Do you see that girl standing in the hallway, her back pressed up against the wall and her face flushed with the adrenaline pumping through her veins still?
You’re asking yourself, how’d she’d get so worked up?
Or maybe you’re not. Maybe you know. Maybe you’ve been obsessed with a superstar before too. Hopefully not Justin Bieber. If that’s the case, we can’t be friends anymore.
You’re wondering how my night turned out like this?
How’d I go from hoping to spend the night in Shade’s suite to standing outside Mila’s office staring at the red walls of the hotel?
I’ll tell you how. I’m a pussy. I had my chance and I blew it when I should have been blowing him. I should have closed the door on us, let him lay his restless head on my chest, and he would have confided in me and we could be having sex.
Do you see the woman approaching me? The one in the long black dress with the frizzy hair and sad blue eyes?
That’s Mila, my best friend. I know you already met her, but look at the poor girl’s face.
“What’s the matter, love?” I ask her when she approaches. She looks worse than me after a long day of cleaning people’s bathrooms. “You look kind of awful.”
“Thanks.” She opens her door, motioning me inside. “I never got to call 911 tonight. I was up in Shade’s room, and it was just weird.”
Shade? My Shade? She was in his suite?
First of all, lucky bitch. But. . . she wouldn’t. . . you know, fuck him. . . or would she?
Do you hear the way my heart stops beating? I think I stop breathing for a moment at least. “I swear to fuckin’ God, Mila, if you slept with him, I will cut your head off and set you on fire.”
I’m not lying. Best friend or not, I’ll cut a bitch if she sleeps with him.
Thankfully for her, Mila’s quick to assure me otherwise. “No, I wouldn’t do that.”
She’s right, she wouldn’t. Mila’s loyal when it comes to friends. She’d never ever fuck your man.
Smiling, I toss my arm around her bony shoulder as we make our way into her office. “I’ll give you a New Year’s kiss. Might even give you tongue if you play your cards right, babe.”
“Though I appreciate the offer, I’ll pass.” She motions to the cupcakes on her desk from Cupcake Royal. “I got us some cupcakes to wallow in our misery of being alone on New Year’s Eve.”
My eyes light up thinking of her twenty-first birthday in college. One of the best nights of my life. “Are those red-velvet infused tequila cupcakes?”
“I think they’re just regular red velvet.” She opens the box and hands me one. The bursts of lights outside her office window catch my eyes, the city below celebrating the New Year. “I had to call in a favor for Shade, and Trevor gave me these as a perk.”
Trevor, the owner of Cupcake Royal, has been trying to fuck Mila for years. It’s actually kind of sad the lengths he goes to land her when he’s twice her age. That’s just creepy if you ask me. “You mean an ‘I’ll show you mine if you show me yours’ type of gift?”
“Yeah, but I didn’t show him.”
Mila Wellington is fucking beautiful. Think exotic island beauty meets New York runway model. If I were the jealous type, I’d be jealous of her simply for the fact that she fills out her jeans way better than me in the booty department. She’s not only got the body to kill for, she’s pretty too. And funny as shit. I never laugh as hard as I do when I’m around her. From her golden complexion to her dark hair and blue eyes, she’s got the cutest face ever. “I can’t believe how men around this city are drooling over your perfectly tan ass.”
Mila frowns. “Sadly, not the one I wanted tonight.”
Since Mila slept with a firefighter on Christmas Eve, she hasn’t been able to forget him. I don’t remember much about him or that night, but I can understand wanting someone you can’t have. Hello, Shade ring a bell?
I watch the fireworks, each spark of light more beautiful than the next. I don’t like Mila being sad, especially not after her last breakup with Tom’s asshole of a friend, Judah Prince. It was ugly. She caught him banging their neighbor.
Now she’s sleeping on my couch because she has too much pride to ask her parents for a place to stay. And it was only a week ago, so yeah, the last thing I want is for her to be depressed. “How about we go sit outside his apartment for the rest of the night and see if he comes home?”
Mila sighs, finishing the last bite of her cupcake and then leans back into the couch and rolls her head to look over at me. “As appealing as that sounds, I think I’ll save my remaining dignity.”
Dignity? I’m not sure I have that. Although, if I didn’t, I totally would have locked myself in the elevator with Shade. So I’d like to think I still have a little left.
I eat two cupcakes. Clearly I don’t need them, but excuse me, rough night here. No one wants to spend New Year’s Eve alone, and sadly, though I’m with Mila, my chance with Shade didn’t happen, and I’m upset. But then I wonder why he wanted cupcakes? To smear the frosting on the Doublemint twins?
“Why’d Shade want cupcakes?”
Mila shrugs one shoulder and picks fluffy crumbs of red spongy cake off her shirt. “I don’t know. When I got up there, he was sitting in the corner of the room completely alone listening to Mumford & Son’s and looked like he was crying.”
I gasp and then choke on the spongy cake in my mouth. Crying? Alone?
My stomach tightens. Did she say crying? You heard that too, right? “Crying? What? He needs me!” I’m ready to run upstairs, dropkick his security and burst through the door singing Katy Perry’s “Roar” to him.
I knew I should have closed the door to the elevator and locked us in there. Was he crying because of his phone? What the hell was on those messages that made him cry?
“He doesn’t even know you,” Mila reminds me, crushing my dream of bursting through his door tonight and letting him cry on my shoulder. Or boobs. Or between my legs. Whatever he feels necessary. “You wouldn’t get past the elevator security.” Of course she had to remind me of that one, too. Damn it. “And besides, I need you.” She hands me a wad of money. “Here’s my half of the rent.”
I take the money and shove it down my shirt into my bra. Though I don’t think it’s necessary she pay me for rent since she’s only sleeping on my couch, I have like three dollars in my bank account. Totally need this.
“Damn it, I wonder why he was crying? Who in the world would make a man as pretty as him cry, and why can’t he love me?” I plead. “Why can’t my life be like that Jennifer Lopez movie where the guy falls in love with the maid?”
“Probably for the same reasons the best sex of my entire life came from a firefighter I’m too chickenshit to find.”
She has a valid point, but still, it doesn’t make me feel any better about him being alone in his room crying. My heart goes out to him. I don’t like seeing anyone upset, but if it’s Shade Sawyer, I really don’t want to see him upset. He’s too pretty to cry.
I CAN’T SLEEP.
Ordinarily, I don’t even go to bed until 2:00 a.m. or later sometimes, and then I’m back up again for work a few hours later. I’ve certainly mastered the art of navigating through life with only about four or five hours of sleep.
I like to think it’s actually a skill I have.
It’s New Year’s Day and sadly my night was spent in Mila’s office eating a dozen cupcakes and me half attempting her to become a lesbian with me.
Sad.
Pathetic.
Not only do I never want to eat another cupcake in my life, but I'm also strangely determined to find out why Shade was crying.
Is that why I can’t sleep?
Most likely.
Do you see that girl on the bed? Take a look around her bedroom. It’s a shithole, isn’t it? Yeah, well, you try to afford rent in Seattle on a maid’s salary. Nearly impossible.
Anyway, do you see any pictures of family around her room?
You don’t, do you?
I’ll get to that later. Look at me closely. Do you see me there twirling a strand of my curly hair around my finger and my cell phone screen lighting up the side of my face?
This girl, she’s restless. I think I’ve been that way most of my life. You’ve heard that saying, “She’s a restless soul with a wandering mind,” yes? Or maybe I just made that up. I’m not sure, but it’s me. Completely. Only this time I’m thinking of Shade and wondering what it takes to make a man like him cry? I’m heartbroken for him and I don’t even know what happened to him.
So I do what any woman would do. I stalk him on social media. I check his Instagram profile first. The last post was from six days ago from when he was in California.
shadesawyer913 #motophoto The hills of Palmdale. Born and raised on these trails, I’ll always love riding in my backyard.
And then it’s a photo of him soaring through the air doing what looks to be a backflip on the bike.
Impressive. Beautiful and sexy. My stare moves over his body, arched to perfection, the blue sky contrasting nicely against his red, yellow, blue and neon-green helmet.
Though his Instagram feed is filled with photos of him on his bike, his brothers, and a lifestyle most only dream of as he travels around the world doing what he loves, it gives me no indication of his mood or what’s going on in his life. You wouldn’t think looking at him in these photos—full of life and smiles—he would be the same man I saw nearly at the breaking point in the elevator.
The last photo of him in Palmdale was dated December twenty-six. Six days ago.
So what changed in six days?
I scroll through his Instagram pictures a little further, looking for women, mostly. Why else would I stalk his social media? From what I can tell, Shade gets around. It’s a known fact. He’s a rock star in the world of freestyle motocross racing. But, he’s never pictured with one unless it’s a night out and there are women all over him. Still, he never posts a picture of them and tags #bae like all the other dumbshits out there who think it’s clever to cut the word babe in half. It’s not like it’s that long of a word, people. Stop hashtagging it.
Anyway, the only girl I see is a picture from two years ago. It’s one of him in Seattle, on the pier and I recognize the white and pink logo of Cupcake Royal behind them. Looking closer at the girl, she’s pretty, in a girl-next-door way with strawberry-blonde hair, bright blue eyes, and freckled cheeks. She’s wearing a black and white trucker hat backward, and he has his arm loosely around her. I can’t see his eyes to tell if he’s happy or not because he’s wearing those damn sunglasses he always has on.
She’s happy though, her smile so bright and wide as though this is the happiest day of her life. It’d be mine too if Shade had his arm around me.
I look for the caption underneath it. There isn’t one.
I scroll through the comments and only one catches my eye. @roughrideboyz damn Ry, haven’t seen a smile like that in a long time. Looks good on you.
Ry? Who’s Ry?
Her name isn’t mentioned anywhere. . . other than someone calling her Ry or in one case, Rhya. So her name is Rhya?
Sometime after three in the morning, I check his Twitter page and that’s when I see an article he’s tagged in. A news article.
That girl I just saw on Instagram. She’s dead.
@dukessawyerboyz91
@shadesawyer Sad to hear about Rhya’s passing, man. I can’t believe she killed herself. Keep it together for us, bro.
She killed herself?
My hands shake as I try to hold my phone steady and not let it fall. My heart twists, pulls, beats to a pain I know. A pain I’ll never forget as long as live. I know now why I’m so drawn to Shade’s sadness. We share it without even knowing it.
Tears burn my eyes, make me blink carefully as I push on, continuing to read through them, though I’m not entirely sure why I am. That tweet is the nicest I come across. The rest are downright fucking rude, and exactly what I expect to find on Twitter from the nameless, faceless bastards who tweet insensitive shit.
Like this douche.
@iaaiclv_2
Noooo Nooooo! I can’t believe she did that to him! He’s struggling enough this year to perform.
Eat a dick @iaaicle_2. No seriously. Eat. A. Dick. I bet you’ve never even attempted to ride a dirt bike, let alone do a backflip midair. And I guarantee you’ve never known anyone who’s taken their own life if you say that kind of bullshit.
@SoCalheat_sawyerfan
She was a crack head. Probably high when she pulled the trigger. Damn tho she was only 20. Too young.
Okay, well at least that one is nicer, but still, crack head? Was she? The girl in the photo didn’t look like a crack head. . . but then again, that was two years ago. Time changes you. Even I know that. I also know a picture can lie. I have one on my phone that does. The only picture I have of Asher. He was as high as the sky, but you’d never know it looking at the photograph of the boy who taught me how to love and then ripped it away just the same.
You’re wondering who Asher is, aren’t you? I’ll get to him in a minute.
I can’t handle looking at Twitter any longer and google Shade Sawyer. A story pops up immediately from USA Today dated an hour ago, but I’m not sure of the validity of it. I still read it though. Who wouldn’t?
BREAKING NEWS OUT OF LOS ANGELES –
Rhya Sky Morgan—longtime friend to Shade Sawyer— (X-Games gold medalist and current X-Fighters competitor and points leader) was found in her Los Angeles apartment unresponsive by a mutual friend of the pair with a self-inflicted gunshot to her head.
Morgan, who had battled substance addiction since she was sixteen, was just released from a Santa Monica rehab center that Sawyer had apparently paid for days prior to her death.
Sawyer and Morgan had been friends since they were young kids. Shade is often quoted telling the press Rhya’s a friend and nothing more when asked if the pair was romantically involved. Sawyer, who’s never been tied to any one woman in the past, has yet to respond to the news.
He’s currently in Seattle Washington where he was set to meet with Red Bull regarding the upcoming NW Street Tour set to take place this July in the streets of Seattle.
When contacted, Sawyer’s publicist declined to provide details or comment.
So that’s why he was crying earlier. For her. For his friend.
I can’t imagine what he must be going through, and then again, I can.
Remember when you looked around my room and didn’t see any pictures? I have one. It’s by my nightstand. Do you see it? It’s one of an old, mean lady who’s long since lost her mind, but she’s still my only family around. That’s Grandma Selma. She’s in a nursing home and thinks I’m a neighbor’s kid who comes to visit her.
Where’s the rest of my family?
Mom left. Having been declined my grandfather’s life insurance money, Mom up and moved to Vegas the moment my he died. Didn’t matter that she had a seventeen-year-old distraught and troubled daughter here, still, or a mother in a nursing home. She just said, “fuck it, I’m out,” and left town.
Goes to show you the type of upbringing I’ve had, doesn’t it? Raised by a douche bag of a mother, I consider myself lucky I didn’t turn out like her.
You’re wondering about my dad now, aren’t you? Yeah, me too.
Hartley Henderson.
What can I say about him other than the fact that he was merely a sperm donor and I’m a spitting image of him in the face? I’ve actually never even met him. I heard he’s some kind of leader of some biker gang. Don’t know, don’t care.
If it goes to show you how much I care, I didn’t even keep his last name. I legally changed my last name to my middle name. Besides, Scarlet Rose sounds cooler and if he wasn’t man enough to stick around, I sure as shit wasn’t keeping his last name.
Remember when I said I could pass a test on Shade? Well, I can, and because of this, I know he doesn’t have a family either. His mom left when he was a year old and his dad died when he was four. From what I’ve read, his brothers and uncle are his only family, and he’d do anything for them. You can tell he’s a loyal friend and brother.
I bet he was a loyal friend to Rhya, too. So why’d she do it?
Maybe for the same reasons Asher did.
I know what you’re thinking. Girl like me, I’ve never been in love. You think that, don’t you?
Well, if you do, I’d smile at you and say, honey, you couldn’t be more wrong. I’ve had my heart shattered into a million pieces.
Rolling over onto my stomach, I prop myself up on my elbows and stare down at my phone and the photograph of the troubled boy who taught me about love and exactly how to destroy it too.
Remember the name Asher Brandon? I said I’d get back to him. Are you still wondering who he is?
Well. . . there once was a man from Nantucket. I’m just kidding. But there once was a boy from Georgia who somehow found his way to Seattle and me.
I met him when I was fifteen outside a tattoo parlor on Capitol Hill. Being fifteen, I thought, shit, he’s perfect for rebelling. I had no idea Asher was as troubled as he was until it was too late.
Asher? He was eighteen, and I thought he was the coolest, pierced, tattooed motherfucker I’d ever met. He hated everyone. Except me for some reason.
Our unhealthy romance of me hanging out in a tattoo parlor and letting Asher pierce my nipples, belly button and eventually my clit, went on for two years. One night, Fourth of July to be exact, I walked out of the tattoo parlor, knowing damn well if I didn’t I’d end up in a situation like my best friend at the time, Felicia, who was pregnant and addicted to meth at seventeen.
Not only was I not going to be that girl, but I didn’t care for meth and valued my dental hygiene. I also didn’t feel like auditioning for Teen Mom. I could barely keep myself alive let alone another human being.
Asher and me, it wasn’t healthy. I couldn’t even talk to another guy without him freaking out on me and threatening, and almost succeeding at killing a man for touching me. That wasn’t why I broke up with him though. I dig the possessive fuckers like any other girl who wants to feel wanted but Asher, don’t let the southern Georgia boy fool you. He was a sadistic homicidal disaster. I broke up with him because he didn’t know where possessive ended and disturbed began. He carved my name into his chest with a fucking razor blade. Are your eyes wide? Do you get it now? No? Okay, well, I draw the line at carving in blood.
It was weeks later when I finally had the courage to break it off with him. Keep in mind I was seventeen at the time and nowhere close to mature. So I said something along the lines of, “Don’t call me ever again,” and honestly thought he wouldn’t. Well, he didn’t. That night, the same night I broke up with him, he left my world permanently and just as harshly as I left him.
No explanation.
No closure.
Maybe that was his intention all along. Maybe it was his payback for breaking up with him. I’ll never know, but at some point, I knew I didn’t need to know. I don’t think Asher ever wanted to end his life. He wanted to end the unexplained rage and pain inside of him. The same rage and pain that had pushed me away from him, took his life from him.
I don’t know Rhya or anything about her for that matter, or how or what led up to this, but I imagine maybe she felt the same way Asher had. Maybe she was sick and no one saw it coming.
I do know how Shade feels though. I know that paralyzing pain.