I knew it was control, but I hadn’t really grasped how far that went.
“We don’t need to go over my opinion about his verbal abuse. I think that’s clear,” Axl went on.
It sure was.
“And I sense you have no real idea how much through his past, and likely his current abuse he’s inserted himself in your life, your thought processes, the image you have of yourself. I think he controls a good deal of your thoughts without you even realizing he controls them.”
Okay, I had to admit, this had come clear with the whole fasting thing and it was something I needed to take some time to ponder.
Though not over croissants on a perfect (or it was) Sunday morning with my brand-new, super-fit, had-the-chest-of-a-god boyfriend.
“So,” Axl sounded like he was about to sum up, “if it were up to me, you’d tell him to kiss your ass and be in touch only if he wanted to take you to dinner or a Rockies game.”
Wow.
Wouldn’t that be a dream.
“Hmm,” I repeated to share that thought.
“It isn’t up to me,” he kept going. “That’s your choice. And I’d like to tell you I won’t go over there tonight and tell him that I know he called you a whore, and then explain somewhat thoroughly how I feel about that, and how I’d like him to refrain from allowing it, or anything like it, ever to happen again. But I can’t tell you that. Because when I go over there with you tonight, that’s precisely what I’m gonna do. With my job, I can’t be there every time you go over to see him. I can only hope you won’t hide that shit from me if it happens, so if I have to have another conversation with your father, I can get on that without delay or without him breaking down what I built up.”
All that was awesome, and scary, in equal measure (maybe a wee bit more scary).
But …
Hang on.
“What you built up?” I queried.
“Babe, you gotta learn how to take off the blinders he put on and see you.”
“Okay, I like that, honey. But you don’t have to make a job of that.”
In fact, I really didn’t want him to make a job of that.
I wanted to be his girlfriend.
No, I was his girlfriend.
What I wasn’t was so deep in the la-la land of Axl Pantera (and his bare chest) post-orgasm, croissants-and-coffee-in-bed goodness that I didn’t think that we’d hit rough patches and it would take work to keep our relationship strong. And frankly, at this point, build that relationship. Because we were in our infancy and anything that was shiny and new was exciting and seemed like it’d never lose its luster, but it always did.
But I didn’t want to be a job to him.
I didn’t want to be work.
His head ticked. “Sorry?”
“You don’t have to make a job of that,” I repeated.
“What do you mean?”
“Telling me all the time I’m beautiful and perfect and you like how I dance and stuff like that. Make it your job to do that.”
He fell silent.
So silent, his silence was the definition of silence.
And after it went on awhile, it started freaking me out.
“Axl,” I said.
“I thought we went through this,” he replied, his voice strange. Low. Careful.
“We did.”
“I’m not blowing sunshine.”
“Okay.”
The silence came back and now he was examining my face in a way I felt he might be able to count my pores.
“Axl.” That one came out as snappish.
Because, what was the deal?
Again with the careful tone. “You’re not hearing me, Hattie.”
“I am.”
He shook his head. “No. You’re listening. But you aren’t hearing.”
“I don’t get what you mean.”
“I’m not feeding you a line.”
“You’ve said that, now repeatedly,” I reminded him.
So suddenly I jumped, he reached out and caught my face in both hands and brought his so close to mine, all I could see were his eyes.
“Fuck,” he muttered.
“What?” I breathed, now not starting to freak out.
I was in a freak-out, full bore.
“You were beautiful in that dress yesterday, Hattie.”
“Okay.”
“Listen to me.”
That was not careful.
It was deep. Resonant. Luke-I-Am-Your-Father intense.
“When you were doing those twirls up on the tips of your toes to Joan Jett—”
“Pirouettes,” I corrected.
“Yeah, those,” he said. “The table next to me gasped. Punk is pounding through Smithie’s sound system and I could hear them gasp.”
Wow.
That was huge.
I stared into his eyes.
“You doin’ ballet to Joan Jett with dark eyes and safety pins in your shirt was genius.”
My heart started beating hard.
Axl continued.
“You say ‘Okay,’ you say ‘Thanks,’ you brush it off when I’m telling you the god’s honest truth. I told you that you were remarkable—”
“I know and that’s sweet and—”
His hands pressed in and he got so close, the tip of his nose was brushing mine. “I told you that, Hattie, because you’re remarkable.”
Okay.
Wow.
I began panting.
“You have no idea because you heard him tell you over and over again that you’re not. But he’s wrong. You are. And it’s not because you have a fantastic body, and I swear to fuck, it took a lot out of me not to drag you to the dressing room and bang you against the mirror when I saw you in that dress yesterday. It isn’t because you trained for years and know the moves so you can execute them. You make people feel when you dance. You make them gasp. Your dad’s been a dick to you all your life, he messed with your head, hurt you, and your loyalty to blood doesn’t break. Your art, babe, we haven’t even gotten to that. Fuck, we haven’t even scratched the surface of you.”