Everybody Falls

by J. A. Hornbuckle

  The emotions which were moving through him now though, he didn't feel like claiming. Didn't want to be feeling. And the fucking ache, the fucking hurt, were like daggers in his head, his heart and underneath his skin.

  He stood up shakily and began putting one foot in front of another, flashing on the stash of booze he'd found in Grandpop's old workshop. A whole row of bottles with a couple of shot glasses pushed off to the side in that old locked cupboard in back.

  A tempting row of glassware, dusty and unclaimed, which called to him in such a taunting, seductive whisper.

  'Drink me', he heard them call. 'We can make it better."

  He'd been sober for eight months, two weeks and four days. A long, hurtful eight months after ten years of hiding from reality with the drugs and booze. Sober was supposed to feel better.

  Wasn't it?

  That's what he'd heard from the assembly when he went for the daily meetings, from his therapist. Shit, even Grams had said it a couple of times.

  But, at the moment, sober sucked. Reality was awful and he wanted it all to just go the fuck away. Right, the fuck, now.

  What was he supposed to do when the need was the greatest? Call on God or something. Wasn't God the one that took Grams away?

  Or was it to call Boots to help him? He was Jax's sponsor and was supposed to help him. Shit, the old man couldn't help himself and seemed to make up the rules as he went along.

  Like there weren't already enough fucking rules in the world.

  Jax slipped into one of the chairs at the dining room table and rested his head on his folded arms. The table his Grams wanted to use for everyday since she knew that she wasn't going to have any more special occasions to use it.

  Fuck!

  He wanted to scream.

  He wanted to run as far and as fast as his legs could carry him.

  He wanted to hit, maim and destroy something, anything, just to release all these fucking emotions. To make them get gone and stay gone.

  'Drink us, Jax,' the bottles sang in the quiet of the kitchen, cutting through the chaos of his mind. 'Just a little and we can make it all better.'

  He was entitled to it, right? He deserved it.

  His Grams was dead.

  A couple of swallows wouldn't hurt. Just enough to take the edge off, to make some of the pain go away. And he could brush his teeth and swish some of that peppermint shit so nobody would have to know. Lace was still asleep and Sarge was out by the road. Boots was, well, Boots was doing what he thought needed to be done.

  He, though, was just sitting and hurting, almost out of his fucking mind with the soft call of the bottles, the goddamn juice that could see him over this first bit.

  Just today.

  Just a couple of swallows to get through today wouldn't be bad.

  He deserved to take the edge off, just ease it off a tad bit, so he could function.

  Hell, yeah. A little was exactly what he needed.

  Jax heard the screen door of the back porch behind him as he made his way across the backyard, back through the garage into the large space that was the workshop. To the glass bottles that were calling louder now. That were steadily singing, connecting with his broken, empty heart.

  He held up the middle fingers of both hands over his head as he moved over the open uncovered area, giving the whirlybirds in the sky something to focus their lenses on.

  *.*.*.*.*

  "Christ, babe!" I heard him bellow as he shoved me away, pushing me so hard that I fell off the side of the bed and my ass hit the floor with a bang. "If you want to suck me off then do it fucking right!"

  I hadn't wanted to suck him at all. He'd gotten into bed and then, when I'd pressed up next to him to find my special spot on his shoulder, he'd used a hand at my neck to push me downwards. He'd pushed me down hard, his fingers digging in, not giving me a choice.

  It had been weird with him since Edie had passed.

  I understood some of it. Grams passing had hit him so badly yet a lot of the behavior I was seeing couldn't be blamed on just that.

  At first we'd clung together, both of us crying off and on, sharing our stories of her in soft whispers that were intertwined with soothing kisses and silky caresses in his room of the quiet farmhouse. Then, there were the times he'd go for his 'walks'. Walks that seemed to take a long, long time and he'd come back then lock himself in the downstairs bathroom.

  However, the Jack that entered that bathroom wasn't the same one that came out.

  The exiting Jack was overly jovial and a real happy-go-lucky kind of guy.

  Loud.

  Raw.

  Boisterous.

  A guy I didn't know. A guy I didn't like very much. A guy that wasn't my Jack.

  It got worse after the director at the mortuary had made a visit, explaining that he didn't have the security Jack needed if he attended Edie's funeral. Explaining there was a special room in the back he could let Jack use to say good-bye in private. Saying there was no way he could protect the other people that wanted to attend if Jack was going to be a part of the memorial service, much less stand at the gravesite.

  I'd called Sarge after the funeral director left because of the rage he'd flown into. A rage that actually scared me down to my soul. Luckily, Sarge and Turner had gotten him calmed down and into bed.

  There was little left of the china that I had so carefully stacked under Edie's tutelage when she wanted to use it for everyday. It had taken me an hour to get it all swept up off the old linoleum after his, and there's no other words for it, temper tantrum.

  "Lace, you still need to open the Bakery tomorrow, Baby Girl," Sarge had argued when I had said that I was needed at the farmhouse. I was talking out loud about maybe finding another baker to fill in for me as he, Turner, and I sat at the dining room table still planted in the kitchen.

  "I told you before about this. Rockers love and care different than other people, especially those that have grown up in the business. You need to keep up with your life if you're going to survive," he'd said firmly. "You can come back here in the afternoons, but it's important you keep up your regular life, Lace."

  It was that first time I came back to the farmhouse after the Bakery's re-opening that I really saw the change in my Jack.

  No kisses.

  No real hugs of merit.

  And when we'd gone to bed, he'd simply rolled over and tried to shove himself into me.

  No caresses.

  No words, either spicy or sweet.

  He'd just tried to part my thighs with his legs as I felt his hardness press against my core, and I was as dry as the Sahara. It hadn't seemed to deter him, nor did he even seem to notice until I shoved a hand between us to cup myself; to barricade my opening from his hard, dry prods.

  He got the message.

  After rolling off me, he grabbed my hand and had me stroke him in complete silence, before he rolled away from me and went to sleep, not even bothering to clean himself off. Even tired as I was, I'd lain awake next to him for hours wondering about what had happened and how to make it better.

  Edie's funeral was beautiful, the chapel filled with flowers and I don't think there were but a few places left to sit when all was said and done. Jack had done a vocal recording, a beautiful tribute about Grams and what he knew of her that was so caring and so loving there wasn't a dry eye in the place.

  Jack couldn't be there. Nor could he be at the gravesite.

  I tried to fill him in on everything, giving him my impressions of the beautiful service, of the flowers and the music that she had picked out to be played which included two Wynter's Vicious songs. He cut me off before storming out towards the garage.

  And, I got it. I really did.

  He was hurting and hurting bad. He'd lost her and then didn't even get the opportunity to participate in saying good-bye to her except for a voice recording.

  However, this last thing? The tossing me on the floor? Even if he didn't mean to do it, it was still so wrong. So very, very wro
ng. I can do understanding and can be supportive but did I need to be treated badly just because he was hurting?

  Oh, hell, no.

  "What's going on, Jack?" I asked on almost a whisper, raising myself to my feet and wrapping my arms around my waist in my place next to the bed, trying to still my body's tremors. I was giving him the benefit of the doubt, however this was a way too much even for me.

  He raised his head and looked at me, eyes narrowed, lips tight.

  "What's going on?" he said harshly on a high voice mimicking mine. "Here's what's going on, you dumb broad."

  I saw him swing his legs to the floor as he grabbed the nightstand as if he was centering himself.

  "You're fucking clueless in bed. Almost fucking useless. Jay-sus, you small town girls need an education," he laughed, yet the laugh I heard, the sound that hit my heart was ruthless in its intent. It had an icy edge, a hateful undertone that ripped into me and was nothing like I'd ever heard come out of his mouth "What? You haven't heard that before? Seems to me that a daughter of a whore, a gal who's own mother wanted to watch her fuck a star, would know at least how to give head."

  My ears heard the words which seemed to make a bee-line to my heart, each syllable a stab. Each utterance a hammer. I could almost hear the break there when the words, his words smashed into me. I couldn't help it. I stumbled backward with the resounding when it did.

  I reached for my clothes on the dresser as his mouth kept spewing his hurtful, destructive words.

  "Don't look at me like that, you dumb cunt! I'm not the problem here. If you don't know what you're doing, then why are you even the fuck in my bed? Huh? God, you stupid little star-struck…You're nothing 'cept a GiM, aren't you? A squealer, but without any talent. Get the fuck outta my house," he'd screamed as he had tried to stand.

  I was dressed and running down the stairs as he continued to yell, my heart left in pieces on his bedroom floor.

  My hand slipped on the large knob of the back door of the kitchen and, once released, I sped towards the door of the porch only to be brought up by the sight of a girl standing at the edge of the overhead, outside light.

  "You okay, honey?" she asked quietly, her eyes doing an eye-roam.

  I was doing the same, noting the denim vest over a lacey bra, the frayed short, jean cut-offs and the fishnets paired with Doc Martins. Her blonde hair was in a messy bun on top of her head and her makeup was heavy and dark.

  "He was pretty fucked up when I left him this morning," she explained, her eyes shooting over my shoulder at the shouts still heard from within. "Maybe I should come back tomorrow."

  That was it. That was when the thing in my chest was completely destroyed, whatever had remained was now ash.

  "I'm Stella," she said and held a hand out between us. "Are you Lacey?"

  I stared at it, just stood and stared at her hand not having a clue of what to do, of how to move.

  My feet did, though. I let them carry me to my car and back to my small place over the Bakery, so heart-blown I was completely numb.

  Chapter 30

  It had taken more than a few weeks, yet I thought I was finally getting to normal. Or, at least, my new kind of normal anyway.

  I don't remember much of the first couple of weeks after being tossed out by Jack. Which is how I thought of the end of us. Him pushing me off his bed before hurling the hand-grenades of words that destroyed whatever had been my heart at the time.

  His actions and words had been on an endless loop in my head, superseding all other words and thoughts. Thoughts that should've been about big things, like my business. Or even small things, like personal hygiene.

  Sarge slept on small twin bed in the spare bedroom and tried to keep things going at the Bakery. For that, he'll always have my gratitude. But, the other stuff? The lectures, the trying to shove food down my throat with the claims of getting me back to 'normal'?

  I still hate to think about it.

  Those close to me were worried and made no bones about it.

  I didn't eat. And sleep was a long, by-gone, memory.

  Mostly I cried.

  I cried a lot.

  In fact, I don't think I'd be putting too fine a point on it to say that crying actually became my hobby.

  Ricki came by. Ricki came by a lot to my way of thinking. Too much.

  Once she'd sprayed my bed, emptying one of my perfume bottles one spritz at a time, telling me that she loved the smell of perfume in the morning. I think she was trying to sound like that actor in that war movie I hated which every guy I'd ever dated made me watch. She said the odor in the room reminded her of, and I quote, "An old rocker's ass crack."

  Yeah, it made me cringe, too.

  That wasn't half as bad as when she dragged me, fully clothed into the shower and screamed at me until the hot water was gone.

  As I understand it, the audience downstairs had heard her words. It would've been hard not to since Ricki never cared much for other people's opinions. She doesn't her pull her punches when she talks to anyone, much less, screams.

  It took my dear, darling grandpop to set me straight and even then the turnaround didn't come overnight.

  "Oh, my sweet Baby Girl," he'd murmured at one point, holding me so tightly on Grandma Lilly's old sofa. "He's just not worth this. You're killing yourself with all this grief. You've got to let this go, Lace. Let him go, my darling."

  And then he told me the stories, detailed stories about him and Lilly. The loving, the lying, the way they'd came together and parted again and again for so many years.

  Just as I'd found my feet, my equilibrium, the flowers started arriving.

  At first it was only a delivery every day, then it escalated. I'd declined them all, of course. Each and every one of them. Still, though, Louis from Auburn's Florist would make the effort. Louis told me that he'd taken the first few home to his girl but, when he was delivering three times a day, he'd just save them up and take them down to the senior center or Sutter-Auburn Hospital to brighten their day.

  And every card with every bouquet held only four words.

  'I'm so sorry, Lace.'

  Yeah, well. I was, too. Except I was only regretting scraping his sorry ass off the asphalt.

  I should've just let him be when he bit it.

  Should've just called 9-1-1 and had them deal with his sorry shit.

  I heard about him, about Jack, in overheard conversations. He was still practicing with the guys only now they'd moved the practices to mornings because he was so fucked up by afternoon that he could barely hold his guitar or find the keys on the electronic keyboard.

  Ricki kept coming by to continue with 'Lacey Watch', but she tried to assure me that it was just to visit. Since she was still wound tightly to Turner, I knew different and kept myself to myself. She and Sarge had a lot to whisper about whenever she came into the Bakery. Every damn time she left, she hugged me just a little too long for me to even begin to consider it a casual visit.

  The paparazzi had packed up and gone when I'd been in my crying stage, which was good. I'd had enough of them to last me a lifetime. Living under a microscope was awful, just as Jack had warned.

  But, I didn't use that name in my head.

  Every time I thought about him, every time my heart cried out for him, I tried to use the word 'asshole' instead of his name. I was hoping it would grab hold but it never did. Even when I woke myself, straight in the middle of a midnight orgasm, his name was on my lips coming up from a place where I used to have a heart.

  That particular day, Ricks had come by to say 'hey' just as I was closing the store, making my way back to the kitchen to do the container thing on whatever magic Sarge had created in his alone time in the kitchen.

  I didn't do that kind of stuff anymore.

  You know, the creating magic thingie.

  I baked and I decorated, because truthfully? The magic was gone for me.

  We chit-chatted as I moved, storing and bagging the stuff for the Shelter before Rick
i shifted to Sarge as she pulled one of her rag sheets from her purse.

  "Can you believe it?" I heard her whisper as she leaned against him.

  "Yeah, girl. It's real. I saw him Sunday and he's doing better. Even I've gotta admit, this is something," I heard my grandpop rumble. He'd taken the time when I was first starting to come back to life to let me know that Jack had quit the farm and gone back to So Cal.

  "What?" I asked, curiosity overcoming my no-need-to-know attitude. It had been a couple of months and I already knew who they were talking about. Who they always talked about.

  I saw his frosted blue eyes and her deep sea-green ones turn to me as I stood holding the swinging half-doors to the kitchen open.

  "Jax. His new tattoo," Ricki said cautiously, shooting her eyes to Sarge as she spoke. Almost like she was looking for approval. Or for backup, I wasn't sure which.

  She held the newspaper out to me which had a half-page picture of Jack, caught from the waistband of his jeans up, shirtless. There, and in the small inset picture, was a tattooed heart on his previously un-inked chest. A chest I'd always found amazing in its maleness, unblemished by the needle.

  The heart was in the shape, which held the marks, of the lace that Grandma Lilly had commissioned to have done when she'd taken her inheritance and began the store.

  The lace echoing our label for the Bakery.

  My name in symbol.

  Right over his stupid, asshole of an ass-hat, heart.

  "He checked himself back into rehab, Lace," Sarge growled. "He's trying, Baby Girl."

  I looked at that picture for a long time. A long, damn, time.

  "Wonder how Stella likes it?" I asked aloud as my eyes stayed glued to the paper.

  "Stella Nixon?" Ricki shot back. "Isn't she the one that had been dealing him the drugs?"

  "The one that Boots turned in, you mean," Sarge retorted with a snort. "Heard her ass was in jail after Boots called when he caught her sneaking around Jax a couple of months back."