Penny

When I cracked my eyelids the next morning, the very first in my list of regrets was the tequila.

I felt like I’d been hit by a smelly, greasy garbage truck driven by Macho Man, who happened to be high on cocaine.

My stomach rolled, and I shifted to lie on my back, hoping to calm the raging bile down as it crept up my esophagus. A long drag of air through my nose helped, and I swallowed, reaching for the glass of water on my nightstand.

Bad, wrong. Bad, wrong, was the song my heart screamed, my brain expanding and contracting in my skull with every masochistic beat.

Yeah, tequila was the mistake that demanded all my attention. But Bodie was the regret that had broken me in the first place.

The night came back to me, not in flashes but like a creeping fog, spreading over me in tendrils. Bodie, distant and hot and angry, so different from the sunshine I’d found in him before. Rodney calling me onstage. The cold dread I’d felt as I chased Bodie out. The hurt when he’d thrown my heart on the steaming pavement. The satisfying pain from punching Rodney in his stupid fucking eyeball.

I flexed my aching right hand at the memory, and pain shot across the bones up to my wrist.

“Fuck,” I croaked, opening my bleary eyes just enough to inspect my swollen phalanges.

My knuckles were split and swollen, fingers bruised, especially where one of my rings had been. Thankfully I’d taken it off or I probably would have had to cut it off. On top of that, I’d broken a nail over that fucker.

Worth it.

Of course, in a few hours, I’d have to use that hand to tattoo people all day. And as I closed my fist, I realized just how bad that was going to suck.

Still wouldn’t suck as badly as the fact that Bodie and I were through.

He was right, and he was wrong. I was right, and I was wrong. I should have gone after him. I should have called him or texted him. I should have known better than to go to that show at all, especially with Bodie.

I shouldn’t have waited so long.

I should have talked to him about how I felt.

And now it was probably too late.

Tears pricked my eyes, and I took a deep, shaky breath again. I’d come home to an empty apartment, drunk and hurt and defeated. A long shower couldn’t wash away my guilt or sadness or loss. It couldn’t erase all the things Bodie had said. It couldn’t wash the dirt off my heart after I picked it up and carried it home. So I dried off, threw on the first thing I could grab from my drawer — panties and an inside-out New Order T-shirt — and slipped into my sheets in the dark.

And then I cried.

I cried until my pillow was damp and the burning in my chest had died down to a smolder. I cried until my eyes were swollen and my nose was red. And when I finally caught my breath and the tears ran dry, I slipped into a fitful sleep.

My muddled dreams ran in circles, waking intermittently to open my eyes to find my room spinning, tequila metabolizing out of my mouth and back into my nose. I hadn’t been smart enough to eat anything or take anything, and I felt that mistake too.

I reached for my phone to check the time, and a shot of adrenaline sent my tender stomach on a turn when I wondered if he’d called or texted.

He hadn’t.

And I was about to be late for work.

“Shit,” I hissed and sat up too fast, dimming my vision and sending me back into the spins, heart banging its warning as I pressed the heels of my palms into my eye sockets until it passed.

I expended a healthy amount of caution as I slipped out of bed and shuffled around my room, pulling on jeans and Chucks, taking my shirt off to put it on right side out. At that point, I stumbled back to my bed and sat, wondering if I was still drunk. But no. I was dehydrated and brokenhearted, but I wasn’t drunk. So I drank the glass of water on my nightstand, took four ibuprofen to guarantee success, and got out of bed, praying to the Mexican devil Agave that I would survive the day.

No makeup happened, and I pulled my hair up into a messy bun to match my messy life, tying a red rolled up bandana around my thumping skull, knotting it at the top. I didn’t even look in the mirror. That was how you know shit was real.

I put on my biggest, darkest shades and hurried as best I could out the door and into the humid, sticky summer day to head to Tonic. The walk felt forever long, and I felt beyond dead.

By the time I opened the door and stepped into the air conditioning, I was practically dragging myself. The shop was loud and buzzing, and I didn’t take my sunglasses off as I headed straight for my station with the singular goal to sit the fuck down.

If the music had been a record, it would have screeched to a halt at my entrance. The entire crew stared at me like I might bite them, and I might have if they’d stopped me from getting into my chair.

I dropped my bag and climbed into my tattoo chair, sighing as the cold leather touched my overheated skin, and I closed my eyes, leaning the chair back without a single fuck to give about anything but trying not to puke.

“Rough night?” Ramona said from my elbow.

I cracked my eyes to see the dark shape of her through my glasses.

“You could say that.” My voice was gravelly and deeper than usual from all the yelling and crying.

“Here’s some water.”

I smiled, lighting up as much as I could as I reached for the offered plastic bottle. “Bless you.”

“What happened, Pen?”

The bottle was to my lips, and I drank half of it before I could bring myself to stop. My stomach gurgled a warning as it prepped itself. “It was bad. Really bad.”

She frowned. “How bad?”

“Apocalyptic.” I sighed, mouth dry and heart wrung out. I took another drink to buy time and to attempt to mend my busted up body. “I drank about ten shots of tequila on an empty stomach, kissed Rodney, and fought with Bodie.”

Her eyes blew open like I’d electrocuted her. “You kissed Rodney?” she said way too loud.

I winced from the memory and the decibel. “Shhh! Fuck, you don’t have to yell. Jesus.”

Her face pinched in anger. “I cannot fucking believe you, Penny! How could you do that to Bodie? God, it’s like I don’t even fucking know you!”

My eyes squeezed shut as my head rang. “Seriously, you have to bring it down, or I’m gonna hurl. I didn’t kiss him like that. Just calm down and let me explain.”

She folded her arms across her chest, and I took a deep breath, taking another sip of water to fortify me, wishing it could bring my dried up soul back to life.

“We were at the show, and Bodie was acting all angry and weird and didn’t seem to even want to be there. And at the end of the show, Rodney spotted me and called me up onstage to sing to me.”

“He did not,” she breathed, mouth open.

“He fucking did, that cockgobbler. He sang to me, and then he kissed me. Onstage. In front of everyone. Including Bodie.”

She cupped her mouth with her hands.

“Yeah. So beyond fucked up. That stupid fucker with his stupid fucking hands on my ass, like he had any right to touch me. And what could I even do? A hundred phones were pointed at me, and frankly, I was stunned stupid. But the second I could get away, I chased Bodie out — because of course he’d left; I would have left me too — and we got into this huge fight. Then Rodney came out, and Bodie punched him in the nose.”

She was blinking now, hands still over her mouth.

“And then he left us there, and Rodney was being Rodney, so I punched him in the eye.”

“You didn’t!” she said from behind her hands.

I held up my right hand, knuckles out, and rested my head against the headrest, closing my tired eyes.

“Get the fuck out of here. How are you going to work today?”

“I don’t even know.” All that water I’d had to drink hit my stomach and began to reverse direction. “Everything sucks. Literally everything. I just want to go home and die slowly, alone, in my bed.”

“Are you gonna talk to Bodie?”

“I don’t know, Ramona. I don’t think he wants to see me again.”

“You have to try. You can’t just walk away. You can’t just give up.”

I shook my head, heartbroken and exhausted and worn down. “I don’t want to talk about it, not right now.”

“But—”

I held up a hand and burped with my lips closed. “Ramona. I need to get through today. And—” Bile raced up my throat, and I scrambled out of my chair. “I’m gonna puke.”

I ran to the bathroom, hitting the john just in time for the volcano to blow, the mass quantities of alcohol I’d consumed leaving me in a burning rush. And the minute that hell was over, my stomach almost sighed, having exorcised the demon, leaving my body feeling frayed and threadbare but less like it was going to expire.

I only wished the same could be said for my heart.

---

Bodie

It was after noon by the time I finally woke. I’d slept like I was dead, a deep, dreamless sleep. But I woke feeling like I hadn’t slept at all.

My stiff body creaked and groaned to life, and when I rolled over and slid my hand under my pillow, pain shot up my forearm and into my heart.

I’d clocked Rodney.

I’d lost Penny.

I flipped onto my back and hooked my arm over my face, sending me into darkness. Images flashed behind my lids like a horror show. Penny watching Rodney, her blue hair foreign, a change I’d known nothing about, a change that had felt like its intention was to isolate me, separating me from her. Penny up on that stage with Rodney’s lips against hers, lips that were mine, lips that had been avoiding me. His hand on her ass and his face buried in her ear — that was the thought that hit me over and over. It had been the thought in my head when I put his face through the meat grinder.

I shouldn’t have left her there with him on the sidewalk. I shouldn’t have left her at all. I shouldn’t have said what I had, but I didn’t want to take it back either. I’d suppressed how I felt for so long that there was no holding it back, not after a fifth of whiskey and Rodney’s hands all over her.

I was wounded, and I didn’t know if I’d get over it.

The cold truth was that, over the span of the last week, since the wedding, I hadn’t seen her. She’d blown me off, leaving my calls and texts largely unanswered, and then, when I’d finally seen her, it had been a nightmare.

The more I thought about it, the more my hope sank.

Penny hadn’t said or done anything to admit that she cared for me, nothing concrete, nothing real. In fact, the way she’d been treating me over the last week only pointed to a simple, undeniable fact.

She just wasn’t that into me.

Everything I’d thought I felt, I’d made up and imagined. I’d read too much into it, and here I was. If she wanted me, I’d know. There would be no cat and mouse, no games to play. No waiting to answer or avoiding each other. And at the end of the day, that had to be my answer.

Operation: Penny Jar was a massive failure after all. I’d knocked the jar off the shelf and it had shattered, leaving broken glass and shiny copper all over the floor of my heart. I was the asshole who had ended up getting hurt after all.

My heart hardened under my sternum, calcifying and shrinking at the realization that it was over. Maybe it had never gotten started. Maybe she’d never cared about me at all.

I flipped off my sheets and climbed out of bed, wanting to leave my thoughts on my pillow but they followed me around like a ghost.

Phil and Jude were already at their computers, and they turned when I shuffled in wearing nothing but sleep pants, rubbing my eyes.

“Morning, sunshine,” Jude sang.

I humphed.

“How’s your head?”

“Fine,” I grumbled as I poured a cup of coffee. “I don’t remember coming home.” I took my mug with me to the island and sat on a stool, facing them, back against the cool counter.

Jude smirked. “You ate half of a cold pizza, drank a gallon of water, and ranted for two hours. I’d give you another high five for decking Roddy, but I don’t want to hurt you.”

I inspected my hand, bruised and cut up and aching, just like my heart. “Fuck that guy.”

Phil watched me. “You gonna be okay?”

“Don’t really have a choice, do I?” I took a sip of coffee when I should have let it cool off, and a scalding trail burned down my chest.

“I don’t mean to be a dick,” Phil started, which indicated he was about to be a dick, “but you’ve been gone, distracted, checked out, man. We’re so close, but we need you to get to the end of this thing. I want you to be happy, but she’s driving you crazy, and we don’t have time for crazy right now.”

I nodded, eyes down and heart sinking. “It’s over. And I’m here. I’m ready. No more distractions. This — the game, you guys — this is my priority. I’m sorry I’ve been tied up with her.” Mistakes. Regret. It’s over. “She’s out of my system,” I lied and stood. “So let’s do this.”

They smiled, though their eyes were sad, and I headed back to my room to put on a shirt.

When I picked up my phone, I found myself looking for her name, for a text, a call. Anything. But I only found the time. And the time said to move on.

So I powered it down and tossed it into my nightstand where it could stay in the dark.