Spider: A tattoo romance (Rough Ink Book 2)

by MV Ellis

  I hovered in the background in the hall, trying to keep out of the way as Spider, his mom, and his brother, Ben, dealt with their private family grief. I felt bad for observing something so very personal from the sidelines, but I was glad to be there for him in the worst of times, as he’d been there for me when I’d needed it the most.

  The three of them went together to identify the body. Moments later, his mother’s anguished screams reverberated off the walls, ceiling, and floor. It was gut-wrenching to witness, and again, it felt wrong. I hadn’t even met his mom or his brother, which I was sure was for the better overall, but it made it even more inappropriate for me to be a spectator to his mother’s grief.

  The trio emerged from the morgue, the new widow flanked and supported on each side by her sons. She couldn’t hold her head up and was still sobbing uncontrollably. I pressed back farther into the shadows, watching as the two settled her into one of the hard, plastic chairs. As Ben sat down next to her, Spider looked around the cold, gloomy hall as though he’d lost something. He stopped searching when his gaze met mine.

  He was in front of me in a few short strides, and at closer range, I saw his eyes were red-rimmed and his cheeks were stained with the tracks of his tears. I may not have known him long, but I knew him well enough to hate seeing him hurting that way. He’d been my rock on the worst day of my life, and now I was witnessing him crumble on what was sure to be the worst day of his.

  He said nothing, just reached for my cheeks—I managed not to flinch this time—and brought his lips crashing down onto mine. The kiss was punishing, almost brutal. He was passing on his pain and anger through his body to mine, and I was happy to take it. I kissed him back, matching his intensity, but when he began pushing his erection into me, walking me backward to lean against the nearby wall, pushing my knees apart with his, I was the one to apply the brakes.

  Not only was I not comfortable with the PDA with his family just a few feet away, but I also knew his intensity wasn’t about me. It was an outlet for his grief, and not a healthy one. I tore my lips away from his, cradling his cheeks with my hands the same way he had mine, waiting for him to meet my eyes.

  “I don’t think this is the time or place.” Conscious of his family nearby, my voice was barely above a whisper.

  “What?” A deep furrow I hadn’t seen before appeared between his eyebrows.

  “You’ve just lost your father, and your mom and brother are right there. You’re upset, not yourself.” Not that I knew who that was, but it was an educated guess.

  “I’m 100 percent myself. Let’s step outside a moment.”

  I hesitated, considering saying no, then changed my mind. He took my hand in his and led me down the hall, nodding to his brother on the way.

  We wound our way through the network of hallways and out a fire escape door into what appeared to be the rear courtyard of the hospital.

  A soon as we were out there, Spider picked up we’d left off, pressing me against the wall and crashing his lips hungrily to mine. This time I pushed back on his shoulder right away. He yielded instantly, much to my surprise. If I’d tried something like that with Tommy, if he hadn’t lost his shit altogether, he would have ignored my resistance, pushing even harder, no doubt. More likely, though, I would have ended up nursing an injury of some kind, to “teach you a lesson.”

  “What?” He rubbed at the crease in his brow, looking more hurt than angry. Another surprise.

  “It’s what I said before. Now isn’t a good time for this. I don’t think you’re thinking straight.”

  “I just identified my father’s body on a slab in the morgue. It isn’t a good time for anything. As for my thinking: straight, bent, or fucking zigzag, who cares? I don’t need to see straight or any other way to know that I want you right now.”

  “That’s the thing. I don’t believe you do want me. You’ve had a massive shock to the system, the worst thing anyone can ever experience, and you must be feeling—”

  “How the hell would you know how I’m feeling?”

  “I guess… I just—”

  “You have no idea. Wanna know how I’m feeling? Horny. That’s how. Horny and pissed off that someone who doesn’t know me is trying to tell me how I must feel. The same someone who less than two hours ago happily screwed me like the world was ending without a thought for how I must be feeling.”

  I knew it was the grief talking. He was hurting and acting out as a result, but I was done with making excuses for people, men especially. It was that kind of permissiveness that had led me to put up with Tommy’s shitty behavior for so many years, even knowing how the story ended, having seen my mom go through it and living with my dad’s behavior every day of my awful childhood. The attitude that saw me expose Noah to the same negative experiences I’d always vowed no child of mine would go through.

  Shit. Noah!

  I looked at my watch, I still had time to collect him from after-school care, but if I didn’t leave soon, I’d be pushing it. Worse than that, I felt a huge pang of guilt for not having thought of my son all day. What kind of mom did that make me? I already knew the answer to that question, and it wasn’t good.

  “Fuck. I have to go. I have… to be somewhere.”

  “Yeah, sure you do.” He kicked at the paving at the edge of the flowerbeds. “Well, don’t let me keep you.”

  “Honestly, whatever you’re thinking, it’s not that.”

  “I’m not thinking anything. If you need to go, just go.”

  “Spider, I—”

  “I get it. Just. Go.” His voice brimmed with anger, which made my blood boil.

  “I’m going. I’m so sorry for your loss, I am, but I’m not about to stand here and let yet another man treat me like I don’t matter.”

  He looked like I’d slapped him in the face, which I’d kind of wanted to do for a moment. Or at least grab him by the lapels and shake some sense into him.

  “I—”

  “It’s okay. You don’t have to say anything.” I stroked his shoulder to let him know there were no hard feelings. Kind of. “I need to go, and you should get back to your family. They need you, and they’ll be wondering where you are.”

  He opened his mouth to speak again, and that time I silenced him with a finger placed gently on his lips.

  “Really. You have my number. Call or message if you need me.”

  Three trains later, I’d made it across the city to collect Noah with thoughts of the day’s events swirling in my mind as he chatted animatedly about his day. I cooed, smiled, and laughed in all the right places; I’d become a master at emoting on cue over the years, so I hoped Noah didn’t realize my mind wasn’t on what he was saying.

  Having been a single parent for five years, then living with one eye over my shoulder and my brain focused on double-thinking and second-guessing every move I made for the past three with Tommy, I had been distracted for most of Noah’s short life. He seemed like a happy and well-adjusted kid regardless, but that didn’t stop me from feeling like a craptastic parent the vast majority of the time. It was another item to add to the long list of things I felt heartbreakingly guilty about. Sigh.

  I was too drained to contemplate cooking, so I ordered pizza, which Noah and I ate in front of the TV. As ever, I wasn’t about to win any parenting awards, but the ease and convenience served multiple purposes, as pizza would be Noah’s death row meal if it ever came to it. He couldn’t get enough, so an impromptu Monday night slice—or three—made me a rock star in his eyes, and helped quell the guilt just a tiny bit.

  Once Noah had eaten, I’d read him about four billion bedtime stories, and he was tucked up and asleep, I collapsed on the couch. I must have flicked through the options on Netflix a hundred times before admitting defeat and giving up. I didn’t even bother getting out a journal. I wasn’t in the right frame of mind to write. Instead, I settled for staring at my phone, trying to decide whether or not to message Chris.

  At some point I’d stopped calling him
Spider in my mind and started calling him by his real name. Not that it mattered, as I was unlikely to ever be calling him anything to his face, given how things had gone that afternoon.

  I wrote and rewrote messages in my mind, everything I thought of saying sounding lame when I wanted to say, “I’m sorry for being a selfish bitch when you needed me,” but I couldn’t bring myself to be so brutally honest. Telling the truth to other people had never been my strong point. In fact, most days I had to bury the truth just to make it through.

  As though I’d summoned it, the phone buzzed. I knew before looking at it who was messaging me.

  Chris: You awake?

  Me: Yeah. Are you okay?

  So lame. I regretted it as soon as I pressed Send.

  Chris: No.

  Me: Sorry. Stupid question.

  Chris: Stop apologizing.

  I hadn’t noticed how often I did until he’d pointed it out.

  Chris: I’m the one who should be sorry. I was an asshole before. Forgive me?

  Me: Of course. Wanna talk about it?

  Chris: Yeah… I think I do. Give me five minutes. I’ll call you.

  Me: Ok, speak then.

  Chris: Ok.

  As I sat waiting, time seemed to go in reverse. Five minutes felt like an hour, and I became increasingly nervous.

  22

  Spider

  After tying up a whole bunch of paperwork and red tape that I’d hoped to never have to do, or at least not for very many years in the future, Benji and I had almost needed to carry Mom out of the hospital. She was exhausted and overwhelmed, which was no surprise. I couldn’t get past the unexpected brutality of the day. How one minute a person’s life could be heading in one direction, all fine and dandy with a rosy future, and the next it could be derailed in the blink of an eye.

  Mom had been blindsided too. It wasn’t like Dad had been sick or old enough that we were expecting his death. Not that it would have made it better, but the shock was so much for all of us to bear. I couldn’t tell how Benji was coping and what the fallout would be with him as time went on. The situation was hard enough for me to get my head around, let alone for Benj, with the challenges his learning disability sometimes presented. I had no choice but to cross that bridge when I came to it.

  I couldn’t find a place in my mind to comprehend the fact that Dad was never coming back. Or that the last words I’d said to him—which I struggled to even recall—would be the last words I’d ever say and have him hear them.

  Thoughts of what I could have said during that call had I known it would be my last plagued my mind. Whoever it was who’d first said that hindsight was a bitch needed to expand their fucking vocabulary. She wasn’t a bitch. She was a sadistic and vindictive cunt made of the blood, sweat, tears, and regret of the poor bastards she’d dry-fucked up the ass.

  We’d helped Mom into the house, and despite her protestations about not being hungry, I’d convinced her to eat something. I couldn’t even fathom looking in the refrigerator to see what was there, let alone cook a meal, so I’d ordered pizza. Mom had nibbled on one slice, not even forcing half of it down before claiming she was full and felt sick.

  Ben and I weren’t much better, but at least we’d eaten earlier in the day. Mom had been about to prepare brunch to have with Dad after his ride when she’d gotten the call; the now stale bread sat abandoned in the toaster, where she’d left it.

  Fearing she would get no sleep but needed it more than anything, I dug out the Ambien she kept to help combat her extreme fear of flying and watched her take two before helping her to bed. Despite her initial resistance, she looked relieved to hit the mattress. I considered dropping a couple myself, knowing the night would be a sleepless one, but pills weren’t my jam, and I didn’t want to start at a time like this.

  Instead, I settled for lying fully clothed on the bed in my old room—which still looked like seventeen-year-old me lived there—looking at the ceiling, thinking over the events of the worst day of my life. Fact was, until that point, I’d had a perfect life with very little ever having gone wrong.

  Today had pulled my lifetime GPA from a solid 5.0 into negative figures, starting with the death of the biggest influence on me, segueing through to me making a total douche of myself with Emi, to the soul-sucking reality of dealing with the formal details of my father’s death, and then the gut-wrenching agony of needing to parent my parent, putting her to bed like she had done to me for so many years. That wasn’t even counting the potential future struggle of helping Benji cope with such complex concepts as death and grief.

  When my brain had digested all that and churned it over from every angle possible, it kept coming back to the same thought. I wanted to talk to Emi—first to apologize for being a total douchecanoe, but also just to hear her voice and have her hear mine. I had no clue what was driving that desire. She’d been right earlier: amid such overwhelming grief, I couldn’t think straight, let alone make sense of the thoughts as they came and went.

  I’d agonized long and hard over whether or not to message her. It was late. I’d been a dick. I didn’t know what we were to each other or where we stood. I didn’t even know what the fuck to say to her. In the end, the singular thought of wanting more contact with her had won the fight.

  Once I’d sent the text, I was relieved that she’d been both awake and willing to speak to my stupid ass. It was the second good thing to have happened that day—the first, of course, being the not-date with her that morning and everything else that had happened up to the point when my life had been turned upside down by one unforgettable phone call.

  I’d said I’d call her back both to give myself time to get my head straight and so I could step away from the bedrooms to speak. Although Mom’s sleeping pills should have knocked her out, I didn’t want to risk waking her or Ben, or have to talk under my breath. Besides, I felt weird about making that call in my childhood bedroom.

  I tiptoed downstairs and out through the kitchen, creaking the back door open to sit on the step despite the chill in the air. I dialed Emi’s number, rubbing at my arms while I held the phone crunched between my shoulder and my chin. She answered on the second ring.

  “Hi.”

  “Hi. It’s Spider.”

  “I know.”

  “Yeah. I just didn’t want to assume. Thanks for talking to me.”

  “Of course.”

  “No, I mean it. You have every right to tell me to go fuck myself for the way I behaved, especially after you’d been so good to me.”

  “I guess so, but I also have the foresight to see that you weren’t yourself. You’d had just about the biggest and worst shock anyone could have. We don’t always behave in the best way when we’re stressed. After Friday, I should know that more than anybody. I’m not in a position to throw stones.”

  I guess she kind of had a point, but as my dad always used to say, two wrongs didn’t make a right. The fact that she’d behaved oddly on Friday didn’t justify my acting like a prick on Monday, no matter the circumstances.

  A lump formed in my throat again as I thought about Dad.

  “Still, there’s no excuse, though I appreciate you graciously forgiving me. I’m sorry.”

  “How is everyone holding up?”

  I paused, trying to find a neat way of summing up how we were all doing.

  “Oh my God, I’m so sorry. Stupid question. Forget I said anything.” Her words came out in a jumbled rush, and I felt the jolting pain in my chest again.

  “The only thing you should be sorry for is being sorry. It was a legitimate question, which you had every right to ask. I was just thinking about the best way to answer it when you jumped in. You really need to stop assuming you’re in the wrong all the time. You’re not.”

  “I know, but it’s a hard habit to break. I’ve been doing some reading, and I’m fairly certain Tommy has narcissistic personality disorder. Gaslighting is one of his few specialist skills. I guess I’ve been drinking his Kool-Aid for so lo
ng I’ve gotten used to the taste without realizing it’s been laced with arsenic this whole time.”

  “Hmm… so you’re not… drinking the Kool-Aid anymore?”

  “Are we still talking about the same Kool-Aid?” I tried to read her voice, but her tone was neutral.

  “Kind of.” It was a question I should have asked her before we’d slept together, but it was also no accident that I hadn’t.

  “Well, he’s in jail, so….”

  “That’s not an answer. What if he wasn’t? Or what about when he gets out? Better yet, have you been visiting him while he’s been in there?” I had no right to be probing her that way, but that didn’t stop me from wanting to know.

  “What? God, no. Do you think I’m insane? Wait, don’t answer that. Let’s just say that my liquid refreshment tastes have changed. No more Kool-Aid for me. Ever. Turns out all those colors and sweeteners are there to mask how bad that shit is for a person’s health. I’m done with Kool-Aid for good. Kool-Aid can rot in hell forevermore for all I care. So, how’s your mom?”

  I felt like the biggest bastard. For a small moment, I’d been so focused on obsessing about Emi’s ex that I’d almost pushed my situation aside in my mind. Almost.

  “She’s been better, obviously. We all have. I don’t really know how we’re doing, really. I mean, she’s a mess, but I don’t even think the whole thing has sunk in yet. After you left, we got through all the shit we needed to do at the hospital and hooked up with a funeral home, so everything’s moving forward from a logistics perspective.

  “Then I brought her home and tried to get her to eat something, which was a fail. I convinced her to take some sleeping pills though, so that’s something. Hopefully she’ll wake up with some kind of appetite tomorrow.”

  “You’re at her house now?”

  “Yeah. Ben and I both are. We’ll be here at least until a few days after the funeral, which is next week Tuesday.”

  “Sounds like you’re taking great care of both of them. And what about you?”