Power Bottom Read online

  Power Bottom

  Jeremy Jenkins

  Contents

  1. Luke

  2. Adam

  3. Luke

  4. Adam

  5. Luke

  6. Adam

  7. Luke

  8. Adam

  9. Luke

  10. Adam

  11. Luke

  12. Adam

  13. Luke

  14. Adam

  15. Luke

  A Note from the author

  Newsletter

  Also by Jeremy Jenkins

  Luke

  My silver engagement ring glittered on my finger as I inserted Adam’s thick metal credit card into the machine.

  The stout cashier’s eyes flicked up to meet mine, full of questions.

  I put on what I hoped was a confident smirk, donning a look that said, Yeah, I know I’m buying three gay BDSM books right now. What are you going to do about it?

  His eyes went down, and his mustached bristled as he neatly tucked each book into a rectangular bag.

  I grabbed the bag with a crinkle and then left the bookstore with a jingle of the bell.

  Once outside, I was lost in a whirlpool of noise and movement as the continuously shifting machine that was New York City thrummed to life around me.

  I could see my breath puff out in front of me and rise into the sky like cotton balls. Luckily, I was wrapped in winter clothes — fashionable ones, of course, and mostly immune to the chilly air.

  An ambulance whined down a street a little further away, and I looked up to see it whiz by.

  I frowned.

  Every time I saw one of those things, it meant Adam could be in some kind of police fight. Every time I saw one of those things, I felt the old, familiar anxiety monster stir in my gut, raking its claws on the sides of my stomach.

  As I set off down the sidewalk, I fished my phone out of my coat pocket and sent a quick text to check-in.

  How is your day going?

  I waited in silence for a response. The city didn’t stop it’s obnoxious noises around me, making me feel powerless and sending the fluttering in my stomach into overdrive. Anxiety whirled to life within me, and for the first time in months, I felt it threaten to take me down.

  I ground my teeth together and leaned against a wall, trying to soothe myself. If Adam were here, he’d have me count how many women were wearing red coats that walked by, or the number of pigeons a man was feeding near that park bench on the other side of the street.

  But it was no good; the worry was taking hold.

  When you have anxiety, worry is more than everyday worry. Worry is a threat from your brain as if it could point a finger and say, “you’re next.”

  My heartbeat was picking up speed as I tried to steady my breathing. It started to work, but then another ambulance’s siren sounded in the distance.

  I had to get out of here; I had to find somewhere quiet just to breathe.

  My phone screen was blank. Adam usually responded instantly if he could, but that wasn’t always possible when he was out on one of his cop missions or whatever. Since we’d moved to New York City, it always seemed like he was out saving lives.

  I tried to clear my head of my needy thoughts, but I could only concentrate on halting the rapidly-approaching anxiety attack.

  As I began to breathe heavier and more controlled, strangers were starting to stare at me.

  That only made it worse.

  A third ambulance siren sounded nearby, the loud cacophony rattling my brain.

  The corners of my vision were speckling to white as the black-clad herd I was walking with pressed forward down the street. I felt small and helpless, lost in the current. My brain was twisting reality to torment me, my thoughts pouring out of my head with hyper-speed like an avalanche.

  Everyone is judging you. You don’t belong here. Without Adam, you’d be nothing. What if Adam’s dead?

  Then, as if were custom-making images specifically designed to bring my worst fears to life, I saw Adam’s massive, burly form in his police uniform spread out on a gurney.

  Tears began to bead at the corners of my eyes.

  I blinked, and my mind made up another one: Attending Adam’s funeral, his loving family surrounding me, weeping.

  Icy tears rolled down my face as I tried to calm down my overactive amygdala, but it was too late. It conjured an image of me, all alone in our brownstone in this big, scary city without Adam.

  The fears snowballed, and white fireworks exploded across my vision as my heart raced like a hummingbird’s wings.

  There was an opening in the crowd beside me. I ducked across the flow of people into an alley, sinking against the wall.

  Breathe, Adam’s voice echoed in my head. Just breathe.

  I buried my head between my knees and sucked in air slowly, even though everything in my body was crushing me with desire for more air, faster. It took considerable control to fight the urge to take in more breaths; to try to fill my body with the cold wind that powered this hurricane of panic.

  As I stepped into the alley, the city noise dulled into a low, distant roar. I slowly began to come out of the attack. My breathing began to slow, and my vision was turning crisp again. I became conscious of the filth of the alley, the distinct smell of garbage hovering below my nostrils.

  Adam is okay; he’s just working, I said to myself. Adam is okay; he’s just working.

  I clung onto that phrase like it was a life vest, pulling me out of the dark waters of my mind.

  The crest of the panic had passed, and now I could hit my brain with logic. Instead of picturing Adam injured or dead, I purposefully conjured up images of him being the hero to someone, kicking down doors and arresting bad guys. He wouldn’t be alone, either. He’d be there with his partner or, depending on the situation, more of the squad.

  He was never alone like I was.

  I squeezed my eyes shut, then opened them to see a middle-aged woman standing in front of me.

  Her hair was a chestnut color with a white streak, pulled back into a ponytail. Her face was old, and her lips were thin. But her eyes were bright green and sparkled with intelligence. When she spoke, a thick Russian accent hung heavy on her syllables.

  “You alright, child?”

  I blinked at her, not quite ready to speak. Did she own this alleyway? Was she about to tell me to get lost? Was I not allowed to sit here and take a break?

  “You have the fear with you,” she said.

  I was still exhausted from the attack, so all I could do was stare at her.

  Her face was as cold and severe as the New York weather.

  She examined me for a moment; those green eyes quietly sussing me out. Then to my surprise, she extended one of her hands in a purple mitten.

  I took it graciously, and she helped pull me to my feet.

  Even though she was small, she was surprisingly strong.

  I was still working on taking slower and slower breaths, a small inkling in the back of my mind embarrassed that I’d let a stranger see me in this sorry state. Like most people with anxiety, I felt shame about my mental illness, guilt that I allowed my real self escape through the layers of false confidence I could hide beneath most of the time.

  “Thanks,” I said, brushing myself off. I was kicking myself for touching anything in this dirty alley, wondering if the back of my trench coat had gotten any nastiness on it.

  I expected the woman to return to the street, rejoin the moving masses flowing down the sidewalk, but she stood in front of me, looking me up and down.

  “You are the one with the fear,” she said.

  “Yeah, it’s called anxiety,” I said, feeling the tiniest flutter of annoyance flare within me. One of the hallmark signs of my condition and th
e cocktail of disorders that came with it was wanting to be alone, but at the same time wanting to be around people. I couldn’t be happy. Whenever I was around people, I craved alone time. Whenever I was alone, I felt an all-consuming urge to be around others, so that I wouldn’t sink into the depths of my torturous mind.

  You can’t win when your own brain is the enemy.

  Her face softened the tiniest bit, the crow’s feet at the corners of her eyes deepening.

  “I own shop over here,” she said, gesturing to a nearly invisible door at the mouth of the alley. “You come inside for tea.”

  I was about to refuse; to tell her that I had to make it to an appointment or something. Part of me wanted to run, but the excuses didn’t make it past my lips. The cold was biting me, and I was exhausted from the anxiety attack. All I wanted to do was sit down in a warm place.

  And this woman… she seemed to emanate an aura of calmness. Something about her reminded me of my grandmother when she was still alive, like nothing in the world could shake her.

  So, I followed her down the alley and through the small brown door.

  As she turned the knob and pushed her way inside, the hinges squeaked in greeting.

  I was grateful for the warmth that enveloped me, falling over my skin like a gentle hug from Adam.

  Glancing at my phone again, I frowned when the screen still showed up blank.

  That familiar sensation of the stomach drop poked me, and I had to cling onto the thought, He’s just working, he’s just working, to keep my mind above water.

  “He is fine,” the woman said as she hung her coat on a spindly coat rack nearby.

  My eyebrows came together. “Who?”

  “Your lover,” she said as she made her way through the shop.

  I quirked my eyebrow, feeling like this was starting to get a little too weird for me. But I wasn’t ready to face the cold and the noise outside yet, and Vikka seemed harmless enough.

  I followed her through a small shop, dim light flooding through skylight windows and illuminating the bright green plants stacked on the shelves. There was shabby furniture around the space, salt lamps emitting soft orange light every few feet, and some kind of trickling water noise coming from a fountain that was just out of sight.

  The ambiance of the space was hippy witch-doctor-like, and I couldn’t deny that it was soothing. It reminded me of my grandmother’s house.

  “What kind of shop is this?” I asked, my voice automatically getting softer in this magical, sacred space.

  “I am a florist,” she said, reaching for a nearby bouquet of Lillies and fluffing it a bit. “But also tea and tarot.”

  Of course it was a tarot shop, too. That kind of thing was getting so popular nowadays. Internally I rolled my eyes.

  “Thank you for inviting me in,” I said softly, checking out the plants hanging off the walls. It occurred to me that I could buy Adam some flowers in here.

  I followed her to the back of the shop, where she pressed a button on her automatic tea kettle. A gentle gurgling filled the space as it quietly bubbled to life.

  “Sit,” she said, gesturing to a dingy table nearby.

  I followed her command, grateful for a place to finish off the rest of my recuperation.

  She took the seat across from me and fixed me with those knowing green eyes.

  “What’s your name?” I asked, suddenly feeling very awkward.

  “I am Vikka,” she answered. “And you are…?”

  “Luke,” I said, grateful that she didn’t know my name already. I was getting serious witch vibes from this woman.

  There was a soft click behind her, and she got up to pour the hot water into a pair of ancient-looking teacups. When she returned to the table, she set one of the cups in front of me, a cute little cage of potpourri-looking stuff locked inside. It was slowly bleeding pink into the water.

  “Steep for four minutes,” she said, taking her place at the table across from me.

  “Thank you,” I said, eyeing the liquid under the soft morning light pouring in through the skylight.

  Mentally, I ran through a check as one of my past therapists advised me to do. With pleasant surprise, I realized that the vibrating sensation of anxiety was almost gone as if the plants surrounding me had muffled it.

  “No fear in here,” she said as if she could read my thoughts.

  “How do you know?” I asked, taking in the decorations around me. I was taking mental notes to outfit the apartment I shared with Adam with some of this calming hippie stuff.

  Vikka smiled, and I was surprised to see that she had a mouth of sparkling white teeth. I’d expected her to have at least a few missing.

  “It follows you,” she said.

  There was a tension in my gut. At times, I did feel like the dark, nervous cloud in my mind was following me, tethered to me with invisible cables.

  “It does,” I said. I didn’t know what it was about this place, but I felt like I could tell Vikka anything. She was just another stranger in New York City, a place where you could get murdered if you talked to the wrong person at the wrong time. But something was calming and trustworthy about her.

  “I found you at the right time,” she said. “You were in my alley for a reason.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked, wishing the tea was cool enough to drink so I could hide my face behind my wide cup.

  “I’m here to do this for you,” she said, reaching under the table.

  My heart clenched with panic, but what she put on the table was a deck of cards.

  “Tarot?” I asked, skepticism invading my tone. I didn’t believe in any of that, but I didn’t want to be rude.

  “This one for free,” Vikka said in her gravelly voice, eyeing me from across the table. “You relax, you sort into three piles.”

  I did what she said, happy for this small oasis from the outside world. My life in New York with Adam had been a little stressful. Here, it felt like time had stopped for just a few minutes.

  With only a few seconds of fumbling, I cut the deck into the three piles and set them between us.

  “Very good,” she said, reclaiming the cards.

  I crossed my legs, trying not to let my mind worry about Adam. With anxiety, it was like my brain was a very poorly-trained pet; without constant check-ins, it would run wild with the most obtuse scenarios.

  He’s just at work, he’s just at work, I thought repeatedly.

  Vikka interrupted my thoughts by laying a card on the table with a schlick.

  I peered down and saw some writing — it had to be Russian with all those backward K’s — scrawled across a queen-looking woman.

  “You are exactly where you need to be,” she emphasized, those green eyes peering into my soul.

  I was about to open my mouth and say something, but she was already laying down another card.

  This one had more writing I couldn’t read, so instead, I watched her face. Her thin eyebrows came together like she was concerned. The card she just laid on the table was the picture of some kind of prince-looking guy.

  “Everything you need to be happy is almost there. You’re trying to pull it out of the invisible, but something is blocking you. A man in your past.”

  I snapped to attention, and the image of my ex, Kirk, came to the forefront of my mind. The one who locked me in a basement and left me there for a few days.

  But he couldn’t come into my life anymore — he was in jail.

  “You need to forgive this person,” she said, poking to the card on the table with the tap of one of her long nails. “Otherwise, he will keep showing up.”

  “He can’t,” I said quickly. “He’s in jail.”

  “The universe will find a way to make him — or someone just like him — come into your life until you forgive him,” Vikka said with finality.

  Something cold was planted deep in my gut. Something I didn’t like; something that felt like it was greedily spreading to my fingertips. Was there a way Kirk could
break out of jail and come after me?

  Then my rational mind kicked in, and I reasoned the thought away. There was no way he could come slithering back in; Adam would protect me.

  Vikka paused, then laid another card on the table. This one had an image of a man dancing around in jester clothes.

  “You’re at the beginning of something…” she said, her eyes looking just beyond my shoulder. “There is an element of naiveté to that. Enjoy it.”

  The dark thing taking root in my gut woke up and stretched greedily. Did Vikka mean my relationship with Adam? New York City? Parsons?

  “Is… is everything going to be okay?” I asked, my heat in my throat. Everyone went to tarot readers and intuitive to answer that question, right? That was the ultimate question.

  She hesitated, and there was a sinking feeling in my stomach.

  Then, she smiled a little too broad and said, “Yes, everything will be okay if you trust your instincts.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?” I asked, trying to keep the fear out of my voice.

  “Trust there,” she said, gesturing to my heart. “And everything will make sense.”

  It was the most general advice of all time, and now my mind was spinning like a loom, knitting together a sweater of fear that threatened to choke me.

  “Th-thank you,” I said, thinking of everything that could go wrong. Adam could break up with me. Kirk could somehow get out of jail and come looking for me. I could fail out of Parsons. Everything in my life could become a disaster!

  But Vikka merely sat across from me peacefully, sipping on her tea.

  I took a sip of mine as well, trying to will my mind away from the raging dumpster fire of fear twisting to life inside.

  We finished the rest of the reading in peace, and she threw out some names that I knew. But I couldn’t let go of that seed of fear that had taken root in my mind.

  Was the happiness I was enjoying right now only temporary? I’d had the sneaking suspicion that it was all just a dream, waiting to shaken awake at the slightest misstep. I secretly suspected that I didn’t deserve all the happiness in my life. It felt like I’d cheated the god of misery or something like I’d managed to wiggle out of fair payment for my joy.