by J. C. Allen
Just like…
No, I couldn’t admit it. I would not admit it. I did not need a man who got drunk at the whims of my brother—I needed someone who actually qualified as a man.
And yet…
No, Eve. You do not m-word him. You do not want to see him again, because you do not… m-word him.
You don’t.
So… stop.
Please.
I let out a long sigh. It was going to take many days, probably many weeks, before I wrapped my head around how the hell this one with Derek had gone by the wayside so quickly and so suddenly. Truth be told, there had been some weird moments leading up to that particular one—and I couldn’t say they were all Derek’s fault; in fact, quite a few were probably mine—but there was no reason those weird moments couldn’t have been handled with a sober, normal conversation.
Deciding I’d had enough of the great outdoors and how its open expanse seemed to fill with endless questions in my mind, I headed back inside to the actual kitchen table I’d meant to go to in the first place. There, I noticed a note on the table in familiar handwriting—Tara’s. I pulled up the note.
“Hey slut,
Take it easy today. Do the Netflix and chill thang! Things will get better. I promise. Guys do dumb shit, but it doesn’t mean forever.”
What if it needs to be forever, though?
But what if it doesn’t? What if this means…
Damnit, Eve, have some self-respect and be strong.
“Might feel like forever to you right now, but it ain’t forever.
You two are too retarded for each other for this to be forever.
So chill!”
Well, that’s one way to put it, I thought as my eyes widened at Tara’s, shall we say, lacking verbal etiquette. But, then again, that was half of what made her so damn enjoyable to be around.
“I had to run out with Faggy McDick-Lover to talk some of the old crew into not being stupid. He knows, but he’s staying out of it. Well, said he’d kick Derek’s ass, but I told him to stay out of it. You’re on the good side either way. Take some of my clothes if you need new ones.
I’ll be back later tonight! Order a pizza for us!
XOXO
Your Tara-tot :-)
PS – I like my pizza like I like my men: with extra meat.
Snoogens :-P”
Well, if Matty is on my side, that’s at least a good sign. Derek’s best friend is taking my side…
Why does it matter if you’re so sure you want to dump him?
Is there anyone to dump right now?
Oh dear God, Eve, stop thinking to yourself so much!
Would be easy if I didn’t mi…
Miss him.
I sighed, looking down at the note and watched as the page began to grow blurry. It wasn’t until a few spots of moisture began dampening the paper and streaking the ink that I realized I’d begun crying again.
“‘… too retarded for each other…’” I read, then reread aloud.
Maybe…
Maybe we are too retarded for each other.
But in the best way possible…
With a long sigh, I hugged the letter, holding it close to me with far greater intensity that I had originally thought possible.
I wanted Tara to be right, and so I believed that she was. That hadn’t worked out so well believing Chuck’s first encounter wasn’t real, but Tara wasn’t going to stab me in the back at the end of the day. And if anyone knew, it was the best friend, right? The one who wanted what was best for me but had the detachment to see it all play out?
Right?
… right enough.
Nodding to myself, I decided that I had to hold out on faith that Derek would come back to me.
You know, the guy who called you a fucking cunt. The guy you slapped.
I bit my lip, hating how conflicted I felt.
Just… go do something. You stay here, your mind’s gonna run a marathon of thoughts. Maybe if you just get the fuck outta the house, go shopping—that always works—you can forget about him for juuuuuuust a minute or two.
Take what you can get.
I headed to Tara’s room, forever grateful that I did not have to confuse myself even more by going to Derek’s, and began to get dressed. Even if I had no one to go shopping with, and even if I barely had enough of my own money to cover the sort of pizza habits that Tara had developed since we’d escaped from the Carrion Crew, it still would do something for the mind. And at this point, I’d take something.
When I got downstairs and looked at the letter once more, I took a moment to fold the paper and slip it into my pocket. For some silly reason, I felt more comfortable having it on me. It felt like, in some way, Tara was with me.
And if I wanted anyone by my side right now, if I wanted someone I knew to be unflinchingly loyal to me and no one else, it was Tara.
I pulled up the Uber app on my phone, preparing to call for a ride to the mall, when I found that the first address that auto-populated in the field was Derek’s apartment. For just a split second, the thought of going back there—stupid as it was, much as I hated the idea of it—did seem rather strong.
I had no idea what I’d do when I got there, but I had a feeling it would involve a lot—an awful lot—of questions.
Do you regret what you did? Are you sorry? Do you wish you hadn’t?
I wanted to believe that Derek was feeling the same sort of regret that I was. I wanted to believe it as much as I believed in Tara’s words.
This one, though…
“Pride has no business in matters of the heart.”
I felt like I’d heard that somewhere before—perhaps read it in one of the many books that Tara was always teasing me for burying myself in on my Kindle—and, though I couldn’t place the source, I still felt like it was one of the world’s only great truths.
What that particular truth meant for us, I had not even close to the foggiest of ideas.
But I did know that going to his place was a mistake, and I had to stick to my guns for at least another couple of days.
And so, ignoring Derek’s address, I called for a ride to the nearest mall.
On the ride over, as I thought about being alone for the day, I couldn’t help but think that maybe being alone wasn’t just the right move, it was the necessary move for my growth and maturity.
How many years of my mature, dating-age life had I ever been single or without supervision? As far back as I could remember, ever since I began to think of Michael in my 5th grade class as kind of cute, I could never remember being without someone to see or someone to potentially see—or, in the last six months, being without someone who watched my every step. The idea of being alone, being independent… it was literally foreign to me. I had no frame of reference to work with.
Maybe if I wanted to figure myself out, I should give myself some independence first. Maybe if I wanted to be a good, well-valued woman, I needed to do that by defining myself first.
Maybe!
Or, maybe, it was just rationalizing the breakup and I needed far longer to have a clear understanding of what had happened.
In any case, the confidence-boosting thoughts, as transient as they were, prevented me from having to think too much about Derek on the rideshare over. The driver pulled up, dropped me off in front of a Sears, and sped away.
Alright. Retail therapy.
Let’s get shopping. Let’s have some fun. Let’s just enjoy the day.
Over the course of the next three hours, I spent my time walking through different shops, buying small things here and there. The bad news was that I realized that I was spending money I probably shouldn’t—the finance girl in me cringed every time “just one more purchase” rang through my head. The good news, though, was that I did feel better for it.
Maybe it was a temporary, fleeting feeling. Well, there was no maybe to it, but maybe what I needed was exactly those temporary, fleeting feelings of happiness and joy that didn’t bog
me down like thoughts of Derek did. Maybe if I couldn’t have a permanent peace of mind, I would settle for the next best thing.
Retail therapy.
“Retail therapy.” Can’t say I know of a psychiatrist that would ever recommend this kind of therapy. But then again, can’t say I know of anyone who would encounter the kind of bullshit I’ve gone through.
I hadn’t been able to shop this way in so long, not since I’d begun to work for Rock. If I’d made purchases like these while working for the Black Falcons, they would’ve instantly thought I was stealing from them and I’d be severely punished.
But now I was free.
Right?
Funny how you take your freedom as a chance to spend money. Sure seems like freedom ain’t free.
But you do feel better, so that helps.
After all of that shopping and all of the temporary boosts to my mood that followed, I headed to the food court, grabbed some Panda Express, and sat down with what started as a pleasant sigh.
By the end, though, I realized that I hadn’t eaten a meal alone in God knows how long. I especially hadn’t eaten a meal alone in public in… months, certainly, if not longer. I had thought that the feelings of being on my own, being independent, and being in complete control of myself would feel nice, but instead, it just let me yearning for company—Derek’s, specifically.
Perhaps I just needed time to acclimate to being alone. Perhaps in the long run, this would actually feel better than being in permanent relationship status. Perhaps…
I nibbled at my food, not really in the mood to eat as the euphoria of new purchases went by the wayside. At least I ate more than I had the previous couple of days, but my months of low-calorie days as a hooker had become a dangerous habit to shake.
And then I felt a chill down my spine, that nervous feeling produced by the feeling of being watched.
I looked around the food court, but I didn’t see anyone staring as people had before. No one in sunglasses looking my way. No baseball caps hiding identifying hair. No hoods pulled low.
But still….
It was there. It was definitely there. I’d developed the sense working from Rock, knowing when he or his cronies were watching me, and someone was definitely watching me.
Now, more than ever, I hated being alone.
Derek, if he were here, would have made sure nothing, and I mean nothing, happened to me. He would have interrogated every last soul in this court to see if they knew anything or had done anything, and his intimidation would have been so great that no one would have dared to fuck with us. I would have felt safer with him than with a police officer.
But he wasn’t here. I was on my own.
And it was a choice I had to have made. Protection wasn’t worth anything when the protector assaulted your sense of self-worth.
You know that wasn’t him, though. You know—
“Sup, sis.”
Chuck came from out of nowhere.
I jumped.
I don’t know how I had missed him—he had on no sunglasses, no baseball cap, nothing covering his face. Maybe it was because he was hiding in plain sight that I had missed him. Maybe it was because my mind was so wrecked, I didn’t know.
I just knew I really wished I had Derek, and I really wished that Derek had not fallen for the bullshit and the lies of Chuck.
He smirked knowingly as he sat across from me, almost as if he’d been waiting for me to spot him but enjoyed me never discovering him. A part of me screamed to run, to just get out of there and pretend that I hadn’t seen him. But unlike in Samsville, when I just decided I had not actually seen him, I didn’t have any grounds to stand on for that.
If I ran now I’d be handing him an advantage—I’d be telling him I was afraid of him, and I’d be giving him a reason to follow. And the last thing I needed was for him to discover where I lived, where Roost lived, or where Derek lived if I found myself running toward there.
Squaring my shoulders, I forced myself to face him. A brief flash of surprise moved across his face before returning to that smug grin. A part of me wondered if it had just been a trick of the light, but I knew better. He hadn’t expected me to just face him. He had expected me to run.
Hell, he’d wanted me to run.
It’s a good thing he’s not a mind-reader.
Too bad. I’m not going to take this.
“You seem surprised,” I said. “You think I can’t stand up to you?”
“You spend your entire life watching a dog—a bitch—cower and piss on herself when another dog walks into the room,” he said with a dismissive shrug, “and you’ll realize your breath catches the day it finally doesn’t happen.”
“Haha, how creative, calling me a bitch. Call me something I haven’t heard before, Chuck. Or has prison made you a bitch with comebacks?”
Another shrug. I could at least see that Chuck was stung by my words on his face, but it would take more than that to break him—and I’m not even sure what I hoped to accomplish by “breaking” him.
It was then, though, in the silence and with the surprise of his appearance worn off, that I noticed the severe bruising and swelling across his face. He almost certainly had more all over his body, and it gave me a smug sense of satisfaction to know that Derek had almost certainly kicked his ass.
“Looks like you should’ve stayed in prison, at least,” I said. “Probably would have gotten your ass kicked less than when you faced Derek.”
“Fuck you, bitch,” Chuck growled, again using that slur that had no impact on me.
“Nah, I’m good,” I said. “Guess you really got your ass beaten by Derek, huh?”
“Guess you got your heart broken by Derek, huh, bitch?”
Of all the comebacks he could have thrown my way, none were more vicious than that. One, it told me that Chuck knew a disturbing amount about my life on a moment to moment basis, which meant he had to have had spies and agents from the Black Falcons trailing me. Two…
Nothing could have gotten more to the core of my emotional state at that moment than what he had just said. And it really showed that no amount of retail therapy, no amount of “independent woman” self talk, and no amount of false bravado and hope would get me past that broken heart.
“Bitch… seems an appropriate comparison across the board, wouldn’t you say?”
“The fuck you talking about?” I said, in a very pissed off mood suddenly. “You seem real quick to throw my fears back in my face when it was you who lied to my boyfriend about photos?”
“Photos?” Chuck said very innocuously, in an infuriating way that made me just want to punch him all the harder. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Eve. I just told Derek the truth. That you’re a manipulative whore who uses her victimhood to get what she wants. If he saw photos, it was only in support of that notion, not the other way around. I just told him the truth, and, well, he didn’t take it well, but I think he made the right choice in the end.”
“The right choice?” I said, struggling for my next words that would have scarred at Chuck. “You lied to him. Whatever you did, you made him believe I was still a whore. Do you really—”
“You still are, at heart,” Chuck said.
I was terrified that Chuck actually might have been telling the truth, at least from his perspective. I don’t know what it said that he truly believed I was still a whore—or at least, it was plausible enough that he believed it—but the fact that it was about the same as him being a perpetual liar said a lot about him.
And I still wanted to keep him around. To protect him. What was wrong with me?
I’ve forgiven a lot, Chuck. But I can’t forgive everything.
“I am not a whore,” I said, jabbing my finger forward. “You are just an asshole who can’t handle that I’m getting my shit together and so you’re jealous. Or, you got called in by the Falcons for help. Either way, you are the one who has screwed up here.”
“Uh-huh,” Chuck said, looking entirely d
isinterested in what I had to see. “Still playing the ‘big bro should’ve been the grown-up’-card, I see.”
“I think you proved in that statement that you should have been, big bro!”
I could not have said the words with any less sarcasm if I tried. Nothing could have better exemplified my disdain for the sociopath than what I had said, the emphasis on calling him a bro not as a family member, but as a douchebag.
It got to him, because his scowl deepened.
“My dear little sister, Eve Kellerman. The tortured, haunted hero. You’ve never been happier than whenever you could complain about your life and point the blame on somebody else. Still a fucking little kid. You’re welcome for always having a target to aim that pristine finger at, by the way. I take so much shit in life, and instead of helping me, you clean yourself of blood and then claim you’ve been attacked.”
“Even after all these years,” I said. “You haven’t learned a goddamn thing. Didn’t prison teach you anything?”
“Yeah: not to trust a man who squares his feet behind you. I see your time on the streets taught you the complete opposite, whore!”
I could barely contain my rage. My God, it was like this guy wasn’t just a sociopath—he was a willing sociopath who was blind and deaf to the world around him! And, to top it all off, he was my brother.
Small wonder I wound up in the hands of the Black Falcons.
“Fuck you, Chuck,” I said, finally breaking. “I don’t know why I ever sat around and waited for you to be a brother. You can’t even learn how to be a decent human being! You’re sick! You’re fucking sick in the head for thinking I was ever happy with the way things were, that I ever could be happy after what happened to me. And rather than spend one damned second trying to understand what it must have been like for me, you just went on being a whiny, arrogant little shit; always making it somebody else’s fault when your own bullshit came raining down on you. Even now, Chuck, you’re trying to blame me for everything! And now that you’re out, you can’t leave me alone and can’t stop trying to convince others that their lives are as ugly and miserable as yours.”
