Page 4 of Desert Loyalties
Like seriously, how are they so fuckin’ beautiful? Just hanging up there, sparkling like they don’t have a care in the world. Like they’re not watching the rest of us drowning in the dark, pretending we’re fine.
That’s why I’m still staring up. Why I haven’t moved. Not because of the weight pressing behind my eyes, thick and tight and threatening to spill over. Not because my chest feels like it’s got a vice clamped around it.
Nah. It’s the stars. Just the stars.
I’m sitting on the old swing set behind the clubhouse. It’s tucked behind the shed, half-forgotten. Rusted chains, splintered wood. They used to call it the “family yard,” back when the old timers still brought their kids around, back when this place wasn’t just a frat house and I’d know.
I tried calling my best friend Ben, Bernadette. Left a pretty pathetic voicemail, I doubt she’ll listen to anytime soon. The woman is living her dream, travelling through Europe, now Asia, I think. She’s the ying to my yang. Spontaneous where I’m predictable. Has loving parents to my… well.
When I first got to college, all I had was my car and a few thousand bucks. Most of it vanished the second tuition was due. So when I saw an ad for a single, just a tiny room barely big enough to fit a bed, I jumped on it without thinking twice.
When I showed up, there was already someone there. This bohemian-looking girl, all mismatched patterns and sun in her smile, was halfway moved in. I must’ve looked like hell, tired, broke, desperate because she didn’t even hesitate. She offeredto share it with me. Said she needed to save anyway. Something about a dream trip across the world, chasing art and sunsets.
It took a hell of a lot of manoeuvring, but we made it work. She had a single mattress on the floor, and I crashed in the ‘extra’ sleeping bag she just happened to have. I think it had mushrooms on it. Her parents were hippie-nomad types, who lived out of a van and thought crystals could fix heartbreak but they loved their daughter fiercely. And by extension, somehow, they loved me too.
When they died during our second year, it hit her hard. Ben, short for Bernadette, though no one called her that, folded in on herself in a way I’d never seen. And I did too, in my own way. But it bonded us. We grieved together. Grew together. We became sisters. Chosen, not born.
And now?
Now my sister is out there chasing that dream, traveling alone. Living out of a backpack and sending me blurry photos from hostels in Greece and mountaintops in Peru.
And I’m still here.
Just me. Me and the quiet. Me and the creaking of this old swing on the porch, rocking back and forth as my feet drag shallow trenches in the dirt. No more chaos. No more midnight laughter or incense smoke curling under the door. Just echoes.
Just the silence.
Fitting, I guess. These swings, like me, got left behind when the dream dried up.
I remember being a kid and thinking life had to be better somewhere else. That maybe one day a man would show up in a truck and say,Hey kid, I’m your dad, and I’m here to take you home.That maybe love looked like dinners at a real table. Where lights stayed on when the bills came. Where birthdays didn’t get swallowed by grief and guilt.
I got a trailer park instead. Screaming through thin walls. Cigarette burns in the carpet. No mom, no dad, just grandparents too drunk to stand by lunch. I learned fast how to heat soup on a stove with one working burner and how to lie to teachers without flinching.
They called me trash before I even knew what it meant. Told me to dream smaller. Be grateful.
I worked hard anyway. Pushed myself, starved myself, gave up sleep just to chase the hope that something better might be waiting.
And maybe it was.
But now?
Now I’m just here. Behind a bar. Wearing fake smiles and short shorts. Pouring drinks for men who laugh too loud and fuck in the open, but call the women whores. Good enough to screw but not take home. I made that mistake when I first got here, trying to be someone I’m not. If it wasn’t for the day I was asked to man the bar, I would’ve been forgotten by them too, not that they see me now. Not really.
They might be the closest thing I have to a family and they don’t even know me, isn’t that sad. Except maybe one of them does. But he won’t say it. And I’m not stupid enough to ask.
So, I swing. Back and forth. Wood creaking. Chains groaning. Eyes locked on the stars like they’ve got answers.
They don’t.
But they’re still so fuckin’ beautiful.
I’m pulled out of my sad fuckin’ reality byhim.
“Hey, darlin’. What you doing out here?”
There it is.Darlin’.
He’s the only one who calls me that, any pet name really. To everyone else I’m justSkye.The bartender. The girl who pours the good whiskey and listens. But to him... it’s alwaysdarlin’. And somehow it always lands like a sucker punch to the ribs.
