Stop it, stop it. Rhea squeezed her eyes shut. This isn’t what I moved to Aurora for.
I came here to find myself and I got wrapped up emotionally with Adam even after I promised myself I wouldn’t. I got invested in and then conned by Brianna. And with all my dates, I never really gave any of them a chance. My fault, my fault, my fault. All my fucking fault.
Okay. Damage control: I can fix this.
I’ll start by renewing my lease here. Actually try dating for real if this thing with Adam isn’t gonna go anywhere, which apparently it isn’t. Nice of him to finally admit it. I never took him for the type to string a girl along but, well, here I am.
The lack of friends thing, however, she had no clue how to fix. Shame there’s no Tinder for friends.
Maybe I’ll create a friendship app. I’ll call it the Frapp. And consequently get my dumb fat ass sued off by Starbucks.
Any other time, Rhea might have cracked a smile at her self-deprecating humor. Instead, she stood. Time for booze.
Drink and Be Merry was walking distance from Rhea’s apartment—a decided perk to city living. She went there on the odd Saturday if for no other reason than to get adequately soused; their bartender mixed a mean cocktail.
Of ten stools at the bar proper, only two were unoccupied and she took the one furthest from everyone else. She wasn’t there to be hit on, to make friends or even to drown her sorrows; she just didn’t want to feel so much anymore.
Bartender Barry—which, she assumed, was not his given name—worked his way down to her.
“You okay?” he asked. “You look depressed.”
Bitch, you don’t even know my depressed face. “I’m fine. Can I get a Rum ‘n’ Cola?”
“Sure.” Bartender Barry backed away to mix her drink and Rhea sighed.
Yeah, step away from the loser. Better I push people away than to let them in so they can hurt me.
The bartender set her drink down. Rhea nodded an acknowledgment, turning her gaze into the dark amber liquid.
It was a while before Rhea had strength enough to lift the drink to her lips; she sipped it steadily.
Someone sat on the stool beside hers. “Hi.”
Rhea’s impulse was to snap leave me alone. Or what the hell do you want? She spared a quick glance at the dark-skinned, raven-haired woman. “Hey.” Now leave me alone.
“You look like you could use a friend.”
“Friends suck.” Holy shit. I actually said that out loud.
“Yeah, you could definitely use a friend.” She held out a lithe hand angled downward, her fingers dressed in a variety of turquoise and silver rings. One had an owl incorporated into the design, its eyes made of dark faceted crystals. Another ring was a serpent snaking several times around her middle digit. “I’m Coraline.”
She supplied a name. Guess this one’s not gonna leave me alone. Damn. It. So I have sex with one girl and now I’m appearing on other people’s gaydar? Suddenly I have that so-called quality? Rhea looked her over.
Well at least this one was an improvement on the last person who hit on her here: the used car salesman with the lame secret agent story and a sorry excuse for a toupee. At least Rhea had moved on to a higher class of weirdo.
Coraline was a stunner in an eccentric mix of Asian and Native American motifs. Her cheekbones were to die for, beautiful chocolate crème eyes surrounded by thick plum eyeliner and a liberal application of golden yellow eyeshadow.
“You don’t want to mess with me,” muttered Rhea. “I’m nothing but trouble.”
“My favorite people always were troublemakers.” Coraline replied, her thick mauve-tinted lips lifting into a broad smile. “What’s your name, beautiful?”
She sighed. “Rhea.”
“That’s pretty.”
“Thanks.”
“C’mon now. Tell me what’s going on.”
I attract such freaks. “You really want to know?”
“I wouldn’t have pried, otherwise.”
“Okay. Fine.” Rhea finished her drink. “I was in a sorta long-distance relationship with this guy but apparently I was more invested in it than he was. We both agreed to sleep with other people, right? He did and it absolutely killed me inside but I didn’t flip out about it because that was our agreement. I sleep with another guy and he loses his fucking mind about it. And of course the guy I slept with was someone the closest thing I had to a best friend here actually had feelings for so she lost her shit over it. So . . .”
She itemized her complaints, ticking them off with her fingers. “I have no boyfriend, I lost my best-friend, and the sex I had to even get to this point? So not worth it.” She exhaled.
If she’d slept with only Brianna, maybe she wouldn’t have felt that way. If she’d not climaxed—and squirted—with Huvie maybe she would have felt less betrayed by her body. The whole thing sucked, start to finish, and I still came the way a good, obedient little slut should. God I hate myself.
“When I met Adam, I’d just gotten divorced. I didn’t want anything at all from him but we hit it off and, oh, it was impossible not to fall in love with him.”
“Mm-hmm.” Coraline nodded, taking a dainty sip of her drink after Bartender Barry dropped it off, airborne pinkie and all.
“And the thing with Brianna was my own dumbassery.”
“Oh?”
“All I’m saying is maybe there was a damn good reason I wasn’t her friend in high school. All those times she had opportunities to include me in her group? Or to at least be cordial in passing . . . would it have killed her?” Rhea kicked the wall of the bar. “I’m such an idiot! ‘Let’s be besties, Rhea!’” She muttered, “Like people actually change?”
“I think you’re being too hard on yourself.”
“I blindly took her side when Travis left her. Maybe he dodged a bullet. I was gonna move in with her. Maybe I dodged a bullet, too.” She shook her head. “I’m an awful friend, an awful person, and God knows I deserve to be alone.”
“I think you’re a sweet, trusting person who’s been hurt.”
“Hate to break it to you, sister, but you’re an awful judge of character.”
“No,” Coraline replied, shaking her head slowly. “I’m not.”
Rhea rolled her eyes, calling for Barry. “Can I get a refill here?”
He nodded, waving at her. “Yeah, just a sec.”
“Everything will be okay,” said Coraline.
Rhea looked at her with impressive deadpan. “How the hell do you figure?”
“You’ve been touched by love.”
Rhea didn’t think it was possible to roll her eyes hard enough. She put on a fake smile instead, hoping to end this nonsensical conversation.
“I can see it in your eyes, you know. Even when you roll them like that. Trust me, I know these things.”
“What are you, some kind of sexologist?”
Coraline giggled. “Something along those lines, yes. Why don’t you go on home, get some rest? You’ll see, tomorrow is a whole new day.”
“I’ll go after I finish this drink.”
“Have you got a ride? I can take you—”
“I walked,” Rhea blurted. “I’ll be fine.”
It turned out Rhea didn’t consume enough alcohol to sufficiently numb her feelings by the time she returned to her apartment. She did however feel beaten down enough to compensate for the lack of drunkenness. She dropped her purse by her front door and dragged herself to bed. Instead of snuggling underneath the covers, she fell to her knees, pressing her forehead into the side of her mattress.
She sorted through her jumbled thoughts, searching for the appropriate prayer. Her parents only ever taught her one, and thanking God for food wasn’t going to fix anything here.
Rhea opened her mouth, two tiny words slipping out as she dissolved into tears: “Help me.”
Chapter 3: The Morning After
he next morning, Rhea woke on the floor like someone recovering from a good drunkenness, not as t
hough she’d experienced anything close to being good and drunk last night. She’d scarcely qualified for good and buzzed. Unfortunately, nobody in her liquor-tolerance department notified her head she had been well within her limits. Her temples throbbed uncontrollably, giving her pathetic excuse for a hangover at least a few symptoms of the genuine article.
She’d never made it into her bed; only decent people deserved to sleep on a mattress. Rhea, on the other hand, deserved this damn near debilitating cramp at the base of her neck from having slept crumpled on the floor like dirty laundry.
Her shift started in an hour and a half which afforded a dose of ibuprofen plenty of time to kick in; she swallowed two blue gel caps before sitting at her kitchen table and cracking open her laptop. It was a surprise when the screen came on; she was certain she’d broken it after Skyping with Adam last night.
While Windows 8 loaded, Rhea checked her phone for messages.
No missed calls.
No texts.
No alerts from Messenger.
No one asking about her on Facebook.
In this case, unsurprisingly, ‘no one’ included Brianna. Which is good. And, unfortunately, ‘no one’ also included Adam. Which is bad and scary.
There were no comments on her blog, of course, though lack of replies was nothing out of the ordinary. To be fair, she hadn’t updated in weeks.
For the most fleeting of moments, Rhea was inclined to update now but her post would be so venomous—primarily toward herself—and so full of bile it might dissolve her keyboard as she typed it. She opted to revisit her blog at another time when she wouldn’t be reading her screen through tears.
Rhea put her hand on the top of her laptop screen to close it but stopped. She Googled what she felt she needed most at the moment, hoping maybe some undeserved compassion from a higher power would do her heart some good. On a page filled with prayers, one stood out as being especially pertinent:
When I feel tainted, God, remind me that I am holy
When I feel weak, teach me that I am strong.
When I am shattered, assure me that I can heal.
When I am weary, renew my spirit.
When I am lost, show me that You are near.
Amen.
Rhea stopped reading when her vision blurred with sadness.
She rubbed her burning eyes and caught sight of her tattoo.
Smile.
It did nothing but conjure memories of a physically painful one-night-stand, and the girl who’d pressured her into getting the ink in the first place.
Smile.
It was the reminder to smile she detested needing. And in Adam’s cursive no less.
Smile.
She wanted to take a knife and see how much of the damned smile she could cut from her flesh.
And if she took too much, it would be Aftermath’s problem. Did crime scene clean-up companies handle that sort of stuff?
Stop it, Rhea. Stop!
She closed the laptop and vacillated over going to work, getting dressed and then deciding to call in. On the second ring, Rhea canceled it; she couldn’t remember the last time she took a sick day but despite the nausea, she didn’t think being in the absolute depths of despair was a good enough excuse for missing work.
Probably the patients won’t care if I cry through their appointments. Doubt they’ll even notice. She took a cleansing breath. I’ll be fine.
Rhea made it in to work without incident and even managed to massage two people before catching the chiropractor between patients. “Dr. Kasick?”
His face firmly enshrouded by a patient’s file, he said, “Rhea, good morning.”
What’s so good about it? She sniffled.
He glanced at her. “Oh. Is everything okay?”
Her breath came with a shudder, her voice high and tight. “No. I think—I think I need to go home.”
“Okay . . .” He said hesitantly with a frown. “Can you get there safely?”
Rhea nodded. “I’m just . . . I’m not in a real good place right now. And um, can I take a few mental health days?”
Dr. Kasick sighed, setting down the patient file on his desk. “You know the rules here, you’re still in your probationary period.”
“I do, I know, but I really don’t think I can stay . . .”
“It’ll have to be unpaid.”
She nodded again. “Yes, Doctor, I understand.”
“And we’ll really struggle without you. You know how important you are to us here. We’re overwhelmed lately as is, you’ll be putting us in a bind.”
Bullshit, anyone with a set of hands can replace me. Rhea tilted her head to the ceiling, tears stinging her eyes. “I know—And really, I’m so sorry, I’d never ordinarily do something like this but—”
“You can have the time off, Rhea, of course. I understand.”
“Oh God, thank you, Dr. Kasick.”
“But.”
Rhea groaned inwardly.
“I insist you get a massage before you leave.”
She glanced at him with a frown; that wasn’t at all what she expected. “Oh. Okay.”
Naturally, it was Clarence to have an opening when Rhea needed it. He was a nice enough guy; Rhea had nothing against him, except he had a penis—she could assume—and anything equipped with one of those was troublesome. Tom cats. Male polar bears. Bull elephants going through musth . . .
As she disrobed and got under the sheet on the massage table, Rhea recalled something random from her teenage years she hadn’t thought of for nearly a decade. It was a key chain she’d purchased that—as memory served—humiliated her mother for whatever reason. A simple, rectangular plastic fob with a saying typed in a bold, no-nonsense font: If it has tires or testicles, it’s bound to give you grief.
At the time, she was naïve to its candor.
“You ready, Rhea?” Clarence asked from outside the room.
“Yeah.” She sniffled; her nose burned. “Come in.”
He stepped inside the room and paused to turn the lights down. “So.” He closed the door. “What do you need?”
Something kind and gentle. “Pulverize me.”
“What? Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.”
He asked, “Do you want to talk about it?”
“No. Thanks,” she replied around the lump in her throat. Her voice shaking perilously, she clarified: “Please, just the massage. And quiet time.”
“Oh. Um. Okay.” He must have been confused; any time he’d given her a massage in the past, she’d been more than happy to talk his ear off. Clarence adjusted the iPod dock, the strains of New Age relaxation music filling the air. After taking a moment to warm some oil between his hands, he began his deep tissue massage at Rhea’s feet.
Some forty-five minutes later, he worked down Rhea’s left arm and couldn’t resist a remark: “Awesome new ink.”
Rhea, who’d been lost in the most self-deprecating thoughts, began to weep.
“Hey, uh . . . I know it’s not my place or nothin’, but I’ve got the name of a pretty amazing man you can talk to. He takes our insurance, helped me through some pretty rough times. You know, Dashonda and my brothers, and all?”
She pulled her arm from his slick hands. “I’ll be fine,” Rhea insisted; after all, her problems paled in comparison to his wife sleeping with his brother. Or two of them. And strictly speaking, one of the two was superfluous as his younger brothers were identical twins and probably did things pretty much the same way in the sack. “Thanks for your concern.” And anyway, she had a doctor she liked. In California. Aw damn.
Clarence finished Rhea’s massage, leaving her to dress and flee the office without further comment.
Rhea drove herself home through a torrent of tears. They ebbed as she shut the door to the outside world and all its ills.
Tears replaced by a welcome numbness, Rhea slithered into her flannel pajamas, curled up on her futon wrapped in her favorite chenille blanket and did what she always did at
her absolute lowest points: she read a Debbie Macomber book. The most recent one she’d purchased was The Shop on Blossom Street.
It was a fast read that was easy to get lost in and what she needed most to forget her troubles. The double-edged sword of books like those, however, was that they were quick reads for an already speedy reader; she finished this one by dinnertime.
She settled at her table with a bowl of Chex and reflected on the tale.
There was something simultaneously uplifting and aggravating about those types of stories. The neat, almost too easy resolution with ultra-happy endings for the characters who were, a few chapters prior, at absolute rock-bottom. Great for them. As a reader, it was what Rhea wanted. But as a human being at rock-bottom herself, it made her even more miserable; where was her ultra-happy ending?
Oh that’s right.
I don’t deserve one.
She choked down her cereal and as she went to clean the bowl and spoon she muttered, “God is good, God is great. I thank Him for the food I ate.”
Not the sincerest Birkat Hamazon Rhea’d ever done, nor the proper Hebrew one by a longshot, but in her defense she’d fallen out of practice saying Grace after meals as a child; she supposed a grumpy English blessing was better than none at all. She also supposed her parents might disagree with her. Maybe God disagreed with her, too.
Probably God disagreed with her marrying the first man to show interest in her when she was barely old enough to sign the marriage contract, later divorcing him; sleeping with a stranger on an eastbound train repeatedly, having sex with said stranger in her hotel room, again repeatedly; sleeping with another man she barely knew just for the sake of having done it; sleeping with a girl less than a few hours later.
Probably all the masturbation and exhibitionist kinks were at least marginally disagreeable too.
What did Rhea know of it? She wasn’t God. And if she were God, she wasn’t a good one. Rhea the Failgod.
The exhibitionist kinks did make her wonder if she chose a life of massage therapy as an excuse to continually put her hands on strangers’ bodies?
She didn’t choose massage therapy to help people. She needed the skin-to-skin contact and it was better when it was people she didn’t know. It always had been.
Smiles By Trials (Rays of Sunshine Book 2) Page 9
