tattoo artist would let a girl do that, anyways?”

  Something about Blaire’s words made shifting pieces in my mind click together. I’d been thinking too broadly
— that I’d gone with this Cash and gotten a tattoo of his name. But what if he’d been the one to tattoo me? If so, that would narrow down this entire search.

  “Blaire,” I said, swallowing a piece of kale salad. “You’re a genius.”

  With this new info in hand, I was one step closer to finding Cash and giving him a piece of my mind… and maybe something else.

  Chapter 5

  Cash

  OKAY, BEFORE you say anything, I tried my best to forget about Cybil. Seriously. I half-heartedly flirted with a few girls at the coffee shop across the street, even re-downloaded Tinder, which I deleted within minutes as it was too painful.

  It had been thirty-six hours and even in my dreams, she was there. She was smiling, chatting, listening. I even caught myself daydreaming about her. I felt like I was in high school again.

  But I couldn’t get Cybil out of my head — her lean body, swelling ass, that honey blonde hair, her black eyes. And she’d been so funny, so breathtakingly frank. She struck me as a woman who knew exactly who she was, and didn’t give a shit if that pleased anyone else. In a city where everyone is trying to become someone else, to fit into a certain ‘type’ for the next big casting call, the attitude was refreshing. She vibrated with uniqueness. And I knew that I couldn’t let her float back out into the ether, unmooring her from my life.

  I set about tidying things up in the shop, hoping that the menial tasks would distract me from Cybil. I cleaned the instruments and mopped the floor with increasing energy, but nothing was able to pull my focus from thoughts of her. With a sigh, I turned on the radio, dialing it to the local hard rock station that was manned by a single DJ who called himself Morristan and seemed to be affecting a voice somewhere between an NPR host and a stoned philosophy major.

  An instrumental version of “Paint It Black” blared through the shop’s lousy speakers — another thing I planned to fix, if money ever came in — and I flopped down into an overstuffed chaise lounge I’d found on the corner of Santa Monica and Winston. It had been a bit beaten up, but with a little simple re-covering, I’d transformed it from a brown lump into a sleek cranberry number. Being good with your hands has its advantages.

  It’s been ages, I reflected with some consternation, since I’ve been with a woman.

  Technically, that’s not accurate. I’ve been with women, and recently, but in a fly-by-night kind of way. Find a girl at a dive bar, make sure she’s sober enough, then fuck her in the bathroom against a wall covered in stickers from now defunct bands. I’d screwed plenty of hot women in this way, and had become rather adept at spotting them in watering holes. They all had this weary look, like they knew what they were about to do, but were already bored with the results. As you can imagine, this didn’t exactly make for joyous communions, but something closer to corporate sex, fucking by dance card.

  The Army psych, over at the VA, had told me my encounters with women — that is to say, all the meaningless sex — was a “manifestation” of other “emotional issues.” I’m not sure why I put that in quotations, given that the psych was definitely right. But she’d looked at me with a mixture of pity and hopelessness that was so potent I hope she’s wrong.

  “Cash,” she’d said, “you have to work on yourself before you can be whole with another person.”

  “And what if I’m never whole?”

  It hadn’t been the first time she’d received that question. She had smiled brightly and replied, “You will be. Once you focus on therapy, and commit to taking the steps—”

  I won’t bore you with the rest of her ramble. Apparently, I find it hard to focus on taking care myself when I feel like there are other people who need saving. Apparently, a lotta people come out of the military with this attitude. Unchecked, it devolves into raging mental health problems that can subsume you. I try not to think about this too much.

  And besides, I’m doing better. Right? I have a business, and I see my parents every day, and I’m trying to stay positive. Some mornings are easier than others. Some nights are hard.

  But Cybil had cut through this fog. In a world that I didn’t always find real, she had grounded me in an irrefutable reality. She was fully there, in that moment, and nowhere else. She was what many psychs nowadays call “practicing mindfulness.”

  She was, in a word, special. A big, wise part of me wanted to leave well enough alone with Cybil. Forget she existed, move on and out of her life, let her pass by without interference. It’s what she deserves. No woman should have to put up with my bullshit. Let our one perfect night be that — perfect — and not fuck it up with a relationship that will leave a bitter taste after a few months. But the small, persistent part of me knew that there was something between us, something I had to pursue. Shit.

  Seemed like I’d already made up my mind, though it had taken a while to realize as much. The conclusion I’d come to, possibly the moment I first met her, was that I needed to see Cybil again. Hopefully I could defeat my demons enough to be a part of her life.

  I hadn’t gotten her number the other night. I’m not a big phone guy, so it just hadn’t occurred to me as a thing that people trade. Luckily for us both — or at least for me — while she was getting the tattoo, she mentioned the yoga studio she worked at, some place called Dandelion. She hadn’t said much more, but it was enough to go on.

  Having fought the instinct for hours, I at last sat down at the front desk’s computer to look up Dandelion. After a few keystrokes, a result came up — Dandelion was in Santa Monica, and specialized in “mind, body and soul wellness.” I grimaced. Words like ‘wellness’ were rarely good signs. They tended to imply overpriced juices and other hallmarks of capitalism. That being said, cynicism hadn’t gotten me very far up to this point, so it might be worth giving some new-age spiritualism the old college try.

  And besides, Cybil would be there. I clicked further through the website and discovered a schedule of yoga classes. Some were for gong meditation, others for extended relaxation. My eyes waded through all the new words, and I was reminded, like I so often am, of how narrow my understanding of the world is. For instance, it had never occurred to me that someone would pay another person to help them nap. Just hadn’t crossed my mind.

  Despite all the muck and mire of Dandelion’s schedule, I at last located Cybil’s name. She was teaching yoga — plain, straightforward yoga — at noon today. I looked at the watch on the computer’s home page. This gave me about half an hour to get there. I could also wait until seven this evening, when she was teaching another class, but the time in between these two felt interminable. With a sudden jolt of energy, I stood up from the desk, shut down the computer and jogged out of the shop, pausing only to lock the door behind me.

  Within a few seconds, I was in the front seat of my car and had the engine revving. The car is about twenty years old, with peeling paint and a finicky engine, and it picked this moment of all moment to give a sad, dying purr.

  “Oh no, you don’t,” I said. “Not right now.”

  I turned the key a few times, attempt to click the engine on, and at last, the vehicle whirred into animation beneath me.

  “Much better.”

  With that, I was off, racing through the streets of Los Angeles, a full sun beating down overhead. Summer was here in full swing and the car didn’t have an air conditioner. Sweat clustered on my brow, but I held firm. Needless to say, the car also didn’t have a GPS, and I was without a smartphone. I preferred the privacy of a flip phone. The government already had plenty of my data, they didn’t need any more. Anyways, after years in the military, I’d become pretty good at navigating my way through a city.

  Would Cybil be happy to see me? The thought had been on the edge of my brain since I’d decided that I could not let her go. If I found her — which I’d determined to do — what would she say? Would she repeat the beautiful things that had passed between us the other night? Or would she laugh me off as a mildly intoxicated fling? Every possibility seemed tinged with danger a
nd embarrassment. I couldn’t want any longer to know what she thought of me in the sober light of day.

  Thanks to some reckless driving, I made it to Dandelion with a few minutes to spare. The building was hard to miss. It had been painted a bright, unyielding yellow that turned practically neon under the bright sun. The name ‘Dandelion’ was scrawled across the front in white, cursive letters. The entire place seemed to vibrate in that liminal place between peacefulness and social capital.

  Was I already being too judgy of Cybil’s workplace? What if this was important to her? You’ve gotta practice being open-minded, I instructed myself. What you don’t know isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

  This was, in fact, the opposite of how I’d been trained. I’d been taught that any unknowns were a danger to be shot at, that you didn’t walk into a situation unless you knew it top to bottom. Even something as mild as going into a yoga studio was a big step for me.

  Cybil, my inner voice reminded. She’s in there. She is your known.

  A good point. I took a deep breath and walked inside.

  Everything smelled like citrus, as if the yellow walls were sweating lemon. I wanted to be put off by the overpowering smell, but in point of order, I actually found it to be rather therapeutic. There were windows everywhere, so most of the light inside was natural, besides the aid of a few well-placed white candles. Leggy women in yoga gear strode around, interspersed with the occasional man wearing loose trunks. I wondered absently how they did any yoga poses in those shorts without exposing themselves.

  Though, of course, that wouldn’t be relevant to me — I realized, with some minor embarrassment, that I didn’t have any proper yoga gear. In fact, I was still wearing my civvies — black jeans and a dark gray, long sleeve T-shirt. Even if I hadn’t known that this wasn’t de rigueur for yoga, the looks of the people passing by said it all. To be more specific, the looks seemed to ask, What the fuck are you doing here?

  I stuck out like a sore thumb, but fuck it. The unknown is scary before it becomes the known. I squared my shoulders, threw a little swagger into my step, and walked to the front, where I was greeted by a perfectly tanned blonde they use as seat fillers for swanky Hollywood events.