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I’m vibrating with nerves, my limbs trembling with the shakes, when I make it back to my tent to find Ava on the inside, alone, and dry inking into her own thigh.
“Oh, hey, C.” She jumps when I slam in and scrambles to put the tattoo gun back where she found it. “I didn’t realize you were coming back.”
“I—um.” Clearing my shaking voice, I avoid looking her in the eye as I head to my toolbox where I know I left my phone. “Just clean it when you’re done, Ava.”
“Your dad saw you left your phone and said to tell you he saw you leaving. Call him.”
“Yeah, okay.” Snagging the device, I’m dialing and dashing back out of the tent before she can say anything else.
The main show is already over for the night and the moon has taken its place in the dark sky. I maneuver around lingering sweaty bodies that smell like the dumpster outside of my tattoo shop in the humid nighttime air as I slam the phone to my ear and a sense of relief washes over me when the line clicks.
“I know it’s late, Sara,” I say into the receiver before she can even get a greeting out as the exit to the venue comes into view. “But I need to talk.”
“Yeah, Cedar.” I freeze when the voice on the other side is notthe woman that has helped me through some of the shit my brain has put me through, but instead has an inky oil slicking over my stomach and makes me more nauseous. “We need to talk.”
No, no, no, no.
I freeze and yank the phone from my head and kill the call with a tremor in my unsteady hands as a group of exiting concert goers bump into me. They smash into my arms and elbows, and the phone goes skittering across the pavement.
Watching in shock as the thing gets kicked around and all but glides over the cement walkway, I flip my loose hair out of my face and chase off after it.
My heart stuttering in my chest and my words stuck in my throat, I force my heavy feet to the device as I bump into bodies and get tousled around by those I’m being equally as rude to.
I need to call for a ride and get my therapist on the line instead of the man that made me crazy and a sense of relief almost washes over me when the phone finally stops beneath the flat sole of a skater shoe.
Forcing a breath, I watch as hands come down to pick up the device from beneath their feet. Long hair falls around the face as the person bends and I work my dry throat to use my words and tell them it belongs to me so they don’t take off with it.
“Hey, man.” It’s not as loud as I’d hoped with the crowd chatter picking up around me, the last ones of the night set on being the loudest ones yet as they all head to their after parties. “Hey!”
Stumbling through the dark as the crowd thins, and the person straightens with my phone in their grasp and it’s not until a slender arm comes up and swipes the hair out of his face that I’m stuck motionless like I’ve sunk into the concrete.
“When I said we needed to talk …” Jeremy’s muddled hazel eyes, rimmed with a darkened red and sunken into his once handsome face, meet mine over the few people that meander around on quick feet in the distance between us. “I didn’t think it’d be so soon, baby.”
Bile, hot and acidic, rushes up the back of my throat. “What do you want, Jeremy?”
“Well baby,” he chuckles a sickening sound from the base of his throat as he cups his junk. “You. I want you and that whore’s pussy you like to dish out.”
I bite back the dry heave that threatens me and eye my phone pinched loosely between his fingers and thumb.
He looks so sick. In the head.
Like me.
Gritting my jaw when I know there’s no way I could outrun him then, and there’s next to no chance I could now, I bow my shoulders in and take a tentative step forward.
I need my phone.
“Jeremy,” I try, with an outstretched hand and another step closer to the man that fuels my nightmares.
“Oh, baby,” he chides with a tsk and takes a step back and it’s then that I realize he’s just outside of the gate of the venue. Where security is less than and the cameras are non-existent. “Ijustwant to talk.”
Do I really need the phone?
Shit, how else do I get home?
Biting the inside of my lip to keep from screaming, it’s moments like these that I really wish I just carried my bat with me. I doubt he could outrun the Slugger.
“Quit fucking around and give me my phone, Jeremy.” I take another step forward, a little more menacingly this time, which only earns me a sickening laugh and him retreating another step. Closer to the bag set up by the tree and a mound of cigarette butts sitting next to it.
