Port in the Storm

Port in the Storm

Dear Diary,

I know I’m probably too old for this, but my best friend is on digital detox and I hate almost everyone at work enough not to engage them in my silly misadventures. I would have probably told my mother by her grave, but somehow writing this down feels right and more real. It feels like I am telling a supernatural spiritual being, perhaps an angel? Who knows? They might be real after all.

Michael, yesterday, came by in the middle of the night high on acid and probably even intoxicated. His knock on the door is usually firm and short, like one, two, done! But yesterday, it was unstable and rapid, as if in a cry for refuge over someone intimidating tailing him behind. It took me a moment to decide whether to receive the door or not, because I wasn’t sure who it was. Curiosity won the debate and I consciously opened the door to have an intoxicated grown man fall into my arms.

I got so worried and carried him over my feeble arms to the living room. He started laughing uncontrollably, calling me babe as he’s used to and telling me not to leave him. I couldn’t. I love him, but it’s being long since I felt a connection between us. The spark we had had reduced to a glowing matchstick after it’s already burned, but when he fell in my arms, as we fell on the couch in his heavy weight and he laid his head on my chest, a sudden hope enveloped me. Maybe we weren’t dead after all. We just needed to stay in each other’s arms and remind ourselves where we came from and how too far gone it was.

Before he began kissing my neck, just ten minutes after he had arrived, his friend, Chris, if I’m not wrong his name is, walked right in and handed me his bag. Said he left it in his car and had only realised when he was already a block away. I took the bag, wondering why Michael was the only one under the influence. It might have shown on my face since Chris answered my question; that Michael had just been let go due to some budget cuts and he needed an excuse to step into a club and might have taken it too far. He then said there are some papers he was to sign before the inevitable and wherever they were, he should drop them at the office first thing tomorrow morning. It was a Wednesday night. Little did I know, I was also on the receiving end the next day.

I pushed Michael away from me as soon as Chris left. I wasn’t ready to get in bed with him because he would not remember the next morning and then again, I couldn’t allow myself to be his punching bag. I mean getting into bed with him just to make him feel great and we haven’t had sex for months. It wasn’t the right time or situation.

“You don’t want to fuck?” he asked so bluntly.

I just sighed then stood to close the door Chris left ajar. “I can’t, Michael. Not when you are high.”

“But I’m not. I’m just drunk,” he slurped his words, struggling even. This got me asking why I don’t leave. Why I never left a relationship so toxic. How did I even keep up with the man?

“Fine,” he says as he sets himself on the couch, taking the comforter on the armrest and wrapping it around himself, “it’s always the same with you. Excuse after excuse. No wonder we never get to have sex anymore.”

I was about to retort back but he cut me off saying, “Oh, by the way, the papers Chris was referring to, I left them here the other day in your room.”

“The papers you asked me to sign?”

He grunted as he got up, looked at me wearily then said, “I just wanted to see your signature. Is that wrong?”

“Michael. They are documents for your work.”

“I’ll just have them make another copy tomorrow, okay. But I’ll still need those back. Now go sleep, I’ve got a hard on to take care of.”

I sit up abruptly. I need to find Michael.

“Sir, can you please turn back?” I lean forward and ask the taxi driver politely. We have been driving for the past twenty minutes, the driver asking after every three if he should drop me off at every known spot and started getting worried of the cab price that is shooting every time I fail to decide.

“Decided on where you are going?”

“Yes. Those apartments near the big toy store. I can’t remember the name.” I lean back again, staring out the window in thought, trying to remember the street Michael lives in.

“I know where exactly that is. You are lucky, miss. It isn’t that far from here.”

A sense of relief washes over me when he says he knows the place. It is the last place I want to be, especially since I never saw Michael after he broke up with me over text, but suddenly I have just realised he might be working for the devil. He may have deliberately made me sign his papers.

I quickly get out of the cab once we’ve arrived and pay through Venmo before the taxi drives away. I look up at his building anxiously, silently wishing the driver would stay, but I have wasted enough time of his as it is and it would be selfish to ask him to wait for me. A man walks out of the same building and walks past me as I still stare up. It is quiet, apart from the few cars passing behind me, but then one honks suddenly and an angry driver yells at the man from earlier who just walks casually to the other side as if he just hasn’t threatened his own life.

Looking back at the commotion and offering myself quite the distraction, I remember a book I once read of a girl with her expiration date tattooed on her forearm, the exact date she was supposed to die. She was almost hit by a car on the designated day as she was crossing the road, but someone saved her, giving her yet one more chance of her life. Towards the end of that fretful day of her apparent death, in hope that she has survived her expiration date, she was then attacked later just next to a cemetery and yet got saved another time. As the story proceeds, the girl lives past her expiration date. Despite living as an expired species, she thrived through the storm and made something out of her miserable life that was destined to end on that particular date on her forearm. It wasn’t known for anyone to survive past their expiration date.

Maybe, I should emulate her. Maybe putting up my soul on eBay was a chance of redemption. Another chance in my life that was seemingly and gradually coming to an end. A ticket out of the misery stones I have been jumping on since my mother died. I have been offered a once in a lifetime opportunity. I may have something to give up and I have already lost everything. It only feels right if I do whatever it takes, like the girl from earlier told me she does. For the sake of what I want.

Taking a deep breath, I turn back and face the road. I don’t have to face Michael. This could be the best gift he has ever given to me. Whether he did it or not, there’s a lot on the table and that’s what I have wanted for as long as I can remember. As I am about to call yet another cab, I hear a familiar voice behind me call my name.

My eyes recognise Michael’s once I turn to face him. I’m suddenly nervous, palms and armpits sweating. I hadn’t prepared for this. I wasn’t ready to face him. What do I even say? Why am I here?

“Didn’t you get my text? Why are you here?” My heart sinks. Was I nothing to him but a mere recruit into the devil’s chambers?

“Uh, I did. I just thought I left some things of mine here but now as I recall, I never really got to.” I pocket my hands avoiding eye contact.

He chuckles. “You did leave a toothbrush which I threw away. That should be it, I hope,” he says so coldly then begins to walk away from me towards the south.

I’m fighting the urge not to yell back at him and confront him for making me a pawn. For stringing me along, knowing I had feelings only to benefit with whatever perks that come from working for the devil. I know it is not cheap. Come to think of, that’s what Dustin did to Leah. The difference being, I was still the target.

“You could have warned me you know.”

He stops but doesn’t turn back.

“I loved you, Michael. I trusted you.”

“How’d you figure it out?” He finally faces me, keeping the same distance.

“I’ve only just realised how stupid it was to show you a signature that you could care less of, Michael. You didn’t care about me or how I felt and every gesture I did for you but you would care about a signature? How much do I cost?”

Scoffing, he says, “This is the best thing that will ever happen to you, Ria. And if that doesn’t count as love…”

“It doesn’t. You made an insane amount of effort to make me fall for you and for what? Couldn’t it be just a fake package delivery to my house or maybe a Wi-Fi password? How much do I cost?” I strain my voice as I angrily ask in between the breaks. Tears wet my cheeks and I bite my teeth to keep me from shouting at him.

“I don’t know your worth and even if I knew, it isn’t my place to tell you. Just take the win,” he says shrugging his shoulders before turning and walking away. It left me asking if I have that a lot of hell to pay. Sure, it has never been great, I just didn’t know it was that bad.

I start walking down on the opposite side Michael has disappeared to, reminiscing about, just about everything. How did I end up here? In the middle of my battering and constant feeling sorry for myself, I find myself in front of a club. The neon lights reel me in, eliciting that beast I discovered from Dustin and gives me the urge to just want to step in, maybe get drunk again and dance away my sorrows.

I walk to the nearest bin and dispose my bandages. Well, I may keep the one around my ribs for now, but the one on my shoulder has to go. It is a risk I am taking, though now as I realise, the milk is already spilled. I am in too deep at this point. So, I proudly throw it in and waltz into the club.

My first stop is on the dance floor. My adrenaline may as well keep me drunk but I still have to go and use up all the money I have left at the bar. I prince my way into the middle of the crowd, closing my eyes and moving in the rhythm of the pop music playing. My hair is in oblivion, bouncing side to side on the prompt of the direction at which my head is moving. I can only lift my left hand up high as I hold my right close by my torso. I then find myself screaming at the top of my lungs, singing along to the song I have just picked up. Several people join me, screaming and laughing as if we have no problems outside those club doors.

“No, I just wanna say hell no, and do whatever I like…” we sing loudly and off key, jumping in the energy an athlete needs to win a race, “it doesn’t matter if they say so, ‘cause I will put up a fight. Let’s make a hit and run, do it for fun, they can’t hold on forever so just say hell no…”

I jump in sync with another girl, mumbling the lyrics we don’t know on each other’s face and laugh then she happily turns me around and I halt suddenly when I see a stoic figure amidst the raving crowd looking at me. My smile gradually reduces into a frown as I recognise him. The red tie, black shirt and silver cufflinks that glint against the neon lights. People push against me as I stand to look at Mr. Memphis as well and as if the world stops, it is only the two of us in the club.

He unties his tie and dangerously ties it like a bandana around his head then loosens the buttons on his shirt, exposing a bit of skin beneath. Mr. Memphis is trying to show me his wild side, which I want to see. He then wears a sexy smirk, one that is inviting me to him, one so mesmerising the whole club could stop and stare at. And it is mine. It is meant for me. Exhaling and returning back my smile, I rush over to him, combing through the crowd in haste in aim of reaching up to him before he disappears. My heart skips a beat once I stop in front of him and admire his godly of a face and without thinking, I pull him in for a kiss.