Page 75 of Dirty Ink

“Fuck yeah,” I said, staring Rachel down. “Let’s get this party started.”

It didn’t take long for the night to devolve into a drunken mess. Or at least for Rachel and me. We circled the small crowd gathered at Dublin Ink like lions stalking a herd of zebras on the Sahara. Our eyes meeting through the maze of people. Our bellies hungry.

Alcohol seemed to be the answer to our frustrations. A glance meant a shot. Caught in the middle of a lingering gaze? Well, that meant a full pint. Thrown back in one go like a fucking nineteen-year-old. The music was loud enough to shatter the windows, but I always heard her voice. There were enough people packed in as the night went on to get lost in, but I never lost her. I wanted to escape her in the chaos. I wanted to escape the chaos and have only her.

The awkwardness of everyone around us was soon gone. Or maybe I just got too locked to see it anymore. There were cheers for divorce. People shook my hand. “Happy Divorce! Happy Divorce!” I’m pretty sure there were ballads to divorce. Poems to divorce. Drinking songs to the beauty and grace and inevitability of divorce.

At one point, Aurnia was locked enough to lean against Conor and dreamily sigh with her beer bottle at her lips, “I hope we get divorced one day.”

There was yelling and dancing and singing and neon lights spinning and I’m not sure which of us kissed someone else first. Whether she saw the smear of red lipstick on my lips first and went to retaliate. Or whether I sought out that juicy red apple because I’d seen someone else’s fingers carding through her hair. It was all a blur at that point. Time and space and the fragility of hearts all fucking relative.

All I know is that I devoured that girl’s mouth. The sweet little thing with cherry lips and needy hands. I remember hoisting her up on the tattoo chair. Tilting her chin up. Seeking out Rachel’s eyes in the crowd before pressing my lips to the girl’s pulsing throat. All I know is that I fucking loved it. All I know is that I never would have kissed her if Rachel hadn’t been watching.

Watching like she’d been when that asshole rutted his hips against her on the makeshift dance floor. Her eyes fixed on mine despite everyone moving between us. Her lips curled cruelly at me as he slid his hands down to her ass. Watching me like she did to make sure I saw when she pulled the asshole’s face to hers.

Rachel and I didn’t say more than two words to each other the entire night. We didn’t dance together. We didn’t drink together. We didn’t even find a quiet moment in the line for the bathroom to curse each other out. To taunt each other.

And yet, for her and for me, there was no one else. Everything I did was for her. To her. Because of her. And it was the same for her. She moved one direction because I was coming from the same way. She took a drink because I’d caught her looking. She trapped me, made me believe she hadn’t noticed I was looking, so that I would reach for the bottle myself. I performed for her. She performed for me.

The red lips were a prop. That man’s hand on her ass was exactly the same as a lacy black bra, a brush of a finger along the thigh, a whisper in the ear. It was meant for me. It had nothing to do with that ass. Nothing at fucking all. It was all for me. Me.

Because she wanted me.

And I wanted her.

Or at least that’s what I told myself before passing out in my bed sometime in the early morning. Alone. Not even having the wherewithal to take off my shoes.

Rachel

I hadn’t heard Mason leave the next night.

I’d spent the whole day beneath the sheets. Groaning. Moaning. Cursing my life choices. Promising to never, ever consume a drop of alcohol never, ever again. I heard every goddamn creak in the house like nails on a chalkboard. I heard every door open and close like a hammer to my skull. Even my own breathing, in and out, in and out—oh God, Rachel, don’t throw up—had been like a cruel, howling wind to my ears. But I hadn’t heard Mason leave.

I did, however, hear him return.

It was like a nightmare that I’d tired of having. That no longer scared me, but exhausted me. Annoyed me. Irritated me to hell. The high-pitched voice. The girlish little giggles. The heels on the steps. The silence which was worst of all because I knew what it meant: it meant Mason had stopped Miss Last Night to kiss her. To press her against the railing. To slip his hand inside her shirt. To find her clit so she gasped, unable to say a fucking thing anymore.

I heard them come up the stairs. Falling over each other. Laughing. Mason trying to get her to be quiet. The girl just getting louder as he pinched her ass at the top of the stairs.

I knew what was going to happen. I knew exactly what kind of sounds I was about to hear. I knew exactly how loud they were going to be, how long they would last, how they would end. I knew. Knew like the back of my fucking hand.

And I was sick of it.

I wasn’t sure what I was going to do when I threw back the damp sheets atop me. The chill of the air bit at my fevered, flushed skin, but I never once considered returning to the humid warmth I’d cocooned myself in all day. Hiding from the light. Hiding from the pain. Hiding from Mason. I didn’t have a plan, not even anything remotely close to one, but I had a direction: out of the room. Down the hallway. Toward the noise on the stairs.

My bare feet smacked on the cold hardwood floors. My heart beat in rhythm. All I knew was that I had to do something.

I was propelled by this anger that had been building and building in my chest. Anger that all I had at night was my hand when these other women had all of Mason. His strong arms. His muscular chest. His cock splitting them in two.

I rushed forward down the hallway toward that faint pink neon glow because I was hurt. Hurt that Mason knew I could hear him. Hurt that he probably liked that I could hear him. Could hear the pleasure he was giving to someone else. Could hear the pleasure he was withholding from me. A shiny, juicy apple just out of reach.

It would have been smart to slow, to hesitate, to think fucking straight for once. I had a fiancé back home. I had a life back home. I had the promise of stability and comfort and ease and maybe if I’d slowed down just a bit, just a tiny bit, I might have been able to convince myself that I wanted all of that more than I wanted to do whatever the fuck it was I was about to do. That I wanted all that—everything I ever wanted, ever thought I wanted—more than I wanted to scream at them. At Mason.

And fuck. If I could have just stopped to think for two seconds, I would have seen this was madness. Madness, throwing it all away. Giving it all up. Sacrificing forever for just one night in Mason’s bed. Just one night as Miss Last Night.

But maybe if I’d been able to slow, if I’d given myself a second to breathe, to think, I would have realised that it was madness to wait so long. That this was what I was always meant to do. That this, this was the smartest thing I could possibly be doing, storming down that hallway in the middle of the night.

In the end it didn’t fucking matter. I would never know what I would have thought, what I would have decided. Because there was no way I could slow. No chance in hell I was going to hesitate. Not now. It was absolutely impossible to think. I was like a car barrelling down a mountain without brakes. There was only one way it could all end.

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