Audrey
“WHAT THE HELL, Liv!” I yanked her off the edge of the tub. The water was running, the spray still warm and steamy while she lay sprawled, slouching at the bottom, clothes and all. She moaned and slapped at me with her skinny fingers as I sat her up, wiping the tangled snakes of hair from her face. “Liv, wake up! LIV!”
Reaching over, I turned the water to cold and blasted her with it. Her eyes widened as she jolted to the far side of the tub, desperately trying to get away from the frigid water. “Fuck!”
My breath let out, a wave of relief relaxing me momentarily as I sunk to the floor and pushed on her forehead, her droopy eyes rolling to find mine, one of them nearly swollen shut and purpling. I didn’t want to ask. I already knew some abusive boyfriend or a one night stand had gotten to her, but she didn’t really reek of alcohol at all, so I wondered why she was so out of it.
“Liv, what’d you do?”
She huffed, slapping my arm away again as she reached over to turn off the shower. I dropped a towel onto her lap, and she began to rub the beads of water away aggressively. “Me? I didn’t do anything. Why do you always assume it’s my fault every time?” She glared at me with her one good brown eye. It shimmered under the dim bathroom light. I realized she really meant what she said.
“Who did this?” I asked. She sighed once more and got to her feet, cursing under her breath as she swayed a bit. “Did you take something, Liv?”
“What if I did? My face is killing me…”
“What’d you take?” I waited impatiently and even helped her step over the ledge of the tub. Her clothes clung to her tooth pick frame, sopping wet, and sent her body into a shivering mess. I pulled the towel around her and motioned her to start stripping.
“Everything okay?” We both looked up to find Saul standing silently at the doorway. I felt Liv shrug under my hands sitting on her shoulders, and she unzipped her pants disregarding the intrusion. I turned back to her and threw her a stinging glare.
“What? He can’t see anything. Not like he has some X-men vision.” She kicked off her sopping wet pants and smacked them against Saul’s leg. “Oops, sorry ‘bout that…” Wavering, she grabbed the wall to steady herself. “Oh…one too many Dilaudids, I think…”
“What? What the hell? Where did you get those? Is that all you took, Liv? Liv…I swear I’m going to smother you…”
“Yeah, geez, okay, okay. I got a few more in my bag. Got ‘em from the stash piles in Ruben’s safe. He was loaded…I only took one, maybe two… hell if I know. If not for that damn roofie, I’d be fine…”
“Say that again?”
“A roo-fee,” she enunciated, slurring her words as she tossed the last of the dripping clothes down and wrapped the towel tighter around her body before shoving her curly locks away from her face. They hung partly wet and already drying in spirals of deep obsidian.
“Who gave you that, and what happened to your face?” My impatience was leaking into my voice, my nose flaring at her.
“Jonas Esperanza.”
I wrinkled my face at the name, knowing full well who she was talking about. “Ruben’s sidekick…” I answered, my voice fading as I slumped, a pocket of dire fear growing inside my guts.
She nodded and dug through her crumpled clothes in the duffle bag at the foot of the bed. Saul was relaxing on his bed, playing soft classical music on his iPod through a small boost speaker. I was sure he could still hear our discussion, but it didn’t really bother me, and he didn’t appear to be eavesdropping.
“What does he have to do in all this? He doesn’t work for Ruben, not directly at least.” I was afraid to hear her answer. Jonas was not one to mess with, at least from the extreme rumors surrounding his reputation. He was highly connected to the Mexican Cartel and did frequent shipments across the border, both ways. Trafficking women was one of them, so I’d heard. What would happen now with his demon eyes set upon us?
“He said he’d paid Ruben the amount we took from him, so now we owe Jonas. He kept blabbing on about some cousin and a music company that he partly owned and wanted us to record a demo for him. If the company liked it, they’d produce our album and he’d get forty percent of our profits. If they didn’t, we could just perform our little ho-dum, dive bar shows and pay him off slowly—fifty percent of each show until our debt is paid, with interest, might I add.”
My blood was boiling. I could feel my face flushing from the coronary I was about to have. “What? You told him no, right?”
“Pffft!” She plopped onto the bed, wet towel and all, with her dry clothes still clutched tightly to her chest. Yawning, she continued her rant, half her words coming out incoherently. “Duh…of course I did. Why the fuck do you think I got my face all screwed up? He didn’t like that answer though, so guess who our new boss is? Latin Stalker…what fun!” She gave a tiny, morose laugh and yanked the bed covers over her tiny body. “Sorry, Sissy. I tried…” Her words faded as her soft snores filled the empty space around us, hovering along with the rhythmic flow of piano music ebbing from the speaker on Saul’s nightstand.
I felt his gaze on me before I sank down onto the edge of his bed. Liv was lying diagonally across our entire bed.
“Hey,” his voice calmly pulled at my thoughts, and I waited for him to continue. “Don’t worry, we’ll figure this out.”
“You shouldn’t get involved, you know. This is our problem.”
He shrugged as my eyes met his icy-blue, blind ones. “Maybe I need a little excitement too. Don’t be selfish now. Share the wealth.” He winked before settling back to his music. His joke brought out a weak laugh from my throat, but I wanted to break down and cry more than anything else. He patted the other side of his bed, and after a moment of hesitation, I slipped down next to him. Exhaustion filled me up all of sudden, even after a good night’s sleep. Saul moved over to one side of the bed as I leaned back onto one of his pillows. It smelled like him, manly musk with a sweet aftershave scent.
It was divine.
We’d been running so fast, so far, for all our lives, just to end up tripping precariously over our own feet, ending up in a whole pile of shit—knee deep, thick, and sinking fast in every which way. We were like the colors flapping in the wind, steadfast, proud—even while beaten by the breeze and dressed in frayed corners.
Chapter Nine