“That’s the power of Axel,” he said with a cocky grin.
I laughed. “Don’t get too ahead of yourself. Remember what I said.”
“I know. You don’t miss me. That’s good. Distance is the best thing we’ve got, Shel.”
I nodded. “Good. I’m glad we’re on the same page.”
Our words were on the same page. Our eyes were on the same page too… but in a different book.
I broke the deck in two and slid Axel’s half across the table.
“What are we playing?” he asked.
I smiled and flipped the top card over. It was a two of hearts.
“Crap,” I said. “You’re going to win this hand easily.”
“Ah, right,” he said. He flipped his top card. “Nine of clubs.”
He swiped both cards off the table.
We started to play war without saying another word to each other for the first couple of minutes. Other than gently stealing a glance from each other here and there, the focus was on flipping the top card over and seeing who won.
Then came the hand when he threw down a king and I flipped a queen.
We both reached for the cards at the same time, our hands colliding.
Axel had two fingers on the cards and my hand was flat across his hand. His warm hand. My fingertips near the very end of the sleeve of tattoos on his arm.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Queen beats king.”
“Really?”
“Oh, so it’s okay for Stacy to change the rules?”
Axel chuckled. “Is that jealousy I hear in your voice?”
“No,” I said. “Not at all. I just want to win this game.”
“Sorry, Shel, we have to play the right way,” Axel said. “I let Stacy change the rules because… it’s Stacy.”
“Because you always treated her like a little sister,” I said. “You loved her. Cared about her. Would do anything for her. Including letting her cheat to win a game.”
“So?”
“But not for me…”
Axel turned his hand and slowly gripped mine. He leaned forward, pressing his body against the table. There was a deep burning fire in his eyes.
“Shel, what I gave you was so much more than cheating at a fucking card game,” he said in his rough voice.
He gave my hand one quick squeeze and pulled his hand away.
My hand flopped to the table with a thud, as though it were completely numb. My brain begged my heart to not let my mouth fall open and have my jaw smack the table.
“Take the cards,” Axel said.
“No,” I said. “I was just messing around.”
“No you weren’t,” he said. “We can bend the rules. It’s different now, right?”
Different now… meaning you don’t love me. Meaning you don’t look at me like you used to. Meaning…
I turned my head for a second.
Was I really going to get jealous over the past? Or even think about it?
“Shel, take the cards,” he said. “Who cares?”
“I care,” I snapped. I flicked my wrist and threw the two cards at Axel. “Take the fucking cards, Axel. I was just fucking joking.”
The cards fell to the floor and Axel didn’t move to get them.
I drank the rest of the beer in my bottle and had the wicked urge to smoke about four cigarettes, one after another. Smoke until I was dizzy. Smoke until I felt sick.
“Christ, Shel,” Axel said. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Don’t do this to me now, Axel. Don’t play that game with me.”
“What game is that?” he asked.
“Whatever this is.”
“You wanted me to come over,” he said. “And do you think for a second that I can’t tell that something is eating at you? I know you, Shel.”
“You don’t know a thing about me,” I yelled at him.
Yelling… why are you yelling?
Axel furrowed his brow. “I’m not going to reply to that.”
“Of course you’re not. Just… I’m sorry I reached for the cards, Axel. I thought you’d find it funny and let it go.”
“I said to take the cards, Shel. What the hell…”
I didn’t want to deal with it anymore. Something washed over me. Sitting there with him, playing cards, touching hands, that tingling feeling of flirting, thinking about more, realizing that we had already lived this life. This moment had already come and gone for us. And we were right back at it.
Even if that’s not how Axel looked at it.
I stuck my right foot out and put my hands to the table to push myself up. I had no idea what the plan was from there. Yell and ask Axel to leave? Lock myself in the bathroom and try to collect myself? Leave my own apartment?
“What the hell is that?” Axel asked.
I was starting to stand when I saw where he was pointing.
Pointing at my ankle. My pants had lifted up enough to show it off. Which wasn’t a big deal… or so I thought.
I looked at my ankle and I quickly shut my eyes.
“Shit,” I whispered.
Truthfully, it wasn’t a big deal. Or it shouldn’t have been.
But it was.
“Is that what I think it is?” Axel asked me.
I opened my eyes and he was already standing up. His eyes didn’t move from my ankle. I hadn’t even moved yet.
I was busted.
For what?
Because of a tattoo on my ankle.
Which shouldn’t have been a big deal, except that I had promised a long time ago that Axel would do my first tattoo.
And the tattoo on my ankle wasn’t from him.
3.
I sort of felt foolish as I grabbed Axel’s arm, digging my heels into the old carpeting in the living room of my apartment, wanting him to not storm out before we talked.
He paused and threw his head back and growled, “No.”
That’s when I let him go and stumbled back, putting my hands to my mouth.
It was like stepping back in time for real.
I could clearly remember this same scene playing out a hundred times before. When things would reach their breaking point and Axel would leave. He’d never leave for good and he would never go with another woman. He’d go to Little Mikey’s and hang out there, get shitfaced, and then Pecker would call someone to come and get him. Pecker would then call me, just to let me know that he was safe and someone had got him. There were a few times when Pecker would let Axel sleep right there at the bar. Or on a pool table. Or on the damn dirty floor.
“This was a bad idea,” Axel said with his back to me.
“I thought we could at least be in the same room together. Maybe figure out a friendship.”
“You got a tattoo, Shel,” he said.
“Yeah, I did. So what?”
“It’s not so what for me.”
“Oh, and everything between us is for me?”
“When did you get it?”
“That doesn’t matter.”
“To me it does.”
“How many women have you fucked since we split?”
Axel turned his head. “That’s where you want to go?”
“What? Is that what it feels like for you right now? To imagine some guy touching me? Me pulling up my pant leg for him. Or maybe I wore really short shorts. And I went to another tattoo shop. It wasn’t done at St. Skin, Axel. Some guy rubbing his hand up and down my ankle, making me shiver, asking me if it was my first time.”
Axel made fists. The anger that swept across his face made me shiver with an icy chill.
Holy shit, Shelby, you officially broke him…
“Years, Shel, years… that’s what I gave. That’s why I waited.”
“Well, I had to find a way to figure it out, Axel,” I said. “So I got a tattoo. Oh well.”
“Right. Oh well. It doesn’t fucking matter anymore. Queen beats a king. You got inked by some other guy. And I’m just a drunk who fucks any
woman he wants. That’s what we wanted, right? We wanted the freedom from each other. So we could do this shit and not care about it.”
“It’s not that simple, Axel.”
“Yeah, actually it is. I remember it clearly. Sitting there at the table, signing the papers. The last goodbye. Without a fucking word to each other.”
He started to walk and I went for him.
“Maybe we never meant to actually say goodbye.”
Axel laughed. “What?”
“We did what we had to do back then, Axel. It was time for… a change.”
“So, what, you calling me now is all about a goodbye? Closure, right? You said that, didn’t you? You want closure. So you have me come over to have a beer. And I’m sitting there thinking that something is wrong with you. That you’re going to tell me something important and I’m wondering how I fit into it. How I can help without messing things up. But instead, you planned on pretending like everything is normal. And then I see the tattoo…”
“Axel, it’s not like that at all.”
“It is, Shel. It is. That damn ink is your goodbye. I get it. This is the freedom we signed up for.”
Axel shook me away and walked to the door.
I watched him open it, and just as it clicked shut, I ran forward again.
He didn’t slam the door.
Which meant that he wasn’t angry.
He was just hurt.
All these years later and I could still hurt him.
4.
I opened the door and the front door was already shutting. I had a pack of cigarettes in my hand, along with a lighter. It was a cheap move to grab the smokes on the way out. My feeble attempt at having a decent excuse to smoke. As though I actually needed one. I was a grown goddamn woman with plenty of life on her plate and this brought me just the slightest amount of pleasure.
Axel had the door to his truck open when he stopped and looked right at me.
I froze as he stood there.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“For what?” I asked.
“For everything,” he said.
He got into his truck and started it.
I had the chance right then to fix this. To run up to the truck and make him roll the window down. To have that moment where we’d forget about time and everything that happened between us. To peel away the shell of what remained and find the honesty we both never spoke with. To the outside world, we were divorced. But inside both of us, there was another story. Especially for me.
Axel started to inch back out of the parking spot, and I simply got myself a cigarette and lit it up, so he could see, as my final jab to his heart. I took a deep drag as he drove away, leaving me standing there completely alone.
I had no idea what I’d expected out of the night. A part of me hoped for the old Axel and Shelby. The ones who were friends and who were fierce together, never crossing that blurry line. Until the night we did. For fun. As friends. But friends became lovers, and lovers became wild love, and wild love became marriage. And then in one breath, it all came to an end.
I blew out the smoke and quickly took another drag.
That was the dumbest thing I could do. Stand there, smoking, not enjoying it, but doing it out of some sense of defiance.
With one last drag, I put the cigarette out and went back inside. My mouth tasted disgusting and I smelled the same.
In my living room, I looked at the cards on the table and Axel’s beer bottle.
I blinked, fighting back tears that shouldn’t have been coming. There was no more need for these kind of tears. Just like Axel said, this was our freedom. The freedom from these feelings and these stupid tears.
I touched the corners of my eyes and went to get another beer.
I was alone, and I hated to be alone.
I put my foot up on the kitchen table and looked at the tattoo on my right ankle. I remembered everything about it. When I got it. Where I got it. Why I got it. And the second the needle touched my skin, I regretted it. But I didn’t stop it.
And I didn’t even like the tattoo.
I thought it was stupid. And ugly.
I swallowed hard, still fighting back tears.
Then again… if I wanted to get the tattoo fixed… there was a really good tattoo shop that was local…
Ten
*PRESENT DAY*
AXEL
1.
I heard the thudding and growled, pulling the pillow over my head. I knew it was morning thanks to the fucking sun pushing through the window. And I knew what that thudding sound was. Someone at my damn door. Which meant that it was late in the morning and I was supposed to be at St. Skin. Normally, they’d just call my phone and break my balls until I decided to answer or show up.
This was my thing. It’s what I did. It was the exact reason why I didn’t want to head up the new shop. I didn’t need that in my life. Setting an alarm. Showing up on time. Dealing with employees and people.
The thudding stopped, which was unusual. I poked my head out from under the pillow and reached for my phone. I didn’t have a single call or text.
That made me pop my head up.
“What the fuck?” I whispered.
A second later, my bedroom door blasted open.
I turned and kicked the covers off, my body going right into fight mode. For all I knew, someone had broken into my apartment and I needed to protect myself. The covers flew off me, the damn sheet sticking to my skin. I turned and fell right out of the fucking bed, putting my hands to the floor to catch myself. The first thing I saw was one of my black boots. I wrapped my hand around it and jumped up, the room spinning for a second as I brought the boot back, ready to launch it at the intruder.
“Holy shit, will you put that thing away?”
Tate stood there, arms crossed.
“Tate?” I asked. “What the fuck…”
“Put some pants on, Axel,” he said.
I looked down.
I was naked.
Ah, fuck…
Before I could put two and two together, in came another person to the party.
A woman with messy brown hair, shuffling into my bedroom, wearing the flannel shirt I had been wearing the night before. She had a little vixen grin on her face, one eyebrow raised, two cups of coffee with her.
She knew damn well that I didn’t know her name.
“This your friend?” Tate asked and nodded to the woman.
“Why are you holding a boot?” the woman asked.
“I thought someone broke into my apartment,” I growled.
“I let him in,” she said.
“Is that your job?” I asked.
“He said he was your boss. Coffee?”
Tate put a hand out. “No coffee until he puts himself away.”
“Come on, that’s my favorite part,” the woman said.
“Christ,” I said. “Will you two get out of here?”
I cupped my other hand over myself and stood there, shaking my head.
“Tell you what,” Tate said, glancing at the woman. He reached into his pocket and took out some money. “Why don’t you leave the two coffees here for me and Axel? And you go and get yourself a nice breakfast, and call your best friend and make up a story about what you did the night before..”
“I can do that,” she said.
“You should,” I said.
“So no second date?” she asked.
Tate belly laughed like an asshole and put his hands under the two coffee mugs and took them from the woman.
“I’m keeping the shirt,” she said.
“A souvenir,” Tate said.
“No,” she said. “He ruined my mine.”
She turned and strutted out of the room.
Just like that, she was gone.
“You don’t know her name, do you?” Tate asked.
“Of course I do,” I lied.
“Then what is it?”
“Lauren,” I said.
“Put some pants
on, we need to talk.”
“Coffee first.”
“Pants first,” Tate said. “I’m not going to stand here with that thing bouncing around.”
“Jealous?”
“You’re a fucking liar, Axel,” Tate said.
“What now?” I asked.
Tate put one of the coffee mugs on the nightstand next to the bed. He looked at me, shaking his head.
“Her name is Lindsay,” he said. “She told me when she answered the door.”
Tate walked out of the bedroom.
I looked at the coffee mug.
I shrugged my shoulders.
At least it started with an L.
2.
“You don’t remember anything from last night, do you?” Tate asked.
“No,” I said. “Well… going back to Little Mikey’s I remember.”
“Back?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I was there and left to… whatever.”
Tate didn’t take a sip of coffee. He just held the mug until he finally dumped it down the drain.
“You only ever get like this when things are bad,” he said. “Last time was when you and Shelby split.”
“So?”
“What’s going on, brother? Talk to me.”
“Christ,” I said. “I thought you were here to break my balls for not being at the shop.”
“That comes later. Right now, I’m your friend.”
“Then be a friend and shut up. Leave it be. Let me get dressed and I’ll meet you down at the shop. Life goes on.”
“I’m not going to do that, Axel. Something has been tearing you apart lately. I know you’ve disappeared in the past, but you’re not disappearing. You’re here, but you’re self-destructing. You only do that when you’re hurting.”
“Fuck off, Tate,” I snapped.
“Yeah, attack me. If that’s what you need to do.”
I put my coffee mug down and stepped forward. I had this quick image of me punching Tate. For no reason. That’s when it really hit me that he was right. I was spiraling a little. Well, more than a little. Normally when shit got to me, I would take off. Do my thing and travel and let it all pass. But I was sticking around this time. For good and bad reasons.
Nothing Lasts Forever Page 8
