Coherent

by Livia Jamerlan

  My head pounded.

  The stench of liquor and pussy surrounded the hotel suite. I peeled my eyes open. Parched, I moved my head, looking for water or something to relieve my thirst. Mindy, Star, Candy—whatever her name—was laying naked across the bed, her platinum blonde hair bunched together like a bee hive over her head. I kicked off the bed and stumbled to my bathroom.

  Taylor and the other guys were somewhere else in the suite, but I didn’t care to go find them. I let the cold water run in the sink before I shoved my head under to alleviate some of my pounding headache. My stomach turned with the remains of last night’s liquor. Lifting the toilet seat, I emptied the remaining liquor from my stomach. I stood, my eyes rolling to the back of my head before I looked at myself in the mirror.

  All of my attempts to forget her had backfired. Instead of forgetting, I only regretted all I had done. All of it, every single second that I had let the alcohol control me. I shouldn’t have left her there on her own. She was scared and weak, and when she needed me the most I’d left. Though she had asked me to leave, I should have stayed by her, helped her. Fought harder for her. I looked at the coward in the mirror, disgusted at the man.

  I squinted from the sunlight when I stumbled back in the bedroom. I made my way over to the limp body on the bed and tapped her lightly on the leg.

  “Get up.” I tapped her again. When she didn’t budge, I shook her. “Get. Up.” My head pounded harder with each second that passed.

  “Hmm,” she moaned. “Come back to bed, Haas baby.”

  I yanked the covers off her body. “You need to get the fuck up now and leave.”

  “Ugh!”

  Sliding off the bed, she collected her belongings from the floor, then slammed the door behind her. I threw an empty beer bottle towards the door, shattering it into tiny pieces when it collided with the wall. I lay back on the bed, my forearm covering my eyes, letting regret take over.

  How was Braelynn ever going to forgive me for this?

  Braelynn

  One month later

  Sweat coated my skin. Peering through one open eye, I looked around the strange room.

  Where was I?

  I tried to wrap my brain around the past few hours.

  Nothing.

  The last I remembered, I had been sitting at a bar in Manhattan. I had wandered over the Brooklyn Bridge, letting the effects of the Oxy take control. It was Saturday.

  Maybe.

  It was my first day off in a month. But I couldn’t be sure. No, it was Saturday. My first day off.

  My job was a breeze, something I was enjoying. But then again, nothing seemed to bother me these days. With my pills stocked there was never a bad day, just bad nights. Most customers were regulars and avoided my line because I didn’t speak any other language besides English. I also believed they liked their usual cashiers since they would spend a few extra minutes catching up. It worked for me since I was able to work under the influence of my medication. I punched in and punched out. Home was right upstairs. The studio apartment was enough for me. I had a cot pushed against the corner. I didn’t need anything else.

  I had woken up Saturday morning feeling lonely and depressed that it had been over thirty something days and I still couldn’t remember a thing from that week. Anything that would help me remember—but I had nothing.

  The images that flashed through my head at night changed on a daily basis. It was what kept me away from my friends and family. I never knew what was real or a nightmare so I drowned myself in more pills. With no work for the next three days due to the Fourth of July weekend, I needed to escape my mind. I’d popped two pills in my mouth and began to roam the streets, finding a bar when my feet began to hurt. The pills went down easy, like tossing a Tic–Tac in my mouth.

  After the bar, everything else was a blur. Including how I had ended up in a dingy motel room. Pushing off the bed, I noticed a torn condom wrapper on the floor. A standard hotel telephone sat on top of the nightstand. I guess this was becoming a ritual for me. Meander the streets of New York City hoping to jar a memory from that awful week, and after hours of self-loathing for whom I had become, I’d find the closest bar. But numbing myself with only alcohol and painkillers wasn’t enough anymore; I needed the empty feeling of sex.

  The bathroom door swung open, bringing me back from my thoughts. Running his fingers through his damp hair, a cocky grin split his face as his eyebrow rose. “Did you have a enjoyable nap?” he asked. A towel was wrapped low on his waist, but instead of looking at the V that always caught my attention, I was focused on the falcon tattoo he had on the side of his body. It started at his hip with its wings spread wide to his chest. A metallic ring hung from his nipple as the eye of the bird.

  I yawned, stretching my arms above my head, letting the covers drop and exposing my breasts. “Did it hurt?” I finally managed to ask.

  His hand found his chest, flicking his nipple. “Which one?” he asked. “The tattoo or the piercings?” He stuck his tongue out at me.

  Memories of us at the bar flashed in my mind. It was what attracted me to him. I’d become mesmerized, staring at the barbell in his tongue. Though I was so high when we fucked, I couldn’t remember now how it felt.

  “Both I guess.”

  “The piercing brings out more sensation, and when I go down on a girl, she never complains. You seemed to enjoy it.” He chuckled and walked over to the bed. “The tattoo…” He shrugged his shoulders. “It becomes an addiction after a while. The pain is numbing. It drowns you out while you’re lying on the table. Why, you thinking about getting one?” He reached over and flicked my nipple.

  “I’ve never thought about it before,” I lied. The truth was I had always been intrigued by tattoos, especially those that seemed like a work of art. Not a tramp stamp or characters, I wanted something with a meaning behind it, but I had always been too chicken shit. Plus, given the career path I had chosen, covering my body with ink wouldn’t look appropriate in court.

  “Well, I’d suggest piercing one of these pretty things.” He brought his lips to my nipple, licking until it was erect. “Apparently the feeling is amazing for a girl. Or if you want to feel a powerful orgasm, pierce your clit.”

  He chuckled and rose from the bed. “But if I’m honest, Lynn, you don’t need anything fucking pierced. Sex like you I’ve never had. Drunk off cheap whiskey, high on Oxy. Shit, the way your eyes roll to the back of your head and your body hugs my cock, you don’t need anything else.” The towel wrapped around his waist showed his semi hard cock growing. Dropping it to the floor, he began to stroke it. “Shit, thinking about your pussy makes me hard.” He leaned over to kiss me, and my hand pressed to his chest, stopping him.

  “Where did you get yours done?” I asked. I wanted the numbing pain, and with a three day weekend filled with time to cloud my thoughts, no amount of pills would help me without putting me in a hospital bed, or worse, dead.

  “My brother has a shop in SoHo. I can take you sometime if you want.”

  “Is it open now?”

  “It’s a twenty–four hour place, so yeah.” He hesitated, dropping the towel and grabbing his boxers from the floor. “You sure you want one? A tattoo is a permanent thing.”

  “Yep.” I tossed the covers to the other side of the bed. I kicked my legs over and began putting on my clothes. “I want one. Now.”

  By the time we arrived at the tattoo shop in SoHo, I had bitten most of my nails off. Both fear and excitement flowed through my body. I held my purse close to me, guarding my pills. Vinnie walked up to the front desk, shaking the guy’s hand. I assumed it was his brother. They seemed to look familiar. But I was too excited to care.

  I was going to do this.

  The walls were covered with artwork, pictures of tattoos and piercings. Out of all the different tattoos I skimmed through, nothing jumped out at me. It wasn’t until I looked over at the back wall that a picture caught my eye. A girl held her shorts low and her shirt high, flashing
her tree tattoo that covered her upper thigh to her rib cage for the camera. An idea instantly popped in my head. I needed for my tattoo to look like artwork but artwork that had to have a meaning behind it.

  “Lynn? You still with us?”

  “Yeah,” I responded taking one last look at the tattoo. “Just picking out what I want.”

  I walked over to Vinnie and the tattoo artist that sat behind the glass desk. Piercings and tattoos covered his fragile thin body. His blue Mohawk was spiked high.

  “What do you have in mind?”

  “I want a tree down my spine. The roots long, gripping the sides of my hips.” It was a sign of change and rebirth. The roots would be tattooed on my hips as the tree grew and blossomed up my spine. Light after the darkness. “I want the bark to look like it has been damaged and broken.” Andrew, the tattoo artist, pulled out pieces of paper as he began to sketch out what I wanted. His first sketch was a smaller tree, one he assumed I wanted on the lower part of my back.

  “Are you sure you want your first tattoo to be from your tailbone up into your neck?” Vinnie asked after I explained to Andrew how big I wanted it to be.

  “Yes.” I didn’t look at him. My eyes were focused on Andrew’s hand as he continued to draw.

  “This is going to take a few days to do,” Andrew said, not looking up at me as his hand worked its magic and began forming my work of art.

  “I have the next few days off. We can do it then.”

  Shrugging his shoulder, Andrew continued to draw the branches of the tree that would spread across my shoulder blades.

  “You know this is going to take a few hours each day, right?” he asked, transferring his finished design to the printer so a stencil could be produced.

  “I know,” I looked back at the door. “Are you guys open twenty–four hours or is that a bullshit sign?” I asked, my head cocked to the neon sign that flashed Open 24 Hours.

  “No, I’m here all night.”

  “Well, then I got all the time you need.”

  Andrew smiled and took the stencil from the printer. He sauntered around the table and headed back to his workstation. “You ready?”

  “Yeah, give me five so I can use the bathroom,” I replied, looking around for the bathroom and Vinnie.

  Vinnie sat on the couch flipping through a Maxim magazine. “Hey,” I said as I approached him. He looked up at me and smiled. “Andrew is about to start. You don’t have to wait for me.”

  “Now! You’re doing it right now? It’s almost midnight.” He looked at his watch.

  “Like I said, you don’t have to wait for me.” I didn’t wait for him to respond. I strolled to the bathroom, popping two more pills in my mouth. I swallowed back the tap water and looked at myself in the cracked mirror. The sheer thought of mindless numbing hours brought a smile to my face.

  Peyton

  One month later

  I had returned from Phill’s bachelor party hung over and filled with regret. No, regret wasn’t strong enough—shame, that’s what I felt. A month had passed since Braelynn had left and I still hadn’t heard from her, so I took my frustrations out with two things: the gym and work. I had taken on more cases than I had ever done before, but I’d also created a file specifically for Braelynn. I requested the paperwork from Officer Walsh, along with my own paper trail of what I knew, and I hired a personal investigator. I didn’t want to snoop in her life, but I needed to assure myself that she was doing all right. When the PI returned with nothing, not even an address, I drowned myself in more work.

  I was studying the case file I had made for her when I heard a familiar female voice. “You look like crap,” Kennedy said, stepping into my office. She pulled the chair out from in front of my desk and sat back. She glanced around my office before she looked at me and smiled.

  “Thanks,” I replied. “What are you doing here?” Not that I minded, but for the past month anytime I called asking how Braelynn was, I got the same answer. “I haven’t heard from her.”

  “I heard through the grapevine that you weren’t your usual self.”

  I closed the file and sat back. “Caleb isn’t the grapevine and I’m working more, Kennedy.” I shrugged my shoulders. “Have you heard from her?” I asked once a few seconds had passed.

  Her smile faded and she shook her head. “No. She only calls Loren, and even so it’s random, twice a week at most. Most of the time she leaves a voicemail, but when Loren does talk to her, it’s one sided.” From Kennedy’s expression she was as distraught as I was with Braelynn’s disappearance, her eyes glassed over and her smile instantly dropped.

  “And Gus?”

  “He hears from her once in a blue. It’s always a text. He’s as sad as you are.” She gave me a half-smile, obviously referring to my unshaven face and dark circles under my eyes. “I think he has walked all of Manhattan looking for her.”

  I hadn’t roamed all of Manhattan, but I had searched the whole island for her. And I knew it was my fault she was gone. “I fucked up,” I finally admitted. Kennedy’s eyes softened, waiting for me to go on. “I should have stuck by her. I should have ignored what Officer Walsh said, ignored the doctor. I should have been happy she was alive. This is entirely my fault.”

  Needing to protect her was what made me search high and low for her. What fueled me to keep going until I found something that proved it wasn’t Braelynn in these photos. It couldn’t have been her. The woman I fell in love with wouldn’t be this person. “Through our entire … relationship if that’s what you want to call it, Braelynn was tough. She never needed me, and she always stood on her own two feet, facing the world head on. And in her moment of weakness, when she needed me the most, I wasn’t there for her. This is all my fault.”

  “No, it’s not—”

  “I doubted her—”

  “No, you didn’t. If you did, you wouldn’t have been at the hospital even after she kicked you out. And you wouldn’t be sitting here going over her case like a detective.” I pushed the brief to the side and studied her. Her amused smirk appeared. “We didn’t know what to expect, Peyton. All that information Dr. Pearson dumped came crashing down on us. First her lab results, followed by Officer Walsh and his news. Of course, we were all shocked. We were processing it.”

  “But still, I should have–”

  “Stop beating yourself up, Peyton. This isn’t your fault. You’re only human. We have to hope that she’ll eventually come to her senses.” It was an order, not a request.

  Once Kennedy left, I thought about what she had said. It was a lot of information that they had dumped on all of us. All at once Braelynn’s world was ripped from underneath her and she had no clue what to do. My mind bounced back and forth blaming me, blaming her for running. But I couldn’t deny that if I were in her predicament, if I’d had my life turned upside up, I would have done the same thing.

  Braelynn

  Three months later

  Gus: Don’t forget brunch today.

  It was the third text message Gus had sent me in the past forty–eight hours. I hadn’t seen him in months. Three, to be exact. I needed to distance myself from them—Gus and Kennedy. I was ruined; there was no other way to put it. Surrounding myself with them would only be a constant reminder of what had happened. When I’d left Kennedy’s apartment, I didn’t look back. I had avoided that side of Manhattan Island, leaving who I was there. I wasn’t going back.

  Until today.

  I turned the water faucet off and wiped my face with the rough yellowed towel. The reflection in the mirror was a stranger. I didn’t recognize myself. My blonde hair was now a dark chestnut brown, the dark circles under my eyes had become a permanent mark on my face, and my cheekbones were more defined.

  The medicine bottle sat on top of the sink, my attention averted by it. As part of my daily routine, I popped open the lid and took out a white capsule. The cold water ran from the faucet again. Popping the pill in my mouth, I lowered my face to drink the water.

  I
closed my eyes, anticipating the effects the opiates were going to have on my body. Taking one during the day helped me function at work and two at night kept me numb so I could enjoy the high enough to sleep three hours or so.

  I wrapped my hands around my hair and tossed it up into a bun. I grabbed black eyeliner from my makeup bag, smearing it under my eyes. This was as presentable as I was going to be.

  I grabbed my purse off the table and locked the door behind me. The hot humidity of the mid-September air made it impossible to walk, but the subway would be hotter, crowded, and with the stench of garbage. This had been the hottest summer in recorded history, and I was looking forward to the autumn months. Left with no choice, I pulled a cigarette from my purse and lit it up as I walked.

  Gus sat next to the window of the small bistro he’d suggested. When he spotted me approaching, he waved vigorously at me to come in. I took a deep breath before I pulled the main door. The brisk air hit me at once, cooling the sheen of sweat covering my skin.

  “Baby girl, you dyed your hair!” he shouted, walking towards me with his hands out.

  A fake grin masked my face. “Hi, Gus.”

  His arms wrapped around my waist, hugging me tightly. “I’ve missed you, Braelynn.” His nose moved to my hair, inhaling the smoke. “Are you smoking?”

  His hands dropped to his sides as he waited for me to respond. I looked up at him and shrugged my shoulder before I nodded. “It’s too soon and I’m not in the mood for a lecture.”

  “Fine. I’ll drop it for now because I’ve missed you so much. Come. Let’s sit, we need to catch up.” He dragged me by my hands to our table. There was nothing to catch up on, nothing I wanted to know about his life. It would all feel like a slap to my face.

  The waiter appeared, handing me a menu and setting Gus’s Bloody Mary on the table.