Highest Bidder (Salacious Players’ Club)

Daisy

What did I expect? A fairy tale? I wanted my life to be poetic, and I feel like an idiot now for ever dreaming that it could be anything more than cruel and lonely. Life isn’t poetic. It’s unfair, ruthless. Nothing more than a fight for survival in a bleak, brutal existence. It takes but never gives.

Life is nothing but a series of days in which you work, grieve, sleep, and eventually die. Alone.

I’m being dramatically morose, but considering I’m lying on my thin foam mattress, parked in the same city parking lot I was in when Ronan found me, I’m allowed to be morose right now.

I had my chance to come clean to Ronan, and maybe if I had done it early on like I was supposed to, then we’d still be together. We could have worked it out. Maybe.

Or maybe not. It’s obvious he’s still hung up on my mother. He clearly loved her for real. Not some short-lived fascination like it was with me. And now not only is he coming to terms with my lies, he’s also grieving her death.

I’ve fucked up. I am a fuckup.

But who cares? It’s better this way. With Ronan, I had something to lose. Happiness is dangerous. The more you have, the more that’s at stake. The higher you feel, the further you fall. I was happy before. I should know better. Just before my mother was diagnosed, I was happy. My future felt bright. An acceptance letter to the music school of my dreams. A beautiful, poetic life like I always dreamed.

But that was ripped away too, by a long, painful battle. There was nothing beautiful about that. Orange pill bottles and sterile hospital rooms and the incessant beeping of those machines. The blue vinyl chair she would sit in while they filled her blood stream with poison, in hopes that it would kill the thing killing her. Daytime talk shows droning on in the background with people smiling and winning cars and trips, plagued with happiness that we would never feel. My mother would never feel that sort of elation ever again.

Because life is unfair.

Her last days feel closer now than they did before. The way her body withered away as fast as her mind did. Watching her organs shut down slowly, drugging her to the point where she lived her last days in an inebriated haze of confusion.

Those final moments soaked my existence, turning even the sunshine gray and filtered with sadness, so every day that existed thereafter felt tainted—until him. Until Paris and pianos. Until private jets and pleasure so palpable, I choked on it. I was blinded by that happiness. I was blinded by him.

But the sunshine is gray again, because I was a fool who fell into life’s little trap. I made the mistake of feeling an ounce of bliss, because what is joy if we don’t know the opposite? If I had never felt the overwhelming rush of anguish, joy would be flat and pointless.

Fuck, I should write this down.

But who wants to listen to a song like that?

My tattered backpack sits next to me, the same backpack that’s been to chemo rooms and then to France. I packed everything I had brought to Ronan’s in a rush after he sent me out of his office. A pile of dirty clothes, my makeup bag, and my journal. I’m sure I left stuff behind, but some leggings and bodywash are the least of my concerns compared to what else I lost—the pieces of me I left with him.

I can’t think about him. My mind won’t let me go there.

His warm smile. The way his soft hands felt on my body. The comfort of his touch on my back. And the intoxicating scent of his cologne.

Him.

And just like that, I’m thinking about him. I don’t even feel the first tear start to brim in my eyes before it falls. Maybe if I let my mind replay all the things about him that I love, then it will eclipse the way he looked when he told me to leave. The expression of disappointment on his face, and how all the love was gone as he stared at me with anger.

No, erase that.

Keep the good stuff.

Reaching into my backpack, I pull out my notebook and mindlessly flip through. Notes and lyrics scribbled messily onto each page. Memories unlocked on every line. I can practically smell the croissants in Paris. The aromatic espresso they served in those tiny cups.

His hand on my knee under the table.

I wish I could write that feeling into a song.

Unable to string together a coherent line of words, I flip to the next page. And there it is.

The lines he scribbled for me. The poetry he wrote…for me.

I gasp for breath before closing the book.

I hurl the journal across the van. Without much space to fly, it slams into the back window and falls, pages crinkling on its way down. I throw myself face down onto my pillow, and I scream like a child. I wish I never got on that stage in the first place, so I would have never known what it’s like to be loved by Ronan Kade.