Page 16 of Driving My Obsession

His hand shoots toward me and wraps around my arm. “No hard feelings, right?”

The casual lilt to his voice ping-pongs inside me, and it takes every ounce of strength to keep my composure. No hard feelings? I have the hardest of fucking feelings. He’s lucky I need the job. If I didn’t, I’d punch him straight in the throat and then stomp on his dick when he’s on the ground. The idea brings a smile to my face, and I guess he takes that as “no hard feelings” because he releases me and leaves.

I throw my bag over my shoulder and escape into the warm night. A truck rumbles by, and a cloud of oil smoke explodes from the exhaust, ruining the clean air. My chest seizes when I try to draw a breath. I’m so sick of this dirty city. Filth greets me everywhere I turn and no matter how many showers I take, I never feel clean. I long for the life I lived before the accident, before I made a stupid decision that upended my soul. If I had a time machine, I would go back to the night of the cast party and beg myself to get a cab or an Uber.

But I can’t think about any of that. Time machines aren’t real. This miserable life is my reality, and I need to stop wishing for the impossible.

I pull out my phone to call for an Uber, but a glint of silver in the distance catches my eye, and I lower my hand. The familiar Jeep pulls in front of me with perfect timing, and the window begins to lower.

“You need a ride?” he asks.

I nod. I don’t know why I keep torturing myself by getting into a vehicle driven by a man who finds my line of work so beneath him, but here we are. Doing it again. Fear of assault is the furthest thing from my mind because I doubt he’d let his dick anywhere near me for fear of picking up all the STDs I don’t fucking have. I fear his disappointment more.

What the fuck is wrong with me?

Probably a lot.

I should be more concerned that a stranger would assault me, but I’ve only been assaulted once in my life, and he wasn’t a stranger. He was the most familiar person at my job.

I lean over to fasten the seat belt, and he pulls away from the curb without looking at me. He doesn’t even speak. Honestly, I don’t mind the silence. I’m embracing it after the deafening din inside the club.

My phone chimes and I pick it up. A name comes across the screen that I haven’t seen in a while: Mom. My stomach rolls against my insides, and I grit my teeth to bite back the nausea creeping up my throat. Since I announced my intent to attend a school of dance instead of medical school, she’s only texted to let me know when someone has died. I have no grandparents left, so that only leaves my dad. Though we’re estranged, he’s still my father, and I don’t want him to pass away before we’ve had a chance to reconcile. I’ve tried in the past. I’ve reached out. And I’ve been met with an unending silence.

Moving my dry tongue across my lips, I open the alert and scan the text.

Do you not have a shred of dignity left in you, Oaklyn?

This message sends me into another sort of panic, denying me the sigh of relief my body craves. She argued her point about the frivolity of dance for months. She spent less than a week cursing the day I was born when she found out I had turned to stripping. What else have I done to earn her disapproval?

What are you talking about?

Don’t act naïve. I got an email from you.

I haven’t sent you an email.

The furious tap of my fingers across the keyboard and the pings of response fill the silence in the Jeep. I’m so fucking confused. I’ve made as much effort to contact her as she has made to contact me. I havenotemailed her.

She sends a screenshot of an email, and I blink a few times when I see the sender’s address. That’s my name, but that isn’t my email.

That’s not me.

Another screenshot follows, this time showing a still frame from a video. I can’t deny this one.

It’s me.

Giving a lap dance.

With my bare breasts shoved into a stranger’s face.

My hand flies to my mouth, and I suck air through my nose to calm the explosion of panic inside me. I’m a firework store, and someone has just lit a fuse in the building. I’m imploding. I spot the acorn in the bottom right corner of the screen, and I realize who has struck the match. My stalker. It has to be. He went from coming in my fucking shoes to ripping open old wounds and pouring rubbing alcohol over the raw flesh. He held a flashlight to the keyhole in my closet and exposed my skeletons to my family. Though they know what I do, they’ve never had to see it firsthand.

An invasion of heat scorches my cheeks. My stomach rolls again, and my abdomen lurches inward. A cold sweat pops onto my brow and lower back. I want Ambrose to pull over so I can vomit what I just saw onto the side of the road, but I don’t want him to ask any questions. How would I even explain that my mother just saw me shaking my breasts in some old guy’s face? Or the stalker who’s hellbent on destroying what little sanity I have left?

As I dangle on the verge of hyperventilation, the voice from the driver’s seat cuts through the darkness.

* * *

Ambrose

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