by Gilmore, RM
“No. You’re not going to stop me this time. I’ve kept my mouth shut too damn long now, and I’m not going to anymore. I love you, Dylan Hart. Regardless of…anything...fuck, anyone, I don’t care. I’ve never loved another soul more than you and I never will.” He’d said things similar to this, but this time, his voice held conviction I hadn’t heard before. Perhaps it was my imminent death and dismemberment he was sensing.
“Yes, you will. You just have to remove yourself from my ass first. Girls tend to not like guys who have ex-girlfriends firmly attached to them.” I was making a joke out of a not so funny situation. Have you come to know me for anything but? Well, maybe you should. Onion, baby. Just remember that.
He stopped me with strong hands on my arms. “Stop making everything a damn joke.” See? “I won’t stop loving you. No matter how much of a bitch you choose to be.”
I wasn’t offended, not in the least. I was acting like a bitch. I’d been acting like a bitch for going on two years, and he had put up with it every day without hesitation. Moreover, to my chagrin, he made sure I knew it.
“Shouldn’t you hate me by now?” Really, he should. I promise.
“Why would I hate you?”
“Do we really need to get into this discussion again? I’d hate you if the roles were reversed. Honestly, if you were me and I you, you’d likely be dead by now.” That was one-hundred percent factual.
“Well, that’s the difference between you and me.”
“What? A heart?” I scoffed. Thinking strangely, about Zeph and his poor head and how little his life meant to me. How little most lives meant to me. Oddly, Mike was on the small list of lives I’d think twice about. Lives I’d miss. Lives I’d fight for if it came right down to it.
“A conscience.” Yeah, that.
I have a conscience. It’s just muffled by the screams of sarcasm and cynicism.
“Look, I don’t want to talk about this. I’m here. I’m safe.” I was safe. Safer than I was an hour ago that was for damn sure.
“Are you sure about that?” he asked, skeptical of my confidence.
Is he in my head?
I fingered the charm that hung at my neck. “As sure as I can be. What else am I supposed to do?”
“How am I supposed to know? I don’t even know what the hell is happening.”
“And you won’t. Like I said, even if I told you, you wouldn’t believe me.”
“I’d believe anything you told me.” His voice was calm and reassuring. His hands kneaded along my chunky arms and pulled me closer to him. “I just need you to be safe.” He always had a way of reminding me of my humanity, even if only in fleeting moments.
His head dipped to my level and he brushed his lips across my forehead. It was rare I let him get so close to me, not since the big break up, but it was so familiar and comforting I let him do it for a second.
“Okay, that’s enough.” I pushed him away gently, but he didn’t budge.
“Why?” he breathed and pulled me closer.
“Because we are not us anymore. I am not yours anymore.” And I just made out with someone else, like six hours ago.
“Not by my choice.” He spouted the truth like it might change something.
“It changes nothing.” Someone else’s tongue had been in my mouth. And if I was honest, I hadn’t exactly had the most opportunity for hygiene as of late, closeness was out of necessity only.
“I need you to see things my way for once.” He pushed my limits and nuzzled his face into my ear.
“Why do you fucking love me so much?” I pushed at him harder and pulled my head away from his.
“I’m nothing without you.” He sounded so pathetic.
“You’re better off, trust me.” I said those words a thousand times and not once did he believe me.
He squeezed my arms. “Stop punishing yourself, dammit.” Okay, maybe not so pathetic.
“Of all the people in this world that has every right to hate me, I can’t even get you to stop loving me. Please, just hate me already. Realize I’m selfish and awful, and you’ll be better off.”
He moved his body away from mine but didn’t release his grip. “It sucks, don’t get me wrong. Knowing…knowing everything. Knowing I could have stopped it. I could have been more for you.”
“Jesus, Mike, do you hear yourself? I fucked someone else and you are blaming yourself? I am the reason we aren’t on our way to a white-picket-fence happy family future and you want me back? What’s wrong with you?” Usually when one party cheats on the other, the relationship ends and neither attempt to rekindle, let alone the wronged party.
“You. You are what’s wrong with me. You’re a bitch. You’re a huge bitch.” He let out a breath. “And you’re hilarious. You’re beautiful. You can drink me under the table. You take no bullshit. You can suck a mean dick. When you love, when you actually admit it anyway, you love with every ounce of your soul. And you were mine. I wanted you to be mine for the rest of my lifetime.”
“Well, we both know how that ended up.” Uncalled for, yes, but it was true.
“Yeah, we do. Most girls squeal, cry, and fan their face with their hand when their live-in boyfriend presents them with a ring. A fucking expensive ring by the way. But not my Dylan. No. My Dylan laughed at me. You fucking laughed.” His voice cracked. It was minor, and anyone else might not have caught it, but I wasn’t just anyone else.
Okay, I was an asshole. I’d accepted it. I didn’t know any other way to be.
“And you proceeded to destroy our home,” I rebutted. It was true so it was fair.
“Can you blame me? Really? Thirty-years-old and I’m crying over some girl because she doesn’t love me. What else is a boy to do? I’d have rather you broken every item we owned instead of what you chose to do. It would have hurt a lot less.”
“It wasn’t my intention. You know this. We’ve talked about this, more than once, and I would rather not talk about it anymore. I fucked up. I know it; you know it. Nothing I can do can change that fact. Why dwell on it?”
“Dwell? More like pine. Does it make you feel good to know that regardless of how hard you try, I will never stop loving you?” He swallowed. “I will never hate you no matter what you do.” I tried to rebut but he stopped me. “I’m not an idiot. You’re chicken shit. You were too scared to be straight with me, so you went out, got yourself shitfaced and fucked around with some stranger from a bar. I don’t know for sure if you were looking for it or if it just fell in you…in your lap, but I’ve decided it doesn’t matter to me. I don’t care. I feel like these last few months you’re hanging on to life by a thread, and it’s killing me. I’ve figured out I will never stop being in love with you, and I don’t want to. You might not be mine, but I’m sure as hell yours and there is not a damn thing you can do about that.”
“I could kill you,” I said plainly.
“Could you really?” he asked as though he thought I might actually be serious.
He closed the distance between us again. I answered his question in my head – no. No. I couldn’t snuff him out and I couldn’t let someone else do it either. Or hurt him even. My hatred had never been in the cards for this man. All in all, he was a fucking amazing human being and my life would be shit without him in it. Good, bad, and indifferent.
I felt his chest rise and fall against me. When it all went down, nearly two years ago, I thought I knew what I was doing. I was wrecking my life. I felt young, too young to be married. He talked about kids and buying a house, and white dresses and a life stuck together forever. I didn’t do romance, let alone that forever talk. Sex was great, and Lord, having a man close by could be handy, but I wasn’t ready for permanent. Living together was still new even, but in my head, it was reversible.
I took a deep breath, stuck in my memories, and pulled in a whiff of his body. Sweat, cologne, soap, gum – Mike. Scent was the sense most tied to memory, and memories came flooding in with the smell of him. Some real, some dreams, collected over t
he last year or so apart. He’d loved me so completely for years, but he didn’t know what he did. His overbearing and protective ‘cop’ nature kept me stuck under his thumb, and I couldn’t imagine my life like that. Forever.
“I love you,” he stated simply.
“Stop saying that…please,” I said through a shaky breath.
We hadn’t been this close in a very long time. Kissing Cyrus was lovely and definitely not terrible, but it was new and uncharted. I’d had every opportunity to explore everything Mike had tucked in his Dockers, and I knew it was all worth my time. There was a comfort in knowing someone had already seen you naked and chose to come back for seconds. Or thirds.
“Never.” He resumed his nuzzling, but this time I didn’t protest.
“Mike, we set boundaries.”
“And?” He kissed along my jaw. “Since when are you a rule follower?” He had my number.
I let out a breath. “These rules are important. It keeps the confusion to a minimum.”
“Yeah, sure it does.” He didn’t stop his kissing, making his way over my ear.
“We broke up. I fucked up and we ended.”
He pulled his head back from mine, leaving only a few inches between us. “We stopped having sex, nothing else changed. You sleep somewhere else and mostly pay your own bills, but otherwise, we are still us. I love you and I know you love me. I need to be close to you. I can’t lose you, not for real. Those people…” He referred to Cyrus and his band of vampires and things. “I don’t trust them not to destroy you.” His hands moved up my arms and hooked at the crook of my neck. “You have become so reckless, it scares me to think something could happen to you when you’re out there…with them. With…him.” I felt his breath on my lips, so close.
I couldn’t take it anymore. My hands found a familiar place on either side of his wide jaw. My mouth found his easily, as it always had. He didn’t hesitate. We were kissing for the first time in nearly two years, and it all happened in less time than it took to smell a fart. Watching his mouth move as he lectured me for being so reckless, should have elicited violence not lust. I’d missed him more than I ever would have allowed myself to understand. If this were a movie I was watching, I’d be mumbling about inappropriately timed sex in times of peril. But it wasn’t, and appropriateness be damned. I was done being this fucking rigid. And fucking someone you’ve fucked before didn’t count as being a slut – it didn’t rack your numbers up. Besides, he’d already seen my chassis and he was still trying to get it. He wasn’t Cyrus, not new, not anything I hadn’t happily done before. Nothing to lose but my self-respect.
Fuck it. I’m practically dead anyway. Carpe…whatever.
I was giving in on a fight that had lasted a year and counting. One of the many faces of Dylan was screaming in my head to not give in. To pull away and kick him out, like I’d done to him many times before. Literally, every other face was completely focused on the task at hand. Or hands.
His made their way under the back of my shirt. I felt sweaty and sticky. I’d been in a car for hours; it wasn’t good for the butt sweat. He squeezed me like he always did, pulling my thick body close to his. Hands trailed, rubbed along my back, lifting my shirt enough to allow cooling air to dry my wet back. He was making his way to my bra, ever so sneakily. The difference between him and Cyrus was vast in the grand scheme of things. Kissing two guys in one day wasn’t really my style, but then again, neither was utilizing a piece of metal to ward off evil spirits. Shit happened. It was life. Knowing my luck lately, I probably don’t have much of it to live, so I might as well roll with the uppercuts.
Fuck it, eh? Yeah, I was kind of planning on it.
I hadn’t asked where my mom was. I hadn’t really thought about her honestly. You’d think, since I was in her living room, she’d cross my mind before too long. Sure enough. Mike’s hands worked under my shirt; they’ve always been rough and manly, so it was nothing new to feel fumbling and scratching against my skin. It dawned on me that I was standing in my mom’s living room, making out with her favorite person in the whole wide world.
A piece of me thought it was best to just stop things while we were ahead. Granted, life was different and would always be different after this incident, but that didn’t change the fact that, if and I mean if, Mike and I were to mend things, sex off the bat was not likely the best way to go about to it. The other piece figured we should move to the bedroom. Either way, a break was in order. It was best to stop him before he actually worked my bra off. It might be awkward otherwise. And a bit floppy.
“Okay, sugar tits.” I pulled away from his lips and used my hands to gently push his chest away from me.
“What?” His eyes looked dreamy like he’d just woken up.
“Not here and not now.” My disgustingly responsible words nearly mimicked those I’d spoken to Cyrus hours ago. Tried and true.
He smiled widely. “But soon?”
Sure! I didn’t actually say that of course. I hated to make promises I couldn’t, or wouldn’t come through on. Instead, I said, “I promise you as soon as life calms down a bit, you and I will have a beer.” There, good enough.
My head was cheering for my honest attempt at being an adult, but my nether regions were screaming at me to strip down and let him have it all. Twice in one day I’d been an adult, and twice it left me with the lady-parts equivalent to blue balls.
Damn you, adulthood!
“I can live with that.” He was still smiling when he squeezed the life out of me with a huge hug. He buried his face in my neck and made happy little noises.
I hated to see him so happy about something that might never come to anything, but it was nice just standing there being hugged by someone I knew loved me for all that I was and all that I wasn’t.
“Dylan,” he said softly into my neck.
“Yeah?”
“Why do you smell like a Porta-Potty?”
I laughed out loud. I laughed so fucking hard my cheeks hurt. He let go eventually to watch the spectacle I was creating, standing there laughing hysterically at nothing.
“What happened to you today?” he asked sincerely.
“Shit,” I replied through bursts of laughter. I shook my head at the ridiculousness that was my life. He looked confused, but I sighed happily and kissed him on the chin. “I’m going to take a shower.” I turned and left him standing there. I was halfway down the hall when I finally said, “Where’s my mom?”
“Putting in applications for an apartment.” I stopped in my tracks. “For you,” he added.
Jesus H. Christ. I closed my eyes and blew air from my lips. Let it go, I told myself. I didn’t ask any more questions. Any answers he had, I probably didn’t want to hear anyway.
My room was just like it always had been when I still lived at home. Only clean. I opened the dresser drawers to find ten-year-old jeans and t-shirts folded neatly. Socks, undies, it was all there. I dug through my sock drawer for a pair of underwear and heard a clank when something hit the wood at the bottom. It took just a second to shove stuff away and see what it was. I smiled so wide my eyes nearly closed.
I couldn’t believe my mom still hadn’t discovered my secret box. Chuckling, I took out the wooden box, no bigger than my two hands, and plopped down on my bed. Inside were all my treasures from high school. A few snapshots of Tatum and me, and a few of our other friends we never saw anymore. One was pregnant last I
heard, but it had been awhile. A note from Brody Sinclair, the only fancy note I got in high school. Fat girls in high school didn’t get much play. I didn’t bother opening it. I didn’t need to be reminded of that douche. A half empty pack of smokes. My mom’s brand. I’d likely stolen it from her purse or something. A mini BIC lighter and a small metal pipe. My curiosity took over and I smelled the bowl, still packed with decade old marijuana. It still smelled good. I hadn’t smoked pot since college; Mike wasn’t exactly a condoner of street drugs, no matter how harmless.
I pulled a stale ci
garette from the pack and lit it. It crackled and tasted like shit. I choked and made a face, but smoked it anyway. My mom didn’t smoke in the house and she would be pissed if she knew I was smoking in my room. So, I grabbed the box and all its contents, and went to the bathroom that my room shared with the guest room. I flipped on the fan and the light in one swoop.
Sitting on the toilet lid, I smelled the weed again. I thought about Angela and her crack pipe and how fucked up she was.
“Not even close,” I whispered to my conscience and put the pipe to my lips.
The idea of some form of relaxation after such a shitty weekend overtook any qualms about smoking weed at nearly thirty. Unlike the cigarette, the pot lit and smoked just as if it were fresh. I took the smoke into my lungs and held it before blowing it up toward the fan. After two more rounds of this and my mind was numb. Well, numb enough to move on for a while. Horrendous events had transpired, and as soon as my head slowed down long enough to process it all, I’d likely need a nice sabbatical in a rubber room, but for the moment, I was cool.
Ultimately, I found myself staring at my naked reflection in the mirror for an unknown amount of time.
“Ugh,” I snarled at my own unattractive body and moved along to the shower. Whatever those two men saw, I wished they would snap a picture of it so I could have seen it too.
Water ran over my body and washed away all the sweat, and shit, and magical coating I’d acquired in my time away from a shower. I left my hair pulled up in a bun, not having the time or energy to fuck with it wet.
The fan whirled above with a consistent white noise. My high was alive and kicking, and I felt great. More so, I felt clean. Shit, I almost felt safe. I touched the trinket around my neck and reassured myself I had my own power and it was strong enough to, at the very least, keep me alive long enough to figure out a plan.
Stepping forward, I let the water wash over my face last. I’d tried to wipe away all the shit-smear I’d been wearing all day; there was only so much you could do without a shower. I leaned forward, hands pressed against the wall in front of me and let water cover my face.
