Losing Pieces of Me

by Briner, Rose

  I could be wrong, and I hope I am, but with the way some of the others are eyeing my sister’s friends, they are all after the same thing, a piece of ass. The only one that’s not looking at them like a lion would his dinner, is the one that looks like Hayden. If anything, he looks bored.

  I gasp and turn to stare down at my drink when the man turns and fixes his gaze on me. I don’t know why the man catching me staring at him has me so flustered, but it does. He reminds me of so many of my latest book boyfriends, and that fact is starting to scare me. Men like him can only lead to heartbreak for women like me.

  I discretely look up in their direction again and quickly try to fix my shirt and look like I’m doing something important by pulling out my phone to play with.

  Why? Because the entire group is headed this way.

  My sister has her chest pushed out like a preening peacock as she hangs off of Hayden’s arm when they approach the table.

  “Reya, this is Hayden, the man I’ve been telling you all about. Hayden, this is Reya,” she says in a distracted tone, not even looking in my direction. Clearly she isn’t thrilled that she had to drag him over to meet the older sister.

  “Nice to meet you, Reya,” greets Hayden as he outstretches his hand to shake mine.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I see Katrina’s friends scooting into the booth on the opposite side.

  “Nice to meet you too, Hayden. My name is Mireya,” I tell him as I glare over at my sister. She knows how much I hate being called Reya.

  I can clearly see that I’ve offended her when she shoots me a nasty glare before refixing her megawatt smile on Hayden.

  “Let’s go to your office to sit, Hayden. There’s too much noise and people down here, I want you all to myself,” she says while pushing her cleavage into his arm.

  I watch as he looks at her face for a beat before his gaze drifts down to her low cut dress.

  “Let’s go,” he states, completely turning away from us and dragging my giggling sister behind him. Clearly they aren’t going to the office to talk.

  “He’s such a great guy, don’t you agree, Jayden?” asks Colleen as she bats her eyelashes at him. The man is clearly Hayden’s brother.

  “Why yes, if you think that acting like a hormonal teenager all day and wasting your life away buying places like this one, then yes, he’s a great guy. Wonderful in fact.”

  The entire time he’s answering Colleen, he’s staring at me. His crystal clear blue eyes fixate on me like he’s curious about me. He’s probably wondering why I’m here with these ladies when clearly I’m not dressed up to go out. I look more like a fraternity house mother who tagged along to make sure these ladies stay in line and make it home in time for curfew.

  “Mireya, I was wondering if perhaps-” the ringing of his phone cuts him off. He pulls it out and squeezes his eyes shut before reopening them and refocusing on me. “Excuse me for a moment, I have to take this.”

  He turns away and walks to the other side of the room, where I watch as he paces back and forth while making wild gestures.

  “God, look at that ass,” I turn my attention back to the girls and find Violet and Colleen staring at Jayden, the both of them biting their lip.

  “I call dibs,” announces Colleen, while licking her lips. I can almost see the wheels turning in her head, she’s seeing dollar signs. I bet she’ll milk him dry, in more ways than one.

  I turn my attention back to Jayden and watch him. I have to admit they are right, he does have a nice ass, in fact everything about him is really nice. He doesn’t look dumb enough to fall in love with one of these bimbos, but he is a man after all, and I clearly have no chance of competing against either of them.

  “I’m going to get another drink, anyone want something? Colleen suddenly announces as she stands from the table. Her drink isn’t even a quarter of the way finished. I watch as she adjusts her dress so it barely covers her assets.

  “No thank you,” I tell her, while Violet just waves her off. She’s now staring at one of the other men that was with Hayden.

  I watch her as she turns and struts her stuff like she’s auditioning for a modeling contract and makes her way right over to where Jayden is standing with his back towards us. I can see his phone is still clearly glued to his ear.

  That doesn’t stop her though from running her hand up his back to get his attention. He pulls the phone away from his ear as he looks at her over his shoulder. Whatever she says to him has him pretty annoyed and his response to her must not have been a pleasant one because she stomps away and over to the bar to order her drink.

  I ignore her when I feel a set of eyes on me and turn to find Jayden now sitting on the couch with his eyes fixated on me. He’s still on the phone, but it appears as if he’s not listening to whatever is being said as his lips turn up into a dazzling smile.

  I look back in Colleen’s direction and find her looking back and forth between us before she scowls at me. She doesn’t look very happy right now.

  It takes a few more minutes for her drink to be ready when she turns to the bartender and says something. It looks like she asked to change her drink order when he hands her a menu.

  That becomes clear when she picks up a drink that looks like a chocolate sundae in a glass and makes her way back over to us. She stops and looks over at Jayden once before she turns back to us and continues towards the table. I bet she’s trying to make sure he’s watching her ass shake as she walks away from him. Works too, he’s looking.

  “Make some space, please?” she asks me in a sugary sweet voice.

  I’ve been so preoccupied that I failed to notice that Violet has managed to capture the attention of the other guys from their group and they are all now taking up the entire other side of the booth.

  “Sure,” I tell her politely as I prepare to make space for her.

  It happens in slow motion. Her drink tilts as she attempts to sit in the space and her drink is falling, the entire contents of the glass drenching the front of my shirt and jeans.

  “Oh my God, I’m so sorry. I must be tipsier than I thought. You’d better go get cleaned up, Reya.”

  She’s not that tipsy nor is she sorry. I just watched her walk in a perfectly straight line to the bar and back.

  I feel my face turning red when I realize that everyone at the table, Colleen included, are now laughing at me. To make matters worse, Jayden is also staring. She’s done this on purpose and all because she thinks I want Jayden to myself.

  I feel coldness seep down the back of my shirt. I don’t even need to look to know that Violet poured her drink all over me. I bet they planned this so they could get rid of me.

  My humiliation is complete. There’s no way I can clean myself up in the bathroom and come back out here. I look like I got caught in an alcoholic beverage storm. Not to mention the front of my pants now looks like I just took a shit in them.

  When I notice Jayden standing from the couch with his phone still to his ear, and I feel tears in my eyes, that’s the moment I make a run for it.

  Screw trying to find the bathroom, I just want to get the hell out of this place and away from these women.

  The issue is, Katrina has all the money, and Hayden’s car brought us here. No doubt they are going to need that later too, so I can’t take it.

  So what do I do? I walk home.

  I could’ve gone to find my sister, but she’s busy so I had little choice. I wouldn’t dare ask Jayden for help, he’d probably laugh in my face and humiliate me even further.

  Shame too, I never did get to find out what he wanted to ask me.

  Chapter Three

  That was the last time I saw Katrina.

  Not because she came home and tried to talk to me, but because she never came home after that night. She disappeared. When I asked Colleen and Violet where she’d gone, they said that she left directly from the club with Hayden to start their magical weekend getaway right after they were done there. Issue is, no one seems to kno
w where they’ve gone. I’m starting to wonder if history is about to repeat itself and she’s going to end up getting married wherever they went and then mysteriously die. I sure hope not, she’s the only family I have left.

  I didn’t start to think that something was really wrong, until she’d been gone more than three weeks. I figured that maybe he took her to Paris or something for an extended vacation, but I hadn’t heard from her and her phone has been disconnected. If only she’d call to let me know she’s okay.

  I tried reporting her missing, but the police told me that she’s an adult and her running away with a millionaire doesn’t count as a person that’s at risk. To me it does, seeing as she’d only known him a week when she went missing.

  I started to panic even more when two months passed and I didn’t hear from her. That’s when I received a mysterious letter in the mail, supposedly the letter is from her, but there’s no return address. I still remember that letter like the first time I read it.

  Dear Reya,

  I’ve decided to run away and never come back. I’m happy, that’s all you need to know. Don’t look for me, I don’t want you to find me, and I’m tired of you being like mom. Good luck.

  Katrina

  I don’t buy that she’s happy. If she’s so happy, why not call me and just tell me that she’s happy and decided not to come back? That’s not the Katrina that I know. She would’ve at least called me to tell me something about her new life, that’s the way she is, she lives for everyone to envy her. She’s always done everything large and loud and loves to show off. No one else believes me, but I know something is not right.

  Issue is that I’ve tried everything to find her. I even went back to the club to look for her, but when I arrived at the door, the bouncer from my first night there, gave me a dirty look and told me to go home. When I went back there the next afternoon to try and talk to Hayden, all I got was a warning that if I ever came back again, I would be arrested for trespassing. No one has even given me any indication that he’s come back. Plus, I’ve done nothing wrong, so why threaten to have me thrown in jail? It’s not like I made a big scene and ordered to see Hayden at once because my sister ran away with him and is now missing.

  They were told not to let me in and perhaps they even know the reason why. No one will talk to me or let me know where Hayden or my sister are.

  So I’ve decided to do the next best thing I can think of, go to the library and look up information on this Hayden and his family to see what I can find out about them. There has to be some way to get in contact with Hayden again, even if I have to go through Jayden to do it. I hope I don’t have to, I’m still mortified about what happened that night in the club and don’t want him to laugh at me when he sees me again.

  As I walk into the library and over to the public computer section to start my search, all I can think about when I sit down is how tired I am. Since Katrina went missing, I’ve spent what money I had left trying to find her. There’s not a whole lot I can do with limited funds and no connections. Not to mention I’m about maybe a month or two away from being evicted from our apartment. I was able to find a part time job, but without Katrina’s help with the rent, I’m now two months behind.

  I don’t want to sit here and do this, all I want to do is go home and crawl under the covers and not come back out. This is taking a physical and emotional toll on me, and I’m starting to run out of ideas on how to find my sister. I’ll never give up, not until I’m dead and buried in the ground. Dead or alive I will find her. I spent all this time keeping her safe and away from our stepfather, I will continue to do that until the day I die.

  I sit for a long time trying to figure out where to start with my search. I start with the only thing I can think of, Orchid Boiler. After all, Jayden did say that Hayden owns that place, I wonder what other places he owns with the way Jayden was speaking that night. There has to be more clubs, I just know there is.

  Turns out he owns three clubs here in New York City. The man never decided to venture outside of the city, choosing to have all of his extracurricular activities close to home. Obviously the Internet doesn’t list an address for the man, but it does list his last name, which is more than I knew going into this thing. Leopold. A search of him also shows what a busy man he’s been. Women and partying seem to be his two specialties and just like Jayden said, he’s never grown up, choosing instead to be the laughing stock of his family.

  Most people would probably think that the Leopold family is the picture perfect family that so many rich and successful families are known for. But this family is far from perfect. Hayden Leopold only has one brother and a mother. Jayden owns his own investment firm here in the city and has made quite a name for himself as a successful businessman. I wonder how he ended up in the club that night with Hayden, because according to what I can find about him he’s relatively quiet and keeps to himself. Then again, sometimes the press only prints what it wants to about people. The man remains a complete mystery to me.

  There’s not much on their mother either. Only that she lives alone in New Jersey and keeps to herself. Nothing is listed on their father or any other family members, outside of the two brothers, there seems to be nothing available. I quickly jot down the address for Jayden’s investment firm and the two other clubs Hayden owns and run home to change.

  When I get home, I think about wearing an outfit like I did the first night I went to Orchid Boiler, but perhaps wearing something more revealing might help out my case a little bit more. Walking into my sister’s room, I feel emptiness take hold of me. I haven’t allowed myself to come in here since right after she disappeared. I looked everywhere for clues about where she might have gone, but I keep coming up empty handed. Katrina’s friends were no help either, damn useless bimbos.

  I ignore the vanity she sat on that night when she told me she was going away with Hayden and instead turn towards her large closet that’s bursting at the seams. I don’t know how she was ever able to afford everything she has here, but she has a very large selection.

  I don’t really have to worry too much about whether or not her clothes will fit me because we’re both the same size, I’m just a lot shorter than she is. Don’t ask me how that happened, both her and my mother were always so much taller than I ever was. I didn’t get lucky the way they did. I was born short and stayed that way.

  I think about wearing something colorful or really short to attract attention, but the more I think about it, the more I realize that going subtle and only showing some skin might be helpful this time. My goal is to get into the club this time, not get stopped at the door by some bouncer who thinks he’s been promoted to king of the world or something.

  Seems like a good idea in theory right? Well, it doesn’t work at the first club. The place is run down and looks nothing like Orchid Boiler. Then again, Orchid Boiler is a brand new club that Hayden just opened. I wonder if that place will look like this one in a few years. With the way this place looks, I bet it will look like this within a year. Clearly Hayden never visits this place, so I don’t even bother going to stand in the small line waiting outside the club.

  I instead go to the last club on my list, Black Dagger. This club looks kind of like Orchid Boiler, and the place is a lot newer than the last place I was just at. The crowd waiting outside isn’t as large as it is at the Orchid Boiler so I think I might have a better shot at getting into this place than I would at Orchid Boiler. This place only has one bouncer standing guard at the door and he doesn’t have a clipboard in his hand, so when I step up before him I plaster a fake smile on my face and smile up at him.

  “ID,” he grunts at me, not returning my smile.

  My smile falters, but I pull out my ID and hand it to him anyways.

  He looks it over for a few seconds before looking up at me and then back down at the photo. He hands it back to me and I think this is the moment that he’s going to tell me to get lost.

  “Here you go Miss, enjoy your evening,”
he tells me as he pushes the door open for me.

  The second I step inside the club and the door closes behind me, I release the breath I’ve been holding and have a look around the place. This club is much smaller than I thought it would be from the outside. The place is about a third the size of Orchid Boiler, so I shouldn’t have to spend too long searching before I find out if Hayden is here.

  I look around the club trying to locate the VIP section on my own, but I don’t see it anywhere. Looking around me up at the walls I notice several cameras around the place so I decide against asking the bouncer standing in the corner. That might draw too much unwanted attention towards myself if I start asking dumb questions again like where the VIP section is. So I do the only thing I can think of, I move myself into the crowd so as not to get noticed for standing in the middle of the room and looking around lost. It’s easier to make it through this club since there are less people dancing, but there are enough people that I don’t stand out in the crowd. I pretend to belong here by bouncing my head along with the techno beat that’s playing right now. I allow it to momentarily flood through my body and move me with the tempo. I have to play the part after all, when all I really want to do right now is stand on the nearest table and shout if anyone knows where the hell my sister is right now.

  I get over to where the VIP section is and instead of approaching the man standing guard, I stand off to the side and look around to see if I can spot Hayden or any of the other men from that night sitting at one of the tables or dancing in the center of the section, but all I see are a bunch of young people hanging out, Hayden is nowhere to be seen.

  I start to give up and head back out towards where the dance floor is so I can stop at the bar and get something to drink. This place is way too hot and I need a moment to sit down and think about what my next move will be when I leave here before I head out into the night and face the fact that once again I am no closer to finding my sister than I was the day she disappeared.