Six runs in rehab, only three of which I finished. The other half I dropped out or called you in tears to beg you to come get me.
Four, the number of notebooks I filled with my handwritten memories. Every time I re read them all the skeletons in my closet come back out to haunt me again.
Eleven, the number of prescription pills left in the bottle hidden in my underwear drawer.
Two hundred and sixteen random fucks. Some of them had college degrees, boyfriends, dreams, jobs, pet cats. Some wanted a claim to fame. Some of them just wanted to be held for awhile.
I always lie and say I don't keep count, but there's a journal under my bed where I write their names, talk about their flavor of lip gloss and how many drinks I had to put on my tab to get them home with me.
I count because one lucky number is gonna make me feel better than anything.
One magic number is gonna mean shared straws in milkshakes in the summer, two arms around my neck when I spin her around to our favorite song, stiletto heels or bare feet and blue jeans, a laugh I'd recognize anywhere, a special ring tone on my cell.
One number is gonna put me up there in the leagues with Nate and Brooklyn, the guys with their steady girls, rings on their hands and sheepish "Aw, the ball 'n' chain's calling" when the cell rings when we're all drunk on expensive wine while watching a football game.
It's not one-eleven, which has a nice ring to it; she had daddy issues and the whole time I'm going down on her she's talking about her stepfather's collection of ships in bottles. It's not eighteen, who I met in Baltimore on her birthday and fucked in an alley between a dumpster and a crate of Bud bottles. It's not two-oh-nine, who was a cute-as-hell redhead with a twin sister that had killed herself a year before, although that connection felt real until she caught me fucking two-twelve behind her back.
And as much as I kept my fingers crossed when I played two-sixteen, it wasn't you either; brown eyes and chocolate curls, a sharp voice I've heard for years telling me to get my shit together, a skinny pair of hips in over priced dresses. You stayed with me longer than one-nineteen, who I took to a Kings of Leon show in Jersey and fucked during "Molly's Chamber", and you held my hair back when two-twelve kicked me in the nuts and I threw up all the scotch I'd been drinking all night leading up to my calling her a fat slut and threatening to ruin her life. No, two-sixteen was nothing but slapping packets of white powder out of my hands and holding me after sex. It was three weeks' of scotch in quiet bars with you always there for me, of me telling horror stories from my childhood with Bart as my father that no one saw to earn a couple of pitying looks that led to sex later, of me playing you like a ballroom piano. I can see now what I did wrong; you'd have kissed me even without the pity, but when you found out I was still fucking two-fourteen after you had broken up with your own number three to make room for me, you walked. Called Harold and Roman, ran away to France for five months, and called three to beg him to take you back.
Now the ring's back on your hand and I'm standing here in the hall, holding myself because no one else will and looking at your door. It's closed but behind it I know you're there in bed, alone since he left an hour ago, probably awake since it's not that late yet. It hurts so bad being alone. I don't want to play this game anymore.
Two, the number of times I've said 'I love you' to you and played it off as drunk even when I wasn't.
One, the number of shots I have left to do something right.
The numbers aren't in my favor, but from here the sign on your door kind of looks like a two-seventeen.