by Michelle Amy
There was a small stage where a beautiful young woman sat with a guitar across her lap. She was adjusting the microphone height and preparing to play a set. The bar itself was against the far wall and all the staff wore black from head to toe.
Our waitress came to our table and took our orders, and it wasn’t long before we were both sipping on a glass of shiraz. As I let the earthy flavors tickle my tongue I watched Jack flip through the drink menu.
He was talking to me about how this was one of his favorite places to come for drinks. He liked the atmosphere and the vibes here. They always hosted local artists, and he had only discovered the place because an old friend had a gig here. Since that show he had always dropped by once a month to enjoy a drink. I didn’t answer much, I simply stared at him. I watched him run his hand through his dark and somewhat untamable mane of hair. I watched him adjust his watch on his wrist. I watched him rub a thumb along the stubble on his jaw.
He looked up at me suddenly and his green eyes sparkled in the candlelight. “You alright?” He asked.
“Oh, yes. I’m good. This place is perfect.” Perfect for watching him. I was beginning to become obsessed with him.
He nodded. “It is. There are a lot of little places like this all through Chicago. But this one sticks with a person. Don’t know why.”
I knew why. The gentle melody the girl on stage was singing was the perfect accompaniment to the wine we sipped and the view I had. He was perfect. He was too perfect.
“Alright,” I said, resting my elbows on the table and putting my chin in my hands. “Time to come clean. What’s wrong with you?” The definition of insanity was doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results. If I truly believed that Jack was different than all the others, I had to know more.
His eyebrows scrunched together and he leaned back in his chair. “What?”
“Fess up. There’s no way this is the whole package. You drink wine. You look the way you look. You drive a nice car. I mean, what’s the big one?”
“Uh-”
“First thing that comes to mind, go.”
I liked how he looked when he was flustered. He fidgeted with his watch a bit again and he went to touch his hair, but stopped himself. I saw the muscles work in his jaw as he sifted through several things I was sure he wanted to say. “Well,” he said slowly, “there are several things. I don’t like chocolate. I hate horror movies. I’m the youngest of seven siblings; all brothers. I’ve never been on an airplane.” He pursed his lips as he searched for more.
“None of those are good enough.” I said. “Let me help you. I have a bad history of dating the wrong men, and that’s why my roommate is so overprotective of me. I have baggage about my family, mostly my mom. I’m emotional at times…
He stared at me for a moment before he started to laugh. “Okay. I see.” His thumb rubbed his jaw again and he stared at the candle between us as he thought. “I haven’t talked to my dad since I was seventeen. I have really bad road rage. And I mean, really bad. A guy cut me off one time and I got out of my car and started screaming at him in the middle of the street at a red light. Incredibly humiliating. And, of course, it’s on youtube. I could show you.”
I laughed into my glass of wine. “I would love to see it some time.”
He was on a roll now. “I’ll show you later. I hate musicals. Truly, there is nothing worse. When I was a kid I wanted to be a police officer. Then I got a speeding ticket a week after getting my license and had it out with the cop. It ended pretty badly. I spent a night in juvie.”
“Seriously?”
“Yep. My parents had the option, to send me there for a night or not. And they opted to put me there.”
“Is that why you haven’t talked to your dad?”
He nodded. The mood had shifted to something a bit more subdued. Maybe I had pushed too far. I reached out a hand and rested in on top of his. I ran my finger over his knuckles. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what got into me.”
He did the single shoulder shrug again as he finished the last mouthful of his wine. “Yeah, well, it seemed as though I didn’t have much of a choice. Why do you have baggage with your mom?”
I blinked. “Oh.”
“Isn’t that how this works? You ask questions, I open up, then you follow suit? Otherwise, I wouldn’t consider this good conversation and you’re dropping the ball on pampering me.” He leaned back in his chair and turned his wineglass around a couple times on the table. His confidence dared me to challenge him. He knew he had just played his trump card. Even though it was a direct challenge aimed at me, I recognized it as him just playing the same game that I had started.
“I suppose you’re right. You deserve more.” I hadn’t talked about my mother with anyone except Brooke. Chris had known that things didn’t end well, and that her death had hit me hard when I received the call from a cousin I’d never met before. That call came in four years ago. “We didn’t have the best relationship. I spent most of my time as a kid at friend’s houses. Brooke’s parents place, mostly.”
“Once a crazy roommate, always a crazy roommate.”
I smiled even though I didn’t mean it. “Yeah. She’s been there through it all. She’s so damn stable too. Never gets herself into trouble. Always plays it straight. And then there’s me, always jumping in head first and needing her to come to the rescue when I’m drowning. And she always comes. Like with my mom. After her and my dad divorced when I was nine, she went on a dating spree. And by dating spree I mean it was like she was competing in the Olympics or something. There was a new guy every weekend, and my house started to feel like it wasn’t mine anymore. There was always beer everywhere. And broken dishes. And laundry was never done. And the fridge was always empty.”
He was looking at me with the same expression Brooke gave me when I knew she was hurting for me. It wasn’t pity. It wasn’t judgement. I wasn’t sure what it was. It was just… there. I skipped some of the more traumatic stories and just gave him the punchline. “Eventually, I just couldn’t take it anymore.”
His expression hardened and I put my hands up to ease his mind. “I couldn’t take the drinking, the lack of food, attention, and care. One night when my mom came home late, I mustered up the courage to tell her how I felt; she simply laughed and left as quickly as she came in. So I packed up my stuff and showed up on Brooke’s porch.” I could remember standing on that dinky, blue paint chipped porch with my mascara leaking down my face and my hands clutching two garbage bags full of my stuff. I was always toting my stuff everywhere. Brooke’s dad had opened the door and as soon as he saw me he took my bags and pulled me in for a hug. And I cried for at least five solid minutes, standing in their entranceway clinging to his waist and covering his polo shirt in tears.
When I pulled myself together we brought a bag each up to Brooke’s room and he told me he would go to my house the next day to get the rest of my things. And that was that. I lived with them until Brooke and I moved out of their home when we turned nineteen.
I caught the waitress’ eye and we both ordered another glass of wine. “Since then Brooke has been the only person who’s stayed by me. Through all my crazy she stood proudly by my side. I think she’s getting tired of it though. I’m always making bad choices. I’m always playing the victim.” I felt a wave of sadness come crashing over me.
Jack nudged my shin with the toe of his boot. “She’s still standing by your side and fighting for you. She hasn’t gone anywhere. You have time to make it up to her.”
“I’m doing a lousy job so far. To be honest, she so badly didn’t want me to go out with you tonight. She’s so worried that I’m going to repeat the past and end up-” I cut myself off. He didn’t need to know all my baggage this early on. Bringing up Chris would be like opening the doors to my private collection of crazy and giving him a tour.
“And end up what?” He asked. He was still draped lazily over his chair. His hand rested on the base of his wineglass and he was mind
lessly turning it in slow circles.
“Oh, it doesn’t matter,” I said, shaking my head. “Something I’d rather forget.”
“But you won’t.”
I blinked and looked up at him. It was true. I would never forget what Chris had done to me. I would never forget that final night with him, when he stood over me and stared down at me and made me feel like the most powerless thing on the planet. I could still close my eyes and see all my mother’s china lying in pieces on the kitchen floor. I sighed. “No, I won’t.”
Jack leaned forward and took a sip of his wine. He didn’t look up at me for a while. When he finally did, his eyes looked darker than I remembered. “Did someone hurt you, Alice?”
Yes, I wanted to say to him. Yes, and I’ve been afraid ever since. “It was a long time ago. I can’t change it. What’s done is done.”
Jack didn’t like that answer. “What happened?”
For some reason I was compelled to tell him. Denying him the truth made me feel like I was carrying a huge weight on my chest. But I also felt like confessing was giving him a lot of information about me. It was my baggage, not his. It was my mistake, not his.
He reached out and rested a hand on mine. “Alice. It’s alright.”
I took a deep breath. “My ex. He wasn’t the nicest person. He… he abused me. Not physically. He never hit me, but he made me feel weak. He tried to control me. When he couldn’t, he lost it. He tore my kitchen apart, threatened me. I’ve never felt so afraid, or so ashamed. I couldn’t believe that I ever let myself get into that situation. He’s why I left New York. He’s why Brooke doesn’t want me to be out with you right now. He did a lot of damage. It’s taken me a long time to bounce back.”
“I’m sorry,” Jack said. His eyes were soft and his thumb was gently stroking the back of my hand.
“Thank you. But I’m okay. It’s all okay. It’s behind me now.”
He let go of my hand when our server returned, and we ordered more wine. The buzz in my head made me forget about Chris, and I was able to give Jack my undivided attention as he changed the subject to lighter things. He took my mind off of Chris with ease, and for that I wanted to kiss him. I wanted to kiss him more than anything.
We stayed at Vixen’s until the place closed. When we were the last ones there we finally extracted ourselves from our seats and stumbled out of the place, clinging to each other for support as the alcohol threatened our balance. Jack wrapped an arm around my waist, and the warmth of his touch and the strength of him did something to my knees that I couldn’t just blame on the wine or the cold weather that made me shiver.
Jack leaned out over the curb and waived down a taxi for us. In the back of the cab he rested a hand on my knee and traced small circles over the denim. “We better get you home, before Brooke puts all your stuff out in the lobby.”
I lifted my cheek from his shoulder. “I don’t want to.”
“You said slow.”
“Screw slow.”
Then he was kissing me. His stubble was tickling my cheeks and my nose and his hands were in my hair again. I didn’t care about the cab driver who was graciously quiet in the front. I let Jack do what he wanted. He pressed himself against me like he was the one who was cold, and his hands couldn’t decide where they wanted to be. My knee, my thigh, my hip, my back. I smiled into our kiss as his fingers traced my spine.
When we pulled up in front of his house we managed to untangle ourselves long enough for him to pay the cab driver, who drove off as soon as the cash was in his fingers. I couldn’t blame him. I wouldn’t want to be driving two people who were in the back seat ‘sucking face’.
Jack pulled me by the hand up his driveway and to his front door. He fumbled with the keys and I made his job more difficult by leaning in and kissing his neck and his ear. He dropped the keys and I erupted in a fit of giggles.
When he tried to put the keys in again I stood behind him and wrapped my arms around him. I slid one hand up the inside of the front of his shirt.
He caught my wrist and held me fast. “Woman,” he snarled, “you are not making this easy.”
“What are you gonna do about it?” I teased, dragging my nails of my other hand along his lower stomach.
Finally he managed to get the door open and we both burst inside. He pressed me against the wall To Be Continued…
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