passages. It’s a strange truth that sometimes writers just know when we’re holding something special in our hands. It doesn’t mean we’ll be able to pull it off, but it does mean that we know there’s gold in the dirt where we’re burrowing our fingers.
Tess is gold.
I don’t skim the parts already written in my notebook. Not tonight. I want to capture the unvarnished truths from the cracks in Tess’ defenses. I want to contain her in the clean, white pages so later I can dress her up like those paper dolls my sister had when we were children. As time passes, I’ll add the costumes, the cut-out dresses of a woman who will carry my name back up to the top.
The scratch of nib on paper is a comforting sound in the quiet of my temporary home. I can hear the voices of tourists in the streets of the French Quarter, the too sharp laugh of drunk women. They look in through the still-open windows, but it bothers me as it didn’t when Tess was astride me. Writing is more intimate than fucking. It might not be my soul I’m trying to ascribe to paper, but it is still the bones and breath of a real person contained by the ink in these pages.
I close the notebook before I get up to close the drapes and shove the book back into the drawer. It nestles between carefully folded undershirts. The city is too hot for so many layers of clothing, at least for me. I see Southern gentleman—or those playing at being old South aristocracy—with their pressed shirts over undershirts, with vests and ties and hats. Some wear a suit coat too. A few add the eccentricities of cane or antique jewelry. They add a strange false elegance to the city, much like the dripping vines and ornate ironwork. The surface of the place, the pieces caught in old photographs and tourist brochures, zero in on the timeless grace of the Crescent City.
They don’t include the drunken women in their sharp heeled shoes or the pervasive stench of vomit and piss that steams and rises in the morning sun every day. That’s the heart of this city, though: filth and the consequences of bad decisions. I don’t know why I bothered with any other city. New Orleans is beautiful and dark, simmering with jewels that look enticing in the flickering gas lights that are still used in the French Quarter, but her feet are mired in things we try to wash away every morning.
They come back. All the dark things come back.
Tess’ secrets will come back, too.
8
Tess
There is nothing wrong with sex. There is nothing wrong with Michael. He's a perfectly serviceable lover. If I thought sex would ease my stress though, I'd still be selling my ass on Bourbon Street. Every buttoned-up-too-tight man wants a woman they wouldn't ever bring home. They fuck us, and then they return to their tedious lives, safe and oblivious, and for years, I have benefitted from their need to take a stroll in a world they can't even truly imagine.
Sex is a thin bandage on a seeping wound, for me. It doesn't make me forget my problems. Talking doesn’t fix them. Drinking doesn’t. Sex doesn’t.
Running hasn’t really fixed my problems, either.
But I’m alive. That is something.
And it’s something I won’t let anyone take away from me—which means I must deal with the reality that Lucas knows things he ought not.
I should die for my mistakes. I remember red, remember gurgling sounds. Tessie is the person I try not to be. She's a woman who loved a man who turned out to be a monster.
I fist my hand and discover a knife there.
Sometime between fucking Michael and now, I must have stopped at my home. The minutes get blurry when Tessie starts stretching under my skin. She's me, or I'm her. We were once both Teresa.
Hunting feels far too familiar. It's almost like Reid is with me. I can hear him whispering, memories of the things he said or maybe just a part of him that he left behind in my skin. He left his mark so deeply inside me that I can still hear him. I look at the people I pass, see the traits that mark them as lambs waiting to be culled.
"Tessie?" Lucas is on his stoop. He pats the floor beside him when he sees me.
I close my eyes. I want there to be another way, but this city