Tiana

I make one mistake in twenty-five years and it ends up plastered all over the Internet. Well, I’ve probably made more than one mistake, but not one this devastating.

It’s Saturday morning and my bedroom is trashed. A multitude of potential clubbing outfits are tossed here and there, my makeup is strewn all over my vanity table and empty shot glasses pepper the dresser and nightstand next to my bed.

This was a bad morning, followed by an even worse night. Being chosen to sing on the world-renowned TV show Just Sing prompted a night of celebrating with my best friend and roommate, Suki. We didn’t wait until we got to the club. We started drinking while we dressed, styled our hair, and applied our makeup. We were well on our way to being inebriated before we even left the apartment.

New York city has been my home for the past three years. I moved here to get away from my overprotective Marine brother, Jayden. I love him to death but he was smothering my dreams of becoming a star.

I took off right after college and thought I would land in the Big Apple, have a couple auditions, get a great job, a recording deal, and be on my way to superstardom.

I was naive and dumb, but after all this time, my dreams feel like a possibility.

I auditioned for the show a month ago. After seeing the competition, I didn’t think I had a chance in hell of being chosen. Suki auditioned too, she’s an actress but she says she’s willing to take the long way around by singing if necessary.

I felt guilty when I opened the letter of acceptance. I shrieked and hugged Suki before even thinking about if she had received one as well.

She hadn’t. We auditioned on different days and I made sure to remind her of that, but another week went by and still no letter came for her. She was a good sport about it; she was genuinely happy for me which is more so than I would have been I’m afraid. She’s a good friend.

Suki and I met the first week I moved to the city. She was working at a nightclub called The Aquarium across the street from my seventh-floor walk-up apartment. I went for a drink on a Saturday night and she was my waitress. We got to talking and bam, I had a job as a cocktail waitress the next weekend.

I didn’t plan to work there for long, but a couple of weeks turned into months and months turned into years. A million auditions later, I was almost ready to give up when a customer heard me singing to myself while I was cleaning up behind the bar after last call.

He was dressed to the nines in an Armani suit that probably cost as much as I make in a year, maybe two. He told me I had a unique voice and pressed a business card into my hand before he left.

I was skeptical but I figured, why not? What’s one more audition?

I had recently enrolled in beauty school after years of my brother telling me I needed to get a real job. As if being on my feet ten hours a night wasn’t real enough.

The idea of standing in one spot with my hands in someone’s hair all day long was not appealing but the pay was a step up from waitressing and according to him, it’s a profession. Jayden wants me to be able to say I’m anything other than a waitress wannabe singer, even if I’m miserable while doing it.

I shelved being a beauty school dropout right away when I opened my acceptance letter from Just Sing. But now lying in bed the morning after watching a video of myself doing things I would never have done under normal, sober circumstances. I’m thinking I might have to dust off that plan and grab my scissors after all.

I open my eyes just a slit, enough to see the mess I’m going to have to clean up later with this head-pounding hangover. Suki pads across the room and I feel the mattress dip next to me but I don’t move.

“Are you okay?”

I moan and turn onto my side into the fetal position. I cringe when I think of the video Suki just showed me from Facebook. I was dancing on the bar of one of the most famous nightclubs in the city nearly naked and sandwiched between two beefy, sweaty men. They were grinding against me and their hands and mouths were everywhere. Bile rises in my throat, but I manage to swallow it back down.

A shiver races up my spine at the thought of their hands on my breasts and their mouths on my skin, but it’s more than just that.

I don’t remember it, any of it. Watching that video is like watching a stranger. Someone wanted me to remember, though. They made damn good and sure of that with a video documentation of the entire night from the second we stepped out of my building until I disappeared out of the side door of the club into an alley at five in the morning, slumped in the arms of a man I’ve never seen before.

“Why are you up watching last night’s bar footage at this time of morning?” I ask.

“It’s three in the afternoon and it popped up on my Facebook news feed, I didn’t go looking for it.”

“Facebook?” I groan and pull my pillow over my face. “Why would anyone video me like that? And why don’t I remember any of it? God, Suki, please tell me you never left my side.”

“I don’t know. I don’t remember much after one in the morning except drinking and dancing.”

“But you woke up in your own bed? Alone?” I removed the pillow and squinted through the bright sunshine at my friend sitting on the edge of my bed. I reached out and felt around on the mattress next to me to make sure I didn’t bring my own nasty beefcake home with me.

The other side of my bed is empty, cool, and undisturbed. Thank God.

“Yeah. I was up at ten this morning and we were both alone and the door to the apartment was locked.”

I should be grateful for that, but what about the enormous gap between arriving at The Aquarium at eleven last night and… well, now?

“Tiana?”

“Yeah?”

“That’s not the only video.”

My heart was already pounding in my chest but now nausea is starting to make its way through my body. More videos? What could be worse than the five minutes of humiliation I just watched?

“What do you mean? What else?”

“I don’t think you want to see, but I thought I should at least tell you.”

“Where are they? Who’s posting them? Why the hell don’t I remember?” I grab my head and squeeze my eyes closed tight trying to pull the nonexistent memories from my fuzzy mind. “We had a lot to drink but I’ve never blacked out and lost time like that. Why did you leave me? You never leave me, we have rules.”

I throw my arm across my eyes and breathe in the smell of stale perfume mixed with cigarette smoke and something else I can’t quite put my finger on.

“I’m sorry, you know I would never leave you alone. I don’t remember leaving either. The videos are coming from club websites.”

“So, nothing private?” I reach down under the comforter as I’m speaking and check for my panties. They’re there.

“No, everything I’ve seen happened inside the clubs.”

“Do you think we were drugged? I mean do you feel like anything serious happened?”

“Serious as in we made fools of ourselves or serious as in assault?”

“The latter.”

“I don’t feel like anything happened, do you?”

I have no idea how I feel right now. I’ve been awake less than five minutes and I’m more confused than I’ve ever been in my life.

“I don’t know, I mean no, I don’t feel different and I’m wearing underwear so that’s good, right?”

She gives me a tiny shrug and lifts one side of her lip in a grimace. She doesn’t believe nothing happened, something is making her doubtful.

The other videos…

“Let me see them, I have to know what’s out there so I can try and fix it before anybody with Just Sing sees them and disqualifies me from the show.”

Her grip on her phone tightens and my eyes widen. “What is it? Why are you trying to protect me from this?”

“It’s just, I don’t know, I don’t think…”

I snatch her phone and roll away from her under the covers shielding the phone with my body in case she tries to take it back. She already has the link to The Aquarium pulled up and I click on it to watch what she doesn’t want me to see.

At first, it’s just more dancing, drinking, being fed drink garnishments and body shots. Then the person videoing becomes distracted by something happening to the left of me but I’m still in the shot.

I keep my eye on myself. I’m pressed up against a man with my arms around his neck when my body slumps. He scoops me up and carries me out the side door into the alley, the time stamp says 5:30 a.m. The person taking the video seems to realize I’m gone and moves to focus on someone else. I scour the rest of the footage looking for myself but all I find are drunken partiers who eventually make their way out of the club at closing time. I push my hand out from under the covers and blindly hand the phone back to her.

“Tiana… you don’t know, I mean maybe he brought you here and put you to bed like a gentleman.”

I whip the sheet from my head and sit up too fast. The room tilts and spins and my head feels like someone is shoving an ice pick into my ear.

“That’s exactly right, Suki, I don’t know, I’ll probably never know. But, to the rest of the world it sure as hell looks like I got trashed off my ass and let some stranger haul me out of the bar, and he was no gentleman.

A gentleman doesn’t pour tequila on a woman’s tits in a bar and licks it off while people shout profanities. I need to shower. I need to look myself over and try to figure out if anything happened. And then we must get those videos taken down. If anyone associated with Just Sing sees that, I’m done. They have a strict ‘good reputation’ clause in their audition paperwork and I signed it because I have always had a good fucking reputation.”

I risk falling flat on my face when I jump out of bed and head for the bathroom. The room spins again and I grab the wall on my way before shutting the door. Inside I press my back against the cool wood and brace myself before I look in the mirror.

When there is only one of everything around me instead of three, I turn and look at my reflection expecting the worst. Usually, after a hard night, I have black mascara streaks down my face and smeared lipstick. But not today, I look like I do every other morning.

I’m wearing my pajama top and panties. My face is free of makeup. My wavy brown hair is in a loose bun on the top of my head. One blue eye and one brown eye stare back at me while I try to remember the events of last night.

I touch my cheek and look down at myself running my hands over my torso feeling for bruising or scratches, but there is nothing.

I pull my shirt off over my head and toss it on the floor near the hamper and place my damp, nervous hands on the vanity. Leaning and twisting closer to the mirror, I check for any signs that I’ve been physically violated but there’s nothing. I step back and touch the waistband of my blue cotton panties. I freeze. I wore black lace last night, not blue cotton.

I lift my wide eyes to the mirror. Lost in thought, I trace my steps from last night, but my memories stop after my third martini.

I’m tired and weak. I need to shower. I slip off my panties and look them over until I’m satisfied they are fresh and clean. I toss them into the hamper next to the shower and see that my clothes from last night are on top of the pile, black lace panties included. Snatching them up I check for rips or tears but they are perfect other than smelling like alcohol and smoke.

Somewhat relieved, I turn on the shower. I’m about to wash away any trace of something I’m not even sure happened and I don’t care. I just want to be clean of the musty smell of the bar and the few sporadic memories of last night.

I wish I could turn back time. I would have stayed home and celebrated with an espresso and a good book instead of the black hole that last night turned into.