Like You (Perfectly Flawed #1)

by Dunning, Rachel

  "Between us. Nothing happened. That's what you were gonna ask, right? I literally fell asleep on the ground there. I was so beat."

  "Of course, of course. I'm sorry, I just had to ask."

  "It's cool."

  "So I guess you're not really into drunk girls."

  "Oh, I'm very much into drunk girls."

  I swallow nervously.

  "Gen, you don't seem like the type that does that kind of stuff. I knew you weren't looking for something romantic last night. OK? "

  "OK."

  He shuffles his feet like he's getting ready to leave.

  I ponder, briefly, what I would be doing now if he weren't here. If he hadn't been here last night. Would I be sitting on the steps by the door, wondering what to do with my life? Scratching my head and falling into that scary place in my mind that I fall into when I'm alone?

  "I'm glad you stayed," I say.

  He raises his mug up to me. "Pleasure."

  I suddenly want to get to know this man. I want to know why the crystal blue in his eyes clouds over so much when I ask him certain seemingly innocuous questions. I want to know why his smile doesn't reach his eyes. I want to know about that one scar above his eyebrow.

  I want to know why he wears a ring when he says he's not married.

  I so much want to know that last point.

  But I promised I wouldn't ask.

  CHAPTER 9

  -1-

  A.

  Nov. 11, 2013 — Monday, a little later that morning

  I wonder what I'm still doing here. I should've left as soon as I saw the babe was OK. The coffee's alright. But do I really want to fuckin sit here in someone's damn kitchen sipping a cup of freaking coffee like this is a damn Desperate Housewives episode?

  Apparently I do.

  I'm here because I'm enjoying the puzzle. The girl drinks like something out of Coyote Ugly, but is the exact opposite. She looks like she's in her twenties, but also like she's lived twice the life of anyone her age. Her features resonate that "good-girl" look. But that's not who she is.

  She's got good girl arms and good girl cheeks. Her breasts are also good girl, not propped up or "enhanced" and pointing every which way, ready to poke your eye out. Bad girl body parts are always at the gym and toned and tight and, for lack of a better word, false. Lies.

  Everything about this girl is real. Her terror is real. Her joy is real. Her shape is real. Her enthusiasm and "Think you can kick me down? I'll kick you down!" attitude is real.

  She might not see that attitude in herself, but I can see it. That she broke down yesterday, and so strongly, only shows that she held it together for way longer than she should have. Tears like that only come when the reservoir is full and yet water is somehow still being pumped into it.

  I wasn't that strong when Zoey passed.

  "Can I show you the town?" I ask.

  She pauses before answering. She does that at every question of mine, like she's considering every possible ramification of what I say. Every nuance. Is he trouble? Does he want something else from me? Is he hoping he'll get laid...?

  Well, I can't blame her. I guess a guy like me probably oozes that untrustworthiness about him. So if she's thinking those things, then she's also a smart girl. People who think that way survive longer than people who don't.

  "Uh...sure. Why not?"

  She cautiously puts her cup down and then cautiously says, "I'm just going to go up and change." She's probably cautiously considering if she should bring mace or a knife.

  I step out the kitchen, just so she has a chance to get that knife if she chooses to. "Um, is this your suitcase?" I holler up the stairs.

  I hear her stomping feet coming down the steps. Her face is flushed. "Um, yeah, right. That's why I came down in the first place."

  "I'll be outside."

  -2-

  My heart thumps when I see her. She's put on makeup and blackened the outsides of her eyes so that the light brown in them looks like a red moon. She's put on thick black leggings and a woolen dress that does all it can to accentuate her pert breasts. Then she's wrapped herself up in a trench coat that makes her look oh so bad.

  I'm staring.

  I look away, move my legs once and hope to God she's not noticing the sudden twang I'm feeling between them as I shift my tool by swaying back and forth.

  "Ready?" she asks.

  Yip, she noticed I was staring.

  But she smiled again as I was doing it... That real smile I saw before. That's real smile number two.

  She should smile more often. She looks good when she smiles.

  I take her past the street where cops like to look at me and also show her the Old Opera House. I show her where all the fancy-shmancy stuck-up noses hang out and where you'll pay eight Euros for a glass of wine and about the same for a beer half the size as the ones we drank yesterday. We walk past the English Theater where they only perform classics like Phantom of the Opera or Evita or Les Misérables but never anything actually original that's been written in the last two decades and which normal people won't fall asleep in.

  I show her the stock exchange and the statue outside it of the bull staring down at the bear. She thinks it's funny and I can see she wants to climb up on top of the bull but is afraid of it seeming too childish or some bullshit like that.

  "Wanna get on it?"

  She looks at me, stunned.

  "On the bull," I clarify.

  She looks at me even more stunned. She shrugs. And a smile reaches her eyes again. A light-hearted smile. Real smile number three.

  I bend down and pick her up by the legs. She yelps! She giggles nervously but it's not flirtatious.

  Hmmm. Interesting. I like that, actually.

  I dump her on top of the bear and wanna say something corny like May all your financial markets be bear markets this year but that really is corny and I'm not a corny guy. So I don't say it.

  She suppresses some laughter and looks around a little, wondering what to do.

  The thing to do is get back down, of course. "Had enough?"

  She nods. And she blushes. And there are those blood-flushed cheeks again. She really does have very pale skin. Soft, pale skin with friendly freckles just faint enough to be missed in the wrong light.

  I smile as well because she lifts my mood.

  I show her the big shining Euro sign outside the banking district, right by the Austin Meatpacker bar-slash-restaurant, and she chuckles at the name of the restaurant. We stroll through the park behind the Euro sign and I show her more banking buildings.

  We walk past the Commerzbank and a fancy restaurant, an English language school. I lose track of where we're heading because that can happen after you've lived here for so long—you don't really appreciate how one street can be so close to another, and yet sell such different "services."

  There are plenty of German words on the signs but some things are unmistakable in either language. Things such as "Sex" and "Girls" and the silhouette of a stripper.

  But I think what really gives it away are the bums hanging out on the streets. Because the men who hang out here really are bums. Of that I've never had my doubts. Eastern Bloc bums. German bums. American bums. Bums.

  She seems nervous.

  "Uhm, sorry, when you live here so long you tend to forget that the Red Light District is only two streets down from the banking area."

  She says nothing.

  "You're safe here with me. Don't panic. And it's daytime. But you should never walk around alone here at night."

  She nods. She really is freaked out. I decide to get her out of here.

  "Hey Axle, baby!" I recognize the voice immediately.

  Alicia's in a bikini which shows off her dark-skinned assets magnificently. The cold weather has tightened up her nipples as well. I look away. Alicia and I don't have that kind of a relationship. I smile and hug her and introduce her to Gen.

  "She's American," I say to Alicia.

  "Oh, t'ank God! I w
as hoping I wouldn't have to talk German to you!"

  "And lose all the charm of that accent? It's reason enough for the Germans to learn English," I say.

  "Don't be makin fun o' mah accent now."

  Gen smiles at Alicia's friendliness. But she still looks wary. Good for her. She should be wary here. It's a skill all women should learn: To not let their guard down.

  Gen stays silent, probably bewildered by what's happening.

  "So, Axle," says Alicia, "this your girlfriend?"

  I feel myself blush. Which is weird, because I don't blush. "I'm showing her around Frankfurt."

  "So you bring her here? Don't you know how to impress a girl? Miss"—she's talking straight to Gen now—"he never been good with the wine and dine, know what ahm sayin?"

  Alicia scratches an eyebrow with her blue fingernails.

  "I'm Alicia, by deh weh."

  "Gen." They shake hands all politely. "And I like the accent."

  "Yah, is beautiful. I from Trinidad and Tobago. Come 'ere to Germany for da good life and end up sellin mahself on da street."

  Gen seems perturbed at the statement.

  "Oh, dearie, don't fret. I knew what I was doing when I came here."

  "Anyway!" I cut in. "We were just leaving, and at least Gen now knows the areas to avoid!"

  "I hear ya."

  "All good with you lately?"

  "All good. And if not, I call you." She looks at Gen. "You know he beat up a punk who was getting frisky with me and then—"

  "Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!" I say. "Bye, Alicia." I start walking away, edging Gen forward. She's smiling more permanently now.

  "She need to know you're not all bad, Axle Rhodes! That it's all a front!"

  "Bye!"

  "Hey, wait. Seriously."

  I stop.

  "When you comin back?" Alicia says. "The girls always a bit nervous when you not around."

  "Not this week."

  "So, next?"

  "Yes, next."

  -3-

  Both exhausted, we grab a cup at one of the five Starbucks in the immediate area—not counting the additional two in the train station. I picked the one by the stock exchange because I think Gen was a little more freaked out than I'd planned in the Red Light District. The stock exchange area is not as creepy as the Red Light District. Must be because there are so many more bankers at the Red Light District. Bankers can really bring the value of an area down.

  Because it's Monday there are actually chairs free inside and I take off my coat and watch her slink out of hers.

  I blink a few times. Because I feel mesmerized a second. I imagine her skin underneath that dress, her legs. I imagine rubbing my hand slowly across them...

  A picture of her black-legged pantyhose from yesterday flashes in my mind.

  Axle, mmmmmm. Oh, baby. Mmmmm. Oh, yeah.

  OK, it's official, the babe has me horny now.

  And that's not good. Not this babe. Not good at all. I'd hurt a girl like this.

  "So you go there often?" she asks.

  "Where?"

  She whispers, "To the Red Light District."

  "You don't need to whisper. They show full frontal male nudity in family movies in this country."

  Her mouth stays slightly open.

  "Gen?"

  She shakes her head. "Sorry, um—" She laughs. "You're real forward, aren't you?"

  "I am. It's best to say things than leave them unsaid. You never know if you'll ever get another chance."

  Damn it! Why did I go and say that? It just slipped out. As if she and I were two casual friends that have known each other for years...

  I've noticed that when I'm with her: How easily the words roll out of my mouth.

  I know she can read that statement. Who couldn't!? You never know if you'll ever get another chance.

  I sit back and play the moment in my head over and over, trying to take back the sentence. Trying to close the window I've mistakenly opened into my soul. The window this babe is looking at me through!

  "You didn't answer my question," she says.

  "What question?" I notice she completely dropped the opportunity to pry into my space. She totally looked past the pink elephant in the room and moved back on over to the lighter subject, the chit-chat.

  Observant.

  I appreciate that.

  "About the RED LIGHT DISTRICT!"

  "Damn it, woman. There's no reason to shout it either!"

  She chuckles. And there it is again, that easy face, the light-hearted one. The polar opposite of the terror-stricken one I saw in that gallery the moment I first saw her.

  Real smile number four.

  "Axle?"

  "Sorry, I was thinking. What was the precise question?"

  "Do. You. Spend. A lot. Of time—?"

  "Ah, yes. I mean, no. I mean, yes I remember the question. No, I don't spend a lot of time there."

  She sits back, crosses her legs, crosses her arms. It accentuates her delicate breasts.

  I look at the statues on the roof of the stock exchange across the street outside.

  I feel something drawing me to her. What is it? Her body? It's small, fragile. Soft and human.

  Hell. I shake my head again.

  What was I thinking about? Ah, right, magnetism, her body. But it's not that. It's like an actual push against my back, wanting to make me lean forward, to smell her, to graze my lips against her neck, her chest.

  The inside of her smooth legs...

  Focus!

  "Actually," I say, "I am there quite often. But not for the reasons most men are there. I make a little extra cash on the side making sure the girls are OK."

  "What, like beating guys up?"

  I shrug. "If I can."

  "If you can?"

  "Are you going to repeat everything I say?"

  She's making me uncomfortable, because the words are coming out too easily. It's banter. It's borderline flirtation, damn it. The kind you do in high school. It's the kind of stuff you say to a girl before you've ever had one, when everything is so new and fresh and...painless.

  "No, I'm not going to repeat everything you say. Except when I repeat everything you say."

  She feels it, too. I know it. I can sense it.

  She smiles again—lighthearted. Number five.

  My heart starts racing. I feel the sweat trickle down my forehead.

  "Zoey, no!"

  I see Zoey's face on the windscreen, smashed and bloody. Her mouth open. A rivulet of red falling from its side.

  "Zoey, baby. Zoey!"

  I try undo my seatbelt. It's not coming loose. I realize we're upside down and I'm hanging, looking at the ceiling of my car, and the windscreen!

  My forehead is bleeding. The blood is falling on the smashed screen below me. It's cold. My forehead is wet.

  Red and white lights everywhere. A cold night in November. November ninth. Screaming outside the car. A woman's voice. A man's voice. Someone shouts.

  Her neck... Zoey's neck is at a strange angle... Why is she down there and I'm up—?

  Oh, God, Oh God no. Where's her seatbelt? I'm hanging because my seatbelt is holding me up! She had no seatbelt on! No, please no. Don't let it be true, please!

  "Zoey, baby. Zoey, please. Talk to me, please!"

  I sit forward in my seat now, twiddle with the handle of my hot cup of coffee.

  "Everything OK?" Gen asks.

  "Uh, yeah, I, um, just need to get to work."

  She looks at me suspiciously for a second, but is polite enough to not call me on it. "Of course. Of course. Well, go ahead. I, um, I can find my way home from here."

  I think of how she panicked yesterday when she first saw me.

  I can't leave her alone.

  I just can't.

  And I also can't stay. Too raw. Too similar. Too much pain.

  "I'm calling Frankie. He'll take you home."

  She frowns. "What?" She shakes her head, as if waking herself up. "Uhm, no— I can find my wa
y home."

  I stare at her. I don't want to go there. I don't want to dig into her history or "get to know her" or whatever. I don't want her to dig into mine.

  And I sure as fuck don't want to "watch out for her."

  But I'm not leaving her alone. Not today. "I'm calling Frankie. He's a good guy. You can trust him. I trust him with my life."

  Because he once saved my life.

  She looks uncomfortable. "Gen." I stretch over and put my hand on her knee. "I haven't asked about why you freaked out yesterday. And it's your business why. Please just let me get you home safely. Frankie...is like a brother to me."

  She doesn't protest. "Uhm, yeah, yeah, OK. I mean, we walked around in circles a lot—"

  "A lot."

  "—and, actually, how do I get back from here?"

  "See?"

  She's a real trooper.

  I really like that.

  And that's the fucking problem.

  I call Frankie. I wait for him to arrive. She and I say nothing much more to each other until he gets here ten minutes later. I stand like someone shoved a hot poker up my ass and shake his hand and tell him I need to go urgently to work and can he take Gen home.

  He knows that's such bullshit.

  He looks me worriedly in the eyes and whispers, "You OK, mate?"

  His words catch me up short and I feel the sudden weakness in my legs.

  I smile. "Course, dude! Why wouldn't I be?" I pretend-laugh. "I just need you to make sure no one robs my fellow compatriot here while she walks home."

  Frankie eyes me down with his intense, dark blue eyes, doesn't let go of my hand. I try and let it go, and he grips harder.

  I glare at him. Don't!

  He gets it. "OK, mate. I'll walk your lass over to her place. But you owe me a beer."

  "Sure." I try let go of his hand again. He holds tighter. Frankie's a wiener in my presence. I'd drop him with one head butt like a spike through a water balloon. And yet his grip has me riveted.

  Besides, I could never hit him. Not after all he's done for me. And he knows that.

  I know what he wants. "OK, one beer. Deal."

  "Tomorrow."

  I sigh. Then I whisper, "Fine."

  He squeezes my hand once. Lets me go. I turn and bid the lady goodbye. I can tell she knows something is up. Damn Frankie!