Girl In Pieces (3 page)

I didn’t move.

“I can’t say I’m not jealous as hell.” She sighed and arched between my legs. “But you didn’t answer my question. Why not keep her? I think I know the answer. I can tell that’s not the path you want to go down. You and I both know that long term relationships don’t work out for us. You’d break her heart if you tried. Or worse. Maybe you’d break her completely. That’s what you’re worried about and you’re smart to worry. She’s a tourist and the charm will wear off the first time she gets jealous at a party. She’ll hate you once she gets tired of being expected to obey you.”

Her hands slid up my thighs and settled precariously between them. I didn’t stop her, but I didn’t make room for her either.

“You can’t hurt me, though, Josh. Sir. I can help you. I can erase her. You can have me.”

It’s better this way.

That’s what you tell yourself when you know you’ve made the wrong choice but there’s no going back.

One.

Two.

Three.

Weeks.

After my father died, I thought I would never stop crying. I thought - this is what it feels like when your heart breaks and it’ll never ever heal. That’s what happens when you lose something important and irreplaceable.

And you cry into your pillow and you take extra-long showers and people bring you 10,000 calorie casseroles you eat out of cereal bowls because you haven’t done dishes in two weeks. You watch a lot of Katherine Heigl movies and eat a lot of ice cream.

But eventually you get tired of casseroles and ice cream. Eventually your landlord wants rent and people stop calling to ask how you’re holding up. Eventually you’ve got to go back to your life because your heart didn’t break enough to actually kill you and you need to shower and go to the grocery store because you’re starting to smell a little funky and you’re almost out of toilet paper.

Three weeks. That was how long anyone ever gets to feel sorry for themselves before being expected to move on.

I didn’t hear from him for three weeks.

So I moved on.

Because I didn’t know what else I was supposed to do. And Katherine Heigl always got the guy in the end and I kind of hated her stupid guts.

Beneath bands of bracelets, two rings of pale circular bruises colored Julie’s wrists. I watched her pace across her living room with her phone glued to her ear, and every time she flicked her hands I saw them. I didn’t know what had made them. Not hands, they were too clean edged and parallel. Handcuffs, maybe, or fabric. Not rope. Something with a tight weave. Stiff. Each line was smooth with long, faded coloring.

While Julie argued with her mother, I followed her bruises and felt longing sink into my chest. Her nights had become an endless carousel of experiences with a guy named Tyler, the Dom who’d co-hosted the party with our friend Kelli where my life had gone sideways. He’d become smitten by her long, thin arms and overlarge smile and bursting personality. I watched them together on the rare occasion I went out with them and the way he looked at her was enviable. Sitting next to her wasn’t enough. He had to graze her hand, her hair, her elbow. Whenever they didn’t have an excuse to touch, he found one. I couldn’t not be happy for her, but watching them felt a little bit like torture.

Julie made a strangled noise, ended the call, and tossed herself down onto the couch beside me, arms and legs slumped out in resignation.

“My mother is ridiculous.
Ridiculous
. She met Tyler last night and she gave him her
number
. Who does that? She said he’s too experienced for me and that I should be dating young, silly men my own age. She told me I was embarrassing myself.” Julie scowled. “Washed up botoxed freak. If one more person points out or age difference, which is only six years I might add, I’m going to explode. Like, all over. Blood and guts and grey brain bits. The works.”

“You’re disturbed.” I wrapped my arms around her shoulders and collected her in a hug. “What did Tyler do with the number?”

“He gave it to the waiter. Asked him to deep fry it and leave it out back for the cats.”

“Shut the front door. He didn’t actually say that.”

“Swear to God.” She sighed and slumped lower. “He’s too perfect. I expect to discover he’s got his crazy wife locked in the attic any day now.”

“Well, that sounds reasonable.”

“Not that I would mind of course. As long as she doesn’t set the house on fire, it’s not a deal breaker.” I laughed and she patted my arms. “Want something to drink? We could get smashed, order pizza, and watch a Jane Austen movie where the heroines always win, even when they don’t deserve to.”

“As much as I would love that, I actually have to go to work in the morning.” I cringed away from her. “At my new job.”

“What!” Julie sat up and spun around to face me. “Like, a for real job? With hours and taxes and shit? When did that happen? And why didn’t you tell me? You’re not bearing cleavage and letting drunken men smack your ass for tips, are you? Because I could get you a job in the lab doing some humiliating physical labor you’d hate, but you’d get to do it fully clothed. You could have just asked.”

“As far as I know, casual dress, no cleavage required. Although, ironically, I am editing sections of the Midtown Edge and organizing the personals, so there might be some spanking requests in there.” I shrugged and pulled at a loose thread at the knee of my jeans where I’d allowed a hole to form. I tried not to look too embarrassed, though giving in and getting a normal job had felt a lot like failure.

A week after the horrible Halloween party, my landlord showed up with a notice. Pay all back rent or I had 30 days to get out. My clients were drying up and several hadn’t yet paid me for the work I’d already done. I’d finished the South River website but had no intention of charging Josh for it. It became painfully apparent when I hadn’t eaten in two days that something had to give. So I gave.

It was actually painless, applying. No one pointed out that I was selling out my dreams to work at someone else’s desk, making someone else’s dreams come true. Two days after I dropped off the application, they called. The sun didn’t explode. The earth kept spinning. The whole process had been painless and unremarkable. Trade in your dreams here kids. Punch a clock, abide by the dress code, get health insurance and a parking spot.

“I’m barely making rent again this month. I have no food in my fridge. None. Poverty is the best diet I’ve ever been on. And I’ve been dodging Brian’s phone calls about how much I owe him. I can’t deal with the bar and so by default I can’t deal with him. I’ve got to figure out a way to get on top of my bills if I want him to stay on his side of the street.”

Three weeks and I hadn’t stepped foot towards the South River Bar. I’d watched it some nights through my curtains, especially on the weekends. I could feel the bass through my walls and I could hear laughter of people saying goodbye or hello on the street. Sometimes, if I was lucky, I could catch little glimpses of him behind the bar when the door opened and someone came or went. He tossed bottles, poured shots, and laughed like he had his whole life ahead of him and thank god he hadn’t let that crazy girl across the street get him tangled up in something serious. It wasn’t fair. In my whole life I couldn’t remember going more than a few days without clamoring through the doors for a piece of the music, my friends, the two most important boys in my life.

Sometimes I even missed my annoying brother.

Josh had taken more than his friendship with him when he replaced me. That loss yawned wide and aching inside me and I had nothing to fill it but time and obsessive overthinking.

“I was considering,” I said quietly. “Maybe this is a good time to downsize to a place across town.”

 
Julie sobered, watched me picking at my jeans, and then nodded a little. “Still no word?”

“Nope. But the gorgeous red head’s car has been back a couple of times.” I hesitated. “I’m trying not to pay attention. I swear. I’m not starting down the crazy stalker girl road. It’s just, it would be a lot easier if I couldn’t see into his bedroom after I get out of the shower, you know? The stalking is completely unintentional. Most of the time.”

“Ugh, that woman.” Julie stood and crossed the room to the little kitchen nook. I watched her bang some cabinet doors before starting a kettle of water on the stove. “I asked Tyler about her finally. I wasn’t sure about the protocol, asking about the others in the community. But he said he’d tell me anything so…”

She turned, two packets of hot chocolate mix between her fingers. “Do you want to know who she is?”

“No.” I sat up, gave my heart five seconds to slam against my rib cage and try to knock itself out. “Yes. No. Yes. Ok, yes.”

“
Mi-chelle
.” She pronounced each syllable as if the redhead was one of the bacteria strains she studied at the hospital. Looking at the tiny blonde, you’d never guess she spent her days bent over microscopes, saying things like -
This Escherichia coli looks just like grape Skittles.
 
“She’s a performer, I guess, at some of the local clubs. She makes corsets and does some leather work, too. She used to be a wedding dress seamstress before catering exclusively to the alternative scenes for their costumes and props. Apparently drag queens adore her work. Tyler made her sound…”

“Perfect?”

“…
driven
. And not even a real red head.” Julie brought two mugs of hot chocolate to the couch and forced one into my hands. “Typical type-A personality. I bet she’s a Leo.”

“She doesn’t sound very, um…” I tried to search for the right word, but my one night hadn’t been enough education to make me not sound like a bumbling domination newb. “Obedient?”

“Right? That’s exactly what I said to Tyler. I asked him why someone like Josh would spend his time with a woman who didn’t sound particularly subbie. He said she was a great performer and very successful at most things she put her mind to. He said she didn’t seem submissive because she wasn’t, strictly speaking. She’s a switch.”

“I have no idea what that means.”

“It’s ok, I swear I feel like I need flash cards sometimes when Tyler and I talk.” She blushed and quickly hid behind her mug. “From what I understand, a switch is someone who goes both ways. They enjoy both topping and bottoming, depending on the partner and scene. She bottoms for Josh. Has for a long time I guess. But Tyler doesn’t think they’ve ever been in a relationship. Just friends.”

She bottoms for him.
 
Those words sounded so intimate and important. She was
his
 
in a way he hadn’t wanted me to be. How could I compete with that? She wasn’t just some flakey girl with pretty hair and a tiny waist. She was talented and driven and established. She was a grown up where I was still more or less a child. I ate popcorn for dinner, gorged on ten hour Doctor Who marathons, and mainlined coffee during all-nighters. She had a convertible and I had a monthly bus pass. What a joke.

I swallowed and leaned back into the cushions, white-knuckling my hot chocolate. “Has…has Tyler talked to Josh since the party?”

“Yes. A little.” Julie hesitated. “He told Tyler to mind his own business and hung up on him.”

“Does Tyler know you’re telling me all this?”

“Of course.” She smiled. “I told him that no bond was stronger than the one between girlfriends and he’d just have to live with that. He said he was telling me all this because he already knew that and his loyalty was to my bestie as much as it was to me.”

“Wow, shit, he is perfect. I think I’m kind of in love with him.”

Julie looked into her mug, the smile fading as quickly as it had appeared. “Yeah. Me too. Kind of.”

“It’s ok if you do.” I softened. “You can tell me. I want to know.”

The little space between us filled with steam and the aroma of melting dark chocolate shavings. “It’s hard to know what I’m feeling for him. About him. The things we do together are so intense - like being stripped down to the bone and rebuilt, one stitch at a time. I feel grateful and I feel love and affection for him, and then fear too and crazy worry. Like, he can’t be this perfect can he? When does he get to the heart breaking moment because it can’t keep feeling this fantastic.”

“You know,” I said and touched her wrist through her bangles. “There doesn’t have to be a heart breaking moment.”

Julie rolled her eyes. “Of course there does. You’ve known Josh your whole life and he did it in one night. I’ve known this guy for like five seconds.”

“The difference, though, is that Josh and I should never have crossed that line.”

She squinted and frowned at where my hand touched her wrist. I pulled away and slipped my fingers back in a death grip around my mug. “You don’t really believe that. Oh my god, you really believe that, don’t you?”

“I have to.” I stared into my mug and watched the dark swirls circle the last of the melting chocolate. Like a dozen tiny, sinking ships. “Or else I’ll absolutely lose my mind.”

“Kat, you need to talk to him. You need to confront him and find out why he did what he did. This is Josh we’re talking about. There has to be a reason.”

I shook my head. “I don’t want to talk to him. I am half afraid nothing he said would make me feel better and half afraid I’d forgive him no matter what the reason. I’m not the girl he wants. I just need to deal with that.”

“Oh sweetie, I just don’t think it’s that simple. You guys have ages of history. Maybe he’s not able to switch gears that fast.”

“Or, more like he’s had someone in his life all this time that he just never told us about. God, Julie, what else hasn’t he told me? I don’t want to know.” I rested my head on my friend’s shoulder and she tightened her hold on me. “I don’t think I ever really knew him at all. And that really sucks.”

“Please consider talking to him. You need answers. You deserve answers.”

Julie’s phone went off somewhere inside the couch, causing her to scramble to find it lost in the cushions. She balanced her mug on one boney knee with one hand and clicked the screen on with the other. She read the message that had set it off, then handed it to me. It was from Tyler, naturally.

Miss you.

Once upon a month ago, Josh had sent me messages like this one. Some were merely cute ploys to exploit me for free labor. Some were random with no other purpose than to talk to me. His messages made my day, my night, my year. I had no idea back then how anxious I was to hear from him, or how much his worry meant to me.

You alive?

I made dinner. Get your ass over here.

Turn off your computer and go to bed.

Come be my inventory slave. I ordered pizza. Your favorite – garlic, Alfredo sauce, artichoke hearts, sausage, & sundried tomatoes. How do you eat this shit? It’s revolting.

Brian says call your mom. Also I want my coffee maker back you wretched little thief.

Can’t sleep. Come over.

I ran my thumb across the message. Two words that meant everything and nothing in particular all at the same time. I couldn’t remember Josh ever saying he missed me, but he had invited me over in the middle of the night so often I had my own pillow. We’d fall asleep watching late night talk shows, eating popcorn in bed, or regaling each other with the boring details of our lives. Maybe we never gave each other the chance to be missed.