Chapter 1
I want to change my habits. I know that’s what I have to do. I mean, if I want to make improvements and move my life in the right direction. It’s up to me.
I don’t have the desire though.
Plus I don’t even know what to do to get started.
I want him to stay asleep. But I can’t get up and leave. Because the truth is I want that high of him climbing all over me.
The alarm on my cell phone is loud as hell. How is he not awake? He hasn’t even moved.
I bet if I make a move to get up he’ll say something.
I slowly turn over and push my feet off the side of the bed. It’s cold immediately without these covers on me. I am naked.
I don’t know why they call it sleeping together. It should be called fucking together. The sleep part is only semi relaxing after the fucking. Outside of that, the sleep sucks.
That’s all we do though. We barely talk. He expects it. I want it because it makes me feel good. Every time we get done and the high wears off, the thoughts creep back into my head. I think about how he treats me like crap.
He hits me when he thinks I am cheating on him. He grabbed me the other night hard by the arm. Gave me a bruise. It was over a new job I took.
I don’t know what to think of him getting mad about that. But I do know what to think of him.
He’ll never support me with money like I want a man to do.
I am cute, nice, and pretty smart. I deserve to have a man take care of me. He’ll never be able to. He smokes weed all day. Maybe plays video games with his friends. That’s all I see him do.
I push myself up onto my feet. I am freezing. No clothes on and I don’t know where I threw them.
I should just move in. I am here every waking hour. And I hate living at my mom’s.
“Come back to bed babe,” Dax says, muffled by his face buried into the top of the bed.
Unbelievable.
He can’t even muster enough to lift his head to get me back in there to ride him. Or blow him. Or whatever. That’s how little he puts into having me. How little he puts into us.
He’s cute. No, he’s fine. Really fine. He’s got that chiseled torso and a large Dracula tattoo down his left arm.
I love how he feels when he’s on top of me. He just pounds me. I love his muscles. There doesn’t seem to be an ounce of loose skin on him.
But he’s just a little boy. Nineteen years old. I think he sells drugs. I have no idea how he gets money. I never see him work. He is still poor, but he always has enough to live.
I am afraid to ask him. That’s our communication style. He tells me nothing. I suspect things, but ask him nothing.
We’ve been together for almost eighteen months, and that’s it as far as the talking. It’s all superficial jabber about movies, and why they need to legalize pot. Then the rest is drama and arguing.
I know it’s a bullshit waste of time in my life to argue. But I love how we fuck. It’s addicting.
I guess this whole deal right now is way better than not feeling that pleasure.
I just have to find something to throw on so I can get to work. I spy a towel hanging from the doorknob of the bathroom.
I wrap it around me. It’s still wet from his shower. Now I am really cold.
I am paralyzed because this all seems so pointless. I can’t live like this, but he’s the only thing that feels good. I know he and I are not going to be anything long-term. Or are we?
But it’s been a year and a half. I am still here. So it’s kinda long-term already.
“I gotta go babe,” I yell back while walking intentionally fast to the living room at the end of the hall. “First actual day at work.”
I gaze out the window to the small balcony. The day is dark. Really dark for San Diego. I bet it’s going to rain.
I am sick of the sun anyways. It makes me feel guilty when I sit inside. If I laid around in a rainy city or city with bad weather, it would feel cozy. I wouldn’t feel so guilty.
I flail around the living room. It’s overrun with dog hair, empty red plastic cups, and a two-day-old Taco Bell nacho platter sitting here.
Where in the hell are my panties?
I see them laying there by the TV table. How in the hell? The rest of my clothes are actually organized, right there on the chair at the kitchen table.
Was I that messed up last night? My panties are twenty feet from the rest of my clothesI can only guess how. Because I have no idea.
At least this all bothers me.
I just want to get moving so Dax won’t get up. Get out the door and get over to the restaurant. I wanted a place that serves booze, but this job was all I could get.
I drop the towel on the plastic floor in the kitchen and realize I never picked up the panties way over by the TV.
I look to my left and see my reflection on this Budweiser beer mirror.
I like my body. It’s gotta be worth more than this. It’s gotta be worth having some options.
I bend over to grab the panties and hear Dax.
“I told you not to take that job,” he says, with a drowsy, scratchy-throat tone. “You want to fuck other guys, obviously. All day flirting with you. Giving you their number on the bill.”
“What do you think it’s like being a woman?” I shoot back, probably a little too aggressively. “That never happens. Guys are too scared or just have no interest.”
I could make him snap if I push it here. Although he usually only puts his hands on me in the evening. Probably because of the drugs and booze he did during the day.
I hesitate and gather myself to make sure I don’t raise his temperature too high.
“I am only going to stay there long enough to find something that serves booze. So don’t worry.”
I put my panties on quickly and proceed back to the kitchen table for the rest of my clothes.
I take a slight semi-circle path to keep my distance from him. He’s now right where the hall to the bedroom ends and the kitchen/living room begins.
“You fuck around on me, I’ll kill you and him.”
He turns around and reenters the bedroom, closing the door quietly behind him.
This is madness. I know it’s madness. But I guess I am scared. Thinking about leaving is my personal lie to myself.
I love the closeness of how he makes me feel when we’re banging.
I’m all talk. I am not going anywhere.
It’s progress that I at least admit to myself this is not anything I should want. But I keep doing nothing about it.
I keep turning off my availability to men. It’s gotten worse too. I’ll meet a nice guy and I just shut it down.
“I am sorry, I am with someone.”
“Are you happy?” the most recent guy, who was a supplier for my new job, asked.
“Very.”
God, I don’t know what to do. I am entering my mid-twenties but it seems like the end of the summer after my senior year of high school. Life has flown by. And after years, I am going nowhere. I might as well be fifty-four not twenty-four, I am so stuck.
I throw on my jeans and white dress shirt. My name tag says “Josie T.” I inspect it while I remove it from my pocket to make sure it has the “e” on the end.
I clip it onto my shirt.
“Ouch!” I exclaim as the pin end pricks me on the thumb, drawing blood.
As I turn the knob, rain starts to batter the glass table out on the balcony.
My mind is all over the place.
I want to see how today goes. I need to make a decision because I am drifting and I know it. Dax, the drugs, my friends, no school, no plan, and I have totally no ambition.
I am hating myself right now, but maybe today I start to make some money and get something going? My mom was right to force me to get a job.
I am addicted to this loser who will never support me and that’s probably my biggest problem. If I want to stop being poor, and do it the easy fast way, I should find a new man with some money. But that’s wrong too. To think about love like that.
I run through the driving rain to my little white Dodge Neon. I am soaked.
…
I am walking through the last of my training at Mama’s Kitchen. It’s off the freeway heading out of the City towards Temecula.
I have never been a waitress before, and this is a lot to remember. As my first day approached, I have put zero effort into memorizing the menu and I am nervous.
I don’t like to be watched and critiqued on something I am not used to doing.
Marion seems like a nice lady, but she’s done this for so long. She’s going to be on my ass when I mess up.
My first customer is at my first table. I approach. Marion is right behind me. Ugh.
This new employee training scene always attracts a nice crowd of eyeballs. Going to the table with a superior following right behind you.
“Hello, good morning. I am Josie and I’ll be your server today.”
The man is older, like 60s. He smells of rank cigars.
“I’ll have my usual, large though on the juice.”
I am relieved. All I have to do is ask him what his usual is and I am off the hook.
“I am new sir, and I am sorry, I don’t know your usual.”
The restaurant around me seems like it is suddenly quieter. Like everyone is listening in. Wanting to hear me fail. I am sweating in my armpits and down my legs. I have only been at work for fifteen minutes, too. This day is going to be total shit.
“The eggs and toast special,” he says.
Now I am really nervous. I know they have an eggs and toast special, but if I have to know anything more than that, I am done.
“How would you like your eggs?”
He winces at me. “You really are new.”
“Fuck it man, just answer,” I am thinking to myself.
I can’t believe I am this worked up about this shit job. But it’s my first one in a while, so I don’t know any better.
“Fried.”
“OK,” I say fake cheerfully. “I’ll get that right up for you.”
I hustle back past the sea of tables to the kitchen food pick-up area. It seems like a really long walk for twenty feet.
“I know you want to do well, but I don’t think you are ready. Part of wanting to do well is being ready,” Marion gripes at me in my ear as I turn in the order.
“What do you mean?”
She moves to my left and looks me in the eye.
“What kinds of toast do we offer?”
I truthfully have no clue, so I say nothing for a few seconds.
“White and wheat right?” I say with a forced smile attempting to lighten things up.
“Marion!” the loud booming voice of Mr. Descano, the manager, calls from the back. “I need you right now. Leave the girl. She’ll handle the one table and the corner to the back. No one will show up back there. Breakfast is winding down anyways. I gotta have you go over the receipts so I can get my ass out of here.”
Just in time.
“I am not going to say anything, but you can’t come in here not knowing our menu,” Marion snorts in my face. “It makes it impossible to train you.”
She walks around me to the back office area to my left, heading for Descano’s office.
“Go handle your table,” Marion says, acting like the damage is too much to repair.
I think she is a loser in her forties who is taking some crap job too seriously.
I don’t want to be her. Right now I feel like I want to cry. I just need support. Not here at Mama’s Kitchen, but out there. Someone to spend money on me. I am cute enough that I shouldn’t work if I don’t want to.
Now I am sweating even worse in this shirt. Four more hours to go. I hope my application to Applebees to be a hostess comes through. There I won’t have to memorize a damn thing.
I honestly don’t know what to do next right now. I am the new girl and no one acts like they give a shit.
I want to go back to high school. I’d kill to turn the clock back and make it Memorial Day back in May six years ago.
I owned the world back in the day. A whole summer of graduation parties and the beach to look forward to. No worrying about college or my future plans.
I was poor but I didn’t know it like I do now. I didn’t feel the pain of poor like I feel it now. My mom and I, we have nothing. Now she’s on me to get to work.
I was better than other people in high school because I was better looking. Now all that doesn’t matter. And this fat guy is gesturing me over, raising his coffee cup.
At least I’ll look busy if I walk over there.
…
Sitting and thinking for ten minutes in the bathroom did wonders for me. I put the top cover down on the potty and sat. Closed my eyes. I guess it was toilet meditation. My great uncle from the Orient would be proud.
I gave the fat smelly guy his coffee and disappeared.
I walk out the bathroom door. Immediately the other waitress on duty, the skinny black girl, grabs me by the shoulder.
“I know, sweetheart,” Tamika says. “Don’t think I don’t.”
I freeze, and slight fear paralyzes me again. All this emotion expended for this lousy job.
What a morning. Now this.
I close my eyes, trying to do a quick meditation. Or maybe I just wish I could disappear.
“What do you mean?” I have totally fucking had it and it’s oozing from my voice.
Silence.
“I know I smell.” Me trying to bring levity to the whole deal. Coping how I can. “I have sweat like a hog since I got in to be honest.”
I smirk.
“Nawwww. Nawwww,” she laughs, and I am relieved. “You seeing this all wrong. Marion and the manager are doing it. Like right now.”
“No way!” I say, laughing.
I don’t know why but I suddenly feel in my element. All of this doesn’t seem so serious anymore.
“How long?”
“Usually only about ten minutes.” she says.
“No. No. How long has it been going on?”
I am smiling. Relaxed. I wouldn’t even mind another table right about now.
“No way for me to know but I bet since I been here. I been here about a year,” Tamika says.
“Well I’ll be. What do you think I should do next?”
“Well, I took care of your customer. The fat smelly guy. It’s almost 10:30. The place dies down now. We do OK at lunch. I guess just chill. Don’t worry. You can have the tip.”
Tamika smiles and a couple gold teeth are visible. The ones bordering either side of the two front teeth.
“Thanks. I owe you one, Tamika.”
The manager’s voice calls from the back. I see Marion out of the corner of my eye scurry from his office to the pantry storage behind the kitchen. She’s fastening her belt on her dress pants and letting her untucked button-up shirt fall across her waist.
“Ms. Toms! Back here now!”
He has an angry tone. My heart is sinking.
His office is more like a closet. It’s got no windows and boxes are piled up everywhere. It’s even smaller than our crappy little break room.
He’s sitting there hunched over his rickety desk.
“You’re fired. Get out,” he says, never looking up.
I instantly begin crying. I didn’t bother with any make-up, so at least it’s not running. But the tears are flowing instantly and uncontrollably.
“Please, no. Please,” I plead through the tears.
He refuses to look up from the paperwork.
“You left your only table, never told anyone, and let a customer sit out there,” he says, like he wrote the Bible of Waitressing and I just broke the First Commandment.
“I was sick,” I begin shrieking. “I was fucking sick! Please don’t fire me.”
“I am sorry, you’re done. Marion said you didn’t know the basics of the menu, too.”
Now I am pissed. That bitch. Turning me in while she’s back here fucking the manager. What a whore.
“She tell you that when you were fucking her, or after?” hatred dripping from my voice now. “Or was it before?”
Descano looks up. I have his full attention. I am shaking. I hate confrontation like this, but I know I got nothing to lose. So I stand there and get ready for the onslaught of what is to come.
“Who told you that?” he says. “That jig?”
“Does it matter?” I shoot back as my breathing is returning to normal.
“Tamika! Get in here!”
Now he is loud. Easily loud enough to be heard clear into the dining room all the way to the front door.
My heart begins to beat rapidly again. I know I just did over Tamika. She is done. She has babies. She needs this way more than me.
I hear Tamika making fun banter with a customer as she approaches. She’s popular at this place for a reason. She loves talking to people and she is always smiling.
She isn’t going to be smiling much longer. I feel like I want to throw up.
…
“Bitch, you can’t share that shit!” Tamika is screaming at me right in the lobby. The dining room is right behind me. “A few hundred dollars a week. Gone. I got two kids.”
She starts to cry.
She takes off out the door and walks across the parking lot to the four-lane road. In the distance there is a Steak and Shake and a McDonald’s. Then behind that, the freeway.
I stay back in the building, afraid to go outside. Afraid she’ll attack me.
My eyes are glued on her. She is at the street’s edge. There’s a bus stop. The least I can do is offer her a ride. I know she’ll tell me to fuck off. And I don’t blame her.
I wasn’t thinking when I said that to Descano.
I caused all this crap. Didn’t even take me an hour to blow everything up and hurt someone. I feel like total shit.
I regain focus. Sort of.
Immediately to the far right of the parking lot I notice two TV news vans from San Diego.
There’s no one out walking around, but seeing the vans surprises me.
I restore my gaze straight ahead to Tamika standing by the road. She’s got a lit cigarette and she’s talking furiously into a cell phone. It’s time. I have to face her and at least offer her a ride.
As I lean against the door to head out to Tamika, an older tall guy with a bald head blocks the door and puts his hand to my face. The window separates him from actually touching me.
I step back and he opens the door.
“Where are you going?” He’s smiling brightly. “We want you here.”
I just want to go the hell home and get working on finding some other job.
Damn. A few of my friends have college degrees and are going places.
I got nothing happening.
I push violently against the door, trying to plow the guy out of the way. It’s a temper tantrum. I am acting like a little girl and I could care less.…
Chapter 2
The bald guy is really tall and he fills out his suit well. You can tell he’s strong. Too strong for me, but I keep banging against the swinging glass door. I just want to disappear.
“Wait! Wait!” He yells back as he keeps absorbing the blows with the side of his body.
He braces himself with his left hand and reaches into his pocket with his right.
Out pops a wad of money. It looks like a bunch of fifties. He puts it up to my eye level.
I halt immediately.
The guy steps back from the door. I walk outside. To my left, at the far end of the parking lot nearest a gas station, I spot a huge bus. It’s blocking the whole view of the gas station.
On the side it reads: Stallworth and Hanson Making America America Again 2020. The words are in red, white, and blue lettering.
Stallworth. Stallworth. Stallworth.
I am not putting it together.
“Is he in politics?” I ask the bald guy.
He is quickly joined by a shorter sort of chubby Hispanic woman, and behind her two black men who have earpieces hanging out of their ears.
The bald guy seems lost about how to answer. He squints his eyes at me briefly.
“I am Harley Miller. Assistant publicity manager for the Stallworth campaign.” he says, than pauses, looking at me.
I make no effort to act like I know any of what he is talking about. I mean, I get it’s politics. I don’t care if he thinks I don’t know more. I don’t do politics. I don’t do the news.
Entertainment news, sure, but not the information news about governments and wars.
“He’s running for President. President of the United States,” Miller says, but not in a way like he is trying to teach me anything.
He’s pleasant enough and he’s not talking down to me.
I want to get talking about the money.
“I just got fired in there.”
I begin breathing heavier as I relive it.
“I think I got a single mother of two fired too. I just need money and I saw you have some.”
He smiles at me and pulls the wad back out from his side pocket.
“I got one thousand bucks if you’ll go back in there and be my server? Or Mr. Stallworth’s server, I mean.”
I am waiting for the punchline.
“I’d love one thousand, but they aren’t going to let me back in there.”
Miller smiles confidently and gestures for me to move aside by bracing my shoulder with the palm of his left hand. I do it and come face to face with the rest of his group.
Maybe ten seconds pass, fifteen tops. The two black guys open the door and begin walking the dining room, then the kitchen. I turn around to watch them. They are talking with their hands pushed against their earpieces, flying from room to room.
The Hispanic lady goes right around me and opens the door.
“I didn’t get your name,” she says coolly. “I am Elizabeth Ramirez. I am Mr. Stallworth’s traveling secretary. And it looks like you just got your job back.”
She holds the door, waiting for me to pass.
The table right in the center of the room is empty. It’s getting double and triple cleaned by Marion, who doesn’t even look me in the eye as she works at a lightning pace.
Ramirez ushers me to the back area right near the very office where I just got fired. She pulls out a wad of money and gives it to me.
“One thousand dollars for you.”
She then pulls a small make-up tray out of her tan purse and snaps it open.
“I don’t want to overdo it. You are gorgeous. Bonita Latina.”
I am flattered, but I say nothing.
I don’t want to risk one cent of this money by telling her I don’t know word of Spanish. I am North Asian and something from like Central America. I heard Costa Rica. I look Mexican, but I’ll be whatever for this kind of money.
“Your eyes are a little puffy. You crying after that firing?”
I shake my head. “Yeah.”
“We got that covered,” she states confidently as she goes to work on my eyelids and the rings around the bottoms of my eyes.
“I gotta be honest though, we didn’t get your job back. The manager knew we were coming. The company that owns Mama’s Kitchen is a huge donor. The manager said you could come back in and serve the future President of the United States.”
“Oh my.”
It’s all I can say.
I am trying to sound interested. She closes the make-up kit. Without thinking at all, I hustle back out to the dining room. Marion hands me two menus as she passes by me without looking me in the eye.
Sitting at the table with Miller, there’s a man who almost makes my knees buckle he is so breathtakingly handsome.
His legs are crossed and hands gesturing to a group of cameras, with people behind him hanging on his every word. I don’t even notice the reporters at first, I am so fixated on candidate Michael Stallworth.
I hear one of the reporters call him Senator Stallworth as I approach. I’ll have to make it up as I go along. This is only the second table I’ve ever handled in my life.
“Hi, I am Josie. Can I start you off with something to drink? The special today is pastrami and also the hot hamburger platter, which comes with two sides.”
I am doing better than earlier, and the stakes are definitely way higher. I am just going with it, figuring I already got the money and I won’t be back working here after it’s over.
“Hi Josie. I am going to have ice water with lemon please. Harley?”
Stallworth is looking up at me but it feels like he is looking through me. I shift my glance immediately to Miller because I can’t take Stallworth’s glance directly in my eyes.
This is what a man looks like. Chiseled jaw, wavy light brown hair. Youthful but mature. Perfection, but no effort put into being perfect. His dark sport coat with gold buttons fits him like a glove. His smile is perfect, with his teeth a shiny white. He’s a more classically handsome and approachable version of Brad Pitt.
I know nothing of this man, but I am betting he’s twenty-nine or thirty, tops. He’d be a big upgrade from fat old, big mouth who won President in 2016. I can’t stand the guy and I don’t follow any of it. He’s an old women pig who treats women like play toys.
“I’ll have a Coke,” Miller says, waking me up from my Stallworth hypnosis with the request.
I start shaking at the knees, knowing Stallworth is looking up at me. His gaze is a million times more nerve-wracking then the presence of cameras.
I walk back to get their drinks, and my first thought is how far off the mark I am, wasting my time with a guy like Dax. My next thought is I want to give this Stallworth my number.
I normally don’t go for the pretty-boy type. But he’s way beyond that. He’s got this wholeness. He’s bigger and more commanding. Rugged is a good word. Not a wimpy pretty boy.
I can picture him rescuing me shirtless from a raging fire, or from an evil bad guy in a movie.
I prepare the drinks and peer back over my shoulder, hoping he might be glancing at me.
Nope.
I just want to be romanced by a real man like this. Forget him paying for anything. It wouldn’t matter.
I’d work ten jobs. But I know he’d pay for everything anyways.
He’s class. You can see it.
So hot. I am as horny as you can possibly be while working a job like this.
I go back to the table with the drinks. I have both hands securely on the tray, gripping tight to break down any shaking that might occur from the nerves. But I am losing the battle.
Don’t drop the drinks on them. Don’t drop the drinks on them.
“Are you ready to order?” as I carefully place the drinks in front of each man. This time I am standing between Stallworth and Miller.
“I’d like a hamburger and fries, pickles on the side,” Stallworth says.
“It doesn’t come with pickles. You have to order them extra.”
I can’t believe I just said that. I didn’t even know I knew that.
“Get me the manager,” he says.
I freeze and want to crawl under the table.
“I am just kidding.”
That gorgeous smile of his again.
Miller laughs, and then the media.
“Josie, let me ask you something?” he says not waiting for my answer. “Are you having a hard time making ends meet these days?”
“I am just a student. But finding a job was hard. Yes.” I am lying like crazy on the first part about being a student. The second part is because I am lazy and not ambitious.
He pats me on the elbow and I begin to shiver with delight. He’s so damn sexy.
“It’s an America without any regard for opportunity for the working class. Who is going to support our growth if most people don’t have opportunity and extra money after they pay all the bills?”
It rolled out of him so smooth. It made some sense too.
He has my vote. But I don’t vote. I don’t even know how.
But he has it anyway.
“I agree,” I say.
Beyond that I shut right up, afraid I’ll sound stupid.
I smile down at him and force myself to look into his eyes. I am trying to tell him he can have me if he only asks. But I can’t say it.
I retreat to the back.
I return to the table three more times. One with the food. One seeing if they want pie. One to present the bill.
Miller answers each time. Stallworth says nothing.
I am devastated. Not one word. He doesn’t even look up. The media took off right after they ordered.
After I present the bill, I head back to the waitress station where the food comes out. I turn my back for ten seconds and sulk.
I look cute, I think. Why isn’t he interested? I have all this confidence all of a sudden. I guess it’s because I did a good job with the table, despite all the nerves.
I feel a tap on the shoulder. I can tell it’s a man’s tap.
I turn around, smiling.
“Here is your money, and the tip too, miss,” Mr. Miller says.
He is still nice, but clearly not interested in keeping me around now that I am no longer of use.
“You did a very good job. Senator Stallworth wanted me to give you this.”
I am too afraid to look down. It’s his private number. Yes!
I put my hand out but don’t look down.
Miller puts his hand on top of mine. It’s not a card. My heart sinks a little.
I look down. It sinks further.
It’s round and wide as a can of beer.
On the front it says Stallworth 2020. I can feel the hinged pin in the palm of my hand.
Before I can say thank you, Miller is gone. It’s Marion, me, and a little pin, in a fully empty Mama’s Kitchen ten minutes before noon on the Sunday before Labor Day.
…
Without a word for anyone, I hustle out the door. I am not looking for Stallworth or the bus.
I am looking for Tamika. She’s still there. Thank God. She’s sitting on the bench at the bus stop. She’s facing back at the restaurant, looking directly at me.
I walk right to her. You can see she’s been crying.
“Why’d you stay?” I ask, as I get close enough for her to hear me in a normal speaking voice.
“I wanted to see the Senator. I think he’s gonna win the whole thing,” she says, smiling wearily. “I am sorry, honey. I hate that job. You probably did me a favor. I am just hurting with money. My baby daddy is going to kill me that I lost this job. He grabs that money every week and I never see it again.”
I smile, knowing that she’s OK with me, but don’t smile too much. Because none of this is anything to be happy about.
I pull the wad of bills from my pants pocket.
“Here’s severance, or whatever they call it.”
I hand her the entire thousand like it was never mine.
“You want a ride home? I have a car.”
Tamika is about to cry. She shakes her head yes and leaps forward to hug me.
It’s a decent conclusion to a shitty two-plus hours. It all began with me walking around naked in Dax’s grubby apartment with a wet towel around me. And actually got worse from there.
I am still broke, and getting broker by the minute. I have no job and no prospects. My mom is going to kick my ass out. I can feel it. I don’t even want to be around Dax. I am done letting him screw me. It’s over, except I can live there for free, so I don’t know if it’s wise to end things. Plus he makes me feel really hot. It always comes back to that with Dax and why I can’t stop.
Even though I helped Tamika, I am sad deep down. The man of my dreams just left without saying anything to me except what was scripted for the cameras.
I need to escape from my current situation. I am going to see if Tamika needs the same on this drive home.
Time to scramble and find a way to survive.
I am still young, cute, addicted to the ride with a bad boy and our regular partying. The reality is scary. I am only like an accidental pregnancy or a trip to jail away from being totally screwed in life.
It’s who I am.
In real life, it sure isn’t taking much to be right there in Fuckedville with the adults I always laughed at when I was younger.
The way Dax and I have been going at it, with me all high, the pregnancy part probably isn’t far behind.
I am not stupid. Yeah, I don’t know who is running for President. I was a C student at best. But I know I gotta make better choices.
It’s just that the right ones are the hardest ones to make and actually carry out.
Right now, I just want to get fucked up and talk to Tamika while she does the same.
All this is on the tip of my tongue as we speed back toward San Diego and her place on the East Side.
I wanna tell her I am hot for Senator Michael Stallworth. I need to keep him alive in my world. Girl talk is a great way to do that.
But he is gone like he never existed. All I have are delusions.
