Page 40 of Dirty Ink

“Mason.”

We’d said each other’s names at the exact same moment. Speaking over one another. Speaking in time with one another. How could one tell? We laughed that nervous laugh. That nervous laugh you exchange with a fellow office worker when you run into each other in the hallway and you both move in the same direction. Then both adjust in the same direction. Awkward. Embarrassed. Not the laughter of people who knew each other. Who knew each other’s bodies. Who had spent a lifetime together in twenty-four hours. Or was it forty-eight?

“Rachel.”

“Mason.”

It happened again. We laughed nervously again.

“You go,” I said.

Rachel’s eyes were wide and earnest as she looked at me. I could see straight into her. Into her soul. Her gaze darted away and she licked her lips. When she looked at me again there was that hesitation once more. That holding of breath.

“Mason,” she finally said, her voice serious, “what we did last night…”

My stomach dropped under a surge of panic. I couldn’t remember the whole night. Or was it nights? What had we done that made Rachel hold her breath? Oh God. I dug through my darkened memories for something, something I didn’t even know what. What had I done? What had we done? Was there something I wasn’t remembering? Something I should have remembered?

Suddenly I wasn’t breathing either.

“Was that, us, together, I mean, was that just a drunken thing?”

I exhaled because I hadn’t forgotten anything. She meant us fucking. Us making love. Us joining ourselves together over panted breaths and sweat-slick skin. I hadn’t forgotten that. There was no way. No human way possible. I exhaled, but Rachel didn’t. Because I’d gotten my answer. But she hadn’t. She was still waiting. Eyes wide. Earnest again. They looked so innocent, so childlike. It was as if Rachel expected to be hurt. As if she’d been hurt all her life and she was ready for it once more. Not shielding herself. Not protecting herself. But opening her arms. Baring her heart. And ready for my dagger.

I opened my mouth to speak and words failed me. Because this was the part when I would say, “Remember what I told you last night.”

When I would say, “This has been fun. And that’s what I promised, right? All I promised.”

When I would say, “I can’t give you what you want. But I told you that. I told you that.”

The words that I normally said failed me, because I hadn’t told Rachel. I hadn’t warned her I couldn’t love. Hadn’t made her understand that the morning was a goodbye, not a hello. Hadn’t given her the speech, the “you should know what you’re getting into before we get into it” speech.

I’d arrested her without reading her her rights. I’d sold her a gun without making her sign a release. I’d put her on a motorcycle racing toward a cliff without going over the brakes. How they worked. How to push them. Hard.

Rachel sensed my hesitation, my failure of words and blinked those wide, earnest eyes. She blinked and they were gone. Her eyes were seductive now. Cat eyes. Charming, alluring eyes. Hidden eyes. She smiled and laughed, this time not nervously. Not nervously at all. She smiled and laughed and leaned over to kiss me sweetly on the cheek.

“This has been fun,” she said, climbing out of bed. “Really.”

She gave me a cheeky smile over her shoulder. Her hip crooked to the side. The view of her ass perfect. The curve of her spine delicious. The peak of an erect nipple as she looked back at me and smiled like a postcard of her body. A memory of her. A memento. A souvenir of Vegas.

She gathered up her clothes and dress with easy chatter. She wasn’t embarrassed at all. Wasn’t hurt. She didn’t hide her body from me behind her white dress, one she must have gotten when I ripped her other one. She let me see everything as she tugged it up over her hips. She even hopped back on the bed to have me zip it up.

“Well, I better be going,” she said. “I’ve got a show tonight and all.”

It was then that I realised it was an act. She was performing for me. A new role. The girl who didn’t care. The girl who was fine with it being just a drunken thing. The girl who was perfectly fine saying goodbye. Rachel would play that girl. But she would not play the rejected girl. The distraught girl. The girl who held on too closely.

With nothing more than a kiss blown from her hand, the one with the stain from the candy ring, she was gone. The hotel room door clicked shut behind her. I was alone.

I was free.

It was exactly what I wanted. What I’d always wanted. From all my fuck arounds. From all my Miss Last Nights. From any woman that I let into my bed for a few hours, that I let into my life for a few hours. This was what I wanted of sex. Of intimacy. Of love. A few hours of passion. Heat. Bodies together. Panting breaths together. Glistening skin together. Climax. Sleep. Blissful sleep. And then goodbye.

Rachel had given me my ideal woman: the one who walks away. The one who leaves me alone. The one who spares me from hurt. From heartbreak. The one who leaves so I’m never left. Not ever again. The one who is never there long enough to miss when she is gone.

It was perfect. I’d find Conor and Rian. I’d nurse my impending hangover with some fruity daiquiris by the pool. I’d fuck one of the cocktail waitresses tonight. I’d arrive at the airport gate just as they were closing the doors. Maybe I’d fuck the flight attendant who tsked me for being so late. For holding them up. For being naughty, naughty, naughty. I’d return to Dublin. To the shitty tattoo parlour I worked in. To the long line of girls waiting at the bars…at the clubs…

I knew them all. The bars. The clubs. The girls. I wanted them. Yes, I wanted them. The slipping on of shoes in the dim light. The creaking of the floorboards as they snuck out past my nan’s room. The emptiness of my bed which only got emptier when their warmth on the sheets eventually faded. Disappeared. Gone forever.

That was what I wanted. Yes, that was what I wanted…

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