Page 77 of Badd Love
The way he'd pleasured me. Taken care of me. Listened to me. Let me push him away when he obviously and desperately wanted the opposite.
He'd stayed silent, giving me the space I'd asked for…demanded, really.
The horn blatted again, and the ferry rocked over a choppy section of water. I spaced out a bit, exhausted from the last forty-eight hours of driving up here from Seattle.
I'd landed on the realization that I was done with LA. Rune was gone. Raquel was gone. Rune's folks were gone. That should've been enough impetus to push me toward Ketchikan, but it was Danny's shock reappearance in my life that had been the final straw. He'd been in my workplace. He’d walked right up to me. He’dtouchedme; he’d been in LA, which meant LA was tainted. The bar was tainted. I know it's ridiculous, but even my apartment felt violated simply by his existence in the city, as if his arrival had brought with it a miasma that fouled everything a hundred miles around it. I swear my apartment justsmells bad, even though I spent four hours deep cleaning— baseboards, under furniture, behind furniture, crevices, everything. And the more I deep cleaned, the more I found myself discarding or boxing up—trophies from college, old textbooks and notebooks, clothes that don't fit or I never wore, kitchen stuff I never used.
A four-hour deep-cleaning binge turned into a weekend-long purge of my belongings, and by the time Sunday evening rolled around, I had the majority of my life already boxed up and sorted into donate, toss, and keep piles; the donate and toss piles were the biggest.
I'd stood staring at the piles, realizing that there was absolutely nothing keeping me in LA—not just that, there was nothing for me here. I looked at the piles of my shit and realized that all I needed to do was box up the rest of the stuff I was keeping, pack it up into my POS car, and I could bust out of LA. My lease was month-to-month since the last two-year contract had expired, and it was the end of the month. I had a little money set aside—I'd been saving for a new car.
So that's what I'd done—packed up my rattling, wheezing, dying Neon with my suitcases and duffel bags of clothes andtoiletries, a few contractor bags of bedding and pillows, my laptop, a plastic bin full of purses, another of shoes, and a few small boxes of knickknacks—our championship trophy from the year we took nationals in high school, a creative writing award, my psychology degree, and a few photos of Rune, Raquel, and me.
I'd rented a pickup from Home Depot for an hour and dropped the donated stuff at a homeless shelter and the garbage at a dump, did one last very thorough cleaning of the apartment, and left. I'd stopped by to tell Saleh of my decision; he'd been sad that I was leaving, but he understood and gave me two grand in cash as a going-away gift.
I'd meandered slowly northward over a period of a couple of months, stopping here and there in little towns, picking up shifts at diners, bars, and clubs, hanging out with locals, and trying to put Danny behind me.
I had a dream journal, now. In it, I wrote down every nightmare I had, every awful, vile, nauseating, graphic detail. Every flashback. Every waking memory. I wrote it all down as it came up, and I faced the feelings. I had bi-weekly online sessions with Dr. Mitra, my therapist, who applauded my decision to leave LA and to keep a dream journal. We talked about the things that came up—which was new stuff all the time, now that I'd opened the floodgates.
But along the way, despite waking up most nights in a cold sweat, sobbing as a new memory resurfaced, I found myself feeling a little lighter each day, feeling more hopeful, more joyful. More able to face the nights. Panic attacks came less frequently, and when they did strike, I was able to get out of them faster. It was almost as if by purging myself first of my ties to LA—where I only now was realizing I’d long felt trapped—and then of my hoarded and suppressed memories, I was removingthe chains and shackles, I was shrugging off the burden tied to my shoulders.
By the time I made it to Portland, after eight weeks of intermittent travel, I felt like a new woman. I was sleeping through the night without nightmares. My dream journal entries were farther apart. During the day, I hadso muchenergy; I felt…alive.
The sun seemed brighter, the air seemed clearer, and the sky seemed bluer.
It was in Portland that Dane first began entering my dreams.
I'd been consumed by the past up until then—finally processing all the shit I'd kept suppressed for the last decade. Now, I could finally, even if only subconsciously, look toward the future.
I'd picked up a two-person pup tent from a secondhand shop in Eureka, along with some other camping supplies—a quality sleeping bag, propane cookstove, a cooler, a few other odds and ends. My car was now packed to the roof, leaving only the driver's side open. I even had stuff ratcheted onto the roof, despite my junker car’s lack of roof rails. I'd never been camping, not really. Rune, Raquel, and I went "camping" once, our junior year at Stanford, but that had been in a rented RV, and we'd gone less than an hour from LA.
My first attempt at putting up the tent was…well, let's just say it's a good thing I was alone. If it had been filmed, it'd have won an award onFunniest Home Videos. And then, after I got it up, I immediately realized I'd forgotten to stake it down; a gust of wind blew it halfway across the campground before I was able to catch it and stake it down properly.
Starting a fire was another learning curve. Same with using a camp stove. And electric lanterns. And sleeping bags. I didn't realize you had to lock food up, and woke up to a loud snufflingsound outside my tent, and the backlit silhouette of a giant bear rifling through my stash of hot dogs and potato chips.
By the time I got to Seattle, I was a camping expert. I could put up my tent in fifteen minutes, start a fire, cook my food, keep bears out of my stuff, and sleep like a baby. I still hate using outhouses, though.
I dreamed of Dane all the time, and put those in my dream journal as well. Some dreams were just weird—Dane riding a purple unicorn that was somehow also a robot that spoke flawless Japanese? I dunno. Other dreams were intensely emotional—him gazing at me, sad, brokenhearted, and lonely. Guilting me for pushing him away. More than once, I dreamed he was a GI leaving for the front, and I'd run along the platform for one last kiss; I never made it, in those dreams. Other dreams were the expected fare: sinful, sexy, dirty dreams reliving the magic of our two sexual encounters. I woke up orgasming from the dreams more than once. Thank god for car chargers that let me recharge my toys while I drove, because those things were gettinga lotof use. More than once, I know I scared a bear away with my screams of climax.
I sent him a postcard from Portland; I'd sat in a cafe for two hours after a shift, staring at that postcard, trying to figure out what to write.
In the end, all I could come up with wasThinking of you. It was lame and way insufficient, but what else could I say that would fit on a fucking postcard? I knew damn well when I sent it that he'd receive it and be like,WTF is this and WTF am I supposed to do with this after all these weeks and months of nothing?I convinced myself that it was better than nothing, and also, I'd see him face-to-face soon.
I just hoped he'd be receptive. I was upchucking my entire life, after all. Not for him, per se, nor because of him. I hadn’t been thinking about him at all when I decided to leave LA.
BWAAAAAAAHHHHHH!Dude, with the fucking foghorn. Good grief. Why do you have to honk the thing every few minutes? It's a giant boat; no one is going to miss us.
The boat docked, and I waited for my turn to drive off the ferry, and then I was officially in Ketchikan with everything I owned in my car. Which was most assuredly on its last legs…or leg. The gauges didn't work at all now, the AC blew hot, the heat blew cold, and the oil leak under the car every morning would make Exxon executives uncomfortable.
But it had gotten me here.
I hadn’t told anyone I was coming. I’d spent a week on Raquel's and Hamish's couch, so she obviously knew I was heading up that way, so I guess what I mean is I hadn’t told Rune or Dane I was coming. I wasn't trying to surprise them, I just wasn't sure what kind of welcome I’d get from the Badd family after the way I'd hurt Dane, and I knew that Rune would lend me her couch until I figured out a plan.
I also didn't have any addresses, didn't know where anyone lived, or where the bar was that she and Duncan lived above…I did have Waze, however, and it knew where Badd's Bar and Grille was.
I found a parking spot not far away, locked my car—for the stuff in it, not the car—and walked to Badd's.
It was eight in the evening by the time I reached the doors—which were standing open despite the fall chill—and an acoustic duo was playing a cover of "Mr. Brightside" in a gritty, bluesy tone, which was an interesting choice. The bouncer was a mammoth man with long jet black hair, who was covered in what looked to my extremely sheltered white girl eyes to be actual native, tribal tattoos, but the real kind, not the shitty douche-bro type. He was wearing baggy Adam Sandler-style gym shorts and a tee that could fit two of me and still have room for activities. He looked me over, asked for my ID, scanned it,and scrutinized me. "Lindsey Snelling from LA." His voice was so deep my ribcage rattled.
