I woke up suddenly a gasp, not aware of where I was. Feeling slightly light-headed, my vision became clear enough to learn that I was scrunched up in the passenger seat of some fancy leather interior sports car. I scrambled to compose myself and got the hell out of whoever this car belonged to.
I vaguely remembered spending my day by the beach, although I was not entirely sure if I had been with someone. I was definitely not feeling well, staggering as I trudged through the sand in hopes of at least running into Gerard. I felt someone following me.
"We ain't the fortunate, we ain't the misfits and we ain't the revolutionaries- so who cares about us?"
I turned to walk away from the familiar voice, struggling on the sand, my face hot, ready to tear up, but she firmly grasped my hand. Man, she was among the most stubborn of people I had met. I had to stand up for myself. "Stop... Just please stop. I need to be alone for once, I miss being alone.
She looked me square in the eye, still tightly clutching my hand. "You're a fucking liar- you're always alone; there in Jersey you'd be alone for weeks at a time, trapped between four walls, wallowing in your self-pity."
Letting go of my hand, she sighed and avoided eye contact. "You need a drink, Frankie. Hell, I do, too. Let's get drunk together so that I ca kiss you and blame it on the vodka."
Did she just say that? I froze. She began walking towards her shiny red car.
"Wait!" I called out. "What about you and... uh, Natalia?"
She kept moving, not bothering to even turn back. "Yo la odio, hate her guts, she's nothing but gold and diamonds to me."
With that, we drove off in her fancy car, a recent birthday gift to Rita Carmen from the most despised Natalia, and proceeded to get as intoxicated as possible.
...
In the mist of our shared drunkenness, Rita Carmen grabbed a good handful of my tangled hair and pulled my face to hers. She crashed her lips onto mine with no hesitation, her tongue in search of mine. She tasted like beer and perfume, her skin against mine felt like burnt pages of diaries. Like me, Rita Carmen was lost in the world. We were two souls with the same intentions.
She threw herself against the mountain of silk pillows in the middle of her living room. Having way more skin exposed than skin covered, she slurred out with a smirk, "I like my hair messy. My love wild. And my sex aggressive. But I'm a sensitive woman, just with a passion."
I had said that exact phrase one day, and now as she told me, everything became even clearer. Cigarette in one hand, I carefully observed this exotic being. She was unlike any other person I had come across. It hurt because just the thought of some interestingly odd person reminded me of Gerard; it was a stake through the heart.
Beautiful in the strangest of manners, Rita Carmen laid there, lips moving slowly as if she were mouthing along to the song of the universe. She breathed out smoke like there was a city burning between her rib cage. She was the type who would sleep on the train tracks and to drink gin out of vases, but this one, she spoke like she's never touched the ground. Every word mesmerizing.
I knew I was in major trouble when I couldn't help but notice the curve of her lips when she smiled up aimlessly at the ceiling, the way her eyes wrinkled at the edges when she laughed aloud every time our eyes would make contact, how she tucked her golden locks of hair behind her ears when she was pondering what crazy thing she would say next...
She stretched out a hand, signaling for me to come over to where she was. I wrapped a silky robe around my bare shoulders and managed to reach her without tripping over my own feet. Thinking she would pull me in for a kiss, I closed my eyes and waited. Instead, the next second she slapped me across the face. My cheeks stung and I was left in a state of shock, too drunk to clearly register what happened.
"I can't believe you just hit me!" I blurted out as I felt the side of my face throbbing.
She slumped back into the pillows, squinting at me, her face straight. "Were you expecting a kiss on the cheek? I'm still bitter, sweetheart."
"So, this is what regret feels like?"
Taking a long drag, she breathed out the smoke right into my face. "Dreadfully sorry, darling, but I ain't as unstable as you wish I was.
I was not sure if I was avoiding the truth that I believed to have finally discovered some moments ago, or if my drunken state didn't allow me to process the words spilling out of my mouth. What I knew for a fact was that Rita Carmen was slipping away, and she hid it very well; nobody cared enough to try to pull her back.
"I'm a good Christian woman, Frankie. Look at it this way; We're all just sluts and players who are trying to make it somewhere in this horrible cycle of life. We all look for heaven and put our love first. I ain't denyin' that all I've been up to is wrong in the eyes of my Lord. But all I can do is pray he still loves me, even after all this fucked up shit I'm into."
"I don't want to be just a memory."
"I'm..." she paused for a moment, caressing my stinging face with the tips of her fingertips. "I'm just here to be your sweet 'lil babydoll. Smile. Sing. Dance. Pretend not to bleed. It's not a... bad life. It's all gonna happen."
As I placed myself by her side, both us wrapped in endless sheets of silk, our bare skin pressing against each other, there was a thundering crashing noise from outside, as well as some yelling. With a faint jingle of keys in the distant, the door swung open.
