Wet Dirt

Cool air kisses my neck as my sweat absorbs the latent heat from my body. I moan with satisfaction, feeling my body cool from just a mere touch of an unfathomable wind. Suddenly, my alarm rings, earning a groan from me for interfering with the serenity. I stretch my hand to turn it off when I graze my arm on a hard surface. I jolt up. I don’t remember my sheets being so rough.

My butt now sits on a cold concrete, my confused self trying to make sense of my surroundings. What was in that drink I was given at the bar? My vision is still blurry and what I register is a blurred, dim yellow light just above my head. An excruciating pain shoots from my right shoulder as I try to sit up and I wince stridently, scaring a raccoon in the bin across from me.

“What time is it?” I whisper to myself in exhaustion as I reach out for my still ringing phone with my painless hand. “It’s four in the morning!” I exclaim in shock, trying to remember why I had set an alarm for such an early morning over my hangover.

I pull myself up despite all the pain, groaning and cursing while I dig for strength within me. My body is so worn out, barely strong enough to hold my weight, but I manage to get on my two feet and stare around, immediately recognising the street. I am just two blocks away from my house but the bar I was is three blocks down from home. How did I end up here?

I squint my eyes over the dim light to read the banner on the building across. Seeing nothing, I give up and begin to stagger my way down the street. Several questions tumble over my poor, exhausted mind asking too many I don’t have answers to, including what happened at the bar.

Holding myself up with as little strength as possible, two more steps and I fall to my knees and begin throwing up on the pavement. My hair is suddenly pulled back but I am too wasted to care by who or look back but just continue throwing up until I feel that sense of relief and wellness.

“Are you finally done?” a man asks, his voice quite soft.

I nod as I lean against a wall or his feet perhaps, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. He has not let go of my hair yet and begins stroking it gently, putting it at the back of my ears before pulling me up. I scream as my right shoulder gets tucked under his armpit, my loud vocals alarming the poor man before he delicately holds me by the waist instead.

“My shoulder hurts,” I manage to whisper over the excruciating pain I’m unable to bear.

“Come with me,” is all he says as he leads me inside one of the buildings into an apartment just on the ground floor. I am limping over one of my broken heels, my ribs feel out of place and my throat burns from the acidic taste of the vomit. I breath out a sigh of relief when I feel a cool soft material on my back as the man lays me down on his velvet sofa. He slides off the shoes from my feet then throws them in a bin just a few inches from the sofa.

I watch as he walks away, his back facing me so I cannot see his face. Over my poor drunken vision, I can see he is dressed casually in dark jeans and a black leather jacket, mentally congratulating myself for calling for attention from a man of his ilk, cool and barely spares any glances to girls like me, boring and basic. He walks right back with folded clothes on his right hand and a small basin on the other, sets them on the table next to the sofa and walks out of the room again.

For a moment there, I zone out and the next thing I remember is that horrible pain on my shoulder but this time it is shooting to my neck all the way to the back of my head. “You’ll just have to bear the pain until I’m done plastering your broken shoulder, Ria.” I give him a puzzled look and he returns with a knowing smile. “Relax, I’ve checked your ID. And before you get all defensive about invasion of privacy, I’ll justify myself with a valid excuse that I was looking for a next of kin to come pick you up. Don’t move!” he orders before getting up and walking to the kitchen.

He comes back with a pair of scissors, cuts of the sleeve of the shirt he has brought, then with ease, throws it over my head.

“All good!”

“Can I have some water?” I manage to say and he nods, leaving and coming back again with a glass of water.

“Rough night?”

I nod.

“You probably don’t remember how you broke your ribs and shoulder, do you?”

I shake my head, receiving the glass of water which I gobble down with haste and end up choking. “Take it easy, Ria,” he scolds, taking the glass from my hand. “Tomorrow we’ll have to go to the hospital and have you operated. For now, just be gentle. We don’t want to damage your bones any further.”

“You a doctor?” I ask.

“Hardly made it, but yeah. I’ve been in practice for almost three years now.”

We sit there in silence for a few minutes until he asks, “Don’t you have anyone to take care of you? I mean, I’m not complaining you are here, I’m just curious.”

“It’s fine. I’ll get out of your hair. Thanks for, you know.”

I master all the strength I can and lift myself from the couch then try to walk past him. He stops me by a tender tug on my wrist, getting up from his seated position on the table. “Don’t go! I didn’t mean to make you feel unwelcomed. I brought you here, remember?”

“Out of pity.”

“Well, I couldn’t let a gorgeous girl sleep on the street now, would I?”

“What if I was some bait on a devious scheme and you just fell into the trap for finding me gorgeous?”

He shrugs. “I’ve had my share of devious schemes in the past. I’m sure I could have made out if this was one. And besides, I can’t let you walk alone with half of your body bandaged, barefoot and still hangover.”

I move a step closer towards him, my good hand feeling the muscles on his torso. I don’t know what it is with these men. I just want to hear them talk. I want to feel their hot breath caressing my skin, their hands all over my body. That’s two in one night, two rebound bonuses after my boyfriend just broke up with me over text.

“What are you thinking, Ria?”

He tucks my hair behind my ear just before his hand slides to my waist, bringing me even closer to his chest. I slightly wince from the pain in my ribs and he smiles down at me right after mocking my wince. His other hand once on my wrist rubs gently up and down my arm, a sudden warmth enveloping me, giving me a sense of comfort in the arms of a stranger.

I exhale as relief washes over me. His sense of touch loosens my fatigue, making me feel so relaxed as if I had slept through the day and had just woken up fresh as a daisy.  “Nothing,” I manage to say despite the rush of heat in the blood in my veins.

I don’t do casual sex, but in the moment, it is all I can think of. After all, the night was an incentive to nurse my pain and misery. After getting fired, my boyfriend breaking up with me and a seriously fucked up night I can’t even remember how I secured a bunch of broken bones, I deserve to feel whole again. I need a reason to live and the world is giving me wickedly hot men as a gift. It will be wrong to turn them down, right?

Mr. Memphis has agreed to help me despite having nothing to pay back. My old self would have declined the offer in the name of modesty, but now, I’ll have to do anything and everything to get back to my feet and get what I want. I need that perfect life I have only been dreaming of.

“Are you sure? You seem deep in thought.” He lifts my head up by my chin, forcing eye contact.

“What’s your name?”

“That’s not it. That’s not what you want, Ria. We both know you don’t care to know my name.”

What I want. Is this yet another opportunity?

“I can make it happen.” He places a soft kiss on my nose then onto my right cheek, making his way to my mouth. “I know you feel the tension in the room. I feel it too.”

My heart pounds uncontrollably in my chest as he moves to my mouth but kisses the side of my lips instead, works his way to my neck, to my broken shoulder then back to my neck and behind my ear.

“Just tell me exactly what you want, Ria.”

I gasp in pleasure as he hits a sweet spot just below my ear, the gasp turning into soft moans, soft pleas. I want him so bad.

“I’ll be as gentle as you want me to be. You have my word.”

The whole time he’s being nothing but gentle, that shouldn’t be a concern. In fact, I have nothing to worry about. After tomorrow, I’ll never see this man again. I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time but in return, I was handed a one-hundred-dollar bill by the world which I couldn’t offer to decline. It is time I treat myself right.

My mother used to tell me, ‘You enjoy playing in the mud, but remember at first, it was just several grains of dust that hurt your tiny little eyes and your fragile lungs…’

“I want you!”