by Marie Hall
Squeezing his eyes shut, John started trembling and I laughed. A sound full of disgust, of hate and revulsion, spilled from my lips.
“I hate you,” I hissed. “I have since the day I caught you with your pants down. You make me sick. I hope you die. I hope you—”
He hung his head. “I am.”
“So what?” It scared me sometimes how little I cared. Was it wrong how I felt? Doctor Alvarez said it wasn’t, that it was common, but I didn’t think it was common to be happy that poetic justice was finally being served. The worst of it was I only wished it’d happened to him sooner, and that terrified me. What kind of human being wished their father dead with such a passion? Only crazy ones.
I was smart—I knew just because he’d done something so repugnant and awful didn’t mean it was encoded in my DNA to do the same, but maybe my DNA was corrupted, because I should’ve cared that he was dying.
I should’ve.
I just didn’t.
Turning his face up to look at me, he nodded slowly, unshed tears causing his eyes to glimmer in the setting light. He swallowed hard, wringing his hands and taking two deep breaths. “I’ve got pancreatic cancer. Stage four. Doctors say weeks, maybe a few months if I’m real lucky.”
My eyes roamed his body then, and I noted the shakiness of his hands, the way his body was caved in on itself, how he was wearing a jacket in ninety-degree weather.
“Get out of here.” I seethed, barely controlling my fury. My knuckles were flexing and popping and I could barely catch a breath that didn’t hurt.
“Are you coming to the barbeque?”
“Go away, John. Now.”
He hovered there for a while, long enough that I wondered if he heard me, but I just couldn’t look up again. I couldn’t look him in the face anymore. The years of pretending were over, and I didn’t care if my silence killed him. I didn’t care that maybe somewhere in his heart he realized he should finally apologize, finally speak the truth. I just didn’t care anymore. It was too late and I was done.
I was hanging my head, looking at my feet, when I finally sensed him leave, but I still didn’t move. My brain was a seething mess. But there was too much in there, too many thoughts all warring for attention.
Cancer.
Dying.
Hate.
Love. There’d been that once…
But now there was only hate.
“Fuck!” I screamed it, not caring who heard. I didn’t care if the cops came out now and Tasered my ass for disorderly conduct. I didn’t give a shit. Walking up to the brick wall, I didn’t think, I just acted. Shoving all of it, everything into the wall. Rearing back, I threw my fist into the bricks. Over and over and over, trying to force the violence and the hate and the agony out through my fists. I felt the skin break, felt the blood flow, hot and dripping down my knuckles.
It hurt so damn bad, and the bones were throbbing. I probably broke something, but I stood there for I don’t know how long.
Hating him, hating me, hating the world.
Finally it’s the darkness that forced me back to the car. I sat inside, and even though it was humid in the cab, I didn’t start the engine or crank the air. I sat, and I sweltered, and it was so black in my head that I couldn’t think around it because it was too much, and I was suddenly drowning.
After a long time, when the darkness in my brain began to recede, I remembered to start the car. When I did I noticed the time. It was a little past nine.
I had stood her up. I should’ve called. I should’ve apologized. But I was too raw, too violent. I couldn’t bring this around her. Closing my eyes, I whispered an apology to the breeze, then started driving. I wasn’t focused on where I was going. I just hit the gas and went, headed for the freeway and drove until the demons stopped screaming, stopped surging up and blinding me.
I knew what I was doing was stupid and tantamount to relationship suicide, but I was not turning this car around. I was not going back to her. Muscle memory led me to a little hole in the wall I hadn’t visited in over a year. Not since Lili became a permanent fixture in our lives. The crunch of gravel sounded when I turned the tires toward the dive, which was held together by a colony of a million termites. Jack’s Bar was a local watering hole known for the best chili fries in the city. But I wasn’t here for food. Not tonight.
Throwing the car in Park, I wasted no time hauling my ass inside. A live bluesy-rock band was playing up front in the barely lit room. They were good—the singer’s voice was raspy and raw and exactly the type of music I liked—but I could barely focus on the song or its words. The tables were mostly empty with a few barflies hanging out here and there, draped across truck drivers with paunchy beer guts.
I took a seat at the bar.
“What’ll it be?” The bartender, a swarthy-looking man with a gray Fu Manchu, asked. He ran a yellowed dishrag through a glass tumbler and I shuddered to think about drinking out of one of those things.
I had about a hundred on me, and the good thing about coming to Jack’s… they didn’t really care about cutting off your supply. And tonight I didn’t plan on being done for a while.
My left hand was shaking pretty bad, so I curled it into a fist in my lap. “Bourbon neat.”
He licked his front teeth and drawled very slowly, “Any brand in particular?” The piercing set of his brown eyes made me think that maybe that guy saw everything. I wiggled in my seat.
“Something that’ll make me forget. The rest, I don’t care.”
He harrumphed and then walked off.
Scrubbing my jaw, I twisted in my chair and looked around, tapping my finger idly on the bar. This wasn’t a friendly place, no one twisted around to look at me or make eye contact, but that wasn’t really the point anyway. I wasn’t coming to meet someone new, I was coming to forget.
A peroxide blonde glanced up just then. She was dressed in acid-washed jeans and a too-tight belly shirt. Her hair was caught up in a mass of wild curls around her head, and she looked at me like a shark eyeing chum. My nose curled as I slowly turned away. I knew her kind, and I wanted nothing to do with her.
The scratch of glass sliding along wood made me turn around. Grabbing one of the tumblers that had made me shudder when I saw him “cleaning” it, I took my first sip. It went down hot and smooth, and the fumes made me dizzy. I knew that soon I wouldn’t care what kind of glass this was served in.
I used to give Ryan such shit about his way of dealing, so it was ironic that I found myself here, drinking in a place probably worse than any he’d ever been to. I finished my drink in another two swallows. I knew I wasn’t giving the bourbon the respect it deserved, but again, it wasn’t about that.
It was about forgetting that John could keep making my life a living hell. I was twenty-three, for fuck’s sake. I tapped the bar hard.
The barkeep looked up with a quirked brow, which I took to mean “what.”
So I lifted my glass and jiggled it at him. With a brisk nod, he turned and made me another.
I took it out of his hands the second he returned, and I tried to nurse that one. But I was smiling then because I could feel the numbness starting to spread. There was fire in my chest and throat, and my arms and legs were tingling.
I wouldn’t let John do this to me. Doc kept telling me I gave him power over me. Power to make me crazy and make me stupid with anger, that I had a choice to make. Whether to let him win or not.
I wondered what she would say if she saw me here right now?
God, what must Zoe be thinking? She probably hated me. My hand shook so hard I slopped a little of the drink over the rim.
I didn’t want her to hate me. I don’t know what I wanted, but not that. Definitely not that. I just wanted her. All of her. All the time. I wanted to be with her and make her love me and fix me and love me… had I already said that? Fuck. I closed my eyes. Things were really starting to grow murky in my head—a pleasant numbness that was spreading like liquid through me.
�
�Zoe,” I croaked, wishing somehow she was there right then so I could apologize. Ask her to forgive me. I was such a screwup and she just didn’t deserve this. I knew that, but I didn’t know how to do stop it.
Lifting the glass, I went to take another sip, but somehow without my knowing, it was empty. I couldn’t believe I’d finished two glasses already.
Shaking the fuzz from my head, I pounded the bar for another. I grinned when a few minutes later he slid another one to me. “You know, I think I need one of you at home. What’s your name by the way?”
Hmm… had I just slurred that last part? I think I might have, but things were turning a little hazy. I wasn’t much of a drinker anymore and I could tell, because I was definitely acting like a featherweight.
He might have said Jason, or Jackie, or hell, maybe even Jack. Not sure, but I thought it started with a J. Anyway, he was gone before I could formulate another thought.
I was taking a large swig of my drink when a hand clamped on to my shoulder. Twisting in my seat, nearly slipping off the side of the stool, I took a second to right myself. When had I become such a lightweight? What kind of crap had “J” served me? Probably Drano.
Blinking rapidly, it took a second for the face in front of me to come into focus. My brain took another two seconds to place it. It was the bottle blonde. There was a black mole above her lip.
I sneered. “Did you draw that on?” I pointed at the mole. “All you girls have one all the time.”
Damn, I was not making any sense. I shook my head.
She was not fazed. Blondie was running her long cherry-red fingernail down my chest and licking her fire-engine-red lips, and I swear she was shoving her boobs into my face. I started to wiggle back.
“I saw you from across the bar,” she purred, and her voice had a rasp like only a longtime smoker has.
Using my drink as a kind of shield, I held it up to my mouth and inhaled its fumes, mainly because she stank like sweat and it was making my empty stomach threaten to revolt.
“Hmmm,” I murmured.
“Whatcha doin’ here all by your lonesome, cowboy?”
My heart jerked at the use of the pet name. “Zoe calls me that,” I slurred and took another sip.
Pouting, she shook her head and scooted in closer to me. Her smell was really smacking me in the face. Ready to dry heave, I set my glass down and scooted with legs that felt like concrete to the next seat over. But when I sat back down, my head was reeling so badly I knew I wouldn’t be driving myself home any time soon.
Maybe I hadn’t moved though, because next thing I knew she was back in my space, nearly sitting on my lap, and her enormous boobs were back in my face.
“So who’s this Zoe?” she asked. “She break your heart? ’Cause I promise you, Sue would never do that.” Licking her lips, she went to straddle my thighs.
My head was incredibly fuzzy, but I still knew this was wrong. And I definitely didn’t want this, but my brain and my body were completely disassociated; my limbs just weren’t responding. Not when she spread her legs and sat on my thigh, not when she walked her finger up my shirt, and definitely not when she leaned in and licked the hollow of my throat.
“Off,” I slurred and shook my head real slow, because the room was definitely spinning.
But either I only thought it, or she didn’t care, because she was moving on me like a cat in heat, and all I could seem to do was make sick noises in the back of my throat.
Taking a deep breath, I screwed up whatever wits I still had left and with all my strength murmured, “Fuck. Off.”
Sue only laughed, and the sound was obnoxious, like a braying donkey. Her fingers were running through my hair. “Whatcha like, baby? Hmm?” Faint kisses, more like the flutter of moths’ wings, ran up and down the column of my throat. “How much you got? I’ll make it so good. I’ll make you forget.”
Dammit, I could feel my body responding. I didn’t want it to. It sure as hell didn’t with the skanks in the Chinese restaurant, but with the way she was moving on me and all the pent-up energy I’d felt the past few days, it was happening against my will.
She laughed, eyes growing wide when she glanced down between us.
“Nope.” I shook my head, again trying to move her off me. But she was like a freakin’ leech with radioactive super clinging powers—the more I shoved, the more she latched on and writhed—and it was driving me insane.
“You say no, but your body says yes. You know you want to, baby. Guys only come to Jack’s for one thing…”
My stomach bottomed out because it was true. My brain might’ve only been working at half capacity, but I knew this. Jack’s was my refuge because it was a place I could come to forget. To blow off steam, maybe hook up with a chick, get skunked off my ass, and forget about everything. At least for a couple of hours.
Angry at myself, pissed for sinking so low again… Unable to handle seeing John, I’d brought myself here. Subconsciously I had to know what could happen.
“You have… two seconds to get off me,” I hiccupped, “before I make you.” Proud of myself for speaking so clearly, I gave her a steely-eyed glare.
Again, she ignored me and I did it. I shoved her off me. Not exactly a shining moment. I didn’t like hurting women, but I didn’t think I really did her any harm. Ignoring my chivalrous side, I lifted a brow at her and pivoted in my seat. But then all my reserves were burned up, and the spinning room was back, and my eyes felt weighted down, and I just had to rest my head on the bar top. Just for a second.
I knew I dumped her on her ass. I saw her land on the dark, stained wood with my own two eyes, but hands were sliding up my back and there was nothing else in me. Squeezing my eyes shut, I felt her hand drift down to my ass, or rather to the wallet tucked into the pocket on my ass.
I knew this, but I just didn’t care anymore. I was tired and drinking myself into a stupor didn’t help me forget at all. Just like all the meaningless sex I’d ever had in my life, it was a blur and ultimately in the end, meant nothing.
Fingers were sliding up my neck, toying with the hair and touching the collar of my shirt. Hot breath was fanning my ear, and all I wanted her to do was just freaking hurry up and take my money so she would go. I didn’t give a shit anymore.
There was tugging on the wallet. “Something to remember me by, just ’cause my mama raised me to be nice that way,” she whispered, and with a sharp tug on my pants, she yanked the wallet from my pocket while simultaneously slamming her mouth onto my lips and mashing them together. Hard. Painfully hard.
I groaned when the hands and lips suddenly disappeared. I heard loud female chatter, the scraping of bar stools and then, “Get the hell away from my friend’s man, ho.”
But I was too tired to look and the voice didn’t belong to Zoe, so again, I didn’t care. An arm slipped around my shoulders.
“What in the hell are you doing here, Alex?”
At the sound of my name, I cracked open my eyes, only to stare into steely-blue ones. Jamie was full-on glaring at me, and somewhere deep in my brain a thread of panic started to set in. I was sure by tomorrow I was going to be cursing myself stupid, but right now the panic was just a level one. Mid-grade and barely sustainable.
She stuck a finger in my face. “All I have to say is, if that was what I think it was, I don’t ever want to see you around her again.” She narrowed her eyes and all I could think was for someone so tiny, she could be totally intimidating when she wanted to be.
She had a scratch down her left cheek, raising a bloodred welt, but otherwise she looked as well kept as always. I wondered why in the hell she was in Jack’s, but the thought drifted away almost as soon as I had it.
Pursing her lips, she handed me my wallet. “By the way, pretty sure this belongs to you.” She rolled her eyes, dropping it in my lap with a flick of disgust.
Huffing, I swiped at it and slipped it back into my pocket. As I went to lay my spinning head back down, she shook her head and grabbed my shoulder
s.
“You’re coming with me. Can you walk?” She slapped my shoulder.
I went to stand and then almost immediately shook my head. “Don’t think so.”
“Ugh.” Looking at the bartender, I heard her ask him something, but I was closing my eyes again and everything was so peaceful now.
The noise was gone in my head and so were the demons—they were snoring and blessedly silent and all I wanted to do was sleep this off and forget I was the son of Satan.
Hands were grabbing me again, but these were definitely not hers, and I was half walking, half weaving out the door, and then I was sliding into a car seat I didn’t recognize and a door shut beside me.
My knees were almost shoved into my chest and I knew it was not my car. Then she was back, sitting in the driver’s side and pulling a cell phone out of her purse.
“Give me your keys.”
I pointed to my pocket.
With another groan of disgust, she reached into my jeans, then dialed something into her phone. I closed my eyes at this point.
“I need a solid,” she muttered. “You owe me, you POS. … I don’t effing care what you’re doing. After that stunt you pulled tonight you better get your ass down here or we’re through. … I swear to God, we’re done.”
The heavy thud of the phone striking the console rocked the sudden stillness. I was just on the verge of snoring when I heard, “You’d better wake your ass up, loser. I’m so GD pissed I can’t even see straight. How the bloody hell could you do that to Zo?”
Only then did I realize she was talking to me.
I shook my head, wanting her to know I wasn’t soliciting, I hadn’t initiated that drama with the barfly, and that even though I knew I’d screwed up royally tonight, I didn’t screw up as bad as she thought I did. But the translation got lost from my brain to my mouth, because all I could say over and over was, “No.”
“Oh yes, yes you did. And if it wasn’t for the fact that I love Zoe so much, I’d have left your ugly ass back there. You’re a loser and you don’t deserve her.” She tapped her nails on the steering wheel, and I was experiencing a terrible case of déjà vu because she was me and I was Ryan and I was telling him the same thing.
