Page 7 of Dirty Ink

Rachel

I was pacing across rugs that cost more than I’d made in my entire lifetime combined. More than years’ worth of crumby singles thrown at my feet or the dollar signs that came from my name in lights. More than all my tips at the cafe, though that’s probably the least surprising of all.

I was pacing over wood floors that were a part of a building in a part of town where if I tried to walk in ten years ago the doorman would call the police. I was pacing in front of windows that overlooked Central Park. Pacing in shoes with red bottoms bought with a black card, stored in a white walk-in closet bigger than any of my previous apartments. I was pacing in a silk robe that was actually silk, actually goddamn, fucking silk.

All around me was security and money and ease and it was all going to be mine and I was digging a hole in it, pacing back and forth, back and forth.

After asking for the woman’s manager at city hall and then her manager and then his manager and after being told that there were no more managers to ask for, after being told the marriage license was real, after being assured it wasn’t some stupid joke, JoJo and I came back to the apartment.

Tim was at work and I was in a panic. JoJo was asking questions I never thought I’d ever have to answer:

“Who the fuck is Mason Donovan?” “When did you meet him?” “How did you know him?” “How long did you know him?” “What happened to him?” “Where is he?” “Why aren’t you two still together, Rachel? Rachel, hello?”

And that was all before she got to the questions I couldn’t answer:

“When did you get married?” “What do you mean you don’t know?” “You don’t remember getting married?” “Rachel, how could you not remember getting married?”

There was lots of tea. Lots of crying. Lots of “Fuck, fuck, fuck, JoJo, what am I going to do?” There was whiskey. There was more tea. More “fucks”. Tissues. More damn tissues. Screams. More whiskey.

And then there was Google.

JoJo typed quickly. Her pinkie hitting Enter felt like someone pulling the pin out of a grenade and throwing it at my feet. I slapped my hands over my eyes.

“Well, hello, Mr Mason Donovan.”

My hands were still over my eyes. They were there until JoJo forcibly tugged them away.

And then there he was.

Mason.

The one who got away.

The one who apparently didn’t get all the way away.

There he was on the computer screen. Chiselled jaw. Cheeky smile. Tousled hair. Tattoos all down his muscular arms. All my best choices and worst mistakes rolled up into one god of a man.

He’d started a tattoo parlour, JoJo was saying. He was in Dublin. He was so fucking sexy, she was saying. He was looking for a three-way with two American chicks.

“What?” I blurted out.

JoJo laughed. “Oh, so now you’re listening.”

“You were joking?”

JoJo just rolled her eyes. When she saw me distraught, she twisted around in the office chair and extended her arms. I was probably double her size, but still I sat on her lap like a little baby.

“What am I going to do?” I moaned into her cropped hair, blue today, who knew what colour tomorrow.

“Well,” she said, rocking me like I wasn’t crushing her alive, “you could move to Utah and join the Mormon faith.”

“JoJo.”

“Or you can pick.”

I pulled away from her.

“Pick?”

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