“You first,” I said as soon as we sat down in a pair of chairs in the corner.
Lilli lifted her shirt and showed me a fresh tattoo of a barbed wire heart. The surrounding skin was raised and red, the black ink stark and scabbing beneath a square of plastic wrap.
“You got a tattoo?”
“I did! Chris got barbed wire along her sternum and her underboobs. It’s very sexy.” Lilli pantomimed fanning herself. “What were you going to say?”
“You won’t believe what happened,” I started.
Her eyes widened, and she spread her fingers out, her hands shaking like chihuahuas.
“Ohmigod, did you…?” She raised her eyebrows suggestively.
“No! No,” I laughed, and she gave me a melodramatic pout. “We went to lunch, and we kissed.” I felt the warmth creeping up in my cheeks.
Lilli squealed like a teenager. “I love this so much. You guys are so cute.”
Something akin to fear reared its ugly head in the pit of my stomach as my mind threatened me with half sentences of incoherent despair.
He won’t want you.
Won’t choose you.
Not you.
You are broken.
Broken.
Broken.
Used and ugly and worthless.
You don’t deserve to be here.
Unworthy.
I couldn’t get it to stop. “I should go to the bathroom,” I said, and I made my way along a hallway trying to find anysecluded spot. I found a solitary pencil sharpener on a piano. Lucky find, or unlucky? A real question of half full or half empty.
It was both a temptation to damnation and a beacon to hope. I grabbed it with the single thoughtjust oncewhispered in my mind like an unholy prayer.
Locking myself in the single-use bathroom, I saw my reflection in the mirror and stopped. I didn’t recognize myself. Was that what my hair always looked like? How long had my skin looked deathly pale?
I heard the audience quiet as the booming voice of the organizer began the evening. I threw the pencil sharpener in the trash and leaned against the sink. Hunched over and clammy, I tried to take some deep breaths as I heard the quiet between the first and second bands. How long had I been in here?
I patted my face with the rough disposable hand towels to try and clear off the cold sweat and pinched my cheeks to bring back some color. “What’s wrong with you that you have to ruin every good thing?” I asked my reflection.
Backstage was quiet as the band onstage started singing a soft ukulele ballad.
I saw Lilli in the greenroom.
“Shit, are you okay? You look like a ghost.”
“Yeah, I’m just…” My throat felt tight. “I started freaking out.”
Lilli’s brows pinched together in concern. “About the show? We’re going to be fine.”
“No, I know.” Since she had mentioned it, though, my wicked inner raincloud started flooding that subject with concern too. “I just… I almost…”
