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If there’s one thing that’s certain, it’s that Lou Miller has a business model that works. She hires pretty girls to manage her bars - they distract the customers from the weak spirits and they distract her from the empty bed that lies waiting for her in her penthouse when the night is over.
On particularly rough nights, they’ll even fill the empty bed, but that comes with a disarming warmth in the early hours and usually leads to a uneasy feeling in Lou’s gut, the sense of something not quite right, not quite acceptable.
Those pretty girls do not stay in the club for long.
She’s built her little empire from the ground up, and it’s nice, but that’s all it is - nice. It’s her pet project, a hobby, a nice little earner on the side. It doesn’t have the spark she craves, it doesn’t sate the itching in her bones for excitement, for high drama, for that someone in particular she’s missing. She religiously pushes that thought to the back of her mind, shakes her fringe out of her eyes and tells herself this is enough. She has money lining her pockets and fuel in her bike. She has her freedom and that’s more than enough. More than some, at least.
By day Lou’s composed and by night she’s dominating, surveying her territory from the rafters and running her ship like clockwork, but inside she’s running, she’s always running, and by 4am she’s restless and alone in stolen sheets and can’t bring herself to admit the reason why.
——
When it’s not getting to sleep thats the issue, it’s the rousing.
Some mornings she wakes up quickly, hot and angry, throwing fistfuls of sheets off her chest and swinging upright too quickly. Those mornings see handfuls of painkillers downed with long swig of whatever liquor is left on the nightstand from the night before, and every single nerve ending dragged into the waking hours kicking and screaming. Those days start with hair of the dog, and pull through with high heeled boots, a sharp tongue, and someone getting the sack with little to no remorse.
Some mornings she’s fine.
Some mornings are slower, hazy, washed over by cool morning light seeping in through the cracks in heavy curtains and painting the room a grey-blue. Those days see Lou in no rush, swinging her legs out of bed and perching her heels on the side of the wrought iron bed-frame for a moment, letting the cold seep into the heels of her feet; heavy slow hands working the twinge in the middle of her shoulder blades that comes with bad posture and hanging her head. Those mornings entail long walks to the bathroom and extended sessions staring into the bathroom mirror, it’s gilded frame only really serving to highlight the bags that collect under her eyes in deep plum hues; a hand through her hair that tells her it could use a little bleach at the roots. Those days start with a long cigarette hanging out of a Juliet balcony, looking across at the water, waiting; nursing a hangover that is less from drink and more from trying to live your life filling a void that you wish you could forget.
——
She shifts the folded piece of paper between her fingers, marvelling at how it’s holding together, coffee stained and a little bit torn at the edges. She’s memorised each word, each flick of the pen in that scrawling hand of hers;
“I can’t explain, I don’t have the time but I’m going away for a while.”
“This is all my fault, don’t think for one moment that any of it was you.”
“Please don’t chase me, it will do neither of us any good.”
She pieced together the story, filled in her own blanks the way she’d always done, but she was struggling to fill the gap in reality quite as easily on her own. To lose a partner and a lover in one fell swoop was enough of a blow to knock even Lou off her feet. Time refused to heal this time.
——
“I love you darling, please remember that.”
She does, and it hurts, because her jailbird is caged and there’s nothing Lou can do about it.