Exotic - Chapter 51: Chapter 51

The best thing about being an overly familiar face at Crescendo was that the audio tech knew me, and that made it harder for him to ignore my requests for increasingly obscure punk-pop music seriously. Maybe he pitied me. All that mattered was he kept playing angry music for me, as I tested the potency of my wig glue with my uninhibited thrashing.
I go blonde when I'm sad
Blew motivation I had
To make my still beating-something
Not hurt that bad.
I wouldn't have thought the amount of alcohol I'd consumed would classify me as drunk, but I had always been a lightweight. I wasn't quite sure of the time, but Lyle was still serving me when I visited him, so I couldn't have been that plastered. And I had been visiting him quite a lot.
One last hurrah, before I have to start thinking like an adult.
I was currently dancing with a guy who was shorter than me in heels but made up for it with his enthusiasm. He also had the prettiest blue eyes. You're not so special, Caleb, I thought, and that had me thinking about him again, which in turn propelled me to the bar, where a man with bleached tips asked for my waist size. Which was a little weird, but I drunkenly let him make a guess with his groping hands as Lyle poured my next drink.
"You are beautiful," the man said against my neck, and while I normally wouldn't have entertained someone who took fashion inspiration from Guy Fieri, I lapped up the praise. Lyle was the one who shooed him away with the end of his tea towel.
"You doing alright, Seph?" the bartender asked, even as he handed me another shot. He seemed to do so reluctantly. But then again, he thought I was twenty-two and could handle myself. "Can I get you a bottle of water or something?"
"Or something," I straddled the barstool and lapped at my shot like a kitten, shuddering at the burn. "Have you ever fucked something up, Lyle? Something good?"
He cocked his head at me, smiling indulgently. "What a cliché. Although you might have chosen a quieter bar to mop about."
"I like being distracted," I countered.
Lyle took another order with a dismissive nod and turned back to me. "All I can suggest is don't make any phone calls the state you're in. And also, if he let you go, I'd say he's the one who fucked things up."
"Aw, Lyle," I purred. "Let me know if your marriage ever hits the rocks."
Lyle tapped my head with a plastic water bottle and moved to the other end of the bar. I took a sip before sliding off the stool, boneless, and swaying back into the mosh pit, eyes closed and shoulders jerking to the beat. Another pair of mostly unwelcomed hands found my hips, and I let it happen. The firm touch assured me that someone wanted to touch me tonight.
I was unceremoniously jerked around after a few seconds of half-hearted grinding and found myself crowded immediately by a mouth doing its best to join with mine. I let it find its target, half-heartedly moving against him with my eyes still firmly closed. He was tall enough to be my type, big shoulders, sharp jaw when I moved my hand up to caress it. A bit enthusiastic on the tongue, like a golden retriever. When I squeezed his arm to come up for air, my tongue was tingling. I tried to keep my eyes closed, but they fluttered open automatically.
My partner grinned at me in a way that should have been charming. He was cute but far from what my imagination had been building him up to be. He was blonde, with a wiry frame, wearing a neon bum bag and little else. When he spoke, asking my name, his voice was far lower than expected. Probably about twenty-five. Remembering what Grayson had said to me, I immediately felt guilty, and a little bit sick.
"I need to pee," I shouted, and abandoned him where he stood.
London Bridges was doing a writhing dance on stage, bare panty-hosed feet sliding across the stage. As I passed, they slipped to the edge of the stage and dropped to their knees, catching my arm and hauling me in close.
"When did you get so famous?" they shouted over the thump of the music.
"What?"
"People want to know when you're coming on."
My stomach churned at the thought of performing. Sephora was a thin illusion tonight, not a state of mind. "I'm not rostered on."
"Do me a favour," London glared at me. "Give them a quickie so I can finish my set."
"London, I look a hot mess..." I was already being dragged up by my wrists, my protests thinning out as the music lowered to a background buzzing. London shoved me unceremoniously towards a microphone, and I staggered the rest of the way. The lights burned my retinas, and I squinted at the crowd in a wholly unappealing way. The dress suddenly felt like a sack, and my mug felt caked on. Every eye that was on me seemed to be scrutinising.
"Hello boys," I managed in a sultry whisper, earning a couple of hoots and hollers. I appreciated the support, but they didn't feel earned. I definitely wasn't selling the Sephora Utah fantasy. "Who in here is single?"
There was a roar in response. It livened me up a little, and I managed to relax my posture into something a little less choir-boy. I smirked and popped a shoulder up. "I'll see you later. Who's here with a friend?"
Another roar. It could have been the alcohol, or it could have been the adrenaline of a live audience, but my head was swimming in the most delightful way.
"I'll see you both later."
I plucked the microphone off the stand and strutted to the front of the stage, giving the people at the front of the dance floor a view all the way up my dress.
"I'm going to be straight with you all... don't," I warned teasingly, and raised a hand to break up the laughter. "I'm not having the best night. I've been reminded a few times this week that safety and respect and understanding are something that I am never going to be guaranteed as long as I present the way I do for all of you. This is a shame because I like this version of myself, a lot more than the palatable one. And it isn't just me. And I know you don't come here to be reminded of how shit this country is to us, so I'm going to stop talking but... it's a ballad-y kind of night. You're getting a ballad. Get over it."
I adjusted myself to whistles and cheers. I saw several phone cameras raised and ready. Glancing down at my feet, I saw they had doubled since I'd last looked at them. I blinked hard until they returned to a single set. My first note wobbled and shattered like a dropped glass. I cleared my throat obviously and shuddered seductively, getting a laugh, before I gave it another try.
Look down.
The ground below is crumbling.
Look up.
The stars are all exploding.
It was far from a club hit, but people were listening, curious. A few mocking torchlights had begun to sway back on forth in the back row. My stomach flipped and twisted, and I did my best to look serene while every instinct was screaming at me to get off the stage.
It's the last day on earth
In my dreams
In my dreams.
It's the end
Of the world
And you've, come back, to me.
In my dreams.
I could feel the crowd getting restless. My voice was shaking, wet and raw, and far from the quality I prided myself on. I probably looked and sounded like a drunk girl at a karaoke party, the one who insists on singing My Heart Will Go On solo and then crying over her ex in a corner for the rest of the night.
My eyes closed. I sang for no one but myself.
And you hold me closer than I
Can ever remember being held.
And I'm not afraid to sleep now,
If we can stay like this until...
Memories came to the surface, so hard and intense it nearly choked me off mid-sentence. Bits and pieces I'd forgotten I'd had, overshadowed by the magnitude of her loss. A woman with a dirty-blonde bun and an infinity tattoo on her thumb, the one she got straight out of high school and regretted forever, singing an octave below me. She warned me I'd lose my range if I ever smoked. She didn't like my music and did her best to smooth it out with her own. We fought over the occupation of the speaker in the car, and I always gave up first. I didn't mind her music really. It was sad in a less angry way than mine.
In my head, I replay our conversations
Over and over 'til they feel like hallucinations
You know me, I love to lose my mind.
She had the most wonderful, ridiculous shoe collection, ankle-breakers and dagger heels, but all she ever wore were brandless sneakers. When my feet got big enough to fit them, I would sneak into her room and practice my walk as if her carpet was a Paris runway. Once, she got home sooner than I'd expected and in my panic, I didn't put them back in their rightful place. But she never said anything, so I assumed she hadn't noticed, even though they had been put back when I next went to look.
She had an encyclopaedic knowledge of movies and insisted on giving me a decent film education. The night she put on Priscilla: Queen of The Desert, I didn't say a word through the entire runtime. My body was folded over itself, as close to the screen as I could get without falling off the couch. She didn't say a thing when I made her watch it with me for the next three movie nights, but her film selections changed. From working-class Australian classics about sun-baked men riding across the outback to a more colourful, urban collection; Strictly Ballroom, Romeo + Juliet, Beetlejuice, and then came the musicals... Grease. Labyrinth. The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
Her hand in mine as she talked me through her diagnosis, calm and careful as if I was the one who was going to die. Her hand on the back of my head as I sobbed. Her pale hand on my knee when I told her I needed to tell her something, the cold hospital room interior far from the setting I wanted to come out to her in. The gentle squeeze she gave it when I told her to forget it, that it wasn't important.
And she knew. She probably knew before I did.
And every time anybody speaks your name
I still feel the same
I ache, I ache, I ache, inside.
Grace.
I cut off with an ugly sob, echoing from the back of my throat and ringing around the club. I couldn't look up to the audience, my cheeks burning with humiliation and my eyes stinging with tears. I dropped the microphone with zero grace and fled. My ankles buckled with each step. To my relief, the house music came on within a few seconds of my embarrassing display onstage, and eyes stopped following me, happy for the distraction. I worked my way through the crowd, shoulders tensed and hands frantically parting the crowds.
I needed to come up for air.
I was moving in the opposite flow to the crowd, aiming for the doors. Every touch and whisper turned from reassurance to sickening. My excuse me's got progressively most hostile until people started to part out of my way, just in time for me to fly out of the emergency door and collapse in the gutter to vomit.
I'd forgotten how much I hated throwing up. The violent arch of my body combined with the corrosive taste... once it was all out of me, I wanted nothing more than to curl up beneath one of the government-sanctioned footpath trees and pass out. I spat and pushed back my hair, the ends of which had been soiled. I wish I had taken the water bottle. The inside of my mouth felt like sandpaper and tasted rancid enough to make me want to throw up again.
A heavy hand landed on my back without warning, and I just about jumped out of my skin.
"Hey. How much have you had to drink tonight?"
The voice was soft and straightforward, with the tone of someone who had asked the question a thousand times before. It registered as eerily familiar, but in my current state, I shouldn't have been trusting my senses. I couldn't shake the discomfort I felt beneath the hand on my back, and I twisted to get loose, but the person just shifted their weight to catch my hips, a more intimate gesture. I felt immediately nauseated.
"Woah, hey," a low chuckle crept like ice down my ear canal. "Let's sit you down. Do you have..."
I managed to jerk all the way out of the unwanted embrace, landing on my almost bare ass on the road. My eyes met those of my grabby little helper, and my mouth fell open.
Peter's eyes blazed with recognition a second after I clocked him. He dropped the smile, a sickening attempt at suave, into a scowl, and immediately wiped his palms on his trousers, as if I'd transferred something to him.
"You fuck," I snarled. "What the hell are you doing here?"
He didn't respond, simply stood and turned in one movement and started walking. I scrambled to my feet, kicking off my heels when they got in the way and started my pursuit barefoot. In my inebriated state, it felt like the right thing to do. I felt brave, so when I caught up to him, I grabbed his shoulder and jerked him around. He did most of the work since I doubted I could have stopped him if he was intent on getting away, but it didn't stop me from laying into him the second we were face to face.
"How dare you?" I sounded shrill, my throat still wrung from a combination of crying and singing and vomiting. "You're not fucking welcome here. People come here to feel safe."
Peter's face was a tightly pinched knot, his jaw stuck out stubbornly. His shifting feet were the only indication that he was at all uncomfortable. It filled me with newfound confidence, despite being vastly unmatched physically. Seeing him walking around, dressed for a fun night while Zsa Zsa was recovering at his parent's house, physically unable to do what he loved because of Peter, ignited my dormant rage. I put both hands on his chest and shoved him, hard.
He backed up a few steps, lips parting in surprise. "Don't fucking push me."
"Or what? Are you going to hit me? Are you going to break my ribs?" I raised my voice deliberately, drawing a few curious eyes. Peter stiffened, and went to grab me, but I staggered out of his circle of reach. "Try it. I'm faster than you and I'm not going to spare you the court date if you catch me."
"Jesus," he hissed, crowding into my space. I might have backed down if I wasn't quite so drunk. But then I thought about Zsa Zsa, left to curl up in an alleyway, his dancer legs inching across the hospital parking lot on crutches, and I realised I couldn't if I wanted to.
"You need to learn when to shut up," he seethed and started to walk away again. I pursued him, feet slapping the pavement, blood hot beneath my skin. It kept the cold from chasing me back to the refuge of Crescendo.
"You're going to leave him the hell alone," I yelled at his back. "That means finding a new spot to sniff around."
Peter hunched his shoulders and slowed his walk, but didn't stop or respond.
"You don't like it when people see you for who you are, do you?" I continued, tongue loosened by liquid courage. "You know what's sad? Grayson said you don't want people knowing you're gay, but you don't seem at all ashamed that you're a lying, cheating, stalking, abusive..."
He rounded on me, his face fracturing into a glower. "I'm not abusive. You're as much at fault for what happened as me."
I looked him right in the eye, chin tilted up to make me feel taller. "What are you talking about?"
"We were fucking happy. Until you stuck your nose in it," he spat. "I would have never done that to him if he'd just... he didn't know how good we had it. I just wanted to remind him how good it was, and he was so fucking cruel about it."
I laughed in his face, just once, loud and disbelieving. "Sorry, are you seriously going with the 'he was asking for it' defence? I don't know how you hide all this hatred. Do you know who hits things when they don't get what they want? Children."
"See?" he sounded incredulous. "You're all such bitches. You don't know anything about me. As far as I gather, you don't know anything about him either."
The night chill was starting to sink in, but I held my ground. "I know it took stitches to fix his lip."
Peter squeezed his eyes shut. He was shaking, as if he were about to burst into tears. "Don't."
"I know he won't press charges. I know you won't stop chasing him because you think that's some sort of admission of still loving you. But you know what? It isn't about you. The world's already hard enough on him without the people like you. You're not some misunderstood romantic. You're a thug, and you're a creep, and..."
* The punch came out of left field, though I should have expected it. It took me to the floor, three times the hit I'd taken weeks before. Peter was a strong guy – bodybuilder, my mind supplied helpfully – and almost a decade older than Aidan. My face lit up, a cracking pain travelling along my jaw. It felt like he'd knocked a few of my teeth loose.
It was at that moment that I realised just how far he had led me from Crescendo and the neon safety net of the inner city. It was late, and there was virtually no one around. The streetlights provided little visibility. My fury faded, overtaken by an overwhelming panic. I was stupid to follow him. How did I not realise what would happen? I rolled onto my back and gaped up at the sky, shock and fear trapping me in place.
From the ground, Peter looked terrifying. He loomed over me, tall and broad and no ounce of remorse in him. He was still shaking, but far from the verge of crying. I started crawling backward away from him, but he ducked down and grabbed a hold of my ankle, pulling me onto my back again with a thump. The air left my lungs, and then he was on top of me, and another hit sent stars shooting across my vision. My brain seemed to rattle in my skull, giving me no faculties to wrench free.
I managed to yell out, something incomprehensible before he got a fist into my stomach. I gasped, nearly throwing up from the weight of the hit. I'd never taken hits like this, aggression with precision behind it.
"Please..." I wheezed, and Peter jerked me close to his face. I couldn't smell alcohol on his breath, and I couldn't decide if it was worse he was beating me entirely sober. His nostrils flared, and he threw me to the ground, as if disgusted. My head bounced off the cement.
* "I told you, you need to learn when to shut up," he barked and wrenched back for another hit. I flinched into myself and threw up my arms in defence, preparing my body to take the blow.
It never came.
I heard yelling, pounding footsteps and a low grunt as Peter's body weight was thrown from me. I heard skin hitting skin, and Peter cried out. I managed to compose myself enough to scramble upright, skinning my knees something brutal against the pavement. One of my arms collapsed under me, as my bare toes clung for purpose on the ground. My face was lighting up like a Christmas tree, the overpowering burn of both hits melding together across my face. My nose felt tender, and my chin felt wet. I could taste blood in my mouth from where I'd bitten the inside of my cheek.
Rough, calloused hands gripped my shoulders and wrenched me to my feet, warm fingers tense on my bare arms.
"Move," a male voice was speaking. He sounded underwater. "The car's right over there."
I stumbled and nearly fell twice, blinded by panic and welling tears. The hand gripped me tighter, kept me standing, guiding me until I heard a car door click. I fell into the passenger seat, sprawling across the leather, still choking on my unsteady breathing with my hands cradling my stomach. I could still feel Peter's fist there, like an imprint.
Another car door slammed, and the car reeved around me. It smelt familiar, and while I'd never call the smell of cigarettes comforting, it was certainly reassuring; Peter couldn't get me here.
The car pulled out of the illegal park it had made on the curb and raced down the street at a doubly illegal speed. From the seat beside me, I heard Reece breathing hard through smoker's lungs, shaking out his hand. I stayed curled around myself, leaned against the door, heaving with pain around the bruise that felt like it was forming inside me.
After a few seconds of this, I looked up, scrubbing one hand across my puffy eyes. Reece was looking across at me, his eyes shadowed by the dark interior of the car. I couldn't even begin to guess what was running through his mind.
I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out. There was nothing I could think to say. He seemed to recognise this, at least.
"You're alright," he said quietly. "You're safe."
Weirdly enough, and maybe I was still suffering from shock, I believed him.