Ink and Lies

by S. L. Jennings

  It takes everything in me not to get up from this table, seething with ire and passion, and tell her in vividly colorful detail just how wrong she is, just before pulling her into my arms and kissing her with so much conviction that her knees weaken under the weight of our love.

  But that only happens in fictional worlds erected on an onyx-inked canvas. And this is by far the realest shit I have ever felt.

  “Fuck you, Fi,” I spit out in frustration before pushing away from the table, the chairs legs cutting angry slits into the hardwood. She looks up at me dumbfounded, confused by my reaction. Wondering why the hell her words could have affected me so deeply when all she did was serve me cold truth on a silver platter. I don’t bother to set her straight or defend myself. I don’t even look at her. I do exactly what’s expected of me. What I’ve done to every person who has ever told me something I didn’t want to hear, nonfiction or not.

  I turn and walk away as if the last ten minutes, the last ten hours, the last ten years never existed. I leave it all behind on the white linen tablecloth of my once favorite table at our once favorite bistro with my once favorite girl. She is merely a memory of my best friend, and I a ghost of hers. Trouble is, she doesn’t believe in me.

  Maybe Fi was right. Maybe I do self-sabotage. Maybe people like me and her can never be more than friends. Shit, maybe I’m not meant to be more than friends with anyone. Because as I retreat into the safety of my detachment—where I lick my wounds doused in scotch and nurse my sorrow-scrawled scars—I can’t think of one good goddamn reason why I thought I could be capable of more.

  “WANT TO HEAR A JOKE?”

  In the fog of dejection, I nod. I’m hollow inside, allowing words and thoughts and emotions to float disjointedly in my head. So I say nothing, in hopes that soon, I may feel nothing.

  “What’s a Dallas Cowboys’ favorite pastry?” the Colonel asks, his eyes still fixated on the screen. My gaze is trained ahead, but I haven’t see a thing. I didn’t even realize the Seahawks were playing the Cowboys.

  I barely open my mouth, and answer without breathing. “What?”

  “A turnover!”

  I nod again, the only sign of coherency I’m able to muster. I wouldn’t have even come if it weren’t for having to pick up Bartleby. Plus, I promised the Colonel, and I always try to keep my promises. I’m a liar, but I try to at least be a loyal one.

  Several quiet minutes tick by before my grandfather speaks again, yet he still stares intently at the televised violence that uncannily resembles the mish mosh of turmoil in my empty gut.

  “Something on your mind, son?” He knows the answer. He knows I’m not myself, that I’ve strolled in here this lovely fall afternoon just a fraction of the man I was just yesterday. Fiona cut me to the quick, and I’ve been left a bleeding, severed carcass. Incomplete in every way.

  Yet, and still, I answer, “Nope.”

  “Sure about that?”

  “Yup.”

  He doesn’t pry. We’ve learned to communicate with the words that go unspoken.

  He grunts, “I’m here when you want to talk about it, son.”

  I nod, “I know, Colonel. Thank you. I just can’t. Not now.”

  I’m two seconds from throwing in the towel on the charade when we hear the familiar foghorn cackling and windbreaker sweat suit swish of Hell-On-Wheels Helen. I roll my eyes and heave a heavy sigh, sinking further into the couch, wishing like hell it would swallow me whole. I can avoid the Colonel’s questions, but I have no patience or energy for Helen’s incessant prying.

  “Benny! Lovely to see you, darling. And with August here as well. Look at that! April was just telling me what a splendid time you two have been having.”

  I look up to find not one but two pairs of blue eyes vying for my attention. I must look like shit, yet they’re both nearly salivating all over Helen’s cheap nylon jacket, which is fittingly decked out in orange and black for Halloween.

  Shit. Where have I been? It’s almost November already, meaning my deadline is much closer than I mentally calculated.

  “Nice to see you, Helen. April.” I force myself to my feet to greet them both with kisses on their cheeks. I owe April that much. She was totally cool about the way I left things with her. And for what? To rescue a girl who didn’t need rescuing? Who didn’t want it? From me? “It’s good to see you,” I tack on when I pull away and sit back down, moving over to indicate that she should join me, leaving Helen to torture the Colonel on the other side of the couch.

  “Didn’t expect to see you here, August,” she smiles stiffly, reading the tension around my eyes. “Everything ok…with your friend?”

  “Yeah, um, everything’s fine. Sorry I haven’t called in a while. I was out of town. Just got back Friday night.”

  “Oh. Well…I’m glad to hear it.”

  “Thanks again,” I say, scrubbing the back of my neck, feeling like a complete jackass. I feel like I’ve let her down, like I owe her something. An explanation, an apology, a do-over—something. But before I can offer the tiny bit of fuck I have left, she beats me to the punch.

  “Hey, how about dinner some time this week? I make a mean chicken parm.”

  “Oh, yeah?” I don’t have the heart to turn her down, yet what’s left of it—the tattered, bloody mess that beats raggedy within my chest cavity—is just not feeling this. Not feeling her. Not feeling anything but confusion and frustration and, shit, fucking rage for putting myself out there and revealing the only honest part of my soul only to have it mocked and derided for an audience of bemused diners enjoying shirred eggs and scones.

  They say there are five stages of grief. Well, I think I’m tackling at least two of those fuckers simultaneously with all the grace of a bull doing ballet.

  “So…dinner?” April pipes up quietly, pulling me back to the conversation, the room. Back to sanity. She watches intently as I chew my bottom lip, pondering the best way to explain my predicament.

  I’m tragically in love with my best friend —whom I’ve just slept with—however, she’s in love with a cocksucking, cheating scumbag with a great head of hair. So while yes, I’d ordinarily love to eat your chicken parm and whatever else you’re offering, I’m much too fucked up in the head to see past anything that isn’t Fiona Shaw, as much as I hate her right now.

  “Hey, son. Let’s go to my apartment to get that thing you came for so you can get back to work. I know your deadline is approaching,” the Colonel says, climbing to his feet and throwing me a lifeline. I nod my appreciation. Nodding is good. Nodding keeps me from blurting out something I’ll regret tomorrow.

  “Yes sir. You’re right about that.” Turning to April, I offer her the consolation of a regretful smile. “I’ll… I’ll see you.” I don’t when or how or in what capacity. I don’t have any pretty lies to warm her heart or her bed tonight.

  Her eyes lower to the floor, refusing to let me see the hurt in them, and I’m grateful. I don’t care about her pain. I can’t. I’m too consumed with my own.

  “You’re talkative today,” the Colonel remarks tersely when we’ve made it to his apartment. Bartleby clambers down from his spot on the couch and greets me at my feet, rubbing his fluffy body against my ankles.

  “Yeah.”

  “Everything ok with the book?”

  “The book is fine,” I reply flatly.

  “And the deal out in Hollywood… still haven’t decided?”

  “Nope.”

  “And things with Fiona are good?”

  Bingo.

  My answer is my non-answer, and I busy myself by stalking over to the kitchen and gathering Bart’s things. And by gathering, I mean throwing them unceremoniously in a grocery tote bag with enough force to punch a hole in the flimsy canvas. Food, bowls, brush, treats. At one point, I think I tossed in a dust bunny that the cleaning ladies must’ve missed.

  “August, is Fiona ok?”

  I suck my teeth in distaste. “She’s fine,” I spit out while gathering Bart’s be
d and toys.

  “You two having a fight?”

  “No.” Technically, we’re not. We’re not having anything, for that matter. Not even a friendship according to her theory.

  “Hmph. Is that right?” he grunts, feigning nonchalance. But the pitbull in him just won’t let it go. He just won’t let me dry swallow my rage, letting it shred my insides on the way down until I’m retching my bright red denial. He won’t let the hollowness take me to that place where fiction reigns and truth is burned at the stake for its black magic audacity, charged with domestic terrorism on the homeland of my heart.

  Goddamn that truth. Goddamn the Colonel. Goddamn his wisdom, his insight. Goddamn my inability to ever amount to the man he was—the man he is today.

  “She said yes,” I sputter. I look away just as the whites of my eyes are colored in red-inked rejection.

  “What?”

  “Fiona. The doctor asked her to marry him. She said yes.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “No,” I reply darkly. “He’s moving her to Seattle. And she said yes. Yes to marrying some asshole she hardly knows. Yes to leaving her home, her job. Yes to leaving her family and friends.” To leaving me. “She said yes to all of it like she never even gave a damn. Like her life here was merely a holding pattern, and she was just waiting for her white knight to sweep her off her feet and fly her far away from mediocrity. She said yes.”

  My grandfather is a logical man. A thinking man. And instead of regurgitating his disdain as I have so eloquently done in the past, he grows quiet and still for a beat. Then he looks up at me with an expression that borders and sympathy and shock.

  “How do you feel about that?”

  Words bubble up my throat so quickly that I nearly choke. “How the fuck do you think I feel?” I grimace. I should apologize, but I’m tumbling recklessly through the Anger stage, hoping to get to the sweet detachment on the other side.

  “I think you’re mad at the wrong person, that’s what I think,” he says softly, yet sternly.

  “Oh, don’t you worry. I’m plenty pissed at her too.”

  “I don’t mean Fiona, August. I mean you.”

  I stop stalking around the room in search of invisible cat toys, and turn to look at him. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  I can see him fighting with his patience at my tone. Even Bartleby has good sense enough to retreat behind the sofa. “It means the real person you should be directing that anger at is yourself. August, you’ve had Fiona for ten years. Since the day you met her—”

  “Had her? I’ve never had Fi.”

  “You had her. From day one, she was yours. But you were too blind and too stupid to see it. You thought chasing every skirt in town somehow made it less true. But every night, it was her you were calling, divulging all your secrets. It was her that waited patiently at home while you ran the streets at night. Her that listened to your ideas, your dreams, your fears. And you didn’t see her, August. You didn’t see what was right there in front of you all along. Not until someone else had eyes for her.”

  I shake my head. “Now you sound like her.”

  “Am I wrong?”

  “You are,” I lie. “It’s not like that. We’re friends. I’m just disappointed she was so desperate for marriage that she settled for the first guy that came along with a Jared credit account. I thought I knew her better than that.”

  “No. You thought she would always be there, waiting in the wings until you deemed your wild oats sufficiently sowed. And now you’re upset that she decided to chase her own happiness. You can’t have it both ways, August. You can’t have her, yet refuse to let her have you.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I know a lot more about life and love than anything you could ever write in your silly little books, young man.”

  I snort sardonically and shake my head again. “Whatever. I have to go.”

  “Fine,” the stubborn old man barks.

  “Fine,” my equally stubborn younger self retorts.

  We trudge off in opposite directions, me towards the couch to scoop up Bart, and him to his bedroom. The Colonel and I never argue. He talks and I listen. But today, I’ve heard enough. From him, from her. I’ve heard enough.

  Begrudgingly, I have to go through the main building to exit the grounds, and I’m in no mood to play it coy with the residents. So when Helen catcalls me from the crochet table, it takes everything in me not to tell the blue-haired biddy to fuck off.

  “August! There you are. April apologizes for her hasty departure, but she has to work today.”

  “That’s fine,” I grumble, trying to escape. Bart squirms uncomfortably in my arms. Even he can feel me tick-tick-ticking closer to a category 5 explosion.

  “I have to tell you…” she rambles on, “I am absolutely delighted about you dating my granddaughter. I never pegged you for the romantic type—you’re almost as rigid and reticent as your grandfather. But April is more than a little smitten with you. I guess it’s true what they say. Love finds you when you least expect it.”

  My mouth says, “I guess so.” But my mind is screaming, “Oh, please shut the fuck up about love.”

  Love is what got me into this mess. Love is the reason I snapped at the one man I’ve looked up to since I was a scrawny ass kid. Love is the reason I tried to be someone I clearly am not, only to make a fool of myself.

  So fuck the fairytale. Fuck trying to conform for the sake of someone else’s view of happiness. I create the fantasies. I don’t live them. Not anymore.

  I CAN’T STAY HOME.

  I can’t look at these walls and pretend like she’s not embedded in every crack and fissure. I can’t sit on the couch and not smell her scent of lavender shampoo on the leather. I can’t listen to music without hearing her favorite songs torturing me on repeat. I can’t watch TV without wondering if the pregnant virgin had her baby or conjuring memories of vegging out with Law and Order: SVU marathons. And I can’t write without every word—every fucking syllable and vowel—being about her.

  To avoid going to prison for arson, I grab my coat and a cab and head down to the bar district. It’s Sunday, so it’s quiet. But I’m not here to socialize. I’m here to forget.

  “Well, isn’t this a pleasant surprise,” Maureen, my artsy bartender smiles before licking her cherry lips. “Been a while, August. I thought you had forgotten all about me.”

  “How could I ever do that, Mo?” I smirk, sliding onto a barstool.

  She wipes down the counter and places a cocktail napkin in front of me. “What’ll it be, handsome?”

  “Scotch neat. For now.”

  “For now?” she coos as she makes my drink.

  “Yes. For now. What time do you get off? Or should I say, what time am I getting you off?”

  The blessed thing about Sundays is that it’s dreadfully slow after there are no more football games to air. So after a few drinks and unholy confessions, Maureen and I are making abstract art between the sheets of her queen-sized bed. She licks lazy strokes up my thighs until heat gathers at the base of my spine. I paint pretty pictures on her soft, pink canvas. I shatter her into a million pieces and scatter her ashes amongst a sky full of neon colored stars. I do to her what I should have done to Fiona.

  “What’s wrong?” she asks, halting her tongue’s advance down my torso.

  “Nothing,” I insist, gently pulling the magenta curls at the nape of her neck.

  “No. I felt you flinch. Am I hurting you?”

  “Of course not. I’m just ticklish there.” The lie rolls off my tongue like butter. There’s no way I could tell her Fiona was responsible for pulling me out of the moment. Just the thought of her makes me feel…I don’t know. Inadequate? And that’s not a feeling I’m used to.

  To scrub her from my mind, I flip Maureen over onto her back, and reach over for another condom from the nightstand, slipping it on in five seconds flat.

  “Again?”
she breathes, her eyes wild with lust.

  “Hell yeah,” I all but groan as I part her legs and slip into her.

  I need this. I need to rage fuck her into the headboard until all thoughts of Fiona are purged from my mind. Even if I can’t feel her, hear her, taste her…at least I won’t have to constantly be tormented with the remembrance of another woman.

  I’m pumping into to her viciously, chasing the high of orgasm that seems so close yet somehow unobtainable, when Maureen presses her glittery blue tipped fingers to my cheek. It’s too tender, too soft. Too much of what it felt like to be artificially loved by Fi. I try to turn away and focus on the feel of her warmth wrapped around me, but she guides my face to hers.

  “Hey,” she whispers with too much sweetness on her tongue.

  “Yeah?”

  She frowns, and the whites of her eyes glaze with emotion I refuse to acknowledge. “Where are you?”

  I dig into her hard, relentlessly, causing her breath to stutter, but she doesn’t give up. “Where are you, August,” she mewls through waves of pleasure.

  “I’m here. Don’t you feel me?” Another deep stroke that makes her shiver underneath me.

  “No, you’re not,” she moans. “I feel your body, but I can’t feel your soul.”

  I pull my face out of her grasp and gather her wrists above her hands. Then I bury myself deep inside her, as far as I can go. Until I’m hidden in the safe arms of denial.

  I don’t come. I can’t. I have nothing left in me to give.

  “Don’t go,” she begs when I sit up at the edge of the bed. Her fingernails carve glittery trails on my back. She’s still panting, and so am I, but I have to go. There’s nothing here for me.

  “Have to write,” is all I offer her before pulling on my jeans. She sighs when I stand up to finish dressing, but I don’t look at her. I’m too ashamed to face the disappointment in her eyes.

  “I’m glad I saw you tonight. I needed to talk to you.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “I met someone. A nice guy. I really like him.”