Page 113 of Love Me Tomorrow

I hung up so fast I hope she got whiplash.

The next time the phone went off, I ripped the fucking cord out of the outlet and threw it clear across the parlor.

I don’t need to look online to know what I’ll already find: I’ve been outed, and there’s nothing I can do to wind back the clock.

Rapid banging on the glass door snares my attention.Lizzie.Gage. Thank fucking Christ.

I practically hurdle over one of our tattoo tables in my haste to get to the front door, and when I rip it open, I halfway worry that I might pull the damn thing off the hinges. My sister-in-law scoots in past me, my twin hot on her heels.

Once they’re in, I bolt the door.

“It’s fucking bad,” I blurt, hands moving up to my head.

Hands on her pregnant belly, Lizzie lowers herself to the sofa. “I got dumped on Instagram, Owen, in front of at least a million people. It wasn’t the end of the world. It’s all in how you manage this.”

“Manage it?” I pace the reception area, sidestepping her massive bag that’s on the floor. “Liz, my entire livelihood comes with people trusting me with color, with ink. How the hell do you think they’re gonna react when they find out I use a fuckingcolor chartto determine what they want and what I can deliver?”

Gage drops a hand on my shoulder, stilling my agitation. “You have a system. It works for you.”

Until it didn’t. Until I was so wound up and so consumed by Savannah that I messed up—bad.I need her. I’ve needed her for hours, ever since that first phone call. I don’t give a damn if that makes me sound like a pussy. She puts things into perspective; she forces me to see that if I’m true to myself, my gut can’t lead me astray. She’s smart and savvy and she’d handle this problem fast.

I look at Gage and Lizzie, who keep exchanging glances like they’re part of their own secret language that no one will ever understand but them. They’re wearing identical expressions of sympathy, of worry, but it isn’t enough.

No.

I need Savannah forme. I need her here to hold my hand and whisper that it’ll be all right. I need to feel her weight at my back, her arms looped around my waist, and know, deep in my soul, that she’s going to keep me standing.

That she’s going to keep memoving, even when anger is crashing through me like a tornado left to wander the open plains.

All afternoon, I’ve kept my emotions tethered by a string, mostly by staying far away from the internet. One snip, one wrong headline that I read, and I’ll spiral. I close my eyes now and it’s like I’ve fallen into a time warp. Bleakness radiates from the darkest depths of my soul. I hear my heavy breathing. I hear my brother and Lizzie discussing our game plan.

But my vision continues to swim, those goddamn colors moving and swirling until I’m hightailing it to the bathroom, my arm already outstretched because I’m going to be sick. One hand lands on the porcelain sink and the other flips up the toilet lid, and nothing,nothing, comes out.

I dry-heave and fight back the memories.Not a sliding scale, I try to remind myself.I can’t change a thing of the past, not without altering who I am now. But the memories assault me, anyway, and for the first time in years, I find myself descending into the blackness—into all the shadows that I’ve purged out on my skin in an effort to find the light. It grips my soul with its gnarled fingers and mocks me with its wicked, sinister grin.

Spiraling never hurt during, only ever after.

I hear my brother shouting, but I slam the bathroom door shut before he can see me like this. Falling. Splintering.Crashing. I see it all. My parents in their matching coffins, just before we slid them into the family tomb in Metairie Cemetery. The bottle of Jim Beam that I swore I wouldn’t drink completely, until I woke up the next morning, still wasted, and covered in my own vomit. The line of coke that an old friend laid out on a table before leaning down, one finger to his nostril, and snorted it all. The line that he then laid out for me.

Savannah’s nervous face, just before I brushed back her hair and traced the fragile skin behind her ear before her first tattoo.

I fumble for my phone in my pocket, my back hitting the wooden door, my knees giving out as I slide down, down, down, until my ass is on the floor and my eyes are squeezed shut and the panic is crowding in and I’m struggling to find air.

Everyone knows.

Everyoneknows.

They want a tell-all. They want me to say that I’m guilty for lying to customers for years. They want to tell me I shouldn’t strive to make my dream a reality—a dream that pulled me out of the depths of hell—because I’m not likethem.

But I only wanther.

“Hey! This is Savannah Rose, I can’t come to the phone right now, but you know the drill. Leave your name and number and I’ll get back to you real soon.”Beep!

The back of my skull collides with the door. “Hey, it’s me.” My voice is rusty, raw, and I try to clear it but it’s a hopeless case that took a turn for the worse at 3:37 p.m. on a fucking Monday. “Some shit happened—no,ithappened.”Freakshow. Guilty. Liar.“Someone listened to my conversation with Gage at the restaurant, I think. Had to be, there’s no other way. I’m heading to the house . . . Barataria. I need to get out. No, I need—I need you, Rose. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do, I don’t know what I’m supposed to say, but all I know is that I need you here. With me.Please.”

I hang up, the phone going to my thigh.

And then I try to remember to breathe . . . and try even harder to keep my shadows at bay.

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