FicWad

How the hell did I get here?

I can’t stop asking myself. The events of the past day feel like a blur, memories so far from now that they barely matter anymore.

The car speeds past the sights of Vegas- neon signs, searchlights, alleys and apartment complexes.

“Free Live Girls” the promise made by the side of every passing truck, building and billboard.

Beside me in the driver’s seat, God snorts. “Free live girls. Don’t miss it.”

His voice is startling. The voice of God. He has barely said a word since that afternoon, when he pulled up to my house in a car resembling the blue time machine in Back to the Future. No explanations or apologies.

I somehow failed to ask the obvious questions- why me? How do you know where I live? What do you want?

In fact, I failed to ask anything at all.

I got in; he took off.

Somehow, speeding into the night, watching house and street and neighborhood disappear in the mirror, everything felt right for once. Hopeful.

“The future is closer than it appears,” I say to the electric trash zooming by.

He doesn’t hear.

He is scanning the radio. Classic. Opera. Blues.

He pauses on something distorted and electronic. The lights outside pulse in time.

Am I high?

I close my eyes, imprinting the shallow pull of the city, a bare light bulb to spellbind helpless human insects.

Irresistible. Sinful. Gluttonous. Honest. Alluring.

Glamour and infamy. Celebrity and sin.

When I open my eyes again, it starts to rain.

The car lurches to the left, onto a filthy side street, and cruises to a stop.

“We’re here,” he says, smiling at the grotesque alley in front of us. It looks like something out of Jack the Ripper’s time.

Was I going to be murdered, much like those prostitutes?

I feel my face scrunch in confusion.

“Uh-we-we’re where?” I stutter out, still looking at the street. When I don’t get a response, I turn to look at him. H is smiling at me and I feel myself blush and look down at the gear shift.

I suddenly feel warmer as I notice from the corner of my eye that he is leaning closer to me.

His hand slides to the back of my neck. I can feel his breath on my cheek, like a warm desert wind. His fingers ghost over my cheek bone. My eyes flutter shut, my breath quickening, my heart speeding up, the adrenaline coursing through my veins.

His hands, oh his hands. Massaging up from my neck to my hair.

It’s like a dream. This is exactly what I dreamt last-

My eyes shoot open as I feel something else brushing along my cheek. Is that? His lips. Brushing down my cheek.

Those pillows, they’re on my mouth. Pressing against mine. I’m leaning into him, sighing softly and-

And he’s pulling away.

I lean forward as he leans back to his seat.

“Here,” he says.

It takes me a minute to understand that he is answering my previous question.

He opens the door and steps out to the street.

I sit in the seat, stunned, staring at the driver’s side of the car.

I- Did he-

I can’t form coherent thought.

I turn forward and see his retreating figure. I think its time to get out of the car.

I stumble out of the passenger door, feeling dazed and ungraceful.

Is this actually happening?

He's taking my hand, leading me through an unmarked gray door under a buzzing fluorescent light. I'm stumbling behind him, awkward and nervous and probably pathetic in his eyes. He walks like he's dancing or leading a victorious (albeit ridiculously flamboyant) army, confident and purposeful.

He's been here before. He's done this before. He's kidding. He's crazy. He's --

His hand tightens on mine. Warm and reassuring, somehow, even though I can't stifle the feeling that this is all some joke, some game meant to corrupt and confuse and mislead.

It's working. I'm staring at his t-shirt as it clings to his back, captivated by the slight ripple of his jeans as he strides forward.

I swallow, hard, and remember to breathe.

The room gets wider, and I'm so dazed I suddenly feel like Alice in Wonderland. Breathe in bright lights, breathe out awe.

I'm assaulted by strobes and electricity and neon, and Daft Punk blasted loud enough to make ears bleed. Vegas, at its most exclusively hip. He pulls me past scruffy hipsters in hundred-dollar pre-faded t-shirts. Girls in gray dresses with messy hair trying to single-handedly revive heroin chic.

I'm too far to think about my stupid jeans and stupid shoes and stupid hair. On with the freak show.

The music is muffled and he's slowing down. The lights are relentlessly bright now, white instead of neon. Cold tiles instead of padded walls. A bathroom, sterile and standard.

I guess even rock stars and supermodels have to piss and wash up. A dry laugh escapes me, and then I'm flooded with insecurity, painfully intense.

The lights are interrogation spotlights. Nowhere left to hide. Messy hair won't conceal the shame written all over my face. All I can do is wait, wait for him to find the weakness, to laugh and remember and disappear.

His eyes burn. They grace my scrawny arms and hunched shoulders and bowed head.

Unworthy; that’s all I keep thinking.

And then I feel his hands, soft and slow. They're easing me up against the wall. They're cupping my chin, brushing the bangs out of my eyes. Delicate. Like he cares.

He's not saying anything but his voice is still tender, gentle, with a tremor of uncertainty.

And suddenly I can't escape. His eyes are on mine and the honesty is louder than the relentless 80s electronica and the buzz of insecurity and the screaming, unyielding voices in my head.

It's been there since the first time I saw him, the first time he saw me. The first time I heard him speak. The first time I felt his touch. The first time I felt his kiss.

"I think I'm in love." I'm whispering to the white lights, white walls. He steals my revelation and the air from my lungs, kissing me again. I'm suffocating. He's pulling the insecurity out of me, and I can't remember where I am, who I am. I can't remember being anywhere but here, being anything but this.

He trails a hand from my neck to my waist, tracing my hipbone. And I can't comprehend what he's doing, what he's saying, what I know he wants from me.

Slowly he pulls away. "I want you. I want this. Since the first time I saw you. I know you barely know me, I know this probably makes no sense and seems insane…I don't care anymore. /I don't care/."

His eyes are burning, impossibly bright, daring me to look away, challenge him. God is standing less than a foot away. My future is changing into something I could care about. As melodramatic as it sounds, he's giving me a reason to stick around and see.

After about fifteen hours spent staring blankly into his eyes, like a deer in the headlights, I realize he probably wants some kind of response.

"Nghhgh…uhh…" Oh my God. Am I fucking retarded? I physically resist the urge to curl into a ball and scream at him to run before he fucks up his entire life.

But he's smiling like he understands, like he doesn't care. Like he won't run away.

Suddenly, the door before us opens. His head snaps to look at who interrupts us, his hands drop from my hips.

The tall, thin guy standing in the doorway looks between the two of us.

The guy greets Him, the face below his long, bleached bangs scrunched together in a confused look. I let myself briefly study this new guy. His black hair has been teased so it looks like a birds nest sitting on top of his head, his brown eyes are heavily lined with black eye liner and his body is covered in a tight black button up shirt and skinny jeans.

“Hey, Josh,” He replies back, turning away from me, not looking at me again.

He walks away from me and out of the bathroom, not turning back around once.

Just before they get out the door, I hear Josh inquire as to why he was talking to me.

“Fuck if I know,” he snorts. “Kind of weirded me out actually.” And with that the door closes.

I stand rooted to the spot. What the fuck just happened?

I stare at the door, waiting for him to come running back, saying he didn’t mean it. Telling me I didn’t hear that, he’d never say that, never hurt me like that. I wait for seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks. Nothing.

The realization crashes in my chest and I hear a strangled sound come from somewhere near me. I look around, but no one is there. The feeling of wetness trickling down my cheek is all I need to realize that terrible noise escaped from my lips. Another one follows and I realize I can’t stay here any longer. I turn to the mirror, disgusted with what I see.

I walk out the door, just like he had before me, through the throng of people.

I let my eyes wander the room, trying to keep it together. Watching the oblivious others engrossed in each other, the lights slightly blinding me.

He’s there, in the corner, in a booth, surrounded by a group of guys, his friends. He’s laughing, they’re laughing. I’m crying.

I stare at him, watch him as I stumble through the crowd. His eyes look around and I silently pray he doesn’t see me. But he does, our eyes look. His face stays blank, but in his eyes I see something I can’t place. But I’m imagining it. I manage to form a glare. Our eyes are in a silent battle and I feel like those last 300 Spartans, no chance of winning. Yet his are the first to break away.

I realize something else. He’s really not coming for me. He was playing with me. He’s a fake, a fraud. He does care.

I run to the door, onto the street. There’s a taxi just up the street. I wave it down.

I throw open the door, collapsing on the seat, gasping out my address as the feelings all wash over me. I have no more energy, I’m defeated. I feel dead, numb.