Ocean Of Need

40 🖤💔🖤 Break Me

I wake up slowly. Feeling floaty and relaxed from the valium. I slept through the whole day. The pill I took was too strong - I won't take those again.

I stretch in our bed, wrap myself up in the sheets, revel in the scent of us, whiskey & sea salt. Remembering you like a long lost lover. That's how you said we kissed the first time we kissed. "Like long lost lovers." Is that what we are now? Lost lovers?

I loved the way you treated me like a doll sometimes. Dressing me up and carrying me around. Other times you treated me like a woman. I never felt underestimated or undervalued by you. And yet here I am, talking about you in past tense.

I've still got two hours to go till I meet Roxy so I get my ass out of bed, brew coffee on the old stove in the corner of our room and carry it to the typewriter on my desk.

I sit at my desk, staring at the typewriter, waiting for you to come back. Your easel has a new canvas on it. I put it there in a moment of hope. The paints are waiting to be used by you, to be adored, to please you. I am too.

I know in my heart that you'll be back. No-one can have a connection like we did and then lose it. Can they? And yet...you're not here...

I get up from my chair. I can't just sit here waiting, at least if I'm pacing I'm doing something.

I feel like I'm losing my mind. It's been over two weeks since I heard from you. How is this even possible? It's like you're dead or something. My heart hits the floor, my knees follow it. Because, what if you are dead? Surely that would be the only way to go from what we were, to this?

*

I push through the crowds at Johnny's and make my way to the bar. That's where Roxy always sits, at least she's easy to find. I see her leaning over the bar, talking to not-so-hot bar-man intently. He nods back at her, his face serious. His mouth is closed tight as hers makes the shape of words and her eyes look up at the ceiling as if she's trying to remember something or inciting a spell.

I've never seen her not smiling. She looks completely different. In control. Like she's commanding an orchestra, or conducting one - what ever it is that they do. I really should leave those valium alone, my mind is ethereal and strange. Pierced by moments of pure panic that the valium can't tamp down. But then, everything is foggy and strange right now because you are not here, and because I am a stranger in a strange land, not knowing who to trust.

I don't even know if I can trust Jameson anymore, and if I can't trust him, well that means I really am on my own now. Just like I wanted and absolutely not how I wanted at all. I feel like Alice in Wonderland, wondering the halls, and getting smaller by the second.

'Roxy,' I say, as I slide onto the bar stool next to her. She jumps as she hears her name, then that smile of hers slides back into place as the not-so-hot bar-man slides away. You said the vultures were circling but to me it feels like the snakes slithering. I don't know which is worst, at this point it all feels frightening.

Roxy squeals, 'Amber! Great to see you Baby!' And hugs me tight. She smells different tonight, but I can't place what the different thing is, 'What'll you have? Margarita?'

'Whiskey. Straight. No ice. Make it a Hennessy please.'

'Whiskey? Really? You don't strike me as a whiskey drinker.'

'I am today,' I say grimly. I need to taste something familiar in my mouth. Instead of this sourness. This mistrust.

Not-so-hot bar-man returns with the whiskey, but instead of leaving to serve the other twenty or so customers in need of sustenance, he hovers across the bar from us.

I turn to Roxy, 'Have you seen him Roxy? Do you know anything?'

Her smile slides away as she nods.

'Tell me,' I say. 'Please. I'm desperate. I have to know what's going on, my mind is going in all directions and I feel like I'm going crazy. I don't know if he's dead or alive.'

She grips my wrist to stop my hands from flying around. I hadn't realised they were. 'He's alive,' she says.

I sag on the bar stool. He's not dead. Thank god. Once that piece of news has sunk in, I say, 'What happened to him?'

'Happened to him? What do you mean?' She frowns.

'Did someone...' Shit, I can't ask that. I can't ask about his work or if someone has got him. He's supposed to be an artist. I'm supposed to be a poet. Roxy is not involved in any of this, I can't ask these questions without putting her in danger too. 'I mean, why isn't he calling me? Did he meet someone else?' God if only our lives were so simple that he'd met another girl and gone off with her.

To my utter shock Roxy nods.

My turn to frown. 'What?'

'I'm really sorry Amber, but, yeah. He's met someone else.'

'No,' I gasp. 'No, that can't be right. That can't be it.'

She bites her lip. Her face is my whole world right now. Everything else has faded away. I try to read it for some clue that this is not true, but I find nothing.

'He's not a nice guy Amber. You must know that? He doesn't play by the rules. I'm guessing he told you that you belong to him?'

My mouth falls open and I nod.

'Yeah. That's pretty standard Dom stuff. And that's all cool. But the thing about MaCallan is that he likes to have lots of belongings.' She makes air quotes as she says, "Belongings," and my heart constricts. Then she says, 'But he doesn't like to belong to any one woman.'

'But,' I gasp, 'But he said it was just me and him.' I sound like a seventeen year old jilted at the prom dance. Is this what you've turned me into?

'I know baby. But, like I said, that's standard Dom talk. It's part of the game.' She cocks her head to the side and says, "I thought you'd played theses kind of games before Amber?'

I'm crying now. Like the idiot I am. 'Yes I have,' I say, through my tears. 'But I didn't think this was a game. I thought this was real.' I swipe at my tears with the back of my hand, and the back of my hand goes black with the kohl from my cloudy eyes. 'I thought he loved me.' I'm sobbing now and people are looking the other way. Fuck.

Roxy rubs my arm and looks uncomfortable. 'Oh, Amber, I'm so sorry. MaCallan is a womaniser. This is what he does. He wins you and then he gets bored. Moves on.'

'Moves on?'

'To someone else.'

'Has he moved on?'

She nods.

No. No fucking way. There is no fucking way way that what we had wasn't real. You can not play a player and I'm one of the biggest players of all. 'I don't believe you.'

'I thought you might not.' She gestures to the not-so-hot barman and he nods.

Oh fuck, what now?

I watch as he pulls his phone from the pocket of his jeans, taps on it, scrolls, presses the screen, and hands it to me.

It's a video. I can't make it out at first because it's a bit dark. Then I see you. Swinging in the same cage that I was in with Roxy and all her ex's. You're with a woman. She has long long blood red hair and it's wrapped around your hand as you kiss her. She closes her eyes and you pull away, look towards the camera, flip your finger and wink, before turning back to the red woman and running your hand up her skirt as her head falls back.

'It's from last night,' Roxy says, catching the phone as it slides from my hand. She gives it back to not-so-hot bar-man and he finally turns away towards the other punters.

I pick my whiskey up from the bar.
You're
not
dead.

I wish you were.