“What, no.” Jimmy looks horrified. “I wouldn’t be tangled up with a mob boss. Are you crazy? He’s just a drug dealer.”
My voice is still the same and it’s starting to scare me. “Just a drug dealer. You owe money to a drug dealer.”
“Yeah. Nothing to worry about, babe.”
“Babe.”
He smiles. “Well I mean, I could call you that now, right? You know everything now. Even my bandmates don’t know this. Big Jack wanted to keep it a secret, even from you. I told him you’d be cool with this but he didn’t wanna take any chances. But now you know. And once we pay off Big Jack, we can finally be together. We can start a life in New York, explore this thing between us. It’s gonna be epic, Poe. You and me. It took us three years to get here. But we are here now.”
“Three years, yeah.”
“And I promise no more kissing other girls,” he whispers, grinning. “Not as long as I get to kiss you.”
Kiss me.
He wants to kiss me.
I’ve waited for that kiss for three long years.
And look, it’s happening.
It actually is happening right now.
Like literally.
Because he leans forward, his lips puckered, his eyes hooded.
He’s going to do it.
Kiss me for the very first time.
And here I was, only a few hours ago, so worried about the fact that I might have to take it from someone else. That I might have to sacrifice my first kiss at the devil’s altar so I could be with Jimmy.
I shouldn’t have worried.
He should have though. Jimmy, I mean.
He should be worried right now.
Because as soon as his lips come a hairsbreadth away from mine, I let go of his t-shirt and ball my fist. I then rear back my arm and fucking lay that fist on his fucking face.
He howls and falls back, letting go of me.
“You fucking asshole,” I growl. Then, on a shout, “You fucking asshole! You motherfucking goddamn asshole!”
His hands are covering almost all of his face so his words are muffled as he speaks. “What the fuck, Poe? What the —”
And since it’s not enough, just punching him in the face, I fucking knee him in the groin too as I scream, “You fucking piece of shit!”
Now his hands are covering his junk as he drops to his knees, howling and moaning in pain.
I bend down and growl again, “Stay away from me, you understand? You and that Big Jack. And stay the fuck away from my Alaric.”
And then I’m running out of there.
I’m dashing away and when I see Mo’s face through the car’s window, I burst out crying.
Jimothy Wilson.
I know guys like him.
Blond haired and blue eyed.
Chiseled and athletic with a penchant for smooth talking and flicking their hair every five seconds like they’re in a fucking shampoo commercial. Throw in a football or a guitar and you’ve got yourself a regular teenage heartthrob.
They know how to play a girl. They know how to make her think that she’s special and that she’s the only one.
Yeah, I’ve known a few guys like him.
A guy like him — several guys like him, actually — gave me my broken nose.
Two titanium plates in my arms and a bunch of broken bones scattered around my body.
And a fuck-ton of anger.
At myself.
For being so stupid. For being so weak and pathetic.
For being so gullible as to believe that a girl would be interested in me, in the boy that I used to be, completely opposite of everything that my family name was supposed to represent.
So much so that I didn’t know what to do with it, my anger.
For the longest time, I didn’t know where to put it.
I’d lie there in the hospital bed — like many, many times before — doped up on pain pills but seething with anger.
I went through my PT while seething. I learned to fucking walk again while seething. I learned to make fists, move my fingers while seething. I learned to breathe again without pain while seething. When I rejoined the world as I was before, new and shiny with no broken bones, I did that while seething.
Until I found a way to channel that anger: into my work and a heavy bag.
And then I made it my mission never to be weak again.
I made it my mission to kill all the softness inside of me, all the naïveté, all the gullible things. To gain respect, power, control.
And so far, I haven’t slipped up.
But then I got this call from Mo.
I was on my way back from the facility where my father has been living for the past seven years. It’s an assisted living home that caters to the elderly suffering from memory degenerative illnesses. My father suffers from dementia and I go up there to see him once a month.
Not that he recognizes me, now that his illness is at an advanced stage.