Sophie Huntsberger
I drag myself heavily through the crowded club once more, everything moving and tipping like I’m at sea, disorientated and foggy, although I’m less drunk than I was. My phone is still glued to my ear, even though I seem to have lost Arrick and hear nothing but silence. Pulling my cell down to look at the blank screen I realize my battery has died and I just sigh in complete deflation. Fed up with how my life is turning out lately as nothing seems to go right anymore.
Taking a long deep breath to try to center myself into sobriety, my body sagging, drying my face halfheartedly with the back of my hand now that my tears have once again subsided, and my heart has resorted to numb emptiness. I don’t even care if my makeup is smeared or even cried off. Arrick has seen me worse so many times.
I let my cell drop in my hand, beside my body and hold it loosely, too disconnected to really feel anything but heavy fatigue from stupidly sobbing, swaying from being under the influence and bumping into things clumsily. I’m just empty and done, completely over my night and not caring that it isn’t even late enough to be bailing.
“Hey, sexy … wanna dance?” Some husky male voice assaults my senses as I try to fight my way through the heaving, dancing crowd, that is more like a sea of tar, shrugging by without a response and hoping he leaves me alone. He taps my shoulder as though I haven’t heard him, and the rise of hairs and goosebumps run across my skin in automatic response. That internal rearing ache in my stomach that happens anytime a guy touches me. I long ago identified it as repulsion. I shrug it off and keep going, eyes forward, not reacting in any way, body simmering with that restless cranky energy that seems to plague me of late.
My steps are labored, and off balance and I know that even if I take off my heels, I won’t be able to keep walking around before face planting the floor. Everything aches, legs like rubber, my feet are burning and sore in my new Jimmy Choos and now I’m irritated and nauseous beyond belief. Everything is surreal and yet shittily familiar. It’s fair to say my mood has seen better days and I really cannot be assed with this shit anymore.
A hot iron-gripped hand catches my upper arm, startling me and halting my progression through sweaty bodies; biting into my naked flesh and pulls me back ungracefully, so that I almost go over my heels. My heart jumps at the action.
“Hey, I was asking you a question!” He yells right into my ear to be heard above the thrum of noise, as he catches up and puts himself right against my ass, heat hitting me, accompanied by that familiar rising panic from deep within. The inner psycho bristling up to take on another sleazy asshole who thinks he has a right to touch me. I inwardly recoil at the unwanted contact.
Annoyed at the nerve of the creep and outraged at my near trip, I flash an angry glare his way over my shoulder and yank myself free. Responding into aggressive mode as rage spikes inside of me like a hot fiery spear. That inner fury, which always bubbles below the surface drunk, and has been ingrained since childhood, sparks up to take on the world. Shoving him hard in the chest with the flat of my palm, putting every ounce of strength into it and almost knocking myself off balance too. I want him to go away and leave me alone, shaking my hand to remove the sensation of his hot clammy body when I manage to gain the space I need.
He disappears into the crowd with the force of my assault and I move fast, knowing better than to stick around for him to come back, trying to get out of sight before he gets back to his original spot. Heart racing a little as adrenaline flows and sense tells me to duck and weave faster to the safety of the dark, back wall of the club.
Men in this club are known for being aggressive and perverted at the best of times, and I’ve been groped on more than one occasion to know it’s true. One weekend had seen too close a call with one hot-tempered asshole who wouldn’t take no for an answer. Arrick had shown up just in time and broken his nose when he had refused to back down. Arry my pro boxing hero.
“Leave me alone!” I yell back as an afterthought, almost coherently, to the general direction he’s fallen back; my slurring voice non-existent under the thumping house music and intent on just finding a quiet place to get off my tired legs to hide. I’m exhausted.
I wish Arry was here already and helping me out to his car, so I can lie down and go to sleep. The thought of him coming for me is all that is keeping me sane right now; alcohol and tears are never a good mix. I’m disheveled, out of place and vulnerable. I’m not sure if I should even tell him about why I’m upset this time, why I have been crying.
Arrick hates my friends, not that I can’t see why, as they’re all pretty pathetic and really just the crowd I fell into when I came here.
I can’t ever seem to form real friendships with people, no matter how hard I try, and I know it’s because I don’t ever let them past my outer wall. It’s the same with men I date. I hide who I really am behind that mask of party girl and reckless persona and attract the wrong kind. Arrick hates the men I date almost as much as I hate his girlfriend Natasha, and another sob story about how hard done to I am by one of them again, will just annoy him. I can’t say that I blame him; it annoys me too, that I’ve become this pathetic doormat that men wipe their feet on, and I let them.
My stomach churns like a washing machine, my throat aches, painfully parched. I sobbed for an hour before even calling him this time, letting the hazy flurry of booze clear a little so I didn’t slur as much on the phone to him, and it’s left me feeling raw and woozy.
I have no idea where my so-called friends are, and last time I saw my handbag it was in the hands of that slimy prick Terry. I left him to hold it for me when I’d gone to dance. Terry is the guy I’ve been dating, on and off, most recently, nothing serious. Just looking for that guy who may be different this time, maybe care more than the last.
Now very much off, due to the fact I ventured to the bathroom and walked right in on him snorting coke from that whore Dionne’s naked breasts while banging her up against a vanity. At first, the disbelief made me stand in open-mouthed silence, before shock, and then outrage hit me. Reacting like a crazy jealous bitch, I yanked him off her and reined a flurry of slaps and abuse at his upper shoulders and head, blinded by overwhelming black rage as my heart twisted itself into a contortion of pain.
They both scrambled for discarded clothes and belongings, before scurrying off like cowardly assholes, and I only realized my bag was with him after I slumped down on a closed toilet and cried my eyes out. Completely betrayed by two people I should have been able to trust, with more heartache to add to my ever-growing memory album. I sobbed until this numbness took effect and wiped me out, although I’m still feeling fragile, I’m mostly just empty.
Dionne played the role of girly best friend for weeks. Looking back, I now see that she was milking me for anything she could get; a never-ending stream of money on tick with promises to pay it back. My clothes, my shoes and now my man. Luckily, my cell was in the back pocket of my denim skirt, a habit Arry drilled into me from an early age. To always keep my cell phone on me in case I ever need him … no matter what. My lifeline to my boy.My other friends seem to have vanished as quickly. As soon as I stumbled out of the ladies’ room, tear-stained and lightheaded to find them, I realized I’d been abandoned. We all came here to get drunk before our main event; a huge party in some exclusive bar across Manhattan, and my time in the bathroom was long enough to get ditched. Again.This isn’t the first time they have all gone on to the next place and left me to it. None of them cares about me, they only care that I pay my share, or more, of t
I dropped out of school because I didn’t see any point in it, none of what I was learning interested me, and I sat drawing clothes, coloring in doodles of shoes in every lesson. My head on getting out and going to max my credit card on whatever hit the boutiques that week, daydreaming over the outfit I wanted to try out when I got home. Besides spending money on clothes, the only other thing which brought me joy was matching outfits for new looks, searching out shoes and accessories that made it all pop. Fashion is everything to me. I adore every aspect of it and love nothing more than customizing things with my own style, teaching myself to sew in my spare time. It’s one of the few genuine joys I seem to have.I broached the subject of fashion school only once; my parents dismissed it as frivolous and pointless and told me that I have the brains to do so much more. As much as I love them, and I really do, it crushes me in a way that they dismiss something I have
Arrick’s aftershave surrounds me like a sudden familiar haven, a solid shield of pure muscle and a beacon in the dark. That wave of cold turns to tingles and internal shakes of sheer relief, my body instantly slumping and falling forwards to lean into him as the adrenaline turns me into a mess of jellified uselessness.“I swear if you don’t turn around and walk off right now, then you’ll be taking all meals from a tube, Dickhead.” Arrick snarls in that husky Carrero tone of the most perfect male voice I’ve ever known. My boy! Like familiar soothing music that just makes you whole. Bristling with aggression and dwarfing the other man with his sheer build of alpha intimidation in all his glory.Arrick is hitting the six-foot-one mark, maybe more nowadays, and his build has gotten a lot wider and stronger since he matured and started professional fighting. He’s a vision of physical perfection that goes so well with the face of mal
Uncertainty sends my already fragile stomach into a washer-like frenzy, hating that being in tune with him means I am so sensitive to exactly this kind of thing.His car has been deposited on the sidewalk neatly, all four gleaming wheels on the concrete, of a sleek gray Mercedes he bought only weeks ago to replace his electric blue sports car. Arrick is growing up, leaving behind that young fast life, and settling down, and I don’t know how to feel about it. He’s changing, has been for a while, and I guess it’s one of the reasons we are not as close as we once were. He’s growing up and I’m too far behind him.We move to the car, where an exceptionally large black-coated bouncer is leaning against it casually, with a beaming smile as he sees us approach.“Arrick, my main man!” He grins and fist bumps him as we close the gap, still holding me firmly, heating up my body despite the chill around us and my lack of jacket. I s
“Arrick?” I glance his way again, hating his ignorance, the silence making it almost unbearable to continue being so quiet. I lean over to let my fingertips trail down his arm, over his black jacket meekly as the little tiny eruptions of anxiety play off inside me like fiery tingles. Trying to attract his attention and knowing he won’t ignore physical touch.I catch that tiny tensing of his jaw deepen, muscle twitching under his cheekbone, and know for certain he is more than just a little mad with me. He’s in closed off, livid as hell mode. My stomach sinks again, breathing slowly to push back the effects of the night’s drinking and the new waves of hurt that are directly connected to him.“Leave it alone, Soph
“I’m sorry I yelled at you.” Arrick lifts my chin back to him with soft fingers so that we’re nose to nose as he ducks into my much shorter height and bridges the large gap as best he can. He frowns hard at me and studies my expression for a second, before that boyish face completely calms to that softer expression I know and love. His genuine calm.Hints of a face that is so achingly familiar, and for a moment I forget why I am even crying, why I’m mad at him. He sighs slowly as though to reel back and comes at me with a new tactic that is less devastating to my soul.“Sophie? Talk to me,” he whispers, and it only pushes me that little bit further into remorse and hopelessness. I burst into painful heartfelt tears and bury my face in the open front of his jacket, against that expanse of hard chest as his arms come around me protectively, the warmth of his body heat encircling me along with the smell of him that could alw
This has been an aching cavern in my chest for eighteen months, as he slowly drifted away with the first throes of his first committed relationship, and a life in the city that didn’t include me. I’ve been losing him slowly and surely, and it’s contributed in part to why I started dating so many men. I was trying to find someone for me, someone that would care about me as much as he always did. I want someone to make me feel the way he does when he’s around: safe, loved, and secure. Like I’m home.“That’s not true.” Arrick makes to pull me back to him, but I step further away. Slapping his hands away childishly. Immature me peeking out to show face.“Can you name one time in the last year, or more, that you called me to just talk or to hang out; one time that you have been near me while I was sober, and not in need of being rescued? And I don’t mean the party invites or when we run into each other!&rd
“Sit.” Arrick pushes me down on the long mink colored fabric couch and then scoops down to unbuckle my shoes. I sink down obediently, lifting cold aching legs as warm hands encircle my ankles, and he slides down to rest himself on his own thighs. Lifting one foot at a time onto his knee, he unlatches me from my self-inflicted restraints and sets my burning feet free. I swear I love my shoes, but sometimes they just kill me. Whoever said fashion isn’t pain is a liar. He takes my shoes and moves off to lay them on the floor, pulling his jacket from my shoulders and throws it towards one of the armchairs.“Thanks.” I grin at him sleepily, more than aware he is only doing it as I moaned every step of the way from his car to the elevator about the agony I was enduring, my tiredness, my inability to stand to be upright anymore, and then used him as a crutch while wai