Tattoo (12 page)

TWENTY-THREE

I couldn't remember the last time I woke up with a smile on my face. But it felt amazing. Before I even opened my eyes, I knew it was going to be a new chapter in our lives. We were going to get through this, get married, and have a family. The pictures danced through my mind as my smile widened. 

And I still had the ring. I'd hidden it away when Lauren moved in so she'd never be able to find it. Maybe it wasn't the right time, maybe I should wait a little longer. But then, again, I knew Lauren was all I'd ever want, she's all I'd ever need in this life. So maybe I should just do it anyway, show her just how much I love her.

I reached across the bed for her, engagement possibilities spinning through my mind. The bed was cold where she was supposed to be. I sat up and rubbed the dreams from my eyes. Even better, she wasn't in bed, I thought. I hopped up and decided to go surprise her in the shower. I snuck out of the room and down the hall, only to hear no running water and the door was open. The bathroom was empty. So was the kitchen and the living room. I checked outside and my car was still there. 

Maybe she went for a walk, I wondered. It was possible but out of character for Lauren. I wandered back into the bedroom to grab some workout clothes, when I saw it. It was sitting so inconspicuously on her night stand, it was like she didn't even want me to find it. Like she knew what it would do to me and tried her best to spare me. Her best wasn't good enough.

              Dear Eric,

              I'm sorry, but I can't do us anymore. I need to leave. I'll miss you and I love you.

              Love always,

              Lauren

The first few times I read the letter, it looked like a foreign language. It took me at least a dozen times before I finally understood it in English. She'd left me.

My mind went blank, totally numb. I couldn't think of words that made any sense. I collapsed onto her side of the bed, where just last night she'd loved me with so much force. I shook my head in disbelief, my hands trembling while I still clutched that paper.

I'd lost her.

I'd done so much wrong. I hadn't been strong enough. Throughout everything, starting with her pregnancy, I'd found someway to hide, to avoid everything. But I didn't understand, I had finally faced it. All of it. The tattoo on my wrist proved that I was ready to face it all, and I thought last night proved I wanted it to be with her. And now she had left.

I tried her cell number, it didn't even ring, just went straight to voicemail. I tried her parents number, too. Her mom didn't answer but her dad did.

"How are you, Eric?" he answered. No more "son". He already knew she had left me.

"Do you know where Lauren is? What's going on?" I asked, panic rising in my voice.

"Yes, I do. But I promised her I wouldn't get involved. I like you, Eric, and I don't know what happened between you guys, but Lauren...she's my baby." He took a long pause. "She's been through so much already, I don't want her to hurt anymore, ok?"

"I don't either, if I could just talk..."

He cut me off.

"I think the best thing for her is for you to let her go. If she's ready, she'll come back."

I sat there in silence, I didn't have any words left to say.

"Good luck, Eric," he told me and hung up the phone.

It must have been hours that I lay on my bed, staring up at the ceiling. I turned on the TV at some point, just to drown out some of the noise crashing through my mind. It didn't work. 

My questions started out as whys. Why would she leave? Why the note and not to my face? Why after last night? Why, why, why? 

But then the question morphed into one final question. Could I let her go?

I laid on the bed, shadows of night had long since fallen into the room with me, and stared at my phone.

Could I let her go? Could I never hear her voice again, feel her touch, smile at her smile, taste her kisses? I didn't know how I'd live through it, if I even could. 

I finally left my room but only to grab a bottle of whisky. If there was ever a night that I'd need to be numb, it was that one. Lucky for me I had a whole bottle to drown my sorrows deep into. It was when I passed the counter that any shred that was left of my heart was torn away.

On the counter I saw a little box, half the size of the one we'd had on the mantle. I didn't even need to open it to know what was inside, but I tortured myself anyway. I lifted the box and saw her ashes, and one little bootie where there used to be two. 

She had taken the other bootie, and some of Sammie's ashes with her wherever she had gone. She wasn't coming back. Not tonight, or next week, or next month. Not ever. I had lost Lauren, just like everything else.

I used every drop of whisky that night, and it still hadn't been enough.

TWENTY-FOUR

It was almost a year and a half before I heard from Lauren. 530 days to be exact, if anyone had been counting. The first couple of days after she left, I called her a lot. I left her messages telling her I understood, I'd be there for her when she was ready, that I loved her more than anything. She never called back. After that first week I still called her, sometimes a couple times a day, but I stopped leaving messages. I'd hang up before there was an option. Every message I left only made me more pissed that she never returned the call or worse, made me hurt more when I heard her recorded voice. I ached to hear her for real. Within a couple weeks I was only calling her randomly, when I thought of a funny story or when I missed her so goddamn much I thought I would die. She never answered, she never called back. 38 days after she left, I deleted her number from my phone.

I hit the bottle hard that night, like I did the night she left. There was no light at the end of the tunnel to pull me back out, my light had disappeared. It angered me that people could keep going on with life, as if the world hadn't ended. I stopped being so good at hiding my booze. Although, I don't know if it was that I stopped being so good, or that I stopped caring. But Coach sure cared.

He called me into his office in April, after a grueling practice.

"Eric, we need to talk."

I sat down in a chair across from his desk. 

"Eric," he started with a sigh. I didn't like how that sounded already and I was wishing I had taken a swig out of the flask before I went in. 

"You're just a freshman, almost a sophomore here. But you may be one of the best damn pitchers I've ever coached. That's a talent that comes naturally to you. You're lucky."

I nodded and smiled. I was very well aware of my pitching ability. 

"But you’re throwing your life away with this damn booze."

That surprised me. Up until then, I thought I had been doing pretty good at hiding it. Guess not. 

"I know it's college and you're supposed to have fun, and often times I look away from the parties and stuff. But you're taking this overboard. I don't think I've seen you sober in months."

Since December, I thought to myself.

"I know you've been through hell and back this year, I can't even imagine going through what you've gone through. But if you can't stop the drinking, I'm going to have to throw you off the team."

My stomach sank. No baseball.

As if he read my mind he answered, "You'd lose your scholarship as well."

No baseball, no school. What would I do? Where would I go with my life?

"I'm going to give you another chance. You have a shot at the pros Eric, don't fuck this up."

That was my dismissal. I nodded my head, still not saying a word. What was there to say? I'd lost Sammie, and I'd lost Lauren. But I'd be damned before I lost baseball, too.  

So, I did exactly what he asked. I threw myself back into baseball. I worked harder than I ever had, I trained harder than I ever had, and I was pitching better than I'd ever dreamed. I was by far the best pitcher on my team, the favorite starting pitcher by far, and I was the top in the league. I was being watched by the pros and I was ready to take it to the top.

I thought about Lauren and Sammie every night. There was no escaping that. I kept my little box on the mantle and prayed every night that Lauren would come back to me. While the prayers stayed as frequent, the intensity started to drain, as night after night passed by and she never came back.

A little over a year later, in my sophomore year, I met Tiffany. It was at a party where I was standing with a joint in my hand, holding in my puff. I'd stayed away from the booze, just like coach had asked, but at a party, I wouldn't turn down a joint. I just needed that escape again, and that's the only place I could get it. That was mainly why I went to those parties, just to have an excuse to get away. 

Tiffany came striding up to me, the most confident thing in the world and she kissed me. I thought it was for me, but she took the smoke from my lungs. When she did that, it was like giving me a little breath of life. She was the first girl I took notice of, the first girl that made something in me stir slowly, as if my body had just woken up. She turned out to be sweet, and in my economics class and had been scoping me out all semester. She told me she'd seen me at all these parties, but she noticed I kept to myself and brushed off most girls, that I might have a dark past but she didn't care.

I looked her up and down. She was blonde with green eyes, tanned skin, the opposite of everything Lauren, but in her own way, pretty damn hot. As my eyes roamed her body, her legs up to her eyes, she told me she was from out of state. That was my bingo. No need to get close, no need to get attached. Again. We started dating for a few months, and she was finally able to get me to smile again. She would drink with me, smoke, and fuck. That's really all I needed at first. But then I learned she was sweet, and actually pretty fun. I thought maybe there would be a chance for another girl after all. 

530 days after Lauren left, my phone buzzed on my nightstand, which I fumbled to find without lifting my head from the pillow. I didn't know what time it was, but I knew it was definitely late. The bed rustled next to me and Tiffany sat up, letting the sheet covering her drift teasingly away from her body. Her long hair swayed to the side and I got a waft of her soapy clean scent and turned towards her.

"Leave the phone," she whispered in my ear and she started kissing my neck.

"Not a problem."

I kissed her mouth, softly at first, but the intensity mounted as I ran my hands along her soft skin, all over her body. We found a rhythm, as if we'd been together for years. It was intense, it was passionate, it was really just fucking, but it was satisfying. Everyone told me I was one lucky man and I knew it well. It always made me laugh a little when she told people of the story of how we met at the party.

She would tell people our eyes met and never left each other’s again, but I was never sure if she was telling the ending correctly or not. It wasn't our eyes that had never left each other, it was our hands. God, sometimes I wasn't sure if we were human or animals. The way I would need her, want her, go crazy until I could be inside her. I always knew she had the same needy feeling of ravaging my body. She'd scrape her nails along my back or the insides of my thighs. Pretty much anything she did could drive me wild. I wasn't sure if it was love, or lust, or maybe I just craved her so badly because she was the first girl who's touch made me almost forget Lauren's.

I looked at her again and couldn't believe I was damn lucky I went to that party that night. But I knew there were no accidents in life, everything had a plan. It had to, to make any sense out of my life. After she was asleep, I slid to the side and found my phone, curiosity getting the better of me, lit the screen and saw the missed call light up. There was no name, only a number, one that I would never be able to erase from my memory. All the breath left my body and my heart squeezed in my chest, shrinking from the pain. God damn it, Lauren was all I could think.

I closed my eyes tightly and tried to erase her picture from my mind. I held Tiffany closer and tried to forget my phone had ever rang. But Lauren, as always, won. I slipped out of bed and took my phone into the bathroom, where I pushed my voicemail button immediately, before I could change my mind. At first, all I could hear was dead silence.                

"Tomorrow, The Rock. Please, Eric," was all she said.

I listened to the message two more times before deleting it. The Rock was a sacred place to us, without really being our place. But that memory flashed through my mind as if it was yesterday. It was the club we went to, where my body pleaded for hers. Where I held her tightly, as she danced against me, arousing me more than I knew I could be. It was the club we were at on the night our lives changed forever.

Confusion cluttered my mind, why would she want to see me? I knew she had to be drinking, I could tell from the slight stumble her words had taken. The phone had been silent from her for the past year and a half, she had practically ripped my heart out and left me for dead. I had stuck with her through everything, loved her through everything. I hadn't been perfect, fuck I knew I had been far from it. Stumbling around drunk, hiding from reality, not showing her when I had the chance, just how much I loved her, and I knew so many little things in between. But I had tried so damn hard when I could have run far, very far away from it all. Instead, she did the running.

I was finally moving on, I had a girlfriend and was as happy as I thought I could be. I slammed the phone on the cool tile counter, anger seeping through me like a black ooze. Fuck her for thinking she could call me for anything. You don't leave someone the way she did and then think you have any place in their life anymore. I thought, for the rest of the night, of all of the things I wanted to say to her, to tell her where to go. The idea even tossed through my head not to answer her at all. I drifted off restlessly, with memories of our past overwhelming me even in my sleep. When I woke up on Saturday, I made my decision to meet her, I just had to know. Tiffany was already in the shower, so I took my phone and pulled up the missed call, saved it as Lauren's number again. I sent her one message, 10:00. 

When Tiffany walked out of the shower, I told her that I had some things to take care of that night, that she should probably sleep at her place and I would call her in the morning. I didn't want to lie, but there was no way I was going to tell her where I was going. She was dripping and steamy and so damn sexy, I couldn't even look at her. 

I walked into The Rock, which had once been the hot spot to hit on the weekends. The lights flashing, the bass blasting, and the booze flowing. Now it was a shell of itself. Seedy, and run down. The old booze that was now permanently stuck to the floors made your feet stick every time you tried to move and gave the place a rank smell. The bar was practically empty, except for a few people sitting at the bar nursing their drinks, along with their lost youth. The bass still rang through the speakers but with a mix of static, and new kind of remix. Basically, it had turned into a shit hole.  

I was late showing up to the club, partly because I wanted her to have to wait, partly because I was wondering if she would. She did. I knew she was there before she knew I had walked in. Her brown hair hung long and loose, cascading down her shoulders, covering her face. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't unstick my feet from the grimy floor. I was rooted to the spot, watching her. I watched her spin her drink, gone already except for the melting ice. I watched her turn to the TV above, not really watching what was happening, her mind lost in thoughts. I needed a cigarette, damn that no smoking in bars law. I shook myself free of myself and walked over and took the stool next to her. She still smelled like strawberries. 

"I'll have what she's having."

She looked up at me, so many things etched in her face I almost didn't recognize her. She held so much pain in the lines of her face. I probably could have seen every tear that had fallen from her eyes, the tracks that had wetted her cheeks. I had been there to kiss so many away, but not enough. Her cheeks were pale and thin, they didn't look like they'd laughed in a long time. Her eyes were the hardest to look into. They didn't hold the light they used to. They were clouded with the hurt she held inside.

When had she started to look this way? When had she lost who she was? All I had ever wanted to do was make her smile, to see the love, that bounce in her eyes like magic. But this was a face that I didn't know. One that looked like a porcelain mask about to shatter. 

She smiled up at me and I finally saw her again. She was buried deep but that smile showed me everything I needed to see. She may be lost, but there she was. She was still so god damn beautiful it made my heart ache. Her beauty had changed, there was very little innocence left in her, but she was beautiful in a whole new way. A way I wanted to know, to learn, every part of her all over again.  

"Hi," she said, her voice husky with liquor.

I think I said hello back, but I can't be positive. 

We didn't say another word for a while, just sat with our sweating drinks, making pools of water on the scarred bar.

"I missed..." I cut her off there with a wave of my hand. I didn't know what I would do if she told me she missed me. I didn't know if I'd be angry or relieved. She sat silently again.