Page 32 of Dirty Ink

Then he was gone.

I sat there on the couch, alone, and watched the door fall shut behind him. Behind him and the woman.

I imagined them falling into a cab together then mounting the stairs at Dublin Ink together. I imagined them taking off each other’s clothes…running their hands over each other’s bodies….lowering themselves slowly to the bed to—

“Goddammit,” I growled as I clenched my eyes shut. I rubbed my knuckles against them and I tried not to see anything. Anything at all.

When I reopened my eyes, I checked my phone. Nothing from Tim. Not a goddamn thing.

It would have been smart to just get a cab myself. To go to Mason’s place. To sleep. But I hadn’t done a single smart thing the whole night, so heck, why start now?

I stumbled (not stalked) toward the bar and slumped over it (I had neither the energy nor the will to slam my fist down on anything except for maybe my own stupid head…or heart). I ordered another round.

I kept ordering until I was sure that when I walked past the bedroom I wasn’t supposed to go in—the bedroom where Mason would be fucking that woman, his cock thrusting in and out of her, the bedframe rattling noisily against the wall—I would be so drunk that there was no way in hell that I would possibly remember.

Then I ordered one more round after that.

For good measure.

Mason

There was no reason whatsoever that I should have stirred awake before dawn.

The night (and day) before I’d drunk enough gargle to intoxicate an elephant. I’d been sleeping like shite anyway the past week like I always did the days leading up to anniversary of the worst day of my life.

I wasn’t exactly an “early bird catches the worm” kind of fella in the first place (just ask Rian or Conor). The room was grey and chilly, the sheets thick and warm, and Miss Last Night’s body beside me was soft and supple. Everything pointed to the fact that I should have slept in past noon.

All except that The One Who Got Away was asleep in the next room.

I shouldn’t have remembered this fact. This inescapable truth. This tear in my heart. See again, the copious amounts of alcohol for one. The tits that bounced in my face all night were decidedly lovely. But they were decidedly not Rachel’s.

Anger and hurt swirled in my chest. Part of me wanted her gone. Part of me never wanted her to leave Dublin.

I shouldn’t have awoken. And yet I did. I shouldn’t have remembered. And yet I could not forget.

Miss Last Night’s ass was against my groin. I had my arm draped across her breasts. Her legs were intertwined with mine beneath the covers. And yet as I blinked awake, the last thing in the world I wanted to do was close my eyes again. I didn’t want to stay in the warmth. In this comfort. To stay for the inevitable morning wood and a willing pair of lips drifting farther and farther down beneath the sheets.

I didn’t have a fucking clue what time it was as I slipped free from Miss Last Night. I stood at the side of my bed and waited for my swirling, pounding head to clear. Then tiptoed over the clothes thrown hastily to the floor from the night before. It didn’t really seem to matter to me what time it was.

All I could think about was Rachel. If I thought about time at all it was all the time we lost together. All the time we could have had.

The door of the old house creaked as I cracked it open, but Miss Last Night didn’t stir. She’d had a lot of alcohol, too. She said something about being a nurse so I’m sure she wasn’t unfamiliar with a lack of sleep herself. She didn’t have the person she’d loved and lost just a few feet away like I had. She’d sleep through a creaking door no problem.

The hallway was even darker than my room. Rain in the early dawn pattered on the window at the far end. The floorboards moaned slightly beneath my bare toes as I moved toward the only door that was ajar. I peeked inside to find in the dim light Rachel passed out on top of the comforter. She was still in her clothes from yesterday. The clothes she left America in. The clothes she came to me in. The clothes she was wearing when she told me we were married. When she told me she wanted a divorce.

I would always remember the costume she wore when I first saw her in Vegas. When the curtains parted. When I blinked against the blinding lights. When she smiled and circled her lips.

But I would also always remember these clothes: a pair of khakis, well-fitting, but not form-fitting, a simple white sweater (probably some expensive material like cashmere, something I couldn’t afford, that was damned sure), black boots with a heel neither high nor low, and a gold chain necklace that strangely didn’t seem to catch the light. She looked elegant. Posh. Expensive. She looked nothing like Rachel.

But then there was her hair.

It was spread out wildly just the way I remembered it. The way it was on that couch in her dressing room, spilling over the sides like a waterfall. It was the way I remembered it when we were together on the strip and she turned back to look at me. Wind catching it. Lights flashing in it. Strands wiping across her face as she smiled at me and extended her hand to me. It was the way I remembered it when I got the call that changed my life. When I ran my fingers through it for what I couldn’t possibly know was the last time. When I looked back at the door with my bag and passport in hand…

I had the sudden urge to creep into the room and slip off her shoes. To unclasp the gold necklace that bit into her neck, all twisted up from sleep. To lift her and guide her beneath the covers, to pull the thick sheets up around her shoulders again. Would she whimper softly and shift toward the warmth? Shift toward me like she did back then? Could it ever be like it was?

I stood there looking in and imagined that we weren’t in this fucked up situation. That I didn’t have Miss Last Night down the hall in another bed. That I hadn’t fucked her hard and fast and rough while thinking the whole time of Rachel. That Rachel had never left, we had never fallen away, fallen apart. That all these years she had been mine.

Perhaps Rachel was passed out on the bed in her clothes because she’d gone out for a girls’ night with friends. Out with Candace. And Aubrey. They’d had too many Skinny Bitches at The Jar. Rachel had performed her burlesque routine from back in the day on the bar. Guys had offered to buy her drinks. To take her home. To strip off her clothes and love her (and fuck her) like the goddess that she was. I imagined that Rachel shooed them all away because she was coming home to me. That she always came home to me.

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