All of the above because it’d be the truth. I actually wrote it at the laundry mat when I washed my red panties with my boss’s white, million thread count sheets by accident because I was operating on two hours sleep.
Following that Corvette hours outside Amarillo, Texas, the sun is high in the sky, but I notice the weather changing, an ominous dark cloud ahead. For what seemed like a hundred miles, I’m not sure which poured more, the clouds or my tears—afraid I wasn’t making the right decision. Or the fact that I was following a Corvette and he couldn’t maintain a speed to save his life.
Then, suddenly, Mr. Corvette decides to slow down. I’m not talking about a few miles per hour. He goes from seventy-six to fifty-five in two seconds. I swear. Enough time that I nearly rear-end the dude, and he pulls off the highway as if he was about to miss his exit. Only there is no exit. We’re in the middle of nowhere. The nearest exit is a ditch with a deer carcass in it.
Not more than a minute later, I see the red and blue lights in my mirror.
Argh!
The next five minutes are filled with me trying to flirt my way out of a ticket and failing miserably. “Don’t mess with Texas” goes for the cops too.
“Where you going so fast?” He gave me that once-over cops do, giving my vehicle and my suitcase a side-eyed look. “Heading somewhere?”
“My heart’s on the run. Unraveling and coming apart at the seams,” I note and then realize that’s not an answer.
“Excuse me?” He stares at me, his head cocked to the side as if I’m speaking a foreign language to him.
Sighing, I rest my hands on my steering wheel. “Amarillo. For the night, then I have no idea.” I really didn’t have an idea. When I left LA, I didn’t set out with a plan. East and south, where the weather turns colder and the men talk slower.
He focuses on my license, probably wondering if I’m old enough to be running away. With a sigh, he hands me back my license. “Drive slower, ma’am. These highways can be dangerous.”
“I will.”
Just before I roll my window up, shivering and turning my seat heater up higher, that damn cherry red Corvette speeds past us, flashing his headlights, as if to thank me for taking one for the team.
“Asshole,” I mumble, hoping the cop didn’t hear me, because it wasn’t meant for him.
Still shaken by my encounter with the state patrol from hell, my phone starts ringing over my music and forces me back to reality once more. You can run, but you can’t hide. From Tara, that is.
Ring. Ring. Ring.
Why is a phone ringing so obnoxious? Probably because I know who’s on the other end. I have her name programed into my phone as Tantrum Tara. It’s the truth.
For reasons I’m not sure, maybe to give myself the satisfaction of hearing her panic that I’m not there for her, I click the button on my steering wheel and take her call. And before you meet this chick, keep in mind, I used to work for her. I quit yesterday. So I can imagine this conversation isn’t going to be friendly. There, you’re all caught up.
“Kacy?” comes the voice on the other end. “Where the hell are you?”
Told you she wasn’t going to be pleasant. “Leaving a city that never fit me.”
“What?” she yells. “Where are you?”
I hate the sound of my name lately. Don’t even form the words around the K. You’ll only piss me off. I hate the words “I’m sorry, Kacy.”
Even more, “It wasn’t what it looked like.”
Oh, but Mother, it was.
“What do you want?” I seethe into the space inside my very cold car, swearing I won’t pick up the next time and knowing I will. “I said I quit and I mean it.”
The line is silent. I still hear her breathing, so I know she hasn’t hung up. If I had to guess, she’s insulted that me, Kacy Conner, the girl everyone runs to when they need help, quit two days before her engagement party.
“Kacy! Where the hell are you? I have so much to do, and I need you here.”
I exhale deeply. “I’m in my car. Somewhere between Flagstaff and fuck you.”
Tara draws in a quick hissing breath. “How dare you speak to me like that!”
“I can speak to you any way I want,” I snap, reaching for my package of candy on my passenger seat next to my one suitcase with all my belongings. I left everything else for my neighbor, who just lost her job and is supporting her teenage son on a waitress’s salary. Fancy furniture my parents bought to show me they loved me but didn’t want me living under their roof. Hundreds of thousands of dollars in clothes and shoes I never wore but took from shoots because they gave them to me. All hers. I don’t want any of it, and I won’t miss it. I take that back. I might miss my comfy bed.
“Do you have any idea what you’ve done?” Tara asks, as if I hadn’t thought this through.
“I don’t work for you anymore; therefore I don’t care what you think I’ve done.” I’ll never have to scrape dog shit off your shoes again. Literally, a true story of mine. I have many. All of which involve others taking from me and leaving very little left. If I were one of those sands of time tubes, there’d be only tiny grains left before I’m lost completely.
“Kacy, really? Do you realize what quitting will do to your career in fashion?”
“Career?” I snort. “Do you really think I want a career being someone’s bitch? When was the last time you made a decision for yourself? You can’t even choose what you eat for dinner. Or who you fuck.”
Yeah, I threw that one in there. Tara has certainly slept her way to the top. She’s twenty-four and well aware of the fact that most models’ careers begin to dwindle by the time they’re twenty-five. Because of that, she’s dating and recently engaged to playboy model and actor, Harrison Wayne.
She doesn’t love him, at least not any more than she loves money and fame. Hell, she still loves her ex-husband. Or should I say husband, because he’s yet to sign the papers for her.
I don’t know a lot about her husband, other than he’s from Texas, and they have two kids she hasn’t seen since she left the ranch he lived on. And you know, I can’t blame him for refusing to sign the papers because she’s a cunt and trying to fuck him over.
The first year I worked for Tara, I didn’t get paid. Not a dime. I was eighteen, wanted in the modeling industry because I thought it’d make my mom love me, and met Tara in the process. She was just starting out, and it seemed like a good fit. Turns out I’m not modeling material. Too sassy and have stretch marks on my ass and hips. Somewhere along the lines of picking up her laundry and delivering her Coke Zero on Sonic ice, I started getting paid. And my duties went from an assistant to very nearly God. She thought, and though I’m amazing, there wasn’t anything I couldn’t do for her.
And there wasn’t. Wanting to prove to my parents that even though I wasn’t the stick-thin model they wanted, I was really fucking good at my job. I also didn’t want my parents supporting me.
But Tara was unlike anyone I ever anticipated. Working eighty-hour weeks and operating on four hours of sleep, I’d have to wake up early to make sure she’s awake at the time she needed to be up, waiting with Egyptian coffee.