Centurion

I got my first tattoo when I was sixteen. The procedure was crude and high-risk for infection. Necessary tools included a sewing needle, Super Black India Ink (found at your local Michael’s), a popsicle stick, a lighter (or matches), rubbing alcohol, and string. It had been Leo’s idea. He wanted to know what it was like to put his art on flesh. 

I’d watched him, our heads bent close together in the dark of the art room, as he held the lighter flame to the tip of the needle.

“You’ll go first. Where do you want it?”

I felt my breath catch as I raised my t-shirt.

“Here,” I blushed, tapping the place just under the band of my bra.

“Lay down,” he said, all business. “What do you want?”

I did as he said, going prone on the table. I watched him as he gently wiped the spot clean, his fingers warm from being so close to the lighter's heat.

“I’m not sure,” I said, “anything you want.”

xx

Years later, hunched at a bar next to my date for the evening, I found myself fighting a yawn. Marcus was a nice guy. Handsome, even. But he was no Leo.

“I’m just going to run to the washroom.” I pushed back my barstool, sliding my purse over my shoulder.

“All good,” Marcus said, already fishing for his phone in his pocket.

In the bathroom I let my hair tumble out of its pinned casing, shaking the stiffness from my roots. I shook the e-cig from my purse and raised it to my lips, the sweet flavour of Piña Colada coating my tongue and teeth, and wondered how long I could stay the bathroom before it got suspicious.

My phone chimed next to the sink. A text from Rachel:

How’s it going? Time for Plan B? (pun intended lol).

As much as I was invested in my love life, Rachel was even more so. A year ago she had buzzed my apartment, her voice high-pitched and as fragile as the fake eyelashes fluttering from her lids.

“Let me in, the ice-cream’s melting,” she said. Once inside, she tossed her fur coat into my arms and skipped to the kitchen to retrieve a spoon.

“It’s nine in the morning,” I groaned, dawning her coat like a cocoon and settling back on the couch.

“It’s time to get over it,” Rachel bunched next to me, popping the lid of the one-litre pot and spooning out a mouthful. “Say ahhhh.” 

I let her feed me like this, swaddled-baby style, until my taste buds numbed from the cold. 

“How many times has this happened now, Cece? I mean, you gotta do something about this. You can't let him—"

“I know,” I said. And I did know, I did. But knowing is easy. It’s the doing-about part that’s hard. 

“You know what you need?” Rachel took a bite of ice cream. I watched it push between the gap in her front teeth as she spoke. “You need a new man.” A lightbulb went off somewhere behind her eyes. “No, even better—new men!”

“No.” I stood, trundling to the bedroom where I knew his scent still lingered. Not even 24 hours before, Leo had been there, propped against the headboard, ruffling the mess of waves that crowned his head. Waves I knew smelled like Piña Coladas, because he was a nicotine addict, and the scent of the juices had soaked into the pillow cases. 

“Yes, you do,” Rachel chirped from the living room, “I bet there’s a hundred guys out there better than him.”

No, I thought, not even close. I let myself go limp at the waist, collapsing onto the bed like a felled tree. “In fact, I bet it would take even less than a hundred dates with a hundred guys for you to get over him.” Rachel’s slim figure snaked to the bedroom doorway. I could hear the challenge in her voice. It was the same tone she used in the past to taunt me into skipping classes or going skinny dipping in the river at night. Rachel knew my buttons and how to push them. More than that, though, I was sick of her lectures about Leo. Why bother trying to explain something she could never – would never – understand?

“I’ll take that bet,” I breathed the words into the mattress, trying my best not to choke on the sweet, coconut aroma. I doubted I would find any of them as attractive as him. I doubted they would be as funny as he was, or as charming or as annoyingly calm. I doubted they could imitate the way he spoke, as if everything he said was a secret between us, or the way his back hunched at his drawing desk, or the way his fingers held a pencil.

On the other hand, I knew no one could make me cry the way he did. No one but him could make me feel as empty as I did right now.

Rachel and I spent the rest of that day creating my dating profile, the washing machine thumping with each spin of the tangled bedsheets inside.

“Plan B” was code for sex. I promised Rachel – and myself – that I would only do it if it felt right. So far, it hasn’t. Not on any date, not with any man since Leo. Sure, I’ve been attracted to them (lots of them), but the moment never happened. I decided it would be my last-ditch effort in the event that, by the 99th man, I was still not over him. 

Now Marcus is, officially, lucky man #99. 

Back at the bar, he was engrossed in a hockey game on his phone. I nursed at my own drink, trying to recall what I could from his profile. I glanced again at his shirt, at the small, white hairs clinging to it. Right – he had a dog. One of those little crusty ones that stereotypically belonged to old white ladies, or featured on the Cesar’s dog food can.

I leaned forward, letting my elbow brush against his on the counter. He looked down at it, then back up at me. Shut off his phone.

“So, what’s your dog’s name?” I asked, reaching up to pluck one of the hairs from his bicep.

“Oh…Tank…” Marcus spun his glass of beer on the counter, “he actually passed away last week.”

I frowned, wrapped my arm around his shoulders to rub small circles on his back.

“Aw, that must’ve been so hard,” I cooed.

“Yeah,” Marcus’ eyes were glued to the foam whirlpooling in his beer. I watched his face, waiting for him to flinch or blush under my touch. Nothing. Maybe I came on too strong--

Marcus’ eyes were welling with tears now, his chin contorting as he tried to stop himself from crying. Beer spilled over the lip of the glass.

“Oh, shit, Marcus—” 

“I’m sorry,” Marcus stood abruptly, his jacket zipper snapping at my shoulder as he yanked it off the back of his chair. The barstool clattered to the ground as he speed-walked from the restaurant.

I watched him go, mouth ajar, rubbing the spot where the zipper had nicked me.

Leo hated anything and everything to do with animals. He was a man resigned mostly to his desk, the window of our first apartment that faced the rest of the city and the hazy mountain range beyond. It was like that in high school, too. Every day at lunch we would sneak away to the art room and I would watch him sketch. Sometimes objects, sometimes landscapes, but mostly – always – me. When I asked him why, he said: 

“Because you’re the most beautiful thing in this room.” 

Sometime between the day we met – when we started hanging out at school, when he branded me in the art room after hours, when he got me addicted to Piña Colada e-cigs, when he asked me to be his muse, when he kissed me in the winter of our eleventh year, when he asked me to move out with him even though we were two broke twenty-year-olds – sometime between all those moments and the day he left, those words became a lie.

I shrugged on my jacket and left the restaurant fuming. In my pocket, my phone chimed again. A new match. I clicked on the dating app, viewed his profile briefly. Dark hair, dark eyes. Decent. I would probably message him later. At the top of the screen, an animated notification appeared:

           Congratulations on 100 Matches!

I stepped out into the rain.

It was raining the day he left. His hair was wet. He didn’t bother to brush it away as he looked at me, rivulets racing down pale cheeks, steam billowing from blurred lips. Moments before, in our apartment of three years, he’d sat me down on the edge of our bed. I had brushed his hair from his eyes, as I’d done a thousand times before, as I would never do again. And then he broke my heart.

Goodbye was all I could understand through the window pane as I watched him slide into the driver's seat of that old VW, the slam of the door cut off by a clap of thunder and my own fists against the glass. You traitor! I screamed at him. A wink of red taillights, and he was gone.

“Cecelia,” Marcus stepped out from the awning of the building, looking sheepish. I started, quickly sliding my phone back into my pocket. 

“Marcus,” I said, offering a small smile, “are you okay?”

"Yeah, I’m fine…” He rubbed his nose awkwardly, but I still spotted the blush in his cheeks. “I’m really sorry about running out like that, I didn’t mean to ruin our date.”

“It’s fine.”

“It’s not,” Marcus took my hand gently. “I want to make it up to you. You even paid for my drinks.” 

This was true. I looked him up and down and thought for a moment. I thought of Rachel, probably at home, eagerly awaiting my text. I thought of her challenge, my desperation, and the cold, empty bed that waited for me. I almost didn’t think of Leo. Time to execute Plan B.

“Well…there’s one way you could make it up to me,” I said. 

We were back at my apartment in five minutes. In six minutes, our shoes were off and strewn on the floor. In seven I was on the kitchen counter and Marcus’ arms were around me and our lips pressed together. In nine we had stumbled into the bedroom, both of us fumbling at our clothes and each other’s, laughing softly as we went. I took my jacket off first and reached for the hem of my dress. Marcus reached for the lights, turned them on. I froze.

“No,” I said, and clicked them off again. “Lights off.”

“Why? I want to see you,” he said, struggling to pull one of his feet free from his now inside-out jeans. 

“No,” I said. 

“Please?” He clicked the light on again. I slammed my hand over the switch.

“No,” I said firmly, “and my dress is staying on.” 

“You’re no fun,” he said. I crawled backwards on the bed and we were kissing again. I tried not to think of how different his shoulders felt under my fingers, the spikiness of his hair, the painfully boring scent of lavender detergent. I tried not to think of Leo’s last words in this room, said on this bed: I don’t know if I ever really loved you. 

But I belong to you, I said. I’m yours.

Not anymore.

xx

Back in the art room, in the dark, I whispered.

“It hurts.”

The needle went in, out, in, out. His hands were clumsy: he pushed too deep and too rough, the sensation made worse with each of my flinching breaths.

“It’s too late to go back,” he mumbled. His elbow pressed into my stomach, his other arm draped over mine as he bent close to my body, making me tremble all the more. “Done.”

He scooted back a little, and I felt cold in his absence.

“Take a picture and show me,” I said, reluctant to move. He did, then handed me the phone.

The ink had spread out on my skin like pen on wet paper. The area around the lines was pink and puffy. It was his name. Leonardo. 

I shoved him and he leapt away, laughing.

“Why would you do that!” I said it like I was angry, but I wasn’t.

“Because,” He said, “you’re mine.”

I glanced back at the photo, then touched the tender spot on my ribcage. It stung. 

“Will it ever fade?” I asked, pulling my shirt down.

“Nope,” Leo folded down over the table, resting his head on my thighs. It was the first time I felt that hair against my skin, soft and heart-stopping. “Never.”