I closed the door and turned around.
Apart from the pile of used condoms scattered across the floor, my apartment was clean. The pizza boxes were gone, dirty dishes were washed and dried and lying on a towel beside the sink.Did someone dust my fan?
The remote was still lying on the couch armrest, and I picked it up and turned off the stereo system that read it was almost four in the morning. Silence came. Then the confusion.
I grabbed a sheet from the bed and pulled it around me on the way to the sliding back door. The plastic patio chair squeaked when I fell into it, and I shoved a cig into my mouth. A whiff of sex and coconut exploded from the bedsheet. It brought flashes of her smooth whiskey skin, the twenty-four karat flecks in her brown eyes. I grinned. A big dumb, detention-hall grin that I hadn’t felt since getting caught having sex with Casey King in the janitor closet at North Point High School.
Then my grin faded.
I jumped from the chair, and the bedsheet fell from around me. I clutched the balcony railing, haunted by the empty parking space where my Chevy was supposed to be. Shock punched through my ribcage, clawed at my heart.Not my truck.
My right side smashed into the sliding glass door on my way inside. The keys weren’t on the clean counter anymore. I spun in place, gripping my hair with my limp and used dick swinging out of my boxer hole.
She stole my truck.
She cleaned my apartment, blasted I Just Had Sex, and stole my fucking truck.
9
#idowhatiwantto
HARLOW SAINT JAMES
The streetsat this hour were dark, empty, and somehow forlorn, like feeling abandoned after spending hours beside a warm body. There was a quietness, too, in the resurrection of the day. I’d stolen his Chevy because who falls asleep while giving oral? And it was something worth repeating in all caps like WHO FALLS ASLEEP WHILE GIVING ORAL?
The engine rumbled down Ocean Avenue under a graphite sky, and the Pacific’s early waves tumbled over each other. The sun hadn’t risen yet, and I gripped the wheel with a faint and satisfied smile, thinking about my night with Linc. Though I was alone with a heart scraped hollow, I was also happy. I believed it to be a rare kind of contentment.
In albums, artists wrote interludes between tracks to set the mood for the next song. A salty breeze played upon my cheeks, birds chirped in the distance, and a lazy orgasmic crawl replacing the hangover turned four o’clock in the morning into an interlude in the album called My Life.
I hooked up my Bluetooth, turned up the volume, and stepped on the gas. I was on a high from stealing Linc’s car, imagining him first waking up and realizing his keys were gone. He would most likely blame it on being high and thinking he’d misplaced them or left them in the truck. What a stupid thing to do, he would think.
I could see him walking out into the parking lot and finding the space empty. He’d probably immediately think to call the cops. In my mind, I saw him digging into his pockets for his phone, then pausing, remembering the hot sex hours earlier. The Creole child star in his room, and the vagina he passed out on.
Then he would finally remember my name.
The beach was deserted, white sand still cold under my bare feet. It had taken many gruesome hours to have my hair done at the salon, so I threw it up into a messy bun to avoid it from getting wet and prevent my curls from coming back. I stripped out of my clothes, tossing the little scraps of what I was wearing like foot tracks in my wake. The shore kissed my toes just as the moon winked at me.
The salty waves cleaned away my sins—rest in peace to my night—and I cupped the ocean into my hands and splashed my face.
I stepped out of the water like a Californian mermaid, letting the silence blanket me and the pre-morning breeze tickle my flesh. My gold bikini bottoms spilled out of my Chanel bag, and I slipped back into them. I was sure people saw me from windows along the coastline, my tanned ass their sunrise surprise. I collapsed onto a towel found in Linc’s truck, threw one of his hoodies over my head, and grabbed a stale pack of cigarettes found under his seat.
I packed the box into my palm, my shoulder and ear hugging my phone. “The fucker fell asleep while going down on me,” I told Sophie’s voicemail, trying to light the cig with a dead lighter. My sentence stood straight, sudden and almost embarrassed to be in the air at this hour. I knew she wouldn’t have answered, spending her graduation night partying, but I couldn’t wait until later to tell her about it. It would be an excellent voicemail to wake up to. “I’m not kidding. Straight face to vagina and moto-boating my clit ...” A ribbon of smoke slipped out from between my lips. “Anyway, my flight leaves at seven, so make sure your ass is up and ready—"
The your-message-is-too-long beep blared in my ear, and I ended the call. “See you tonight, Soph.” But only Santa Monica Beach heard my words that time.
For a moment, I sat and stared at the reflections of the pier bouncing off the waters before the ocean sucked its wave back. Like the nightlife always sucked me back after short intervals of the day. Only for a moment, though, because I could never stay in one place for too long. I was sleepless in L.A. There was no denying it. The day made me impatient, and the night was like a fourteen-minute remix I could dance to. It always happened so fast, and I’d fallen in love with the small spurts of lunacy and got addicted.
Sand followed me inside the truck, dusting the floorboards. An ombre sky charged my view, pinks splashing the windshield. The sun was blinking its tired eyes awake, and I took one more second before starting the truck, allowing myself to be blinded by the sun glitter scattered across the Pacific. There were only a few more hours to kill before my flight to Florida would take off. Which meant only a few more hours until I was in the same state as my dead-beat mother.
The thought drove me to the nearest twenty-four liquor store for a few bottles of champagne and a drive-thru. I ordered a double shot of espresso—I was always ordering a double shot of something—and a black coffee to sip on afterward.
The Chevy ran out of gas somewhere off Ocean Avenue, spitting pollution into the air from the tailpipes. It rolled to a stop on the side of the road. Motivated moms in their training shoes and bikes threw judgmental glances as they passed.
I got out, slammed the door, and sat on the hood with the two bottles of peaches and cream flavored champagne, one in each hand and drinking straight from the bottle.
A few selfies with the truck on my social media would have the world spinning. Surely if I tagged Linc, he could find his truck and take it home after he awoke. Then he never had to speak to me again. It was the plan, after all. This was what it had always come down to:turn everything I touched into ruin.
But Linc Hendrix didn’t have social media. At all.
