Chapter 1

Cybil

MY HEAD was breaking open.

Yes, that was it, that had to be why everything hurt so goddamn much — because my head was split down the middle, my little mushy brain bits spilling out onto the pillow.

Or you’re just really hungover, my throbbing mind offered.

“Shhh,” I replied. The mental chiding had felt like a scream in the dullness of my booze-soaked brain. I immediately regretted trying to say anything at all, as the sound of my own voice reverberated in my ears.

“Uunhh,” I groaned, miserable. This wasn’t going to get better on its own. I called upon my inner strength, developed through years of meditation and yoga practice, and opened my eyes.

The room was blurry, but I was at least relieved to see that it was, in fact, my room. For some reason, I’d had this dim sense that maybe I’d wake up in a foreign environment on top of some plaid sheets from Target, in a room with a Fight Club poster. Instead, I was greeted by my white canopy. I turned my head slowly and saw some of the pillows I liked to sleep with still on the bed and just beyond the hoard of crystals that dominated my nightstand.

I was home. I was safe. Miserable, but safe.

“Om gam ganapataye namah,” I muttered, intoning my mantra. “Om gam ganapataye namah.”

I concentrated all my energy to my heart’s center, and with a heave-ho that left me dizzy, pushed away from my pillows, and up into a sitting position.

My head exploded. Um, ow?!

It’s your own fault, that rude little voice tsked. You know you’re a lightweight.

“Shut up.” I put my face in my hands, and felt clumps of leftover mascara framing my cheekbones. My back ached.

I took another deep breath, in through my nose and out through my mouth, and threw my legs over the side of the bed. For the first time in — years? maybe — I decided to forgo my morning salutations. Screw the salutations. I needed water. Coconut water. Medicine. Relief.

I grabbed a pair of sunglasses from a nearby jewelry stand and affixed them on the bridge of my nose. There. That was a teensy bit better. At least I no longer felt like a detective was shining a flashlight in my pupils.

Slowly, carefully, I picked my way to the bathroom.

“Good work,” I said, cheering myself on. “You’re doing great.”

With trembling hands, I opened my medicine cabinet, which was packed to the brim with all manner of natural remedies. After a moment’s painful thought, I selected magnesium pills, vitamin B6 and milk thistle. It’s unclear if you’re actually supposed to take all these things together, but I figured that this wasn’t a time for ‘everything’s better in moderation.’ Last night certainly wasn’t. Why start now?

Pills in hand, I migrated like a slow iceberg to the kitchen, where light filtered through the curtains, creating patterns across my tile floor. I felt, out of nowhere, as though I were too gross for my gorgeous place, an ungainly, injured beast that had crawled into the wrong cave to die in peace.

What? I’m a Leo, I’m dramatic.

After grabbing a glass of coconut water, I put the pills in my mouth, took a sip of the water, and swallowed, waiting eagerly for a respite from the pain. The pounding didn’t stop.

“Not fair,” I whined, stomping my foot on the ground. I’m not usually one for petulance, and for what it’s worth, I have a great pain threshold, but this morning was giving new meaning to the word ‘hungover.’

I flopped onto my sofa, unable to stand, and pulled a blanket around my shoulders before realizing I had the hangover sweats. The blanket was quickly shucked until a few seconds later I was cold once more, and yanked it off the floor and back onto my body. The blanket and I fell into this routine for what felt like hours.

Last night had been fun. Right? I could no longer remember. I have no recollection beyond having dinner yesterday. God, I really couldn’t drink like this, I was getting too old.

You’re twenty-seven, my brain corrected, perhaps the first kind thing it had proffered all day.

I was in no mood. “Twenty-seven is like, ancient for L.A. I’m basically near death.”

The internal voice was silent, because we both knew it was true. Twenty-seven in L.A. was almost forty anywhere else. Sorry, I don’t make the rules.

The whole hot-cold routine induced by my pores desperately trying to let out trickles of leftover alcohol was starting to make me feel truly yucky. With another theatrical groan, I rolled off the edge of the couch, landing on my knees on the floor and coaxing myself into a standing position. I yanked my comically large sleep T-shirt over my head and dropped it without ceremony on the ground. On a normal day, I’d pick the shirt up and carry it over to the laundry hamper, where I’d deposit it gently. Today, I was beyond giving a shit.

Back in my bathroom, I opened the window, allowing a little fresh breeze to blow in.

“Better,” I said, forcing positivity that I didn’t feel.

My ass had begun to ache in time with my head, as though each round of blood pumped from my heart went straight to my brain and my butt, clocking both parts with an ACME-brand hammer. I winced and turned on the overhead shower.

In a bout of creativity several months ago, I’d planted a small DIY garden in my tub. Basically, the ‘garden’ uses the extra water from your shower to, like, help the plants grow. My friends thought it was maybe a little too hippy-dippy, but I’d written their concerns off as being mainstream and boring.

Now, I was beginning to regret that. The shower-garden made the floor of the tub slippery with that kind of slickness that comes from moss. Have you ever tried climbing a tree trunk in a swamp in the dead of summer? No? Oh well. That’s what it felt like.

I scrubbed myself with a pumice stone, determined to get every bit of caked grime off my skin. The grime wasn’t interested in this plan, and resisted me with each stroke. Relenting, I threw the pumice down and picked up the bar of tea tree oil that I used for all-natural soap. Like everything else in my home, it was sustainably sourced and organic.

The calming smell wafted up my nose and I relaxed a little. I was beginning to feel calm was descending on me like the steam from the shower.

And that’s right around the moment when I slipped and ate shit.

My ass hit the bottom of the tub and pain pierced through me, a bullet traveling through all my veins in synchronicity. I screamed, and in the same breath, thought how this was right about the moment when you wanted a live-in boyfriend, someone who would coming running at your cries to scoop you off the ground and kiss your boo-boos.

I was left to pick myself up, using the edge of the tub to cantilever myself back to vertical, each movement sending shivers of ache through my form. Once upright and panting, I moved a hand to my back, preparing to brush off the dirt left by contact with the shower garden.

My fingers brushed against a large piece of material that was definitely not a product of the garden. Weird. I furrowed my brows, and ran my fingers over the thing again, unable to discern what it might be. It was taped to my back.

After quickly drying off with a cotton towel, I hopped — err, hobbled — out of the tub and back onto solid, non-plant covered ground. My full-length mirror was fogged over from the shower, so I quickly ran a forearm over it. With that, I did a one-eighty, turning to face away from the mirror and dropping my towel to the ground. Another sound escaped my throat as I craned my neck to see over my shoulder, and down to the mysterious thing on my ass.

It was a large industrial bandage.

The lines between my brows deepened. What the hell? Had I taken a tumble last night and forgotten about it? Given my current condition, that seemed entirely possible, and extremely embarrassing. I had been focusing on my head, not my body. Thanks to years of training, I had great core strength and excellent balance. What — or who — had knocked me off my mountain-goat feet?

I peeled the bandage back, mentally preparing myself for an enormous gash or some other similarly grisly injury. The bandage refused to come off, so I tugged and tugged until—

“Shit!” I exclaimed.

There was no gnarly cut or bad bruise. But there was a sizable tattoo smack dab in the middle of my right ass cheek. A tattoo that hadn’t been there twenty-four hours ago.

My heart race as I repeated, “Shit!” and struggled to read the elaborate cursive script backwards in the mirror.

Sounding it out, I said, “C… A… S… H…” then broke off. “Cash?”

No. Absolutely not. There was no way I’d gotten a freaking tattoo! And a tattoo that read ‘cash.’ This couldn’t be happening. I had zero tattoos, like nil. I had no elaborate piercings, either. It just wasn’t my thing. I had, up until apparently last night, made it to twenty-seven without a reckless, youth-induced tat. What could’ve possibly induced to me to renege on that long-standing decision?

“Okay, think,” I said out loud. “Think.” I sat down on the lid of the toilet seat, careful to avoid the location of my new ink, and began to mentally run through what might’ve prodded me to go for something as seemingly nuts as ‘cash,’ of all tattoos.

Could it mean money? This was the obvious answer, but I nixed it immediately. I have no interest in money. After all, it wasn’t like people become yoga instructors for the sweet payday. Plus, I thought capitalism was total bullshit. Clearly I’d been out of my mind last night, but enough of my self-possession remained that I knew I wouldn’t have gotten a tattoo praising the very thing I despised. That was some small relief.

My ass throbbed and I reluctantly stood up, throwing the towel over the shower rod and grabbing a kimono from a nearby hook. I wrapped it around my body and moved back to the bedroom. Moving in autopilot while my mind raced, I opened my laptop, hit my music player, and pressed shuffle. Surely some familiar tunes would calm me down. An old Appalachian folk song filtered through the small speaker on my desk. It’s kind of the ultimate social suicide to admit in L.A., but country music of any form is my guilty pleasure. But don’t repeat that.

I flopped on the bed, as I mouthed the word ‘cash’ over and over, letting it sit heavy on my tongue. ‘Cash.’

“Okay,” I said, reasoning aloud. “Maybe that’s the name of the club you were at last night?”

Not a bad thought. ‘Cash’ did sound about right for a stupid, West Hollywood club. That was easily checked. I snatched my combo bullet journal and day planner off the desk and flipped through its pages until my finger landed on yesterday’s date, then traced down to the notation for last night’s festivities. It read:

Dinner @Fresh. Bachelorette Party with The Girls, @OnePart.

Dang it. OnePart was a well-known club in the area, which meant that the tattoo on my ass wasn’t an ode to the joint.

No problem. I reached further into the recesses of my mind, examining other possibilities.

I wracked my brain trying to remember anything from yesterday. I had dinner with the girls and then went out with them for drinks. Perhaps I should have had more than just a salad for dinner.

“Maybe it’s an abbreviation or unfinished,” I ventured. But an abbreviation for what? Cashmere? Uh, that’d be a pretty strange reference. Cashew? I bit my lip, nervous. It would actually be a little bit on brand for me to immortalize my love of nuts. I loved trail mix, drank almond milk whenever possible, and used shea butter, derived from shea nuts, to moisturize. And I loved cashews.

“Oh God,” I muttered. “Did you get a tattoo about nuts?”

I was so busy mentally berating myself that I missed the first few notes of the next song, but by the second chorus, the words started to filter through my foggy brain.

And it burns, a familiar voice crooned. That ring of fire.

I jolted up in bed as I heard Johnny Cash finish with that ring of fire.

Cash. It wasn’t money, or a club or nuts.

It was a man’s name.

I had a man’s name tattooed on my ass.

But I didn’t know anyone named Cash. Not now, not ever.

So who was Cash, and what the hell was he doing scrawled across my ass?!