Claimed

by Pratt, Lulu

  “Did it ever occur to you,” she barked, “that I was terrified? I didn’t know you, or anyone else in there, and you left me alone and expected me to ‘handle myself’? Fine, maybe I could’ve ‘handled’ those guys. But that’s a big maybe.”

  She was right, and I said so. “I know,” I murmured. “I know.”

  I exhaled, and raked a hand through my hair. How could we start back at the very beginning? Was that possible? I could see her shoulders rising and falling even from a distance. Without thought or agenda, I walked closer to her.

  “Listen,” I said, my voice quiet. There were only a few feet between us, and up close, I could see a frenzied passion in her eyes. “I fucked up. In so many, many ways. I should’ve told you who I was. Not just my name, but about the entire night. I should’ve given you more details about the concert, so that you could make sure I wasn’t, like, a killer. And I shouldn’t have ever left your side, not for one minute.”

  “You’re missing something,” she said, her jaw hemming back and forth.

  “What?”

  “The fucking tattoo,” she roared.

  Oh, shit. Right.

  “Well, you did agree to that,” I said. “Technically. You signed papers. And I didn’t know how drunk you were—”

  “You don’t tattoo drunk people, period!”

  I winced. Touché.

  She was done. I could see the moment her face shifted from hurt to complete outrage. My apology might have worked… had it not been for that one glaring, inky oversight. And besides, I wasn’t sure it even required an apology. After all, it had been mutual.

  Cybil was gearing up to launch another expletive when, much to my surprise, a cab rolled up to the curb we were arguing on. I’d never seen a cab in these parts. People usually stumbled drunkenly home, or to a second location, or managed to wiggle their way onto some public transit or into the back of some random guitarist’s van. But sure enough, there was a blue and white Prius with the sign ‘Taxi’ on the roof, the label dull and unlit to indicate its vacancy.

  “Did you call a cab?” I asked in surprise, momentarily forgetting the conflict at hand.

  “No,” she said. “But I’m glad it’s here. I’m gonna take it far, far away from you, Cash, and your bullshit.”

  She began walking to the cab, waving at the driver purposefully.

  “Come on!” I cried from my stationary position. “Give me another chance.”

  Cybil whirled back on me as she flung open the door. “I gave you a million fucking chances. We’re done.” She climbed in the cab and slammed the door shut. I couldn’t see even her vague profile through the tinted window.

  I raced to the glass, desperate to make one more attempt. Up close, the glass wasn’t so opaque, and I could see her shoulders tensed and her face drawn with anger. I banged on the window, and her profile turned and flipped me off.

  “Cybil!” I shouted, but the cab was already rolling forward, and within seconds, it had shot out of my view, disappearing into the darkness of Los Angeles.

  I kicked a nearby beer can. How had I fucked this up so badly? I had done everything wrong. Dark, self-hating thoughts began to swirl in my head. The kinds of thoughts, born of PTSD and trauma, that scared me. I had hurt her, even after vowing to never hurt another person, not after what I’d done to so many people while in the military. All I had wanted was to give us a chance, to give her a perfect night. Instead — Jesus, I couldn’t think about it anymore, it was creating a noxious pit in my stomach.

  The street was empty. The lurkers in the shadows had watched our fight play out silently, staring at us as though we were actors upon a stage.

  In a moment of rage, I shouted in their direction, “What the fuck are you looking at?”

  One man with a tatted head snorted, but I got no other reply. I wanted a fight, some kind of brawl to shoot adrenaline through my system and clear my head and distract me from all the other horrible things — but it looked like nobody else was biting tonight. Perhaps they’d seen me trounce the guys inside, and knew better than to be drawn into a match with me. Fair enough.

  I gazed at the ground, searching for another beer can to punish with the tip of my foot, something I could unleash my emotions on without human repercussions. In the darkness, I noticed a square rock, and geared up my leg to kick the shit out of it. But then the light caught its surface.

  “Oh shit,” I said aloud. It was a phone.

  If the other people heard me, they said nothing. I knelt down to pick it up. It was warm in my hand, and the screen was intact, suggesting it hadn’t been there for long. I turned it over, examining the case. It was… glittery. That is to say, pretty out of place for the club. It looked to be an iPhone. For a moment, I considered turning it over to the venue management, but then I decided that the management was probably scarce at best.

  This one’s on you, my Jiminy Cricket conscious whispered. Do something right tonight.

  That sounded like an awful lot of work, but I knew I needed to make some kind of amends to the universe. I clicked the ‘home’ button and the screen lit up. The background was a picture of a couple of girls under some fireworks, a few generic white girls, except…

  Cybil.

  There she was, second from the right, her arm slung around a brunette, a glass of Champagne in her hand and glasses that read “New Year’s 2018” slung onto her face. She looked blissfully happy, a stark contrast to the Cybil I’d just seen, a Cybil who wasn’t going to be very thrilled when she learned I had her phone.

  But should I even return it to her? God knew she didn’t want to see me again, no matter how badly I might want to see her, just to make things right if nothing else. Should I drop it off at her house? Damn it, I didn’t know her address. I tried to open the phone, fast realizing that she’d locked it with a passcode, something most people had now but which my flip phone didn’t even offer as an option.

  I could leave it at Dandelion, I thought, but then rejected that — she probably didn’t want me in her place of work. Besides, the place was closed at the moment, so I had no choice but to pocket it for now.

  I knelt down to the ground, curling over the phone pensively. What should I do? How to get Cinderella back her glass slipper?

  And then I shook my head, giving up. Tonight had been long enough. Tomorrow would be a new day, and with a clearer mind, I could think over my options then. Yes, that was the right call. Time heals all wounds.

  I tucked the phone in my back pocket, and began to walk to the bus stop.

  Chapter 12

  Cybil

  THE CAB ride was miserable. The vinyl seats squealed against my denim thighs, scraping against the uncomfortable wet patch on my crotch, and the cab driver kept trying to draw me into a conversation, even though he presumably saw the thick tears that caked my face.

  At last, after his third attempt to talk about a new sitcom, I politely said, “Sir, I’d like to just sit here and cry if that’s cool with you.”

  He gave me a skeptical look, but then replied, “Go for it. Actresses love to cry in my cab. Apparently I’m very welcoming in that way.”

  Typical. I ignored his comment, but did precede to bawl my eyes out. It was a long, long journey back home. The driver turned on what sounded like a Christian rock station, which made the whole thing even more awful. Couldn’t I just sob in peace without hearing about Jesus being a ‘cool dude’?

  You’re misplacing your anger, a sage inner voice suggested.

  Shut up, I instructed the voice. Just let me misplace it.

  The inner voice seemed to tsk judgmentally, but I tuned it out, turning my attention more to the radio, where a singer was telling me that loving God was the real party.

  What I mainly did during that ride was try, and fail, to not think about Cash. About his stupid name and the stupid tattoo, and the stupid way his face was so hot. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

  The cab eventually arrived at my house. I gave the driver cash, and immediately, I thou
ght of him again. Frustrated, I threw a few twenties on the driver’s front seat, told him to keep the change, and bounded out of the cab. I stumbled out of the cab — not because of literal, but rather emotional, intoxication — and into my house.

  At last. I was home, safe and sound. Physically speaking.

  “Good, so go to bed,” I instructed myself.

  But there was no way. Pure outrage — and, much to my dismay, leftover arousal — coursed through my veins, moving my pulse to a gallop. I couldn’t sleep in this condition. There was nothing for it but to fall on my old coping mechanism — cleaning.

  I tore off my jacket, corset and jeans until I stood in the middle of my entryway in a thong and nothing else. Should I put on PJs? I wondered. No, no time for that. Besides, I’d probably work up a sweat cleaning anyways.

  Without further ado, I tore into my broom closet, pulling out all manner of cleaning supplies, and set to work vacuuming the living room, scrubbing the kitchen, sanitizing the bathroom. My hands flew past me in a flurry of activity, and for a while, my brain went quiet.

  I didn’t stop cleaning until approximately three in the morning, when I sat back against a wall in my bedroom, where I’d been busy reorganizing my jewelry holder. Physical exhaustion overtook me, and with it, thoughts of Cash were beginning to return.

  “Uh-uh,” I said. “Get out of my head.”

  But there he was. Curls falling in his eyes, a wicked grin on his face, tatted arms cocooning me, fingers claiming my pussy as his own. I wanted to punch him. I wanted to fuck him. I didn’t know what I wanted.

  “Goddammit, leave me alone!” I shouted.

  Okay, I was officially losing my mind. But whose fault was that? Not mine. “His,” I said, responding to my own question. “It’s his damn fault.”

  After all, he’d been the one playing mind games.

  “Enough,” I snapped at myself. The cleaning wasn’t working anymore. I was too exhausted. So I rolled out my yoga mat, and sat down,. Meditation, that would be the trick.

  I concentrated my energy in my mind’s eye, calling on inner peace and… nada. No inner peace to be found. Instead, I wandered back with an almost absurd inevitability to Cash. Did I never want to see him again, or did I want to see him right that second, preferably atop me in my bed?

  Argh! My feelings were so confusing. I felt like a teen again, unable to differentiate between raw emotion, common sense and horniness. My pure, logical hatred for Cash was clouded by my immense physical attraction, and I struggled to parse the two. I needed outside help.

  By then it was almost three-thirty, which meant it was a perfect time to call Blaire. As a standup comedian, she pretty much lived her life exclusively at nighttime. Her work day, or rather work night, started around ten, and she’d be drinking with her buddies ‘til five or so.

  I left my yoga mat, which hadn’t been doing much for me anyways, and strode into the entryway where I’d deposited my jacket and pants. Reaching into the pockets of the jacket, I searched around for my phone. Nothing. Okay, that’s all right, check the pants, I thought. Also nothing. I began to panic, and searched all the pockets a second, then a third time. Still nothing.

  “Fuck!” There was nothing for it. In a ridiculously on-the-nose closing note, I had clearly left the phone at the venue or in the cab. Perfect. A little more bullshit to cap off my veritable evening of bullshit.

  But I was tired. Too tired to even make a go at a search. This had been the nail in the coffin. I sulked off to bed, slipping my naked body under the covers and squeezing my eyes shut, resisting the urge to touch my pussy to thoughts of Cash. That would be letting him win.

  It crossed my mind that, if I’d let him tattoo my ass, that meant he must have touched it, maybe even squeezed it. I wondered if he liked the way my bare ass felt under his hands, if he thought it was hot. I thought suddenly of how he had squeezed it possessively earlier that night. Once again, I was flooded by contradictory feelings of rage and attraction. He had unfairly staked a claim on my ass. But on the other hand, I had loved the way it felt under his grip, like he was channeling all of his animal energy into worshipping my body.

  “Go the fuck to sleep,” I snarled at myself, burrowing into the pillows and sheets. “Just don’t think about him.”

  Predictably, I thought about him the whole night and well into morning. If I got any sleep, it was impossible to separate from being awake, because all areas of my conscious were flooded by thoughts of him. It was like nowhere in my life was safe from his influence. He had dominated me on all fronts. When I emerged from my dreams — or whatever they were, maybe waking thoughts — I was exhausted. There had been little to no rest in my alternating revenge and sex fantasies regarding Cash.

  But with no other choice, I at last arose from my bed, exhausted and cranky. I’d been both sweaty and freezing over the course of the night, and the white sheets smelled damp but were cold against my skin.

  I was three minutes into making breakfast when I remembered my phone.

  Sighing, I set down my knife and grabbed my computer from the other room, setting it down on the kitchen table. I pulled up “Find My iPhone,” an app that does — well, pretty much what the name would suggest. It activates the GPS tracker in your phone so you can pinpoint it. I feared that some hooligan from the bar had jacked my phone, and mentally prepared for the worst.

  Luckily, I’d set my phone to consistently download backups to iCloud, so it’s not like I’d lose all my pictures or anything. That being said, I wasn’t delighted at the prospect of needing to, y’know, buy a new phone. I’m not made of money.

  I began running ‘Find My iPhone.’ The app beeped and booped, and in a few minutes, it dropped a pin on a map to indicate the location of my phone. Looked like it was in WeHo, actually pretty close to OnePart, the club I’d been at the other night. I downloaded the address and Googled it, hoping it wasn’t some residential building where a guy was jailbreaking my phone to resell it or piecemeal for parts.

  My heart sunk. No, actually, it smashed through the floor of my stomach and pounded its way out through my asshole.

  The phone was in a tattoo parlor.

  I didn’t even have to dig further into the shop to surmise that it was very probably the one Cash worked at. For one, as I’d realized even before, it was right near OnePart, so it would make sense that he picked me up there and brought me back to the shop where he was employed. For another, it was too great a coincidence to assume that somebody else had picked up that phone and taken it to a tattoo shop in WeHo. That didn’t look like a big “WeHo” crowd. You’ll have to trust me on that, because it can’t be explained to a non-native.

  And besides, I just had a feeling. Cash had to have been the one who took the phone, because Fate had already bent me over and taken me in the ass, so She was just gearing up for a round two. Of course I would have to, once again, confront the guy who had wrecked me emotionally. Wasn’t that just how my life was going these days?

  I mean, I could’ve let the phone go, but let me remind you once more that I’m a yoga instructor. I’m not in a position to ‘let a phone go.’ And, okay all right, maybe I wanted to see him again. Ugh, I can’t believe I even admitted that. I’m such a coward, and I am way, way too controlled by my pussy. Think with your brain, Cybil, not your clit!

  I considered delaying going to the shop a few days, or perhaps texting my own phone via my computer to say, ‘Cash, leave the phone at your work. I’ll pick it up there, don’t try to talk to me.” Or something along those lines. But then I remembered that my phone was set such that you couldn’t read the incoming messages on the home screen. You had to unlock it. In other words, he wouldn’t be able to read my haughty text. I could call him, but hearing his low rumble of a voice was just as bad as seeing him.

  I even considered asking Blaire to go get the phone and dismissed the idea as soon as it appeared. She’d ask too many questions and if she met Cash, she might wonder why I was avoiding him.

&nb
sp; Nothing for it — I had to go to the shop, and stat. Like I said, I debated delaying the journey, but then decided it was better to rip off the emotional bandage.

  I threw on my work clothes — billowing pants and a crop top — and went sans make-up, in what I took to be a clear declaration that I didn’t even care enough about him to make a little effort. What? I told you I’d gotten in my head about the whole thing. Logic wasn’t coming easily to me at the moment. Anyways, I did have to go to work first, and it didn’t make sense to bring a whole change of clothes just to impress a guy who had lied to me and hurt my stupid little feelings.

  The work day dragged on for ages. I taught three classes, none of which were eventful, if you don’t count all the times I lost my train of thought. If it weren’t for my litany of regulars, the classes would’ve been borderline nonsensical. I ordered them into positions that didn’t exist, messed up names for real ones, and generally messed up any kind of yoga flow. They could probably tell that I was out of it, but none were rude enough to comment. Instead, they self-directed and tried to give me space, which was nice but also mortifying.

  It was over in a flash, and before I knew it, I was packing my mat back into my trunk, swigging an iced tea and clambering into the car.

  “Deep breath,” I instructed myself, probably the best piece of instruction I’d given all day. “It’s gonna be fine. Om gam ganapataye namah.”

  I didn’t really believe that, but now was not the time to get into semantics.

  After about a thirty-minute drive, I had arrived in front of the tattoo parlor. Somehow, in the blur of realization, I hadn’t focused on the shop’s name. Now, though, I could see it in neon lettering above some black matte-ing. It read Bills.

  Bills. Remind you of anything? Like, perhaps, the name Cash? Shit. I wasn’t certain, but I’d venture a guess that not only was this his place of employment, but also his place. Like, he owned it. I was going to be walking into the enemy’s lair.

  “Om gam ganapataye namah,” I repeated, desperate for inner peace, which does not coexist alongside any so-called desperation. I turned off the car and hopped out, stopping momentarily to brush my pants off, as though that would somehow class up my look.