AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Mason
Maybe Rachel was always meant to be a flash. A moment of brilliance so blinding she left an impression on the back of my eyelids so fierce, I didn’t even realise she was gone until she was impossibly out of reach. A shooting star, a comet, a siren’s call toward the rocks.
Day 30 of our “marriage” was fast approaching. With each day closer Rachel became more distant. I feared Day 30 she would be gone. I’d be left blinking at the burned image she left behind.
When we fucked, her eyes seemed to stare at something unseen over my shoulder. Her fingers still dug into my body, but not like she was falling, not like I was the only thing to keep her from death. More like she was on a busy city bus and was reaching up for a handhold. Jostled, off-balance, but certainly not in any sort of danger. When I came, she rolled away from me faster than before. Tugged the blanket up over her shoulders higher than before. She joked like usual about making my breakfast in the morning and fell asleep more quickly than before.
She rose before me. Some nights I wasn’t even sure she’d slept. I worried she’d slip out when I fell asleep, tiptoe to the room down the hall and in the morning make the bed there with such precision that no matter how closely I analysed it, I couldn’t be quite sure whether it had ever been disturbed at all.
Rachel’s time at the shop lessened. More and more, Rian or Conor or Aurnia would ask where Rachel was and more and more, I wouldn’t have an answer. More and more, I wouldn’t even be the first to know that she had left. Her excuses for missing beers with the gang after work came less easily over time. Or she tried less.
“I’m just tired,” she’d say after avoiding my eyes for a few quiet minutes, busying herself with a receipt for groceries.
“You didn’t sleep well?” I’d ask.
Rachel would then give me a weak smile and say something like, “How can I when my husband snores so terribly?”
We’d do what we always did: laugh, let it go, each pretend that there wasn’t something heavy between us. Pressing between us. Unresolved between us.
I’d come back from beers at The Jar and Rachel would be by the window. Just staring out through the cracked blinds. Or sitting on the still made-up bed. Legs long in front of her. Back rounded as she gazed in a sort of unsleeping dream at the wall across the bedroom.
“You waited up?” I’d ask, slipping off my jacket, coming over to fondle her breast. I’d whisper in her ear, “Not so tired, eh?”
She’d fuck me like a sex doll. Drag her fingers through my hair like a comb. Make sounds like she knew those were the sounds she was supposed to make, were she feeling what she was supposed to feel.
Bit by bit, Rachel avoided my eye more. Waited till I was done brushing my teeth to slip quietly into the bathroom. Bit by bit she kept her clothes separate from mine in the dresser drawers. Easier to grab. More convenient to pack when she leaves.
She’s going to leave. She’s going to be gone. Day 30 would come and Day 30 would go and I would be alone.
One evening I closed the shop alone. Conor had taken Aurnia home, the two of them all chuckles and straying hands before ducking out into the rain. Rian had asked if Rachel and I were going to have dinner alone or if we wanted to go out. I told him dinner alone, because I had no idea where Rachel was.
I was thankful that the guys had left early. It meant more work to consume my time. There was the trash to be taken out. The tattoo guns to clean, to polish, to prep for the next day. The chairs to wipe down, the desks to brush clean of pencil shavings and eraser remnants, the floors to sweep from shaved arms or legs. There were the appointments to confirm for tomorrow. There was going over social media posts. There was tidying the storeroom in the back.
There was plenty to do and yet not nearly enough.
The rain increased, pattering loudly against the now dark windows. I stood in the noisy silence without anything to do. Without anything to do, but wait for Rachel. Or think about waiting. Wait to think about waiting. Think about waiting to think about waiting.
Pacing was good at first. Movement. A sense of progress even if it was just a back-and-forth illusion. I could also see down both sides of the slick sidewalk when I paced. First to the north. Then to the south.
But soon pacing felt like running. My heart was erratic, wild. My palms were sweaty. My shirt clung to my clammy shoulders. Sitting was better. A glass of whiskey was better. Relaxing, staying calm, remaining reasonable was better.
I lasted about fifteen minutes before leaping toward the stairs. I took them two, three at a time. I yanked at the dresser drawers in a panic.
No, her things were still there. All the tidy little piles separated more and more, bit by bit from mine were still there. Her passport was tucked under her sweatpants at the very bottom. I ran my fingers over them because I was fairly sure she’d had them since Vegas. They were buttery soft and they smelled like her.
Dragging my fingers through my hair, I sank wearily onto the edge of the bed. I was driving myself mad. I was so worried that Rachel left me when I knew she was going to leave me. What did a day or two or three more really matter? Sure Day 30 wasn’t technically here, but it would be. For all intents and purposes, it might as well be. Because she was leaving. She said she was. A few good fucks and a trip down memory lane hadn’t changed the fact that she came to Dublin for a divorce. Stuck around for a divorce. Was waiting around, at my insane insistence, for a divorce.
The truth was right there in front of me: I thought she might not. Might not leave me. Might not really want a divorce in the end. Might not go come Day 30.
I’d given myself this glimmer of hope. I’d allowed myself to believe that love was anything more than the thing that made the inevitable pain of being left all the worse. The heights you were dragged to before being dropped. You would always be dropped; I knew that. Love was what made it hurt. If I just stayed on the fucking ground…
I growled in frustration and went back downstairs. The glow of the pink neon “Dublin Ink” sign on the wall reminded me of Vegas so I ripped the cord from the wall. It sputtered and snapped as it died. Darkness fell on the parlour like a closing curtain on a stage.
Where the fuck did she go? I wondered at the window. Where the fuck did she always go? And for so long? More and more time each fucking time? Why couldn’t she just stay? Why couldn’t anyone just fucking stay?
I grew angry because it was the same feeling as when I returned to Rachel’s apartment in Vegas to find it emptied, stripped clean, abandoned. I wanted to drive my fist through the wall because I was there again: heartbroken, devastated, ruined. I wanted to throw a chair through the glass of that bigger window overlooking the empty sidewalk because I put myself in a position to get hurt. I did this to myself. I let Rachel break all my rules, crash through all my defences, lay waste to the walls I’d so tediously built up through all my years of Miss Last Nights.
As the rain swept across the black street in lashing waves, I tried to imagine how I would get past this. Rachel being gone again. Me again being the one left. The last time it took years. The last time I fucked my way through Dublin to get over her. The last time I built Dublin Ink as a lighthouse for her to find me.
