I shake my head. “No. I got this.”
The slur was the very last word my father called me when I walked out of the house with my backpack.
And I refuse to let it stain my Wild in the same way it stained me.
6
ISLA
As I sit in the parking lot outside the vet, I check my video stats. Last night, supported by a large gulp of cheap wine I was drinking to celebrate the return of power and heating to the house, I posted my second video. This was of me cleaning the bathroom out and trying to make it look nicer without actually decorating it. While cleaning, I talked a little bit about how objects hold power when we assign memories to them. And that Nanna isn’t in the little crocheted doll cover that sat over a spare toilet paper on top of the cistern. In some ways it was more to remind myself, as much as anyone else, that it’s okay to get rid of things that don’t serve.
It has seventy-eight views. But I got thirteen new followers, taking me up to twenty-three in total.
Most of the comments were supportive.
One was not. It was a man telling me all the things I’m doing wrong.
But I can ignore them because a woman called Grace from Orlando told me she was going through her mom’s house and was struggling with the same things. And a person with theusernameprobablyapumpkinencouraged me to not rush and sit with things if they’re too difficult to let go of.
There’s a real sense of honest togetherness that warms my heart, so I get out of my car feeling buoyed by what I’ve read.
The bell above the clinic door gives its usual half-hearted jingle as I push inside, the sound so familiar that it barely registers. I’ve been opening this place three mornings a week for almost three months, and even though I still have to fight off that gut-deep instinct to flinch when someone walks behind me, the routine helps.
I turn off the alarm, switch on the lights, and then smile at the sound of a dog barking in the back where we keep sick animals overnight. More than anything, this job has started to restore a little bit of pride in myself. Before this job, I’d pick up the occasional bar shift, babysit, or rely on the money some of the brothers would periodically give me.
Catfish was the best. He’d give me two hundred bucks at the end of every month, like clockwork. Tell me to take myself out for dinner or get my hair done or something. Instead, I put it to ramen and cereal and did my own hair. Smoke and Wraith would occasionally flip me a twenty or a fifty. I remember the day I wrote about it in my journal, as something that was kind about the club, but seeing it on the page, it made my skin crawl. Was it kindness, or was it paying for sex? I took it as interest, that they cared…but in the cold light of day, it felt a lot like sex work. And it didn’t even hit minimum wage.
None of them ever bought me dinner. Or saw me outside of the club.
And I’m having to undo beliefs I wasn’t aware I was carrying about sex work that led me to feel shame. Or maybe it’s the fact I thought I was there to find a man who would love and protect me, and all I found were men willing to sleep with me and pay me for it. I’m embarrassed I didn’t even see it.
I shake my head. “Money flows healthily and abundantly into my life when I seek it in ways that support my best interest. Money flows healthily and abundantly into my life when I seek it in ways that support my best interest. Money flows healthily and abundantly into my life when I seek it in ways that support my best interest.”
I always say my mantras three times. I read three is lucky or something.
Out of habit, I commence my usual routine. The most important task, once I’ve unlocked, is to make the coffee. Once it is slowly bubbling and dripping into the pot, I slip into the bathroom, remove my sweater, and pull on the scrub top, smoothing the embroidered patch—Clearwater Veterinary Clinic—over my chest.
When I step out, Dr. Noah Lane rounds the corner from the hallway.
He smiles, all dimples and the kind of earnest gentleness that makes me suspicious. “Morning, Isla,” he says, stopping a perfectly polite distance away from me. But my brain is still struggling to not associate proximity with danger, even though Noah is about as threatening as a Labradoodle puppy.
In the clubhouse, bikers just touch. You’re free game. You’re walking by the bar one minute, sandwiched between a man’s legs the next. I used to think if I leaned into that, if I was the most brazen, the one with the fewest inhibitions, the one more up for anything, I’d be desired.
Look how that backfired.
“Morning,” I manage, walking behind the receptionist desk so there’s solid furniture between us. A firm barrier I can control.
He leans an elbow on the counter, eyes flicking over my shoulder toward the treatment area and then back to me. “You were right.”
“I was? About what?”
“That Mexican place you recommended. The one with the birria tacos.”
“Oh?” I shuffle papers I don’t need to shuffle, just to keep my hands busy. “Did you go for the lamb or beef?”
“Beef. Maybe next time we can go together and get the lamb. Maybe this weekend?”
There it is. The line I’ve been pretending not to see him inch toward over the last three months. My stomach tightens. Not because he’s unattractive, because he’s objectively handsome in that outdoorsy, golden retriever boyfriend kind of way. Dirty-blond hair that falls messily to his shoulders, blue eyes, and cheekbones that are just unfair. But I’m shaky because I know what happens next. I know the script. Dinner becomes groping and kissing and sex you might or might not enjoy.
