Want You Back

by Lulu Pratt

  It was a large industrial bandage.

  The lines between my brows deepened. What the hell? Had I taken a tumble last night and forgotten about it? Given my current condition, that seemed entirely possible, and extremely embarrassing. I had been focusing on my head, not my body. Thanks to years of training, I had great core strength and excellent balance. What — or who — had knocked me off my mountain-goat feet?

  I peeled the bandage back, mentally preparing myself for an enormous gash or some other similarly grisly injury. The bandage refused to come off, so I tugged and tugged until—

  “Shit!” I exclaimed.

  There was no gnarly cut or bad bruise. But there was a sizable tattoo smack dab in the middle of my right ass cheek. A tattoo that hadn’t been there twenty-four hours ago.

  My heart race as I repeated, “Shit!” and struggled to read the elaborate cursive script backwards in the mirror.

  Sounding it out, I said, “C… A… S… H…” then broke off. “Cash?”

  No. Absolutely not. There was no way I’d gotten a freaking tattoo! And a tattoo that read ‘cash.’ This couldn’t be happening. I had zero tattoos, like nil. I had no elaborate piercings, either. It just wasn’t my thing. I had, up until apparently last night, made it to twenty-seven without a reckless, youth-induced tat. What could’ve possibly induced to me to renege on that long-standing decision?

  “Okay, think,” I said out loud. “Think.” I sat down on the lid of the toilet seat, careful to avoid the location of my new ink, and began to mentally run through what might’ve prodded me to go for something as seemingly nuts as ‘cash,’ of all tattoos.

  Could it mean money? This was the obvious answer, but I nixed it immediately. I have no interest in money. After all, it wasn’t like people become yoga instructors for the sweet payday. Plus, I thought capitalism was total bullshit. Clearly I’d been out of my mind last night, but enough of my self-possession remained that I knew I wouldn’t have gotten a tattoo praising the very thing I despised. That was some small relief.

  My ass throbbed and I reluctantly stood up, throwing the towel over the shower rod and grabbing a kimono from a nearby hook. I wrapped it around my body and moved back to the bedroom. Moving in autopilot while my mind raced, I opened my laptop, hit my music player, and pressed shuffle. Surely some familiar tunes would calm me down. An old Appalachian folk song filtered through the small speaker on my desk. It’s kind of the ultimate social suicide to admit in L.A., but country music of any form is my guilty pleasure. But don’t repeat that.

  I flopped on the bed, as I mouthed the word ‘cash’ over and over, letting it sit heavy on my tongue. ‘Cash.’

  “Okay,” I said, reasoning aloud. “Maybe that’s the name of the club you were at last night?”

  Not a bad thought. ‘Cash’ did sound about right for a stupid, West Hollywood club. That was easily checked. I snatched my combo bullet journal and day planner off the desk and flipped through its pages until my finger landed on yesterday’s date, then traced down to the notation for last night’s festivities. It read:

  Dinner @Fresh. Bachelorette Party with The Girls, @OnePart.

  Dang it. OnePart was a well-known club in the area, which meant that the tattoo on my ass wasn’t an ode to the joint.

  No problem. I reached further into the recesses of my mind, examining other possibilities.

  I wracked my brain trying to remember anything from yesterday. I had dinner with the girls and then went out with them for drinks. Perhaps I should have had more than just a salad for dinner.

  “Maybe it’s an abbreviation or unfinished,” I ventured. But an abbreviation for what? Cashmere? Uh, that’d be a pretty strange reference. Cashew? I bit my lip, nervous. It would actually be a little bit on brand for me to immortalize my love of nuts. I loved trail mix, drank almond milk whenever possible, and used shea butter, derived from shea nuts, to moisturize. And I loved cashews.

  “Oh God,” I muttered. “Did you get a tattoo about nuts?”

  I was so busy mentally berating myself that I missed the first few notes of the next song, but by the second chorus, the words started to filter through my foggy brain.

  And it burns, a familiar voice crooned. That ring of fire.

  I jolted up in bed as I heard Johnny Cash finish with that ring of fire.

  Cash. It wasn’t money, or a club or nuts.

  It was a man’s name.

  I had a man’s name tattooed on my ass.

  But I didn’t know anyone named Cash. Not now, not ever.

  So who was Cash, and what the hell was he doing scrawled across my ass?!

  Chapter 2

  Cybil

  OKAY CYBIL, breathe, I told myself. All you have to do is retrace your steps, Sherlock Holmes style.

  Yes, that was it. I needed to go back to the scene of the crime. Well, not literally. Like most upscale clubs, OnePart wasn’t open during the day. And given my total lack of recall about the night, I wasn’t entirely sure I’d be welcome there again. Who knows what mischief I might’ve gotten up to? Perhaps the tattoo was the least of my worries.

  No, what I had in mind was some purely mental retracing. I figured if I meditated hard enough and concentrated on my pyrite crystal, the best ‘memory’ crystal in my stash, things would start to filter back into my brain. I had heard that memories lost during alcohol-induced blackouts can’t be retrieved. Rather, you were supposed to sit back and wait for some of them to re-emerge from the fog. Months later, you might have a burst of insight and be able to recount an entire previously lost evening.

  But I didn’t have months. What I did have was a new tattoo, and no leads as to who might’ve given it to me or what lead up to it. There was no time to wait around and hope that the mystery solved itself.

  I hung my kimono up on its hook, and walked over to my drawer, where I pulled out an athleisure set — one pair of sculpting leggings and an adorable crop top. A mildly embarrassing fact about me is that I own next to zero clothing that isn’t spandex. In my defense, I look very good in spandex.

  The clothing made me feel a little more awake, a little more… I don’t know… spruced up. It’s amazing how switching out of PJs and into semi-regular apparel can make you feel like more of a functioning human.

  I sat down on my yoga mat. Birds, the international hipster insignia, were printed every few inches across the mat at irregular intervals, so as to give the impression that they’d just alighted upon the fabric. I crossed my legs and placed the backs of my hands on my knees. Normally, I’d shift my butt to make sure it was firmly under my spine, creating elongation and centering, but my ass hurt too much to help with posture.

  “Om gam ganapataye namah,” I murmured, focusing on my mantra. “Om gam ganapataye namah.”

  I began to journey back through last night.

  It had started with drinks at Blaire’s house before dinner. In retrospect, too many drinks, but when your best friend is getting married in six weeks, you see her off in style — and by style, I mean more Champagne than the human body is designed to stomach.

  As Blaire’s best friend, I’d been put in charge of managing the night, but that hadn’t meant much. Blaire wasn’t looking for a ‘lollipops-shaped-like-dicks and male strippers’ kind of bachelorette party, but more of a casual night on the town. Frankly, I wouldn’t have minded the chance to plan something with dick pops and strippers, but Blaire had overruled that.

  So anyways, that was how Blaire and I, along with our friends Sheila and Morgan, had ended up agreeing on Fresh for dinner and then dancing at OnePart.

  The night started well, I remember that much. I was drinking normally — that is to say, not a lot — and the four of us were giggling as we hopped out of our Uber and disembarked on Sunset Boulevard, the night already in full swing. There was a block-long line for OnePart, but I was the doorman’s yoga instructor, so he let us in without a problem.

  Blaire had whispered in my ear, “Oh my God, you’re so cool.”

&
nbsp; We laughed and entered the club. The place was pulsating with pink neon light that flashed off the walls and reflected on our faces, which were shiny from highlighter and bronzer. OnePart has a strict dress code, so I’d gone to the trouble of throwing on my sexiest LBD, with mesh cutouts that left opaque fabric covering only my most essential goodies. I’d topped it off with a pair of black stilettos that could put an eye out, if need be.

  Blaire, a stand-up comedian, is like me, she rarely makes an effort with clothing, usually settling for jeans and a flannel shirt. Last night, even she’d shimmied into a sexy little number that her husband-to-be had apparently “mistrusted on sight.” Sheila and Morgan, as per usual, looked hot as hell. Both were Instagram influencers with thousands and thousands of followers each, which meant that they were usually the ones who got us to the fronts of lines.

  We made an odd little group, a sort of Sex and the City for today. Was I the Charlotte? And, dear God, who was the Miranda?

  I digress. The music was bumping, and some guys let us take their VIP booth while they went to dance, probably hoping that we’d eventually join them on the dance floor, or at least humor them with some flirting. Jokes on them. All in the group but myself were engaged or married.

  Ah! That must have been it — the thought that started me down my whole of mopey despair that ended with a wicked hangover. I must have started thinking about how everyone in the group was in a serious relationship, save for me.

  See, I’ve been in tons of relationships. I was that kindergartener who already had a serious boyfriend, who knew what flowers she wanted at her wedding. But then I’d broken up with my last beau a year back, and the flow of men had just stopped. Out of nowhere, no warning. It was like the stream just dried up.

  This isn’t to say that I’m not capable of being a strong, independent woman, but I like having a partner in my life. I missed that kind of intimacy, and thus far, all of my one-night stands had only gone to show me that I did, indeed, hate sleeping around with strangers. Unfamiliar men have no idea what to do around a clitoris.

  All these self-pitying thoughts had raced through my head, each one a little slap across the cheek. My friends were so happy, so carefree, and though I hate to say it, I wanted what they had. We were in a fancy club at a VIP table, looking hot as hell, and all I could think was how seethingly jealous I was. Not cute.

  “So that’s when the shots came,” I said aloud.

  Ah yes, the shots. Some guy had come around and deposited a platter of murky shots on our table.

  Blaire, already drunk, piped up, “Oh, I don’t think we need these, I think we’re—”

  Before she could finish, I had a glass in my hand and was throwing its contents down my throat, anxious to forget how annoyed I was at my friends’ perfect lives.

  She raised an eyebrow, then turned to the man and said, “Never mind, leave the shots.” To me, “You good?”

  I nodded, then added with an over-pronounced smile, “I just wanna have a great time.”

  “Same,” Sheila cheered. She and Morgan grabbed drinks, clinked glasses and took the shots. Blaire knew me better than any of them, and could probably tell that something was off, but without a word, she took a shot of her own. That’s a true friend. Someone who doesn’t chide you for random heavy drinking, but rather joins you.

  We’ve established that I don’t usually drink much, right? Because I really, really don’t drink much. So don’t look so skeptical when I say that, after six drinks, I was smashed.

  The music started to seem one beat out of sync with the real world. The lights were too bright, and the glitter that caked every visible surface was shimmering with menace.

  “Let’s dance!” Blaire cried, and moved out of the booth and onto the dance floor. Her voice reverberated in my eardrums, the sound distorted.

  She grabbed my arm and tugged me onto the floor. I paused, turned back to the table, and took another shot.

  “Okay,” I replied, wiping my mouth. “Now I’m ready.”

  We made our way to the floor, which was a writhing sea of sexy young things, and squeezed in somewhere between two gay guys having a steamy make-out session and a girl who wore a mesh shirt with no bra, her nipples fully exposed.

  “Happy bachelorette party!” I screamed in Blaire’s direction.

  Her voice, happy and alcohol-drenched, came back. “I love you all, like, soooo much!”

  The beat drop, and the entire club began to thump as people jumped in time with the music. I bounced on the balls of my feet, but couldn’t make it to a full jump.

  Would I ever have a bachelorette party of my own? Would my friends ever organize a special last night of singledom before seeing me off into marriage? After years of certainty that I’d be the first one married or settled down or even the first one with a baby bump, would I now become the one who never quite made it down the aisle?

  I shook my head, and snatched a glass out of a nearby dude’s hand. He made a noise, but I shrugged it off. I know they say drinking just makes you more depressed, but I was fully prepared to test that theory. Besides, it’s not like anything could make me worse company than I already was.

  “Did you just have another drink?” Blaire shouted in my ear.

  “Uh, hell yeah,” I replied. “Why, did you want one?”

  She shook her head. “No, I just wanted to make sure you’re good.”

  Morgan and Sheila were looking in our direction, so I nodded frantically. “Yeah, totally,” I said. “This is amazing. I love it. Are you having a good time?”

  She grinned. “Duh. You girls are the absolute best.”

  I gave her a sloppy kiss on the cheek, and she laughed. “Well, somebody’s in their cups.”

  Desperate to keep up the spirits for Blaire’s night, I threw my hands in the air, the universal symbol for ‘let the good times roll,’ then began to twerk with abandon.

  Morgan began to chant, “Go Cybil, go Cybil, go Cybil!”

  I was young, wild and carefree. Or at least kinda young-ish, very wild, and full of cares but trying pretty hard to feel otherwise.

  Stuff started to really blur right about then. Maybe it was the extra shot, or the twerking, or the chants, but somewhere along the way, my vision seemed to tilt sideways. The last things I definitely remember were my girlfriends huddled around me, screaming along with the music and tossing their gorgeous manes around.

  Well, that’s not exactly true. There are a few memories after that, but they’re blurry, and I’m not sure if they can be totally trusted. It’s like the way that you remember a dream just as you wake up, then immediately forget it, hazy around the edges. But for the sake of transparency, I guess I’ll tell you.

  The last things I kind of remember are a pair of dark brown eyes, so brown they might have been black, rimmed by thick, definitively black lashes that moved slow, too slow for the frantic anxiety of the club, like a cat waiting to pounce. Lips, curled up in a smirk. And two arms covered in a maze of tattoos so deep you could trace them for years and never find your way out.

  And that’s all.

  ***

  Thank you for reading the first chapters of Claimed. Want more? Go to Amazon.com to read the full book. Thank you!

  ***

  Sign up to my newsletters and get FREE exclusive bonuses on all my stories including a bonus short, Claimed — One Year Later.

  Click here to join my newsletter and get the bonus book, Big Swinging Dick.

  Thank you!

  Thank you for reading my stories, I hope you enjoyed them!

  Sign up to my newsletters and get FREE exclusive bonuses on all my stories including a bonus short, Want You Back – One Year Later.

  Click here to join my newsletter and get the bonus book, Big Swinging Dick.

 

 

 
ter>