by Lena Fox
Mary left to wait in the living room. Maybe she needed some space or knew I did, but either way I was glad she went out. I stared at Georgina for a moment longer, and then threw the used condoms in the trash and got some clothes on.
I was still trying to get my head around what had just happened. The item on Georgina’s list that had turned me on the most, that had made me want to be involved with her in the first place, wasn’t at all how I’d expected it to be. It should have been a dream come true, but the reality had fallen short of what I had imagined. In daydreams, I never wished one of the women wasn’t there. I never thought I would feel like I was doing something wrong. Or feel so damn jealous and possessive seeing someone, even a scorching-hot woman, give pleasure to my Georgina.
My Georgina? She’s made it clear she isn’t mine. That should suit me perfectly, but I kept wanting more.
Mary refused to go by bike, so I grabbed Georgina’s keys and we were on the road. Mary lit a cigarette without asking if I minded. Since it was Georgina’s car, I just rolled the window down on my side to try and stop the smell from sticking.
We passed dark streets, a cool wind blowing in the window, the radio so low it was just a hum.
There was something about that late hour. Most of the cars on the roads carried drunks going home or the cops trying to catch them. The world looked bare and tired, and a gloomy pall of depression filled the air. Maybe I was tired or just coming off a slow buzz that never really got a start, but I felt run down, exhausted, and sore in my chest.
I didn’t want to talk but when Mary rummaged around in her handbag, pulled out a wedding ring and put it on, I couldn’t help reacting. “You’re married?”
A grin crossed her lips. “I travel for work far more often than we would like, and he knows I need certain things. Like the occasional gorgeous woman.” She grinned again, the yellow of a passing streetlight flashing across her teeth. “I do this a lot less than I could, and we keep it honest. He’s allowed to do what he wants as well, but we never swing or bring people into our own bed. It works for us.”
I shook my head. Maybe it worked for some people, but after tonight I knew I was only after one woman, and I wanted her to only have me.
Mary took another long drag of her cigarette and let the smoke run out slowly over her lips. “What made the two of you decide to do this?”
I wasn’t sure exactly how to explain it. I didn’t really know why myself. “Georgina has this list.”
“Like a bucket list?” She wound her window down and tapped the ash off her cigarette. “I thought it might be something like that when I felt that lump in her breast.”
She said something else but it was lost in the roar that had started in my skull.
“Sh-she has a lump,” I stuttered out.
“Man, breast cancer sucks. I take it the prognosis is no good?”
My hands gripped the steering wheel so tight my knuckles turned white. I had known. I’d known there was something wrong. I just didn’t know what. I hadn’t wanted to know what, not when we were pretending whatever we had wasn’t going anywhere. Then it did anyway, and I felt things I shouldn’t be feeling, things that were going to fucking hurt the both of us.
Georgina. She’d made it through something before, but she had it again and … she had what? Given up?
“She already had it, when she was a kid. And her mom—she died of it.” Admitting it made my throat ache. I knew I didn’t know for sure, but everything added up. There was that scar, and the fact that she had once worn a wig, and she had those tiny, damnable blue spots. She had a bucket list she was dead set on finishing. She kept telling me she wouldn’t be around forever. She didn’t want me to be attached to her. It all added up to a final equation I didn’t want to solve.
A pain bloomed in my chest like a thorn-bush, tipped in poison, constricting my heart. I’d been hoping that after The List was over, Georgina would relax, and we could get to know each other properly, and maybe something real could come of this. It wasn’t something I’d wanted for a long time. Not since Seyvia. But Georgina was so … ineffable. She awoke a desire in me for something more. Something lasting. But this was going to end. Everything ended, and too often too fucking tragically.
Seyvia. I still couldn’t even say her name out loud. Couldn’t hear one of her songs. Not after how she died. Not with knowing it was my fault.
I still couldn’t deal with that pain. How could I go through something like that again?
I knew with Seyvia, too, in a way. I knew the fate she’d been headed towards. I’d tried to stay blind to it, to deny it, and it had happened anyway. It happened because I tried to deny it. Because I didn’t help.
To be with Georgina would be staring down the possibility of losing her every single moment. Knowing that loss was coming.
But saying goodbye to her now would be losing her, too. Removing her from my life by choice would have the same effect as losing her to death—that she wouldn’t be with me.
And fuck it all, when all I wanted was for her to be with me.
“Fuck. Life fucking sucks.” Mary tossed her cigarette butt out the window and yawned.
We didn’t speak again. She got out of the car and headed into her hotel. She was just as hot and sexy as she had been when she came into the bar, and I watched her go, wishing I could go back in time and say no to the whole thing, yank Georgina out of there before we ever met the woman who wrecked my entire world.
I drove back home in a haze of pain. There was only one possibility—something was pushing Georgina into the actions she was taking, something dire, because under all of her bravado she was inexperienced and terrified as hell. And that something was probably cancer.
I got out of the car and looked for the evening star in the gloomy sky.
“She’s dying.” I said the words out loud, and they echoed in the stillness. A dog barked down the street. Tears filled my eyes, and I made it inside in time to keep myself from breaking down on my own doorstep. I wasn’t strong enough. After tonight, I couldn’t be with her anymore. I had to end this. I would in the morning. But I needed one more night with her in my arms.
I crept silently into bed beside Georgina and held her tight until morning.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Georgina
The next time I saw Blake, I would say goodbye to him forever.
Maybe that was why I couldn’t bring myself to see him. I needed to buy some time.
After our night with Mary, I woke up in Blake’s arms. His hands clung to me and his face nuzzled deep into my neck. A small frown furrowed his eyebrows, even in slumber.
I lay there for a moment, my heart pounding against my breastbone as though it was trying to leap out of me and into him, fleeing this sinking ship that didn’t deserve to feel the way his embrace made me feel right then.
So I fled, too. Snuck out before he woke up.
I didn’t call him, and he didn’t call me the next day. Or the day after.
There was a tension in that silence between us, but also a relief. As long as we didn’t speak, the need to end this would be delayed. And I was still being a coward.
I tried to bury myself in class assignment work, but I felt a different calling. I dug through my supplies, found a large sheet of hot press paper, and cracked open my watercolor palette. Pencils and markers soon joined the dance, and form, hue, value, and pattern spilled onto the paper before me. I worked in a frenzy, splashing paint and then scrawling bold lines over it to accentuate the fractal shapes it dried into. Soon, something of beauty emerged from that chaos. I worked obsessively, breathlessly until it was done.
Mom, do you like it?
I fell asleep staring at what I’d created, surrounded by a litter of brushes and pencils. A fiery sense of purpose consumed me, and I knew exactly what I was going to do the next day.
But when it came time to do it, I needed moral support.
I had no idea how I talked Julie into coming with me, but I did.
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I dressed in an outfit I hoped made me look tougher than I felt—black T-shirt, denim miniskirt over old, ripped, black stockings, and a butt-ton of eyeliner. I thought I looked like a rebel, and that costume gave me courage.
It made Julie eye me suspiciously. She didn’t join in the dress-up, and wore her usual cargo pants and a T-shirt with kawaii designs translated into broken English.
And that was how we walked into the tattoo parlor together.
I had imagined a dingy smoke-filled den crammed to the rafters with rough bikers and heavily tattooed people hanging out on stained sofas, drinking liquor from bottles. Instead, I found a bright, sterile room with a hint of funky flair in the massive color-splashed canvases and fairy lights strung along the walls above framed licenses and awards.
Behind the counter, a friendly woman with an etched buzz cut smiled warmly at us. Her arms were covered in tattoos, but not done in the traditional heavily inked black style. They were delicate, highly detailed geometric designs of leaping deer, surrounded by organic swatches of color, like paint had been splashed and left to dry on her skin. I smiled, instantly more confident I was in the right place.
She glanced over at Julie, then let her gaze rest on me. “Hi, I’m Birdie. What can I do you for?” She gave me an appraising look. “Belly button piercing? Nose ring?”
“I want a tattoo.” I spoke too loudly, but I couldn’t help it. Nerves were messing with my vocal chords.
The woman leaned forward on the counter, her pink lace bra showing clearly over the top of her plain white tank top. “Awesome, darling! Do you have something in mind? Working on an existing piece?”
“No. It’s my first time. I kind of have some ideas, but some advice would be good.” I hoped I didn’t sound like too much of an idiot.
Birdie just smiled wider. “That’s how we all start out. Have a flick through the flash. Let me know if you see something you like. Start here—that’s a good place for beginners.” She thumped a heavy folder onto the desk and opened it to a section with tiny butterfly and love-heart designs. I looked down at them, feeling like the kid being sent to play in the ball pit instead of on the big rides.
“Actually, I was thinking of something like this.” I opened my purse and pulled out my folded piece of paper, handing it Birdie.
Julie peered over my shoulder as the tattoo artist opened it up. “Where did you get that?”
“Just something I drew.”
Julie’s dark eyes widened. “Pretty,” she said, in her emotionless way.
Birdie appraised the artwork, eyebrows raised. “Nice work. But to get that much detail, it’s going to be a big tattoo for a newb. Sure you don’t want to look at the smaller ones? I got some cute fairies.”
Julie squeezed my arm as well, giving me a look. “Are you sure?”
The List Georgina is brave Georgina. The List Georgina says yes. “Yep.”
“It will be on your skin. Your whole life.”
“I do get the concept.”
“Do you realize how long that will be?”
Much shorter than I want.
“I want my design. Can you do it all today?” I pushed on. If I hesitated now, I’d run away. The coward inside me would win. Because I was not at all as cool as I was pretending I was about getting this done. I was terrified, in fact. The idea of marking my skin forever scared me—until I reminded myself that my forever was going to be pretty short in the grand scheme of things.
Birdie studied the design again for a while. “I’d normally do it in two passes, but yeah, if we simplify it a little it can be done today. It’ll take a couple hours. And I don’t give out pain meds.”
I’d been through worse. The cost worried me more than the pain. But I didn’t have anything to save for anymore.
Julie watched with a blank face as I signed the documents and paid upfront. “You’re really doing this?”
“You want something too?” I smirked.
Her eyes popped. “No.” Then her lip twitched. “Maybe. One day. Tell me how it was afterwards.”
One day. Of course, Julie was still someone who had the luxury of ‘one day’. “You can leave, if you want, since this is going to take a while. I mean, I want you here, it’s nice having someone here, but I don’t want to waste your time.”
Julie shrugged. “I can wait.”
Birdie asked about where I wanted the tattoo. I didn’t really know. I just wanted a tattoo because I wanted something permanent, something that was made to last. I had lived with the little pinprick tattoos from radiotherapy for years now, those plain black spots, and I wanted something to cover them up. I wanted to hide them with something beautiful.
I asked about getting the tattoo on my under-bust area, but Birdie suggested it would fit better on my back. She told me to go to room number one, take off my shirt, and lie down.
“Be there in a jiffy,” she sang.
The room was cold, and I shuddered. The entire space reminded me of hospitals and smelled of alcohol wipes, the kind I had to wipe the soft flesh of my stomach with before giving myself the post-chemo treatment needles that made my bones ache for days. The smell of those wipes still made me queasy.
Julie turned around as I stripped off my top half and lay down face-first on what looked a lot like a massage table. She took a seat next to me and started playing a game on her phone.
Birdie came in, and I heard her snap on some gloves. “All set? This is going to look so hot!”
I just nodded, and the needle whirred to life.
The pain wasn’t very intense—it was just there. It settled into my back and my face pressed deeper into the low table’s headrest. I stared at the tiles of the floor below. It was faultlessly clean, and that was one more thing that disappointed me. I wanted grungy, dirty nastiness.
The pain grew sharper as it went nearer my spinal column. I gritted my teeth, waiting for it to subside. Instead, it worsened, and I yelped.
Birdie spoke over the hum of the tattoo gun. “Yeah, it’s a sensitive spot. Want me to give you a break?”
“No. Keep going.”
My eyes closed involuntarily, and a tear leaked out from one eye. Something ripped loose, the pain pulling away some emotional wall. That invisible armor I had locked on tight unclipped, and more tears began to fall.
Julie’s feet came into view. Her hand closed around mine. It made the tears fall faster, splashing onto the tiles beneath me.
I couldn’t handle this anymore. I wanted to be alive, to have more than just a stupid list of things I was in a hurry to do because I would probably never get a shot at them otherwise. I wanted to have real friends. I wanted to really be with Blake. I didn’t want my dad to lose me.
What would Dad do without me? He had never gotten over my mom dying. Even at my young age, I saw how close he’d been to giving up himself when he lost her. It was only for me that he kept going and stayed strong. How would he cope with me leaving as well?
The pain opened me up, letting loose an ache that had nothing to do with the needle stabbing ink into my flesh. I felt like a little girl again, losing my mother for the first time. It wasn’t fair. I needed Mom. I needed her to have held me as a teenager when I suffered the same disease she did. I needed her now to tell me things would be all right. Even if they wouldn’t. Even if we both knew I was dying, I needed to hear words of comfort from my mother.
It’s okay. I know it hurts.
I could almost hear her voice.
It’s almost over. You’ll be all right.
It wasn’t Mom. It was the tattoo artist. Her voice intruded into my clouded head.
“Aaaaand we’re all done,” Birdie announced.
My eyes popped open. I wasn’t sure if I’d fainted or simply cried myself to sleep right there on the tattoo table. Time had passed, but Julie remained by my side, her hand still in mine. The gun stopped its whirring and the stinging pain no longer seemed as intense there on my back.
Some liquid was daubed gently over
the area, and I held my breath for a few seconds as it sent fresh threads of fiery pain through me.
“It looks amazing,” Julie said.
Birdie held up a mirror, and I looked over my shoulder to see. It did look great, swirling across the curve of my middle back and up toward my shoulder blades— red, bold, and defiant.
It was an artwork born of anger and strength. Bold lines created the silhouette of a woman, clutching a red heart to her chest as she was engulfed in flames that flew around her like wings. It was the first time I had drawn something just for me, just from my own inspiration, for a long time. It spoke to me. It said, “Hang onto whatever life you have got left. Burn bright as you burn out.” This artwork was part of me, had to become part of me. And now it was, forever.
The woman swaddled me in plastic wrap. After dressing and being handed a sheet of care instructions, it was all done.
Julie took my keys and helped me into the car. I didn’t ask her to drive, and she didn’t offer—she just did it. She didn’t ask me any questions, or say a word about how I’d cried and cried on that table.
I stared out the window all the way home, blinking up at the darkening sky with my fresh tattoo and my head stuffed full of things I didn’t want to think about.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Georgina
It was over a week without any contact from Blake. My back had been itching like crazy. The yearning to scratch it raw was almost as strong as the yearning to see Blake again, despite what had to be done when I did see him. The weather had become muggy and oppressive, heavy around my body and heart. Even as much as I hated the cold, I started to crave it. Cool showers got me by, but I longed to be immersed in cold water, to float away in it as it chilled me to the bone. Throwing all caution and my tattoo aftercare instructions to the wind, I’d put my swimmers on and headed out.
I caught the bus in to town. My head felt too clogged up and messy to drive. The air in the bus hung thick with the haze of sweaty humans, but to me, it smelled of life. I pressed my head to the window and watched the world go by, trying to glimpse into every house we passed, every balcony of every apartment block, every tucked away playground. I was playing voyeur to life, snatching up moments of other people’s lives with my greedy eyes, but unable to live my own.
