Mess You Made

8.

Malibu.

It's busy tonight. I hate when it's busy. I hate all shifts but the busy ones make me want to bleed out on the floor or something equally as fatal.

I've heard nothing back from that club.

Sierra keeps holding out hope but after the first week of silence, I gave up, like I should've initially done anyways. There was no chance. The way we went about it? We were kidding ourselves, but it's okay. I accepted my fate here long before.

Known nothing else. I won't know anything else.

It's the way of things. For me, us. For my family, it's a generational curse, I believe.

I've been working on my feet for six hours now, can practically feel the blisters on my heels reopening so I'm allowing myself a five minute break, amidst all the chaos. But my head — my head's spinning today. The corners of it feel dark, my chest feels heavy in a way I know isn't good. Managed to find an empty back booth where nobody can interfere, hopefully.

I shut my eyes, drop my head and push back all my flyaways, attempting to drown out all the noise in here but it's impossible when it's this chaotic, and the men are so loud, the sounds of them all so overwhelming.

I try to push my mind elsewhere, anywhere except this bar but that doesn't work. It never works well. My mind — I don't know how to explain it to myself, or you, but it's like a broken ferris wheel, tilted off its hinges, I'm stuck at the top of it and I can't seem to reach ground again. The clock in my mind, it ticks back to the same number, stuck on it, time wont pass because the arm always falls stuck on her face.

I don't really know when my head goes anywhere except her when it has a moment to spare.

She hated it here.

She hated that I worked here, even if she didn't much care about most shit. Barely there. She didn't have much opinions on me, on anything because what was she if not constantly, forever despondent? On the rare occasion she was present, she would say she didn't like it, and I'd always placate her. Tell her it isn't as bad as it seems.

Deep down, I wanted to ask her what the fuck else she wants me to do? We didn't have any other choice but it's not like Maya was ever present enough to comprehend the way of things because she had always been in her own specific world.

She was never anywhere but her own mind that killed her. Tried to save her from it. We failed.

We failed again, and again, and then when we failed for good, Cristian and I died with her.

A piece of us did, at least. It all changed.

Our whole lives — all of it — centred on saving het. It had never been anything but, and I recognised as I grew up how strange of a way that is to live — but even then, it was still all we knew.

Maya. She was in bold, underlined, hung over our house constantly like a banner you'd see before walking through our doorway to introduce us, because that's all we were.

Centred on her.

For years, and years, and years.

We left no room for anything else which I look back on now, realising how we probably fucked ourselves over because of it. We ended up losing her anyways.