Chapter Twenty-Two

F*ck-Ups Five-Forty-Nine through Five-Sixty-Eight

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In late April, I got a tattoo—something I’d always dreamed of doing, but had been too chicken to pull the trigger on. I’d Tweeted out a question about great female tattoo artists in NYC. Among the responses was DirtyLinens, asking for an exclusive interview while I got tattooed. Mel and Marlene flipped over the amazing free publicity. Marlene made sure to put the book on super early pre-order to capitalize on my inking.

My tattoo wasn’t going to be any wild piece of surrealist art—I’d decided on quotation marks on the backs of my shoulders. Probably too stupidly literal, as several Twitter followers had said, but they would look amazing with a tank top, and would remind me to never again keep quiet when I wanted to shout from the rooftops.

The day of reckoning came. A Saturday. I woke up on the weekend and, as I did most non-work days, reached for a breakfast beer. Then it occurred to me.

549. Breakfast beers were probably bad

550. When they happened ten times a month

Having fun or drowning sorrows was one thing, alcoholism was another.

551. Alcoholism was for old-timey male literary authors

Ew, right? So I made a demonstrably un-fucking-up decision to stop day drinking.

552. I still cried in my shower, though

553. Let’s not get crazy with the good progress, for

554. ‘Scully’s Tentacles’ had not left another comment

Despite assuring myself I would not bring up Yash in the interview…

555. She totally brought up Yash in the interview

I lay on my squished boobs on the medical-ish bed at the tattoo parlor, my palms sweating. As the needle buzzed in the hand of a super-tattooed lady named, of all things, Giselle, I talked about how badly I’d fucked up my dream relationship. I’d sabotaged myself because I’d convinced myself it could end no other way.

556. Then I fretted out loud about taking further advantage of him just by talking

My nerves already jumped because Anna was the one interviewing me. I’d made sure not to wear the same coat to meet her this time.

And I left my unicorn head at home.

The needle made my tongue loose, for talking helped distract me from the pain. We discussed fear in relationships, choosing a path our family didn’t approve of—her family was made of lawyers…until her—and about behaving like good little girls. She got death and rape threats regularly online, just as I did. It’s the accepted cost of doing business if you’re a woman on the Internet.

557. Ha ha ha no, the world is terrible and shouldn’t be that way

Soon, one completed quotation mark throbbed on my shoulder! We took a break so that I could take a break from the pain. Seriously—I was a wimp. I sat up and squeezed my eyes shut. Seemed I was always tired and hung over from either booze or emotions lately. Sometimes both. It had been months, and my heart was still a raw piece of steak chewed on by a mangy mutt. How could I let him go when he hadn’t ever been mine?

558. That made no sense, but whatever

My palms started to sweat anew, and I pulled Anna aside. “I-I shouldn’t be talking about him in this interview. It’s so disrespectful. He didn’t ask for any of this, and I—”

“Okay, okay.” She yanked on my arms and pulled me in for a hug. My face landed between her tits. It was a very comforting place, I could tell why people liked it. “We’ll have a general conversation about relationships, not a conversation about one relationship.”

I sniffled, fighting with all my might not to cry or mucus on her boobies, from which I dislodged myself. “Thanks. This has been, without question, the weirdest year of my life.”

She grinned. “I sure hope so.”

“I have to have something left over for the book. Let’s get back to the inking. You can spend five hundred words mocking my low tolerance for pain.”

“Oh, I don’t know. Seems to me you have a pretty big capacity for taking tough shit and turning it into gold.”

We started on the other shoulder with a new ease between us, and we cracked open beers to help me with the pain and her with the need for a beer.

My phone dinged. Anna was closest to it, and her eyes flicked to the source of the beep before going very wide. Trepidation seizing my belly, I took the phone as she handed it over to me. The lock screen lit up again with four words.

The first word was Yash.

I almost fell off the table. He’d texted me. He’d texted me!

The next three were That’s your explanation?

My bottom dropped out. I jerked up, and the tattoo artist’s needle stabbed me. She called out, and I mumbled a “Sorry” while cradling the phone, the blessed phone. The text color had changed—he’d unblocked me!

I made it to my feet and jumped up and down, my boobs bouncing perilously in the bandeau bra I’d worn.

Anna opened her mouth and I fell to my knees at her feet. I was a drama queen—so what? “Please. Please don’t publish that you saw that. If I have any hope in hell of even making him my friend again, I can’t have people knowing this. It’s the first word he’s said directly to me since it all went down. Please, please, pl—”

“Okay.” She held up her hands. “Okay, I believe in the cause of true, fucked-up love. But if you two crazy kids actually work out, I expect an exclusive on the wedding.”

“You can take the first born I probably won’t have.”

“Uh…that’s okay.”

She and the tattoo artist stared at me, still on the floor. What to do? Should I answer now? Keep getting the tattoo? Act cool, calm, collected?

Hahahahahaha what the fuck no. My innards were about to explode like an alien out of John Hurt’s chest.

I scrambled to standing. “I-I have to go. I’m so sorry, can we continue the appointment at a later date?”

Giselle gave me that eyebrows-together-you’re-a-loon face I often received from Mel. “Yeah, sure. You look like a dangling thought now, though.”

I held a mirror in front of me and examined my partial tattoos in the mirror behind. One quote on the right, a partial outline on the left. She was right—I was the beginning of a sentence that yet had no end. She affixed clear plastic over the tattoos, such as they were.

I yanked on my shirt while babbling. “Thank you. Thank you both. It’s just that I— I have to— He— I never thought I’d hear from hi—”

“Go,” Anna said.

“Go,” Giselle said. “Get him back. He seems like a cool guy, and his first book was great.”

I smiled. “Thank you.” Then I kept talking like an idiot.

559. “You should read the sec—”

560. I bit my tongue to hold in the fact that I’d started his next book, which had made me weep in its heartbreaking wit

He’d gotten better. The beautiful bastard had gotten better.

Anna raised an eyebrow, clearly having almost heard my almost slip. I waved and ran from the building before I said or did anything else stupid.

A few blocks down, under a weak streetlight, I stared at my phone. Seven minutes had passed since he’d sent the three words. I stood there, a pebble in the stream of people coming and going on either side.

In my urgency to answer the blessed text, it hadn’t even occurred to me—

561. What do I say now?

A minute passed under the streetlight. Three. My head swam, and my shoulder hurt like the blazes. How could I form a proper sentence with only one quotation mark?

I’d rehearsed the speech a thousand times in my mind. Infinite variations of explanation, all of which had fled my cerebellum at the crucial moment. All I could think of was his laugh. All I could see was his face. All I could hear was the murmured sounds of his words in my ear as he made love to me.

Six minutes passed. Finally, terrified he would block me again, I responded.

 

Me: Because I was an idiot. And then I was an idiot who cared about you, and I was in too deep. The lie was too big, so I got desperate for any time I could spend with you. You must believe me when I say I’m so sorry. And I never in a million years thought anyone would ferret you out. Please see beginning of message about me being an idiot.

 

My stomach flipping into my throat, I hit Send.

I stood there. The message had been read. I waited for those little ellipse marks that show you the other end is writing. I waited.

562. I waited…

563. Dot dot dot

Nothing.

I shivered. Spring had not yet sprung in New York, and my too-light jacket did not cut the mustard. Chill puffed from my mouth. I wound my arms around myself, phone still in my hand, and started walking home. The cold felt nice, actually.

564. In the cold, I could pretend my shaking was from the temperature, not from terror

I came to a dead stop under another light, the person behind me running me over with a “Move!” Ugh. I picked myself off the ground, brushed the grit off my hand, and sent three more words to Yash, because I couldn’t not.

 

Me: I love you.

 

565. I waited…

566. I waited… Tears sprang to my eyes

567. I waited…my heart breaking in two

No, it had already split. My heart lay in fractions in my chest—a game of Plinko wherein they fell down, down, down.

Nothing.

That night was the worst in a long time, because before there may have been the tiniest glimmer of hope, but I’d said the wrong damn thing, and he’d responded with exactly nothing.

There wasn’t enough buttercream in the world.

 

* * * *

 

The next day, my eyes puffy from being punched by feelings, I managed to drag myself to work. My phone had become a permanent fixture in my hand, just in case he sent another word.

But one thing was different today from yesterday. Today I was still unblocked. He hadn’t shut the door. Oh, the thought made my heart race, not to mention my love-starved body. He hadn’t shut the door on me, even if he wasn’t taking a step through it.

I mentioned none of this in my blog. A new piece had gone up today, about getting the tattoo. I’d written it before I’d gone to get inked, and people were demanding pictures.

Latisha graciously took a photo of the one completed quote tattoo and I updated the post with it. The 666 blog was publishing company business now because we’d profit off the eventual book. The commenters wanted to know why I had only one quote.

I thought my half-finished art was deep, in a high school poetry class sort of way. What would the end of my dialogue be?

568. As of today, I think it probably sounded like a long dog fart

However that was spelled.