TAT Box Set

by Emjay Soren

  When I started school my first class was in Dr Haworth’s English lit. He chose me almost immediately as one of his in class TA’s and had been my mentor for the last four months. Today I was running late after a late night working on my dissertation finding the story of my life revolving around the only two men in it that mattered. My brother and my Chad.

  After dredging up old memories that no matter how hard I tried to forget I never could, I fell into a restless sleep. My dreams were plagued by love notes asking me my favorite flower, words of Wizard of Oz telling me I was Dorothy. I missed him so much it hurt to breathe when I think about him. I can’t go a day without crying, forcing myself not to call him, text him write him an email. Anything to keep from begging him to forgive me.

  Last night I covered the longing for him that first few weeks after we broke up.

  Noah had finally talked to me and told me about the fight with Chad. He didn’t know if they would be okay and I hated how I was breaking so many people in the process of my choice. Candy had stopped talking to Noah, determined to make a point that he would never change. The fact he knew about Chad and Trisha had essentially broken them up. Chad had told Noah he thought he was trying to tear us apart. Noah told Chad that if he really thought like that he could fuck off. He also told me he thought I was wrong to end it with Chad. He called me a pussy and a brat but that he loved me and had my back anyway because in the end it was my choice.

  I was a pussy, a big one. I loved Chad with everything and once I was able to see the truth of that night through a clear mind, I knew I believed he was innocent. What stopped me from stopping the ache of missing him and begging him to come back was the thought that it would happen again, and maybe next time he would cave.

  There were no guarantee’s in life and now that we were truly free of our past, I wanted a clean slate future.

  Chad and Noah were talking but only if it involved tats or TAT. A label had come calling like we all knew it would just a week after I came home from the hospital.

  “A label really?” I ask shocked but overjoyed for the guys, Chad included.

  Noah was bouncing on his heels in nervous excitement. I knew he wanted to grab me and squeeze but I was far from recovered. Apparently the bands success on tour with The Sinners, as well as the news coverage of our father, his attempt on me the night of the Seattle show and the break-up between me and Chad, was enough to have Heshan Aggression Records salivating for TAT to sign.

  “Cal’s dad is coming with us to look over the contract and make sure we do right for the band, but if all go’s smooth we start recording next week and touring within three months. We won’t headline, but we did request an invite to tour with The Sinners when they hit the Midwest in the fall.”

  The Sinners accepted the offer with huge smiles once TAT signed with Heshan Agression Records. They started the tour in LA last week moving down the coast only this tour they were headlining, the days of opening for other bands was long gone. I was sad to see Noah leave just after Christmas because he had only been home a short time, but I talked to him daily, followed the bands website like a fangirl and was actually going to their show in Seattle three days from now.

  It wouldn’t be the first time I saw Chad since our breakup.

  After sending all his calls to voicemail, and deleting every text he sent without reading them he must have decided he would battle me face to face. It had been a month since we split. I spent most of that time crying or working. A lot of teary calls to Candy who in turn cried to me. We were both heartbroken and lonely and anxious to get back to school.

  The knock on the door didn’t faze me because it was one of three people, Cassa, Candy or Shame who were dropping by like crazy since my assault.

  I opened the door to see Chad, green eyes rimmed red with dark circles underneath. He looked like I felt and just the sight of him almost broke me. “Hi.” I said nervously tucking my hair behind my ears and wishing I was wearing something nicer… like a burlap sack perhaps? I was in my tattered yoga pants that were a very faded black as well as an old slave to the needle shirt from when Noah first started. Chad looked divine in worn distressed jeans and a long sleeved hoodie (hood over his head because he needed to be sexier?) sporting the Slave to the needle emblem of a machine sweating out ink.

  “I tried to get you on the phone, over text.” He didn’t say anything else though and stepped inside nervously and nodded to Noah who was watching a marathon of Ink Master on Spike. Once he saw Chad though he cursed, paused the show and bailed from the room heading for his room.

  “Well one would think that meant you were wasting your time.” I knew I sounded snide and flippant but he deserved my anger, even if he didn’t cheat on me in the most basic sense, I was pissed he covered it, slept with me bare and I didn’t think he ever had the intention of telling me.

  “Fuck!” He bellowed and I flinched at the sound he made, then hunched from the shooting pain through my ribs. His voice softened marginally when he saw the flinch actually hurt me, but even calming down his voice was still angry. “Carrie just be civil for a fucking second. Please.”

  “I can be civil. Can you?” I leveled my stare on him and he knew I was referring to his outburst just seconds before.

  “I am dying inside Carrie.”

  Oh God! His voice was broken and his face… oh God his face was full of so much pain. I wanted to beg him to stop! Leave! Don’t do this to us! We are so broken already. This is just shuffling the pieces so we can never find them again.

  “I’m so fucking lost without you I can’t sleep, I can’t eat, or tattoo. All I do is sit in the house with Gramps downstairs making out with old ladies while I write song after song about you wishing like fuck I could go back in time.”

  “We would still be here Chad. You’re leaving for a lot more than eight days. I am heading back to school in two weeks. This thing between us was really bad timing and too many secrets between us.” I wasn’t making excuses this time, I was being realistic and we never would have worked.

  “Baby we don’t have secrets anymore. I told you everything. I haven’t seen or talked to a fangirl and I have cancelled all my appointments from my usual tatterlies. I won’t jeopardize anything that could be between us Carrie. I told you once and I meant every word baby. Your it, my all my everything.”

  My anger was peaking. It was like a sick joke the way he could pull me in and twist me up inside. “You.Fucked.Another.Woman! I don’t care if you got off or not. Somewhere down the line between dumping her and dating me, you forgot to draw a line in the sand with Trisha and it got you busted. I don’t think there is another woman on this earth that would take a man back after knowing he fucked someone else and then fucked you. Bareback no less!”

  “You think I wanted this?” He sounds defensive but angry too. He doesn’t deserve to be mad. “You think I don’t know all the ways I should have stopped her from coming around? I fucking know it Carrie, but no matter what happened that night, the minute I was awake and of sound fucking mind, she was toast.”

  “Take away the fact that you didn’t sleep with her, do that and answer me this one burning question.” I am seething and trying not to cry though its taking everything in me.

  “Anything.” He answers me without a seconds hesitation.

  “You never told me about cheating on Trisha, or that she was in love with you, or that she sang with you guys in fucking ballads no less. You never told me you almost knocked up a fangirl. Nothing! I feel like a fool Chad. All those times Noah tried warning me off but never saying a word because he was loyal to us both. Everyone knew your secrets and kept them from me. I came clean to you about mine. I may have left out the details for your benefit, but you knew my darkest place, you saw it clear as day in Seattle. You took me to bed promising forever, condom free damn well aware you were inside another woman just nights before. So answer me, were you bareback in her too?”

  That last part believe it or not had just occurred to me as I was ra
nting, now it was like the weight of the world waiting on the answer. That answer came in the form of him shaking his head yes. I wasn’t holding back anymore. My tears exploded from my eyes at his silent confession, my stomach rolling unaware of what she might have given him and in turn given me. I knew I was clean, I was going to be tested for the next six months just to ensure while I was passed out my dad didn’t do something he failed to admit. Knowing he took me condom free after he had been inside her, made me sick.

  “Carrie”-

  No!” I am shaking my head, bawling and crumbling before him. “Do you know what it’s like for me every time I think of that night? I see her on top of you, as all the times I had done the same thing. I feel your hand at the small of my back, you telling me to come for you. I see you above me calling me baby just seconds before your lips descend to mine and we climax together. I think of how you pepper kisses along my jaw and lick my neck and when I think these things I see you doing them to her and it kills me!” I scream the last part through my tears, my eyes squeezing shut because I can’t handle the look on his face.

  I have never once seen Chad drop a tear. I have wondered from time to time if he had been overwhelmed by emotion, but his face had been hidden from me and I never knew for certain. With my words before, the effect was clear in his shining green eyes and wet cheeks. He was fighting looking at me, looking anywhere to keep me from seeing his tears, as if this was the weakness he needed to hide from me.

  “You don’t get the right to look away from my sobbing Chad.” I step towards him and cup his face in my hands. His head is back, and he is looking at the ceiling blinking rapidly and his tears infuriate me. “You need to see what you have done to us. I never lied Chad, I always came to you and no matter how bad it sucked, I told you the truth. You promised I could trust you, knowing how deep that one word is to me. That trust means more in my life than any other, a small five letter word with such an intense definition. You broke it, broke us and there is no forgiveness for this sort of thing. We were a fling Chad, no matter how much I love you or you love me, we are and will always only ever be a fling.”

  When I admitted to loving him, acknowledged his loving me, he finally looked at me and I felt a sharp pain slice my chest. I no longer felt pain in an emotional sense with Chad, it was all physical how deep I hurt.

  “You can’t leave me baby, not like this.” His tears were falling, devastating me all while he shook his head no in defense.

  But the words were simple enough to say regardless how deep it hurt. “I’m not leaving Chad. You lost me and there is a distinct difference.”

  I made it to Dr Haworth’s class fifteen minutes late. The stadium seating in the lecture room was enormous and packed to the brim. Students like myself for the last three years, were willing to offer a limb to be taught under him and it was an honor to TA for him in my final semester. Most of the class looked up when I entered the room because the heavy metal door wouldn’t let me enter unnoticed. Dr Haworth looked up from his lecture and smiled an irritated smile before turning to the class. “No big deal, we all know Carrie and her being late, though unheard of, isn’t worth hearing my lesson. Eyes on me and pencils on paper folks.”

  I appreciated him not embarrassing me for being late. I think he knew I overslept based on my sloppy hoodie and skinny jeans outfit. I had stopped caring about the trivial girl shit as Chad called it about a month after school started. By then everyone in the world who followed TAT news, knew who I was, who my brother was, who my ex-boyfriend was and my dad.

  The world knew my secrets and whether they liked me or not, I couldn’t muster the emotion to give a shit. Luckily, I was old news by now. With TAT making a stop in Seattle this coming weekend, a few news channels called me for a statement forcing me to change my number again and even a few tough guys waited outside the apartment I shared with Candy and Cassa, but they got nothing as I now just pass them as if they don’t exist. I have learned to not bother them unless they hound me inside my home or at the school.

  I had graded papers the night before and then worked on the dissertation and now I was passing the graded sheets out, walking quietly so I didn’t disrupt the class. My thought on their own went back to the first week of school…

  Noah had left me yesterday and he was off to be a Rockstar and I knew he would be awesome at it. We had a party, a farewell last night for the guys. Chad was there and we were civil as we had agreed. He had sent me a text message two nights before asking me if we could learn to live in each other’s life for the sake of TAT. The request was a realistic one. Noah was my brother, Shame was like a brother and his girlfriend was one of my best friends. Cal was Cal and you learn to love him for it and Chad, well, no matter how angry I knew I would never, could never hate Chad. I loved him too much and that was the problem.

  We were cordial and polite and even spoke a little about mundane shit and I knew that though terribly painful, we both would survive. It was this morning though that shocked us all. By ten am Candy and I both were sleeping off the early morning ride to SEATAC where we dropped off Noah. I didn’t walk him in knowing that Candy wanted a personal goodbye, so I bawled my eyes out in passenger drop off before promising him I would study hard and call daily.

  After we got home at seven am, we both hit the bed to snore off the early morning emotion. We had decided that as adults we needed an apartment and what better way to spend my inheritance. I refused to use the money for school anything worthless. I would work for the things I desired and use my inheritance for the things I needed to graduate. That meant we had a three-bedroom apartment for the next year, utilities paid and our own space to go as we pleased. We used the third room as a study room, but it seemed more like Candy’s own closet she had so much clothes stashed in there it was ridiculous.

  By seven-thirty our door was banging, and our phones were full of messages. We ran to the door both scared of the worst when we open it to see Cassa standing there crying in hysterics. She looked as broken as I had when Chad and I broke up but I knew that couldn’t be the case. Through sobs she tried explaining that Shame was gone, handing us a tear soaked letter.

  Cassa,

  I can’t take you with me baby. I will love you every day of forever and then some, but I can’t bring you along because I can fail at any second and you would get the blowback. I won’t let you quit school and change your dreams in for mine when the world over could hate us. I don’t expect forgiveness and I assume you hate me by now, but I will always love you.

  Shame.

  What.The.Fuck?

  That was five months ago and Jesus what a difference five months made. Cassa was married to a creepy guy named Corey. He had a tendency to hit to make his point and Cassa was always making excuses for him. Candy and I refused to clean out the third bedroom that she had taken over immediately after Shame left with the rest of TAT. He hadn’t contacted her or tried to explain. He left her like she was nothing. Cal, Noah and Chad were all at her wedding, Candy and I and Roni wore pink satin dressed and carried white roses and wondered why the hell she was doing it.

  She explained a few weeks later that she was pregnant, almost four months. It was Shames baby and she was scared to tell Corey and was definitely keeping it from Shame as were Chad, Noah and Cal.

  It seemed the TAT boys had our backs even when our men did wrong. Chad, Cal and Shame stayed in close contact with Candy, Shame making it hard because he always wanted inform from me and Candy on how she was. We of course said nothing. Cal and Noah and Shame always calling or emailing me to check in and it was again, Shame asking about Cassa. This went on for the last five months until last month Cassa miscarried the baby. Corey found out how far along she was and tried to kill her. He found a note she had written to Shamus when they were in Vegas eloping. It explained the baby was his and why she was doing right by the baby by marrying a man who wanted it, even though she only wanted Shamus.

  Corey was now behind bars with our dad the sick fuck. The guys had band
ed together to make sure enough money was thrown at the situation that Cassa was able to keep it quiet. She had just moved back in with Candy and I and had been home from the hospital just shy of a month. Corey had ripped her womb from her, cut her open and took any ability she had for children away and damn near took her life with it. He was crazy insane and his kind of crazy had robbed Cass of so much she would never be Sass again.

  I would watch her walk, always scared and jumpy. She swapped her major for Public Relations and started in on photography and it was her place to hide. Shamus never knew any of it. He knew she was married and that had cemented him staying away.

  I try to think if situations were reversed if I would have let Chad marry another and I find the thought repulsive. The few times we have seen one another we have smiled and watched each other with a sexual intent that flamed me even in the coldest mood. It always left me wondering if we were really over.

  “Carrie?” Dr Haworth’s voice pulled me from memory lane. Class had ended a few minutes before and I barely focused long enough to pass out the graded papers and the study notes for the next assignment.

  “Sorry Dr Haworth. I was working on the dissertation all night and my mind is still stuck in between the story and reality.”

  “Have you thought more on maybe self publishing it instead of going the traditional route?” We had discussed the options and his opinion was that the story was personal and a truth. I had turned my life story into a romance and he thought that self publishing my story would be therapeutic and still get me recognition.

  “Yea but I won’t decide till it’s done.” I was waiting to see how it ended and that wouldn’t happen until the show three days from now. I had made my decision to talk to Chad if he was willing. I missed him. More now that Cassa was around recovering from her trip to hell and it was all because she was alone. I had accused Chad of loneliness… How could I have not seen past my own nose to spite my face? I had what Cassa wanted from Shame. Chad didn’t want us to end, he was fighting still and I was deferring every chance I could.