Dirty Roulette, page 16
I want her miles away from Ryder. What the hell is wrong with me? I’m not the jealous type. I’m not jealous. Why am I lying to myself? I’m drowning from the thought of him biting the edge of her lips, sucking on her neck as he did mine, or combing his hand through her hair. I want to slam my head into a brick wall. My brain swirls, imagining her every moan and sigh from him doing all those things to her that he did to me. It’s suffocating. At this rate, she’s going to sneak into his hotel room and brag about it for days on end.
The ten bags of popcorn I’ve binged on and the dozens of Butterfinger wrappers living in my bed aren’t helping. Croaking alone in bed from a heartbreak must be a thing. Another day of this, I’ll have flies laying eggs inside my mouth, gaping open.
I get caught up staring at Ryder’s posts. The pictures, the thoughts he types up, and skimming through the comments from girls all over the campus swooning for him to notice.
Getting sucked into the loop is easy, and when I talk myself down and log off, I’m back online within thirty minutes. Staring at my messages, watching his icon go online, all of it wages war against my heart.
All week – and after every long day of classes, practice, and stupid sorority meetings – I cuddle up with my blanket in the dorm room with a thousand pounds of books and homework. None of it pulls my eyes off social media. Brittni’s stupid post sits on her feed and eats at me like crows pecking at a dead body.
EW the Trash got a hickey. Not even a fifty-year-old deadbeat would want to touch her with a ten foot pole. If she really thinks she can get with a running back, she’s out of her mind.
Naomi: What did I miss?
Autumn: Not a single guy was willing to kiss her the other night. Talk about gross.
Brittni: Right, and dressing for attention is trashy. Oh wait, she is Trash.
Charlie: Writing about my brother in the bathroom stall seems more trashy. He isn't your property.
Brittni: Oh, please. The bitch is lying to you and you consider her a friend.
Charlie: I can't believe anyone would consider you a good friend. At least she wouldn’t cheat.
Brittni: Whatever! Get off my feed!
Charlie: Peace!
Brody: She’s not Phi material, sweetheart.
Brittni: Trash.
Autumn: She should go Hannah Baker herself and we can burn it.
Brittni: Set it on fire, and get the hint no one wants you here.
Charlie: She’s not the reason why you and my brother broke up. That shit is all on you.
Naomi: I dig the no-bullshit attitude.
Ryder: YOU don’t stand a chance with me. Sounds like you’re angry at the fact someone came on the team with skills you can’t match up to. If Payt wants a running back, I’m all hers. She’s more of a woman than you will ever be.
Charlie: Seriously Ryder?
Brittni: oooo burn. I’m so offended that I might go cry in a corner.
Ryder's comment has more wow faces than the entire post. I’ve read the post a million times. Reported it. The response is that it doesn't violate any community standards when they legitimately want to throw me at the stake and burn me like a witch.
I don’t know why I’m drowning in what everyone says. There should be some type of strength in me not to give a fuck about them but it’s hard enough to be myself around anyone.
The only thing that’s given me any relief is Charlie not drilling into me about Dirty Roulette. I’ve grounded myself in the dorm, writing papers in English and talking to the wall in French. The one time I’ve left other than for classes and cheerleading was to find the old man tutoring algebra in the library.
Today turned gloomy. The sun isn’t supposed to set for another hour, but heavy gray clouds race across the sky, leaving us with endless dusk all afternoon. The onslaught of rain hasn’t stopped pattering against the window for the last hour. It fits my glum mood.
The obsessive compulsion hits an all-time high when Ryder posts a new picture of himself, shirtless, sitting in his Jeep by the lake. The devil horns, his tongue sticking out. Oh my god, he is with someone else. The pit of my stomach flops more. His biceps flex, the chiseled tan abs. It ruins me. Smears of mud and paintball residue make him look like an edible candy bar.
Naomi: I’m sweating.
Jared: Can I pour oil all over you and give you a back massage?
Ashley: Watch out, hottie on the loose!
Nick: Bro, stop it. You’re stealing all the thirsty girls.
Katie: I think you’ve made my panties wet.
Brittni: Hey, remember the other night? When are you gonna invite me over again?
Ryder: In what universe were you in?
Anessa: Want to know what would look good together? Me and you.
Ryder: Lol
Payton: Fuck you...
I just did that. I typed it up. What the hell is wrong with me? He’s gonna see it. I can’t delete it now. Pursing my lips into a flat, hard line, I try to ignore the way my body flushes from hot to cold. I pitch my phone hard against the wall and crumble to the mattress, ready to burst into an ear splitting scream of blubbery tears any second now. He said we’d hang out, he’d find the time, but he won’t even tell Brittni to piss off.
Charlie pulls an earbud out and cocks an eyebrow. “What’s wrong with you?” I sink my palms deep into my eye sockets, and it pours out. Gross and disgusting waves of tears run down my cheeks as I heave a sob.
“Fuck this, and fuck him!”
“Him? Are you finally gonna tell me who this guy is?” When I don’t answer, Charlie slams the computer shut, scoots off the bed, and crawls into mine. “You need to get out of the dorm. You are bed rotting.” Charlie grabs the metal bowl with popcorn kernels and places it on the nightstand.
“I’m not bed rotting!”
Charlie stares me down, then reverts her attention to the computer screen.
“Then who the hell are you sobbing over?” She crawls across the mattress and leans to pick the phone up off the floor. “Why is my brother calling you?”
I swallow the bulge lodged in my throat, and it sinks to my stomach like a hot rock.
“I don’t know.”
“Cut the crap! You’ve been ditching me for him, haven’t you?”
“What do you want me to say?”
“The truth.” She scoffs.
I wipe the edges of my eyes, but tears pool into little streams of agony falling down my cheeks. It hurts to the core, ripping the skin off my bones.
“I swear his birth certificate is an apology letter from a condom factory.” Charlie gawks down at the phone ringing in her hand. The stupid little crab icon swims across the screen. “I really want to know what he wants.”
“No, wait!” With my elbows, I prop myself up and reach for the cell, but Charlie slides off the bed and answers it.
“Why are you calling her like that? Pretty sure I’m not blind and it’s the third time in a row!”
Ryder’s voice is muffled, and I’m unable to hear a word he says. “Uh-huh... yeah... sure.” Maybe I shouldn’t care, but deep down I do. “Okay, but you’re not explaining to me why you are calling, and she’s sobbing right now. So, what the hell have you done?”
I lace my fingers tautly until my knuckles turn white. I choke on the sob and climb off the bed to reach for the phone. “Just hang up!” Charlie shoos me away. Her brows furrow and her eyes search as if she’s trying to soak in whatever he says.
“Charlie!” I rip my claws into her hands, grab the cell phone, and pitch it against the wall. Sinking back to the bed, my hands tangle into my uncombed hair.
“What the hell...” She huffs and scratches the back of her neck. “That’s it! We’re hanging with Noah. Put something decent on and grab a swimsuit. You’re not ditching me tonight!” She swings open the closet and tosses a top at me with a pair of leggings.
I put my big girl panties on, wipe the tears off my face, and change. Luckily, my cell screen didn’t combust as I snatched it from the floor. Ryder’s name pops up again, and this time I power off the phone, yelling at myself to keep it off. We leave ten minutes later and get into Charlie’s Civic.
***
It’s a thirty-minute trip down the freeway to a random neighborhood with cars littering the street. In the distance, the pounding of drums shakes the metal of the car. The different strings of a guitar playing hit my bloodstream.
I climb out of the car to the wet concrete with little streams running along the sidewalk. Cold rain and wet soil hit my lungs when I slam the door. A three-car garage is wide open, with a complete drum set and guitars connected to speakers.
Charlie takes the lead and I follow her to a group of guys huddled in the garage. Noah sits on top of a speaker with a notebook and pen in his hand, and a computer resting on a stool. “I dig this cinematic beat. It’s like the song can be put into a movie.” Noah clicks on the mouse pad, then lifts his head up.
“Hey, you!” He pushes himself off the speaker and wraps his arms around Charlie’s neck, planting a kiss on her forehead, then heavy on the lips.
“Hey, I remember you.” Noah’s friend with the man bun lifts his chin up at me.
“Oh yeah. I never got to introduce you to Omen.” He holds out his hand while Omen waves at me with a friendly smile.
“We should probably take a break. We’ve been messing with this song all day.” The guy sitting on the drum set taps his foot, playing a low thump on the bass, then dribbling his sticks across the snare, toms, and crashing into the symbols.
“That’s Vince.” Noah dips his head to him, as he swirls the sticks between his fingers.
“Tony.” Another guy with a tangled beard hanging down his chest chimes in. He lifts his hand. “We should grab some drinks.”
“I haven’t eaten since this morning. Let’s order some hot wings while we’re at it.” Vince slides off his stool and pushes back his chocolate brown hair. It’s not as long as Noah’s mermaid disaster that gives my hair a bad name. Vince’s wavy mess falls to his shoulders. Tattoos climb up his neck, and he has sleeves on both arms.
“Hey, you wanna get a tattoo? I see you staring at Vince. I can draw you one right now?” Omen asks me.
I bring my shoulders up to my neck and shrug. “I have no idea what I’d get.”
“What do you feel like right now?” Omen opens the garage door and I step into a dimly lit living room. A faint hint of pot and smoke fills my lungs. A black lab whines and paws at the stained-glass door leading to the patio. Noah and Charlie weasel outside. The dog barks, leaping up and down, licking her to death as she pets him.
“I don’t know, maybe I’m depressed.”
“Aren’t we all?”
I stroll with him into the kitchen. He pries open the empty fridge with condiments and rows of beer cans. He pulls one out, and cracks it open. “I’ve always wanted a tattoo,” I say.
“Well, if you let me paint a canvas on you, the beer is off-limits.” He slurps, “But it’s up to you.”
“Do you always ask people if they want a tattoo?”
“No, but it would look hot on you.”
Empty beer cans lay all over the kitchen counter. A faucet drips steadily on dishes stacked up to the brim in the sink.
“Come look. I got a room set up.”
“Okay.” I stroll down the dark hallway into a room with lights a shade of blood red.
“So, this is where you murder people?” I ask.
“Haha, no!”
I sit on the black leather chair and stare at a wall covered with framed designs of diversified tattoos. There has to be over a hundred options, from flowers to dangerous animals, lettering, and crosses.
One piques my interest. “The dandelion one is cute.” I point a finger at the picture. The wind blows through the fluffy seeds, carrying them off. There are small butterflies tangled within them, flying off into the sky.
“I drew that last night. You like it?” He pulls the frame off the wall.
“Yeah, it’s cute.”
“I’ll do it right now. All you gotta do is let me take a picture of it to gain some attention on my page.” He says. I’m already numb, and doing dangerous new things seems to be on my bucket list of bad decisions. I think a needle piercing my skin will ease all the demons caged inside. Maybe it will perform the long-awaiting exorcism I’ve needed for centuries.
“Yeah. How about getting it here?” I rub against my upper arm.
“Hell yeah! You’ll need to remove that sleeve.”
I wiggle my arm out of the shirt, lay flat in the chair, and stare up at the red ceiling as he rummages around the drawers and cabinets putting everything together.
The smell of antiseptic lingers in the room as he wipes down the area on my shoulder. It doesn’t take him long to get a stencil of the design, and he places it on my arm. Once I approve the placement he rummages around for other things. The buzzing of the needle fills the air, and it hits my skin.
“That game we played was pretty nuts,” he says.
“Oh yeah, you were there.” A sharp, bearable pain shoots through my skin as his eyes are dedicated to his art.
“That guy running the show has some crazy ego shit going on,” Omen keeps the conversation alive.
“Brody... Yeah, he’s an asshole.”
“Did you really have to sleep with that guy who came into the room?” It tingles and dances on my nerves and a faint aroma of ink swirls in the air.
“You saw that? Oh my god, you saw me dry-humping him?”
“Looked like you were having the time of your life with him.”
Now I’m red in the face. I can feel it. “Umm... Well, did Charlie sleep with Noah and film it?”
“I don’t know about the filming part, but yeah she’s been coming over with him a lot. Half the time he’s not practicing with us, they are sucking face in the hot tub.” The buzz continues as he presses a hand into my skin. “You know that guy you sucked face with kinda looks like Charlie... are they related?” He asks.
“Have you mentioned any of this to Noah or Charlie?”
“What do you mean?”
“Like what you saw?” I ask.
“Nah... why?”
“It’s Charlie’s brother.”
“Oh shit! No way.”
“I don’t know how I feel about any of it. I don’t want to lose my scholarship, and I really don’t want to lose Charlie... and if I lose him... I’m definitely screwed.” There I said it. It came out of my mouth. I repented, and Omen is now a priest. Let me do the sign of the cross and pray for forgiveness. “I haven’t figured out how to sit there and tell her. He’s getting over some bitch who cheated on him, but her hands are on him all the time.”
“It didn’t look like he was hung up on some bitch, dude looked like he had it bad for you.”
“I wish it felt like that.”
I say nothing else and let him work. The buzz drowns out everything. Eventually, there are no feelings in my arm. Staring into space instead of my phone takes away a fragment of the ache. At some point, I must have fallen asleep because I sat there for almost three hours when the buzz stopped, and I’m back to reality.
“Shit, that came out good.” Omen wipes a cold cloth over my arm. The skin is raw and pink around the edges of the ink. I glance in the mirror along the wall and see etched lines of perfection. Omen digs around for a camera and shoots several pictures of it before wrapping it up and giving me a quick rundown on how to let it heal.
We come out of his dungeon of tattoos and into the kitchen. It’s dark outside and Charlie’s eyes glimmer and gush. She takes my fingers and pulls me over.
“I thought you were sucking him off in there. That looks hella sexy on you.”
“Yeah,” I say, ogling down at it from my angle.
“Okay, well I’m getting drunk, you’re only getting lemonade!” She giggles.
I pound four cups of pink lemonade with nothing else in my stomach. It doesn’t take long for everyone else to get a buzz, and get infected with the giggles. We are all chatting about music and the different songs they are writing. Their band is called Wolves In Sheep’s Skin. I listen to Noah sing, as they practice and him laughing when he messes up his own lyrics.
They tell stories of people in the mosh pits at their concerts – the pushing, shoving, crowd-surfing. They have over fifty thousand followers and are climbing fast.
After my fifth cup of lemonade, I realize my bladder threatens to betray me. I need to take a piss.
I hurry down the hallway to the bathroom at the far end. When I plop on the toilet, my cell falls out of my back pocket to the tile floor. It stares at me with its sinful temptation. As gallons of piss rages out of me, I hold down the side buttons watching my screen light up.
Crab: What’s with the comment?
Crab: Can you call me back?
Crab: I have to work tonight. Message me, please.
There is a voicemail and the transcription of it sends a violent storm to go rampant in my chest. Sirens announce in my brain to the world we now have a category-six hurricane.
“Hey... I’m not sure what’s wrong, or if I upset you. I’m swamped. We have an away game and leave on Friday and Coach is pushing a second practice on us daily. I know I said I’d call you to hang... I... I do want to see you. I’m sorry. Just call me when you can.”
Screw it. Let me play the same game. I flush, wiggle up my leggings, and stare into the mirror. It’s vintage and rustic here. I dig the vibes and set up the phone to capture a picture of all my imperfections and the one thing that’s without flaw on my body. I post a selfie with my gorgeous tattoo, type nothing but black hearts, and toss it all back at them.
