The Carrero Heart 1: Beginning

Sophie

I drag myself heavily through the crowded club once more. Everything is moving and tipping like I’m at sea, disoriented 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 sigh in complete deflation. Fed up with how my life is turning out lately, nothing seems to go right anymore.

Taking a long deep breath to try to center myself into sobriety, my body sags. I dry 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 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 feel anything but heavy fatigue from stupidly sobbing, swaying from being under the influence, and bumping into things clumsily. I’m 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 fight my way through the heaving, dancing crowd, which is more like a sea of tar. I shrug by without a response and hope he leaves me alone. He taps my shoulder as though I haven’t heard him, and the rise of hairs and goosebumps runs 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 is surreal and yet shittily familiar. Everything aches. My legs are like rubber, my feet are burning and sore in my new Jimmy Choos, and now I’m irritated and nauseous beyond belief. It’s fair to say my mood has seen better days, and I 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. It bites 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 hits me, accompanied by that familiar rising panic from deep within. The inner psycho is 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. I respond aggressively as rage spikes inside 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. I try to get out of sight before he gets back to his original spot. My heart races a little as adrenaline flows, and my 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 is non-existent under the thumping house music and I’m intent on just finding a quiet place to get off my tired legs to hide. I’m exhausted.

I wish Arry were here already helping me out to his car, so I can lie down and 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 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 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 am behind that mask of a 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 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, and 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 unsteady.

I have no idea where my so-called friends are, and the 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, disbelief made me stand in open-mouthed silence before shock and 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. Always keep my cell phone on me if 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 upscale 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 the booze and don’t cause drama. No one bothers even looking for me, which is why I always call Arry to come to find me. He’s the only person I ever really count on. He never lets me down.

Whenever I feel this way, he’s all I want, all I need to feel better. That hero coming to rescue me and take care of me for a while, that guy who never abandons me, even if he is pissed at me for calling.

It’s stopped me from falling off the edge of the cliff I’m dangerously walking along many times. My haven of calm, my island in a storm, and I miss him so much since our lives started to take different paths.

I’m so tired of this scene, the endless backstabbing, shallow assholes that befriend me and don’t give an actual shit, and generally tired of life. Tired of being the one left wandering alone and relying on Arry to come to find me when I need him and knowing that I’m only pushing him away every time I do.

Tired of the way my friends are only around for the party but never the aftermath, and even then, only around as long as my allowance doesn’t run out. Tired of being used and discarded by men when they move on to someone else, as though I’m worth no more than a cheap night out when I am no longer a lure for them.

I’m just sick of everything, sick of the life I’ve made for myself, and I don’t know how to get out of it anymore. I feel spent inside and tired, to the point that I know it’s no longer alcohol-related.

I’m not happy living this way, and chasing this life to make myself happy doesn’t work out at all.

I manage to push and claw my way through the last crowded expanse to the empty back seats of the club, into the darkest and quieter shadows, despite Arry telling me never to venture back here alone. Into the depths, I’m so consumed with needing to sit down and put my head on something to stop it from spinning.

I need to sit and breathe before he gets here.