Putting my phone on airplane mode and disconnecting my computer from the internet, I sit and write the rest of Simply Sinister’s book. The heat of my laptop burns my thighs. With only a few cat naps and bathroom breaks, I don’t stop writing until the early hours of Monday morning. Three full days. Nonstop. Then,and only then, I reconnect my laptop to send the first draft of the finished manuscript to Gail for her approval.
I’m positive Damian will love how he and the band are portrayed. I’m blatant in the fact Simply Sinister has spent their entire musical career collecting sexual exploits and criminal charges like they’re trying to break world records. Speaking from personal experience, one does not just visit with Damian Miles and Simply Sinister so much as one aids and abets. The book goes into explicit detail of my time spent with Damian Miles furiously inhaling massive quantities of alcohol and drugs, as if he worried over the world’s supply running out on him. I gave detailed accounts along with all the X-rated photogpahic evidence of Damian and the band, and how, without a doubt, the hundreds of green rooms they’ve partied in are probably haunted by the ghosts of thousands of unborn children. Blah. Blah. Blah. I told the story just like he wanted me to, making him and the guys look like the biggest, baddest rock legends to ever live.
I swallow hard and stare at my screen. There are hundreds of emails I need to read through, but I refuse. I disconnect as soon as Simply Sinister’s manuscript is sent. I shut down everything, close my blinds, and pass out into a drunken sleep.
I have nightmares the book flops and I lose my job and have to sell dirty jokes on a street corner to buy food. There is also a cat named Wilson inhabiting these dreams, who always drags around a bottle of catnip-flavored whiskey. Dex is in each of these night terrors too, standing in a dark corner holding a baby that has strange purple octopus tentacles that slap at his face.
Monday afternoon, what sounds like a stampede of rhinoceros charging through my front door wakes me up, flailing my arms around, and bolting straight up out of bed. An empty bottle of wine hits the floor and there seems to be a serious amount of potato chip crumbles all over the front of my clothes.
And in my bra.
I lurch forward and stumble into my living room, clutching my throbbing head. “What the hell?” I ask the door as I try to unstick my tongue from the roof of my mouth.
The door pounds again. “Are you dead in there?” Julia’s voice shouts from the other side.
I reach out and fumble with the door locks. “What?” I croak as I open the door the tiniest bit to peek through.
Julia’s eyebrows hit her hairline when she sees me. “What in the actual fuck?”
I struggle to keep my eyelids open and not fall back asleep slumped against the wall. “What? I’m tired. I want to sleep forever.” Or at least until something can mend all the shattered pieces of my broken heart. I step back and squeeze my forehead.Why did I drink so much?Again.
Julia comes in and closes the door behind her.
I somehow make it to the couch without dying and prop my head against a pillow to keep myself from tipping over. Then I remember that this is probably the most diseased cootified couch that has ever existed in the history of couches—a Damian Miles jizz-upholstered monstrosity—and my eyes tear from not having the energy to move myself off of it.
“You look awful. Why don’t you get dressed and we can do something?” She eyes my shirt, covered in grease and junk food. Her eyes round. “How about the gym? You want to hit the gym with me?”
There’s a small pause of silence as I blink up at her. “Can’t I just drop my body off there and, like, pick it back up when it’s ready? Do they have a drive-thru?”
Julia thinks this is funny.
Me, I think it’s a plausible question. Why hasn’t that been invented yet?
“Your make-up is everywhere but where it belongs. And girl, you are ripe.” She sniffs the air. “It actually smells worse than a bar in here.”
I give her a thumbs-up and slowly close my eyes.
“Come on,” she says, suddenly all in my personal space and yanking me up away from gravity. I’m instantly vertical and my brain seems to seep out of the back of my head. I feel completely hollow, like someone stuffed my ears and mouth full of cotton.
“I can’t think. My brain is gone,” I grumble. “And I have horrible cramps, it’s like someone is stabbing a screwdriver into my side and jiggling it around, but I just finished my period. I hate being female right now. Why do women get punished every month fornotgetting pregnant?”
“You’ll feel more human after a shower,” she says as she drags me across the room and down the hallway. In the bathroom, she pops open a bottle of aspirin and shoves some pills at me. I swallow them with some water from the sink as she opens the shower curtain and turns on the water.
I would rather die a thousand deaths than have this woman see me with my clothes off. It’s not happening. I fold my arms across my chest and stare at the her.
“Are you okay?” she asks.
“I’m fine.” I suck in my cheeks and give her a curt nod. “I finished the book. Dex had a baby. Mistakes were made. Wine happened.”
Her eyes soften and her hand touches my shoulder. “I know, hun. I heard.” She looks back at the shower. “I’ll give you some time alone. Take a shower. You’ll feel better and then we could talk, okay?” She puts her head down and leaves me in my bathroom, stunned.
I take a long hot shower, wondering who could have bodysnatched Julia. She’s been an awful friend ever since meeting Nate, where did her empathy suddenly come back from? Was it on vacation?
I pamper myself with my favorite soaps and shave my legs and underarms that I’ve let reach sasquatch levels. Andotherareas that reached even further, we’re talkingsascrotchlevels. I tweeze my eyebrows which, over my wine-hazed weekend, crept up my forehead, then removed the small colored flakes left from my long-ago manicured nails. I even blow out my hair until it’s pin straight and shiny.
Julia was right, I feel a lot better. More human. But a sad, lonely, once-again-single human.
I throw on a clean T-shirt and jeans and find Julia in my kitchen with a bag of take-out from a small diner two blocks away. Two greasy cheeseburgers sit on a pair of paper plates next to a pile of fries and glorious crispy pickle spears. I salivate just from the smell alone.
