"Do what?"
I see a look of pain on her pretty face. She isn't ready yet. For love. She's so broken I don't even think she could handle having sex with me.
"Let me help you. For now, until you can find work and show Adam you're fine." I insist, and I see her beautiful smile appear. I wonder what her orgasm face looks like. Her moan a minute ago was pretty hot.
"You know, I don't even know your age." She says with a giggle.
"I don't know yours either."
"Twenty-one last summer." Her voice sounds bashful. Is she surprised she made it to her current age? "And you are?"
"Too old for running in circles with filthy intentions." I answer. "I'm twenty-five."
Her eyes widen at what I say to her. Like I rang a bell in her mind, that, or struck a nerve. I hope she doesn't ask for my body count next. Not that she would care. Or would she?
"Well, you're very kind for offering me a place to stay." She says. "But I'm not looking. For anything. Actually, I want to go to Vegas."
God dammit.
To add gasoline to the ongoing dumpster fire this entire conversation has been, she suggests, "You should ask Karla to move in with you instead."
Karla Stein is a recovering meth addict, who I was never involved with. I don't bother telling her this. In fact, I walk away. Not because she isn't worth the trouble of trying to help. It's what she wants me to do.
I know she's actually gone when a week goes by and she hasn't texted or called. I ignore my heartbreak, and attempt to conceal it by seeing call girls, several in a day. I even sent a redhead home over her appearance being too close to hers'.
Money isn't a problem. This is the only thing I have in common with her brother.
I paid another one two hundred bucks to listen to me cry. She held me with her manicured hands, patting my back and rolling her eyes. She questioned why I love someone who is a schizophrenic, explained how unavailable they are due to their own minds, that her mother is a bipolar who is still screwed up to this day.
"Sometimes you can't help who you love. Ain't nobody worth the effort, 'specially if they're not trying for you." she said as she left. I tipped her an eight ball of Colombian coke.
Jane later flips shit at me upon coming home to a gigantic mess in the living room. As she's speaking, I head out the door. To go smoke heroin under a bridge.
Your pity is not something I yearn for, Josh.
I nod out slowly to the sound of her arrogant yet empathetic voice echoing through my head. Tears finally fill my eyes, despite that I am high on the world's most soothing pain killer.
Fairwell, Amy. You are the first person I ever loved.
I wake at the crack of dawn uncomfortable as hell, sore, and depressed. It's Sunday morning. I have a half hour to get home, shower, and get myself over to the store. Sometimes I think I should just sell the place and fill the extra time selling drugs out of Jane's. Not that I don't already.
When I get there, there is a line up consisting of teens and young adults awaiting to acquire a copy of that grunge rock album that just released today. I think about Amy, who was in a punk rock band, a lame one where she made everyone look good. I imagine her on the cover of an album, posing with her Fender, wearing her signature smirk complimented by a victory in her dark brown-red eyes.
I unlock the doors and the customers immediately come flooding in to surround the counter, having supposed to wait outside. They chat to each other about their excitement for the upcoming tour the band is going on. I unlock the glass window under the cash register that has the newest inventory and look for the release date that reads NOVEMBER 27th.
I sigh. I miss her so much.
—
I'm with a bimbo in a club. She calls herself Tee. I watch her dance from the couch, inebriated by the smack I did just ten minutes ago. I don't feel found. But her beauty, and her unapologetic sanguine personality brings me peace, and hope, that maybe, I was wrong.
"Come on, sleepy head!" Tee grabs my hands. She wants me to dance with her, while I just intend to stare at her ass. And her long platinum blonde locks.
"Coming." I reply, but I don't feel the ground under my feet.
I feel like I'm floating instead. No, the world is slowing down around me. I lose strength in my legs, as though I've been shot, but cannot feel the bullet burning inside of my flesh, as I've been crippled and cannot feel below my waist. I watch my vision quickly switch from clear, to blurry, to black. And then I see her face.
She leads me through a meadow, one that then morphs into an empty beach. Just the two of us walking it together makes a warmth rise within my consciousness.
A sensation I haven't felt since we spoke for the first time and decided to dance together under the flashing strobe lights.
She is giggling. Smiling. She isn't crazy, like the others say. She is beautiful…