Reckless

 The bus is partially quiet.

Someone is snoring lightly at the back, and slow Rory Gallagher songs are playing from the separate section of the bus that belongs to our driver, but the volume is so low I can barely make them out.

I sit alone at the dining booth and look mindlessly out the window.

The horizon is spread wide and clear outside—the sun setting behind green fields and strawberry farms that we slowly, but eventually pass by. The scenery combined with the gentle purr of the wheels is undeniably lulling, but I can’t sleep or even try.

I spread my arm out on the table and try to close my eyes briefly, but I stare at my forearm instead.

It has been inked—decided in a moment of recklessness and thoughtlessness.

I glide my fingertips over the thick ink line that creates a small protuberance on my skin. I remember mum’s thoughts about tattoos. In her words, I’ve been sealed like a cow waiting for the kill.

There’s a diamond on my forearm now, matching Jonas’s, deepening whatever feelings I have for him, but not in a good way this time.

Now this tattoo almost hurts.

Now it’s a symbol of this disgusting person I’ve become.

I’ve changed. From the outside, which is notorious, but from the inside as well. I’m not the Georgia Evans that dreams of guitar and changing the world in whatever way with her music anymore.

I know what it is really about to be in a band now—playing in venues at midnights four days a week and getting pissed the spare days, possibly making some lad cheat on his girlfriend with you.

The diamond on my arm was just a pretty design at first, but now it represents the materialism I’m bathed in. The red carpet strut and party all night.

Now, music seems to have quit being top-priority, and gathering my life together again became my impossible dream. The messed up green San Dimas that is my only guitar became mostly my therapy over my passion. And music became the only way I could silence everything and everyone around me and pretend I’m still the teenage wreck that breathes music and self-promises that looks are never going to be important, and I’m never hurting anyone as much as I’ve been hurt.

Now my heart became this shattered and burned mass that only keeps me surviving this hell that I once called dream.

I could blame love about this, too, but I can’t keep blaming Jonas Holman on everything.

I sigh in silence, resting my forehead against the cool crystal of the window.

On the radio, “Wave Myself Goodbye” makes me clench my jaw.