Claimed

by Pratt, Lulu

  “We’ll have it once more,” my mom fired back. “I lost you once for four years, I won’t do it again.”

  “It’s not up to you.”

  My father’s mustache quivered. “Don’t talk to your mother like that.”

  “It’s my life, it’s our lives—”

  “Do you think we’re doddering old fools?” he bellowed. “We don’t need you to take care of us, change our diapers and wipe oatmeal from our chins. We’ve got plenty of years left in us. Retirement is a long ways away. We can turn the shop around well before then.”

  And even as the words left his mouth, I could see that he didn’t believe them. He knew as well as I that there was only so much longer they could take the daily grind. Sure, they’d be able to help out around the shop, but any other job would be too taxing. His lips twisted as he tried to hide the reality of the situation.

  “I’m sorry,” I repeated once more.

  My mother’s face transitioned immediately from anger to resignation. She must have seen the cold steel in my eyes, an inheritance from my father and from herself and a surefire indication that I was going to do exactly as I pleased, with or without their support.

  “Leave off, Lee,” she told my dad. “It’s no use. Cash has already made up his mind.”

  My dad opened and closed his mouth a few times, as if gearing up for another tirade, but then let out a long gust of air. He, too, had resigned himself to the realities of the situation. We all waited in silence, which itself was perhaps the most alarming thing. This shop was never silent — be it old music or tattoo needles whirring, there was never a quiet minute that passed by. This quiet felt overwhelming, unbearable, hot around the neck.

  At last, my dad replied, “Will you be careful?”

  I nodded. “Always.”

  My mom added, “Don’t pick any stupid fights, okay?”

  “Deal.”

  She walked across the room and flung her thick arms around my neck. She smelled, as always, like leather and whiskey. I nestled my head into her shoulder, and hugged her tighter.

  “I love you,” I said.

  “I love you too.”

  I felt another set of large arms encircling me, and knew that my dad had joined the hug. And though I didn’t comment on it, I could tell by the moisture on my shoulder that he was crying.

  After a full minute, we broke out of the hug. My dad turned quickly away to wipe his eyes, and my mom and I both pretended like we’d seen nothing. Once he’d recovered his emotions, he turned back to us.

  “So,” he said with forced ease, “when do you leave?”

  I gulped. This would be the hard part.

  “Tomorrow.”

  Chapter 18

  Cybil

  THERE HAD been a serious, and unwelcome, uptick in my life of crying bouts recently. Suddenly, out of nowhere, I was crying in cars, at concerts, over coffee. Anywhere and everywhere. And there’s one person to blame:

  Cash.

  From the moment he’d walked into my life, I’d become a waterworks, constantly bawling over one thing or another. What had I done to deserve this constant emotional maelstrom?

  That’s love, my stupid brain offered. A constant emotional maelstrom.

  Love? Did love have to be like this? Ceaselessly hard and scary and awesome and oh my God I’m going crazy?

  Anyways, all this to say, I was once again collapsed on my bed, sobbing my eyes out, covering my nice white linen pillow cases in streaks of brown mascara.

  “Cash,” I wailed into the pillow, as though the pillow might wail back. “Why?”

  I’m an emotional girl. I know this about myself. My heart opens easily. And I’ve definitely cried over other breakups. But those were with serious, long-term boyfriends who I’d totally enmeshed my life with. Cash, on the other hand, I’d known for just a few days. Why was I losing my goddamn mind like this? He was just another guy, right? One of the ones who comes into your life, in a hot, if fleeting, fling, and then you part ways amicably.

  Oh, who am I kidding? He was the best man I’d ever met. There was no point trying to downplay it. I was head over heels. Against my better judgment, I’d already started to picture what it’d be like to see him at the end of the aisle, waiting for me in a black tux, his perfect curls tucked behind his ear, that roguish grin across his face.

  And now a fire had torn through that image, burning it into unrecognizable charred bits. A scrap of white silk here, a rose there. I should’ve known that dreams only come true for Disney princesses and girls on reality TV shows. Who cares what happens after the camera turns off? It’s all about those few brief moments of perfection.

  “Why did you have to be so gorgeous,” I groaned into my pillow, my words forming around wet sobs. “Couldn’t you have been ugly? It would’ve made this so much easier.”

  I was being glib, but only because the depths of my real emotion were so, well, terrifying. Had I fallen for him this hard, this fast? The speed of the plummet was neck-breaking.

  The first time I’d met him — well, I guess I didn’t technically remember the first time I’d met him. But apparently, I’d sworn my love within the hour. That wasn’t like me. I’d been in enough serious relationships to know that love takes time to build. It’s not some kind of at-first-sight phenomenon.

  Or was it?

  Because I had, according to Cash, been in love. Or at least enough in love to let him tattoo me, which was no small thing.

  Sigh. Back to the tattoo. What did it mean that he’d tattooed me while I was drunk? Granted, I wasn’t sure it was really okay for him to do that, but… I liked the tattoo. It had been, I think, what I’d wanted. When I first discovered it, yeah, I had a regret or two. But mostly, the thing was pretty great. And it reminded me of him, which was nice.

  If we break up, you’ll have his name on you forever, my brain reminded me.

  “Very helpful, thanks,” came my muffled reply from the pillows.

  Just like he had all those other girls’ names tattooed on his arms.

  How had I not noticed that before? You’d think that even a casual observer would pick up on that bright red flag. You ever heard that joke about a guy practically tattooing “Bad Decision” across his forehead to warn you off? Cash had done that but like, literally. But when he’d first told me about the tattoo, he’d said he’d never done one for a girl before. And yet, this morning, the evidence was there, and the ink hadn’t been fresh nor would he have had the time to get quite so many tats.

  So what was the truth? Had he lied to me before, or was he lying to me now? Did it matter? Did I care if he’d tattooed other girls’ names? I probably should, but the anger just wasn’t gushing through me like usual. Instead, it was just a font of sadness.

  The way he’d touched me when we were together was unlike anything I’d felt before. It had been a touch of discovery, of possession — no, of hunger — of care. Was that something you could fake? If so, he was a masterful actor. Even then, as I reflected on our sex — or could I call it lovemaking? — my center clenched tightly, desiring against its better judgment to have his cock back once more, filling the hole as though it were made for it. I painfully recalled just how arousing his every touch had been. This, coinciding with the fear that I’d never find another sexual encounter like it.

  Was this it? Would I never see him again? Would I be a footnote in his story, and he an entire chapter in mine?

  Jesus. My mind was racing with questions and feelings and unwanted visions of the future. Cash was dominating my mind, just as he’d dominated me in bed.

  “I need to rub some fucking crystals,” I said aloud.

  Wiping the smudged make-up from my eyes, I sat up in bed and reached to my nightstand, from which I swiped a few crystals and began to hold them, not even bothering to examine which ones I’d picked up, which is, like, totally against the crystal rules.

  “Om gam ganapataye namah,” I chanted. “Om gam ganapataye namah.”

  I focused on
the crystals’ energy, trying to properly channel them, and then out of nowhere, resorted to my eight-year-old self’s version of problem-solving.

  That is, I talked to my crystals like they were a collective Magic 8-Ball.

  “Does Cash love me?”

  If they were a proper Magic 8-Ball, they’d come back with a murky image reading something like “Sources say yes,” or “Try again later.” But they weren’t a ball, and frankly, I didn’t think they were magic either.

  So I tried a more amorphous question, one that had been lingering in the back of my mind since the moment I’d stormed out of La Belle.

  “Should I go after him?” I asked aloud.

  Now, you don’t have to believe me about this. I’m not entirely sure I believe myself. Maybe I was hallucinating or just seeing what I wanted to see as some kind of like coping mechanism.

  But I swear to God those crystals vibrated in my hands, as if to say ‘Go get him.’

  I’d never felt the crystals move before. Honestly, I was pretty sure they were a bunch of New Age woo-woo mumbo-jumbo that Los Angeles had just convinced me to buy. But as I spoke the question, they were almost buzzing. The universe, it seemed, wanted me to go chase the man I needed.

  And who the fuck am I to deny the universe?

  I was out the door in under a minute, racing to my car and slamming the door shut. I was on the highway in even less time, urging the car to over ninety as I sped to the tattoo shop. As I tore off the exit, I glanced briefly in the mirror, and cleaned up the flaked mascara under my eyes. The task was useless. It was caked there. Whatever. If I looked crazy, so be it. I felt crazy. For Chrissakes, I’d just taken life guidance from some crystals. It was entirely possible I was crazy.

  But being crazy is better than crying alone on your bed, waiting for a man to come fetch you. Sometimes, you have to go get the guy.

  It was with that thought in mind that I pulled to a jarring halt in front of Cash’s studio, not even bothering to check parking signs and hour restrictions. It’s like, basically illegal to give out tickets when love is on the line, right? I bounded through the door of the tattoo shop, hair mussed and sweat covering my skin.

  “Cash!” I cried as I burst through the door. “Cash!”

  I didn’t know what to say next. Did I just lead with ‘I love you’ or should we start earlier, with ‘Sorry I ran out of that restaurant but I didn’t mean it’?

  My internal debate was stopped mid argument when I saw Cash’s parents staring blankly at me from behind the front desk. Oh my God. How mortifying.

  “Hi there,” I said, desperately trying to rearrange my face into a smile. What had I been thinking in the car? It would’ve taken me two seconds to wipe off the mascara. Maybe then his parents wouldn’t be looking at me like I was the Bride of Chucky.

  They remained silent, so with much effort, I managed to get out, “Is Cash around? I’d really like to talk.”

  “Oh sweetie,” his mother said quietly.

  It took only two words to bring the world around me crashing down. I’d heard that tone before, from my own mother, from any number of adults when I was a kid. It was the tone that said ‘everything you believe you know is so, so wrong.’ It was maternal and sympathetic, the voice of someone who understood the pain that lay down your road. It stopped my heart from beating.

  “What is it?” I whispered.

  I’d known something was wrong — of course he wouldn’t normally act like that. Was it cancer? Shit, it was probably cancer, how could I have been so mean to a guy who had cancer, that is like super inexcusable —

  “He’s gone,” his mom replied, struggling to keep an even tone.

  A white light flashed in my vision, real or imagined. I sat down, hard, on a nearby sofa, the next best thing to actually fainting.

  The words stuck in my throat, but I needed to say them. “Is he… is he… de- dead?”

  His dad’s eyes went wide. “Oh shit, no,” he replied. “Sorry we startled you like that, little lady. No, he’s alive, all right.”

  I tilted my head back and gulped a deep breath of air. The panic attack that had been on the verge of bringing down my entire nervous system subsided for the moment, though anxiety was still thrumming through me at a high frequency, shooting adrenaline through my body. I tipped my chin down again to face them, and saw that both were nervously moving closer to me, perhaps out of fear that I really would faint. No, I’m not one of those girls! I wanted to shout. It wouldn’t do for his parents to think I was some weakling, not when they seemed so tough.

  With that in mind, I sat up straight, and tried to collect myself before asking, “So what do you mean, ‘gone’?”

  “He didn’t tell you?” his mom asked with some consternation. “Now that’s not the way I raised my boy.”

  I shook my head. “He didn’t tell me anything. He was acting… uh… strange yesterday morning, but he refused to say what was going on.”

  Cash’s dad grimaced, and apologized. “I’m sorry ‘bout that.” To his wife, he muttered something that sounded like, “Lemme handle this one,” though I wasn’t sure I’d heard right.

  “Just tell me,” I said.

  He rubbed a hand over his head, reminding me, rather painfully, of his son. Then, much to my surprise, he moseyed over to my little couch, and sat down next to me, taking my hand in his as he would a daughter. Did that mean Cash had told them about me? Of course, we’d met briefly, but this was far more affection than you’d show the average fling.

  “Listen, kid,” he began, his speech faltering. “You know how Cash has spent some time in the military?”

  I nodded. “Yeah, he told me.”

  “Well, they offered him another job. And he took it.” His dad’s face buckled with sorrow. “We begged him not to, but…”

  Was there something I wasn’t understanding? “Is that a bad thing?” I asked, feeling rather stupid.

  His parents looked at one another and seemed to realize in unison that I didn’t understand anything about the army. They were right. Or is it military? Aren’t they the same thing? Anyways, you see what I mean — I was clueless.

  His dad attempted to clarify. “The job means he’s going to be on tour, out of the country, for four years. He might come home on the occasional leave, but mostly… mostly he’ll be gone.”

  I laughed. What else was there to do? I laughed, and then I began to laugh more, and then I was laughing so hard I thought I might have an aneurism, or was perhaps mid-stroke. His parents looked at me like I’d cracked, and that wasn’t totally wrong.

  “Gone,” I repeated, not for any real reason, but rather to stop the laugher that kept bubbling up from my chest like a noxious fume.

  “Yes.” His dad paused, then added, “I’m… sorry. I know you mean — meant — mean a lot to him.”

  “How do you know?” I was numb, and the question was stupid, but I needed to ask it.

  He shrugged. “I can just tell. I’m his father, I know ‘bout stuff like this. It’s sort of my job.”

  I looked to his mom for confirmation. Moms always knew more than dads, always. She nodded in agreement.

  “He liked you loads, sweetie,” she murmured, her words surprisingly gentle for such an intimidating woman.

  “Thanks,” I replied glumly. Though I appreciated the compliment, it wasn’t enough — he’d still left. If he’d really cared, Cash would’ve stayed.

  And then, as if answering my thought, his mom responded, “I know what you’re thinking. I know you’re goin’, ‘but oh, if he loved me, why’d he go?’ And the answer is that Cash is a headstrong young man hell-bent on doing what he thinks is best for his family, even if it maybe ain’t. It’s hard for the rest of us to understand, but you gotta just stand aside and let him do it.”

  ‘What he thinks is best.’ That phrase played over in my mind, and transformed into a key, unlocking my memory.

  This was why he’d treated me the way he had that morning. He thought it was for th
e best. I could’ve been wrong, but I knew, with every instinct in my body, that I wasn’t. Cash had wanted to push me away so that he could run back to the army or military, or whatever, and leave me with a clean break. He was doing that old trick from some old movie, that thing where you throw rocks at wolves to get them to run away and mend faster.

  Even when he was staring down the barrel of four more years in the military, he’d been thinking about me. It was a stupid thought, a bad plan, but at least it didn’t come out of malice or sheer spite, but actual feeling. While this realization answered many questions, it raised even more. I had to talk to Cash, had to figure out if we were, as I suspected, the real deal.

  “Where is he now?” I asked. “I know you said he’s gone, but where, exactly.”

  His mother fussed with the fringe on her leather jacket. “He left for the base today. After that, we don’t know where he goes. Most of his work is top secret.”

  “Where’s the base?” I pressed.

  She looked skeptically to her husband, then back to me. “Well, it’s up past Sacramento, I believe.”

  “Could you write me down the address if I asked?” A plan was beginning to form.

  She sighed, “There’s no point in trying to be romantic, dear, by writing him letters and such. Like I said, when Cash makes up his mind, it’s done. Plus, he’s signing contracts tomorrow, so—”

  “Tomorrow?” I asked, trying to keep my voice innocent.

  She was having none of it. Her eyebrow raised. “Yeah, tomorrow. Why?”

  I was a bad liar, but I had to commit for this to work.

  “No reason,” I said, gazing skyward like a beatific cherub. “I just want to know what’s going to happen to him.”

  “Well,” his dad said. “After signing the paperwork, he’ll be in the military for four more years. He can’t leave until then, or it’ll be considered going AWOL.” He looked at my blank face, and explained, “That’s a bad thing. A very bad thing. He’d go to military court, probably get put in jail, so on and so forth.”