by Heidi Lowe
“Yeah, well you should see someone about that.” Her tone had turned bitter.
“I just did.” I picked up my purse. “Bye.”
I left the apartment in a hurry, and ordered an Uber as soon as I was outside. I needed to pick up my scooter, which was still parked outside Strobe.
While I waited, I noticed that I’d had several missed calls. Goosebumps spread all over my body when I saw that Naomi was responsible for two of them. The rest had come from Brit.
I called Brit back, and she picked up on the first ring.
“Hey, where are you?” She sounded worried.
“Why?”
“Erm, no reason. I just... just wanted to know when you’d be home...” Yeah, that didn’t sound at all suspicious.
“Why?” I said again. “You’ve never asked me that before.”
Silence on the line. It spoke volumes.
“Did she call you?” I tried to stay calm, but I could feel my blood reaching boiling point.
“What? Who?” She was such a bad actress.
“I don’t need either of you checking up on me. I’m fine, all right. I had some drinks, I did some soul-searching, and now I’m waiting for my Uber. I’m okay.” I sounded so convincing I was starting to convince myself.
“Cool. Then I’ll see you soon?”
I tutted and hung up.
So Naomi had called Brit to check on me? I didn’t know whether to smile, cry, or be furious. So I ended up doing all three.
TWENTY-THREE
When my alarm went off that Monday morning, I hit cancel on the phone, pulled the duvet over my head and went back to sleep.
Twenty minutes or so later, Brit knocked. “Shouldn’t you be, like, up already?” she called from the other side of the door.
I groaned in response, which prompted her to enter. She drew back the curtains, and daylight spilled in, so bright I was able to see it beneath the duvet.
“Go away.”
“You know I hate work as much as the next person, but I don’t make enough to cover your share of the rent, so you need to get your ass up and make some dough.”
I groaned again, adamant that I would not be moved — not by her or anyone. But then she started singing the Baywatch theme song at the top of her lungs, in an exaggeratedly bad voice, leaving me no choice.
“You’re an awful human being,” I said to her smug face, as I stormed past her and headed to the bathroom.
In the past, I would have broken my neck trying to get to work on time. Being just five minutes late was blasphemous, in my book. In my old book, at least. But that morning, as I strutted out of the elevator, aware that I was half an hour late with no acceptable reason, I didn’t give a shit.
Everyone was seated at the conference table, mid-briefing, when I rocked in. Naomi stopped mid-sentence, waiting for an apology. I sat down without giving her one, eased back in my chair and, with my eyes, dared her to challenge me.
She must have sensed my belligerence, because she cleared her throat and continued addressing the team. Saeed shot me a perplexed look. I smiled at him.
Ten minutes later, I was sitting in my office, researching a prospective client, when my work phone rang. The orange button for line two flashed; it was coming from Naomi’s office. I watched the flashing button with a scowl, didn’t make a move to answer. It stopped ringing after a little while, started again, went unanswered. I knew she’d be pissed. I smiled to myself, continued working.
Five minutes later, Saeed knocked on my door. I ushered him in. “Hey, erm Naomi wants to see you in her office.”
“Tell her I’m busy.”
He gave a nervous laugh. “I can’t tell her that.”
“Sure you can. Just walk on back over to her, say it, then leave,” I said casually.
“Dakota, come on. It’s Naomi.”
Who the hell did she think she was? Did she just expect everyone to drop what they were doing whenever she snapped her fingers?
I got up, filled with attitude, and marched across the room to her office. I didn’t knock before I entered.
“What?” I demanded.
The look she shot me was venomous, like a thousand scorpion bites. If there hadn’t been other people all around us, she would have ripped into me unrelentingly.
I saw her throat move as she swallowed back the venom she wanted to spit at me. Composed herself. “You strolled in half an hour late and didn’t offer an apology.”
I folded my arms. “So fire me.” I didn’t care anymore.
“Is that what you want?”
I shrugged my nonchalance.
She scribbled something down on a piece of paper. “Well it’s going on your record as a verbal warning.”
My mouth dropped open. I couldn’t believe she was really going to reprimand me professionally for it.
“You wanna play that game, huh? What sort of warning do they give to senior execs who fuck their employees?”
I knew that would do the trick.
She got up slowly, and I thought she was going to jump the table and lunge at me, tug on my neck until all the breath had vacated my body. But she steadied her breathing, her eyes boring into mine until I had to look away.
“I’ve lost all patience with you,” she said in a low, measured voice. “That stunt you pulled the other night, this abhorrent attitude, your insolence...”
I laughed without humor. “And here it comes, the ‘how could I ever have loved you’.” Because I knew it was only a matter of time before she said it. I was her crazy ex now, the one that couldn’t let go, that couldn’t take rejection.
So when her face softened, it was unexpected. “You called my lifestyle sick and depraved, Dakota. I’m not the one with regret.” She sounded genuinely offended.
“I was confused, my brother nearly died...”
She put up a hand to stop me. “I know all of that, but those words came from somewhere. They came from the heart. I told you months ago that this wasn’t your world, and I was right.”
Anger filled me again. “You don’t know anything. I fucked someone, a woman, that night after I left you. And it was incredible.”
Her expression didn’t change, but the way her chest rose and fell indicated that her breathing had become erratic.
She didn’t speak, so I continued. “She wasn’t the first, and she won’t be the last. So don’t you dare presume to know me.” With that I stormed from her office.
Not committing their names to memory had become somewhat of a skill for me when it came to picking up women. I’d mastered the trick of hearing them once and forgetting them forever. Why remember names I would never use again?
My latest conquest came with a friend, and both of them were ready to party. They shared a massive house in Montlake that had a pool and its own basement cinema. I never asked what they did for a living, though something told me they were in the porn industry. It didn’t matter either way.
A blonde and a brunette. I was currently naked between the blonde’s legs, her breast in my mouth, my fingers inside her, while the beige leather couch squeaked beneath us. The brunette had gone to answer the door.
I heard the click clack of her kitten heels as she returned to the living room, wearing a sheer red dressing gown and nothing else underneath. They were truly my best Strobe find to date.
She smiled, holding up a little semi-transparent blue pouch. “Party time,” she announced.
I plucked my lips from her friend’s breast, withdrew my fingers from her sex. “I thought we were already partying.”
She bent down, gave me a sexy, sloppy kiss. “These will up the stakes.”
I sat back as the two women cleared the glass coffee table, then removed from the pouch a plastic bag of white powder, followed by a second with a dozen or more blue pills.
“I don’t do drugs,” I said, eyeing them warily as one threw back an ecstasy pill, while the other cut several lines of coke with a credit card, rolled up a twenty dollar bill, then snorted.
“I got these especially for you,” the brunette whined in her high pitched voice that had yet to get annoying. She pouted. “Have some fun.”
Deliberation only lasted a minute. My resolve broke the second the blonde poured a line onto her friend’s chest, across one breast, and handed me the rolled up note.
“Just one line,” I said, and sniffed it up. I felt the jolt in my brain almost immediately. Felt the world fill with color. Then I was off.
I couldn’t remember how I’d gotten home, or when. But I woke up on my couch early Monday morning, head banging, mouth dry, like I’d had a bucket of sand poured down my throat.
When I tried to stand I found that my legs were too wobbly to hold me, and I grabbed the arm of the couch to stop myself from toppling over.
I heard Brit’s door open. She appeared in the living room doorway, shaking her head and grinning her reproach. “Look at you. Rolling in higher than a bird riding a plane.”
“I... I wasn’t high,” I lied.
She chuckled. “Hey, I may look really youthful for my age, but I wasn’t born yesterday. I know what a high looks like. What did you take, molly? I know it wouldn’t have been any of the harder stuff, you wouldn’t be that stupid.”
I had been that stupid, but she didn’t need to know that. I nodded, my head hurting even more when I did. I winced.
“Is there any aspirin?”
“You know, I think it’s good that you’re going out and meeting new people and all, but you gotta take a break once in a while.”
I staggered to the bathroom to raid the medicine cabinet. “I’m fine.”
“Yeah, you look it.”
“Would you get off my back? I’m getting married in a few weeks, I deserve to have some fun before my life ends.”
This amused her, as it always did when I spoke about my impending nuptials. I had thus far had nothing but negative things to say, as the sense of dread and despair hung over me, getting ever closer to enveloping me entirely. As such, I’d launched into a three-week binge fest of booze and sex. The booze, Brit knew about; the sex, she only suspected.
She put up her hands in surrender, still grinning. “All right, but remember that I tried to save you from yourself.” As she was leaving, she added, “Oh, and go easy on the mollies. That stuff is no joke.”
Once I’d taken two aspirins, washed down with a glass of water, I collected my purse off the floor, and plodded into my room. I dug into one of the zipped up pockets of the purse, pulled out the plastic bag with the remainder of the ecstasy pills. A gift from my pornstar friends. Six in total, down from twelve. We’d taken two each.
I clutched the bag in my hand, deliberating. They’d insisted I take them, said they could always get more for themselves. I’d had no choice. But I did now. Flushing them down the toilet would have been the smart thing to do. But I’d stopped doing the smart thing months ago, and no longer knew what it looked like. So I tucked them back into my purse.
My dreams had become frightful. I’d lost count of the number of times I’d been chased by a feral animal that had escaped from the zoo, hunted down by a feral man who’d escaped from prison, or crashed the car I was driving. So naturally, on the rare occasion that I had good dreams, I wanted to stay asleep, live in them for as long as possible.
I was shaken awake by an angry hand. When I opened my eyes, I looked up into the seething face of Naomi. Gradually the rest of my surroundings came into focus. I wasn’t in my bed, but hunched over my desk at work.
“What the hell is wrong with you? You’re not here to sleep,” she said.
I must have dozed off some time after the briefing. I’d been fighting to stay awake during it, and must have conked out the minute my head hit my desk.
Disoriented. “I—I didn’t know—”
She leaned down close, spoke through gritted teeth, “Just look at the state of you. That’s the third time you’ve fallen asleep on the job. Did you think I didn’t notice before?”
I had no energy to fight with her. And her scent had that calming effect. I missed it so much; I missed her so much it ached all over.
“I was dreaming about you,” I confessed. “I haven’t had a good dream in weeks. And then this one. We were taking a bath together...” A dream, and a memory. We’d bathed together a couple of times for real. It had been one of my favorite things to do with her.
She probably wanted to stay mad at me, but I was so pathetic in that moment that she gave me a pitying look.
I felt my eyes moisten. “I did the right thing, did what He wanted, and I’m still miserable.”
“You call this the right thing?”
Could she tell I’d been taking drugs? I prayed she couldn’t, because even now, the thought of disappointing her terrified me.
She straightened up, pushed her long hair off her shoulders. “I’m putting you on two weeks’ involuntary leave, starting today. Go home and get yourself together.”
There was no use arguing with her, she’d made up her mind.
I’d almost forgotten how soulful my brother’s voice was, how tortured and real his lyrics could be when he set his heart free to write them. As I sat in the crowd of the small but packed out bar that Saturday evening, I wasn’t the only one in tears. A quick glance around revealed several sniffling women, tissues in hand to dab at their damp eyes. How powerful one man and his guitar could be. He needed no stage, just a corner to himself, and that was enough to make an impact.
I’d never even heard of the place when he announced that he’d secured a gig there. A two-week probation, twice a week, to see how he would fare. Well he’d passed with flying colors, had garnered a small but dedicated fanbase of mostly cougars that made it their mission to get to all of his performances.
Colin and Brit were sitting with me at the table, both seemingly unaffected. Perhaps he was terrible but family loyalty made me biased.
When the song was over, the crowd of about twenty-five erupted into applause, his cougar groupies outdoing even me in enthusiasm.
He thanked everyone then disappeared in the back somewhere with the manager.
“Well that was depressing,” Brit said, downing her beer. “Like Coldplay, only darker.”
“I thought it was amazing,” I said. “And not just because he’s my brother.”
She chortled. “No, that’s exactly why. If he sings like that at your wedding, it’ll turn into a funeral!”
It already felt like one.
Colin was quiet, pensive. I knew why. Just before Dove’s performance, I’d mentioned to him that I’d taken time off work, neglecting to tell him that the time off wasn’t my choice. Well, my explanation wasn’t adding up to him, apparently.
“Are you stressed, is that it?” he said, picking up almost exactly where we’d left off. “With the wedding preparations? Work?”
I sighed. “Yes, all the above. I just needed some me time, that’s all.”
“But two weeks? Will you have any vacation time left for our honeymoon? You already took time off when Dove was sick...”
The honeymoon. A ten-night, all-inclusive trip to The Maldives — an island paradise in South Asia, and a playground for the rich and famous. The trip would mark my first venture out of the States. But I couldn’t look forward to it.
“It’s fine, Colin. Stop worrying.” He’d become a nuisance, a bigger one than usual. Whining and whinging about every little detail of the wedding. It was his big, special day, one he’d waited for much longer than I had, and he wanted everything to be perfect. But the more of a fuss he made, the less I could stand him.
Dove came out a few minutes later.
“You were amazing!” I said, throwing my arms around him.
He chuckled. “You’re just saying that because you’re obligated to.”
“That’s what I said,” Brit teased. “You know I wouldn’t lie to spare your feelings.”
“So what did you think, Bitchney?”
She sipped her beer as we w
aited for her verdict. Then she said, “You killed it!”
He laughed. “I think that’s the first compliment you’ve given me since we met. Even when we were boning you never gave me one.”
It was like this all the time with them. The back and forth, the insults, the bringing up of their brief but fiery fling. It was their way of flirting. They were so wrong for each other, but I knew in my heart of hearts that, sooner or later, they would start seeing each other again. I was powerless to stop it.
“We’ll give you a lift home if you want,” Colin said.
Dove looked over at his gaggle of cougar pals, waved, and they all coquettishly waved back. His grin said it all. “I think I’m gonna hang out here for a bit.” He slapped Colin on the back, then went to join the cougar table.
Brit snorted a laugh. “Look at them fawning all over him, like he’s John Mayer or something.” Was that a hint of jealousy I detected?
“You ready to go, Dakota?”
“Actually, Brit and I are gonna go see a friend.”
Brit frowned, opened her mouth to tell me I was full of crap, but closed it again when she read my eyes.
“Oh, okay. So I’ll just see you tomorrow at church?”
Once Colin had left, Brit turned to me. “So who’s this friend we’re gonna see, huh?”
“Strobe.” I grabbed my purse. She followed me to the door.
“I’m starting to regret introducing you to that place,” she said, shaking her head.
I waved a final farewell to Dove. “I would have found it eventually.”
With Brit by my side, I could avoid getting into trouble, that was my thinking. So when we rocked up to the club, I didn’t have sex on my mind; I just wanted to party, to drown out the noise in my head with the noise of the music.
I’d come here so many times that some of the faces were familiar. That was definitely a sign that I needed to quit while I was ahead, before any of my secret lovers came out of the woodwork. I envisioned a scene where they would all come together in their shared experience of my fucking and ditching them, then they’d slowly close in on me, like an angry mob.
