“Go on.”
“When Burns killed Ratchet, he’d been planning it for a while. He was greedy for money. Ratchet’s MM wasn’t rich, the brothers lived decent lives, but Burns wanted more. Dig told me he was always like that, even back in the day, he was always trying to get Ratchet to enter into deals with shady mother fuckers. Ratchet was old school. He came back from ‘Nam with Dig’s dad, and they just wanted to be free. Mayhem are all over the country, but they started the first Missouri chapter.”
“Who’s Dig?”
“We’ll get there. So Ratchet and Dig’s dad, Joe, started MM, but Joe was older and came back from ‘Nam all fucked in the head. Dig was already ten when they returned since Joe had knocked up Dig’s mom before getting drafted.”
“Joe and Dig’s mom weren’t married?”
“Nope. His mom was crazy to start with, and Joe came back crazy. It wasn’t long before Ratchet found Joe with a needle in his arm, dead on the club couch. This was all before my time, but it’s why Ratchet refused to get in the drug game. He treated Dig like a nephew, practically a son. Gave him a job at the club and a bed to sleep in. Eventually, Ratchet knew his time was coming to an end as club president.”
J paused his story. He seemed on a roll—and then nothing. Quiet. I waited for him to continue, unsure of what had caused his abrupt pause. After a few minutes, I turned around, my back having been to his front. I turned so I was straddling him and wrapped my legs around him. Taking his hands
, I probed.
“What happened?”
J’s eyes were closed when he answered. “Ratchet was diagnosed with Parkinson’s right after I was patched in. He knew he wouldn’t be able to ride much longer. Once you can’t ride, you can’t reign. So he knew he’d have to step down. Dig was the obvious choice for Prez, but Ratchet knew Burns would dispute, and make it go to vote. Ratchet wasn’t sure where everyone sat on the decision. Some of the brothers were around for Joe’s demise. Others weren’t, but on principal, they didn’t want to fuck around with drugs. Still, there were enough greedy mother fuckers, who would sell weed to school kids if it would make them rich. Ratchet was a mess over what to do.”
I wanted to ask what happened next, but I knew. Burns happened. Ratchet was dead. That was when J went dark.
“So that’s how you ended up doing what you’re doing?” I couldn’t say any more. I knew he killed people, but that was the monster, not the man I was sitting in a tub of lukewarm water with, catching the lone tear that fell from his left eye. I knew that despite whatever J had done in his past, the man in front of me was beautiful.
At some point during his story, as J’s body shook silently, I pulled closer to him, wrapping my legs around his
waist, his legs out in front of us. He bowed his head, and burrowed it into where my shoulder and neck met. He nodded, his response to how he’d ended up in this fucked up situation.
“Shhhhh. It’s OK, baby.” I pulled him closer to me, pressing my breasts against his damp chest. “Whatever you gotta do, I’ll be right here beside you.”
He shook his head against my neck and spoke against my skin. “No.”
I pulled back, looking him in the eyes.
Excuse me?
written all over my face.
“Elle baby, I don’t want you any where near the shit I’m about to wade into.”
I laughed. Like I hadn’t waded through shit before. I spent years in nothing but shit, it seemed.
“I have to do this alone. You have to wait.” He was pleading again. His eyes fillin
g with anguish. Fuckin’ A. He couldn't be a monster with such pain radiating from is soul.
Shit. He was broken, j
ust like me. Were we good for each other or toxic?
I stood up to get out of the bath. J grabbed my hand as I stood up. “You’ll wait?” His shattered eyes begged me a hundred times louder than his faint whisper.
I wanted to say yes. I wanted to scream, YES.
Yes, I’ll wait for you. I’d go to the ends of the earth with you, if you’d let me
. But that’s not what he wanted. He wanted me to wait. Wait. The street bitch inside of me growled f
uuuuuck that
.
I wasn’t that girl anymore. I’d felt too much with this man to go back to the ice queen. I could never be with him and have
a cold, hard, safe shell of ice surround my heart. Fuck! How did I get here?
I shrugged. I knew J wanted words. I knew he wanted what I couldn’t give him. I grabbed a towel and dried off, crawling into bed as J slowly exited the bathtub.
I braided my hair, and tied it around my head. J was still in the bathroom when I crawled under the covers, clean and dry.
“You aren’t gonna moisturize?” he called from the bathroom
“What?” I exclaimed. Where had that come from? “Are you asking me if I’m going to moisturize?”
“Yeah. You always lather up after the shower.”
“We took a bath.”
“You know what I mean.”
I got out of bed and found him in the bathroom holding my bottle of lotion. Eucerin. It was the shit. I could do a commercial for the stuff. And J was right, I always lathered up, as he put it, when I got out. My skin was dry. I didn’t think he noticed.
J walked into the bedroom, towel wrapped around his hips. I forced my eyes away, and focused on slathering lotion on my arms and shoulders. He sauntered over t
o me, putting his hands over mine. He intertwined my fingers with his, them easily sliding together between the lotion.
“What are you doing?” I asked, annoyed, tired, aroused, and with ashy legs
. Yeah, white girls get ashy too. You just can’t see the ash... They were dry, OK. And his hands were making parts between them throb and it was pissing me off. I put my leg on the chair across from my bed, and began spreading the lotion I’d pumped out of the bottle over my calf and shin.
J walked around me, lifted my leg, sat on the chair, and placed my foot on his thigh. I sighed and went to switch legs. He grabbed the lotion from my hand, pumping some out into his palm. He rubbed it up and down the dry leg, now perched on his slightly naked thigh, the towel having opened up when he grabbed the bottle. Shit, fucker was making it a challenge to keep quiet.
He lathered my leg and pulled me down onto his lap. One of the few drawbacks to having a giant boyfriend (or whatever the fuck he was) was that he could overpower me with his physical strength anytime he wanted. He never did. At least not in ways I didn’t like and approve of. He knew this as he swept his arms under my legs, his other arm spanning my back. He held me against him, cautious to make sure my injured side wasn’t pressed up against him. Standing, he walked to the bed and deposited me in it, following closely after.
Once he’d gotten us into place, both on our sides facing one another, a tangled pretzel of limbs, he asked again. “Please.” He didn’t have to voice his full request. He wanted me to wait for him to do whatever the hell he was about to do so that we could maybe be together. Maybe he was so desperate for me to wait for him because he knew the only option other
than success was death. Fuckin' A.
I sighed, defeated. “I’ll try. That’s all I can say.”
That was enough, because he pulled me closer to him, adjusting us so his cheek was against the slightly damp braids wrapped around the top of my head. He kissed the crown of my head and I knew the conversation was closed. It needed to be closed.
I knew
Chris usually had Sundays off, and was hoping that was still the case when I pulled up to her house. I wasn’t normally one to admit defeat, especially when I didn’t think I was totally wrong, but I needed Chris more than I’d realized. If she felt the same way about me, then I could understand why she was so upset. The last week without her was my own personal hell—or one version of it. I felt as though I’d experienced a myriad of hells lately, but this was one I could actually do something about, so if I had to grovel at her feet I would because I was a mess without her.
I knocked on the door and waited. Her truck was out front, but I wouldn’t put it past her to not open the door. I heard footsteps, and saw her peek through the curtains. I squeezed my eyes shut, praying she would open the door, praying she wouldn’t hate me forever, praying I could get my best friend back.
I heard the door knob turn, opened my eyes and blurted out my intentions before she could utter a single syllable.
“I’m sorry. Tell me
how I can make it up. I can’t do this without you.”
Chris sighed a
nd motioned for me to come in. Stepping inside, I held my tongue—her house was trashed. She wasn’t a neat freak necessarily, and it wasn't uncommon for her house to be messy, but it looked like she hadn’t cleaned a single thing all week. Empty chip bags and candy wrappers were all over. There were ashtrays overflowing with cigarette butts and blunt roaches. I couldn’t see the kitchen, but I could image what it must look like based on the smell emanating out of it. There were crumbs in the carpet that I heard crunch under my feet.
I moved a carry out container of hot wing bones off the sectional and sat down. She took a seat, and we both were silent
, staring at anything but each other. I had a million things to say, but couldn’t seem to get my mouth to work. Chris had her elbows on her knees and was bent forward, wringing her hands as if she too was unsure how to proceed. I feared the worst; that her silence meant she didn’t want to be my friend anymore, but he didn't know how to tell me. That I’d been so self-absorbed after the accident, she didn’t feel I was worth it, and my J comments were the tipping point for her to say
fuck it
with regards to our friendship.
Getting shot had a way of putting things into
perspective. Some things. I didn’t have perspective on J, or at least, I wasn’t sure what my fucked up perspective was since it kept flip flopping like a fish on land. What getting shot had made me realize was that a true friend was hard to come by, a true female friend even harder. Sure, the guys at work meant a lot to me, and I valued that they all took care of me in their own weird ways, but I couldn’t talk to them the way I did with Chris. Even Aaron couldn’t replace Chris. I needed someone with the double X’s to really understand me. Those Y chromosomes didn’t understand how I could laugh one minute and cry in another, or how a single emotion could rule me for days. They didn’t understand the complexities that came with being a woman. They would never understand why I wished I had a dick sometimes so I didn’t have to
feel
so much, but at the same time wouldn’t give my vagina up for the world. I wanted to
feel
as much as I didn’t, something men would never understand, even gay men. Shit, I wasn't even sure I understood it.
Well fuck, t
his was awkward, but I knew I had to speak up, so I bit the bullet. I needed my friend back.
“I’m sorry I’ve been a shitty friend. After what you did for me, I never should have brought up—
”
Chris held her hand out, palm facing me, to indicate I didn’t need to keep going.
Crap, crap, crap. She wasn't going to even let me explain? My heart started to race, and it seemed like hours of uncomfortable silence lingered in the air, though I knew it was just a few moments before Chris finally said her piece.
“I was a bitch.”
I sat in silence, stunned and unsure what to say to that comment. I’d be lying if I said that exact thought hadn’t occurred to me. She kinda had been a bitch, but I thought I deserved it. She’d taken care of me the way a mother—other than my own—would have taken care of their child. Chris had not only done that, but she’d tolerated the comings and goings of Larry, a feat in and of itself.
“Chris, I’m not really sure what to say. Yeah, you were a bitch, but I think you had reason to be. I mean, you took care of me and I didn’t say thank you. I have no idea what’s going on in your life cuz I’ve been so wrapped up in mine. And I know you had to deal with things after J shot me that I didn’t. You had to race me to the hospital, wait
around to find out if I’d live, and deal with the shooter all at the same time. I’m sorry I didn’t see that ‘til now.”
Chris finally looked at me. “Seventy five percent of what came out of your mouth just now is bullshit.”
My eyes got wide. What?! I was shocked, and my racing heart sped up like it was in the last lap of the Indy 500. I realized... this was the end of me and Chris. How was I going to make it without her? I felt tears coming as I thought of all the nights I’d been spending sobbing in bed. Could you dehydrate yourself from crying? I was about to get up and leave when Chris spoke again.
“You weren’t self-
centered. You were shot. Recovery was all you needed to be thinking about. And I didn’t have anything going on in my life cuz I was taking care of you. I’d been stewing about J for weeks, but didn’t want to bring it up to you. I wasn’t sure how you felt, and I didn’t want to fuck up your progress towards recovery. And fuckin' Larry, yeah, you kinda owe me for that, but he kept you from falling into the funk I expected, so I put up with White Snake being around all the time.”
“You can tell me anything," I told her.
"And I tell you everything. That’s us. That’s why I like us so much. That’s why I brought up my thoughts about J.”
“I know, but I’d been stewing long enough on the shit
bag that I had worked myself up into a frenzy of hate. I imagined shanking him.”
I laughed. “Shanking? Why not just shoot him, or stab him with a knife?”
“Too many episodes of Lock Up.”
I laughed my super ugly, rarely heard,
this shit’s truly funny
laugh. It seemed fitting Chris would use a shank, and that made it hard for me to stop laughing. Once I gained control of myself, I saw Chris smiling too. I wasn’t a fan of Lock Up, but Chris was addicted to it. She lived for that shit, disturbed as it may be.
“I’ve had time to think, and I realized I was being the self-centered one,” Chris said, the smile melting off her face. “I get it that you can’t just turn off feelings. Despite the shit my mother did to me, or allowed to happen to me, I still have love for her. I ain’t trynna be her homie or nothin’, but that doesn’t mean I don’t care about her.”
“I know I should’ve spoken up,” Chris continued, “about J, I mean. I wasn’t sure where you were at with it, and I didn’t know if you could handle talking about him. So I treated you like glass.”
“You were just looking out for me.”
“And look where it got us.”
“Are we talking about our friendship or your house?”
I motioned to the mess around us.
“Fuck you.” Chris threw an empty soda can at me. I dodged it, and it landed behind the sectional. “I mean ou
r friendship. I should have known you could handle it.”
“So are we good? Cuz I really need my best friend right now.”
“No
, we’re not good.” My heart dropped. “We’ll be good when you help me clean up my house. I’ve been having my own personal pity party, with a guest list of one, for the last week. I missed you too."
If her mess of a house reflected how much she missed me, then she's been just as tore up about our fight as I was. I wanted to cry, hug her, have a Spanish soap opera worthy make up scene with her, but we'd doe enough crying.
Instead, I stood up and tossed my purse in the cleanest spot I could find. “Let’s get crack-a-lackin’ then.”
It took us most of the afternoon to clean up her place. I found things I wish I could erase from my brain. Used Q-Tips littered the house, like she’d been cleaning her ears every five minutes and leaving the Q-Tip in whatever room she was
occupying. When I asked her how she could clean her ears so much, she told me she used them to clean her belly button too. Ew, gross.
We finished cleani
ng just as it was getting dark, both of us covered in a layer of sweat and grime.
“You need help showering?
" Chris asked me. "Cuz you stink.”
“Not as bad as you, Pig-Pen.” Chris threw her dirty rag at me, which I also dodged and let fall behind the sectional. I’d get it later. “Nah, but thanks. I got my stitches out Friday and they said I could get
the area wet now.”
“Shit, I’m sorry. I was supposed to take you to that appointment.”
“It’s all good. I need you for something bigger.”
Chris plopped her ass on the sectional with me and started packing a bowl. “Whatchya need?”
“An ear.”
“Whatever Monet.”
“It was Van Gogh, and I need someone to listen and help me sort shit out.”
“Fo sho.”
“It’s about J.” I figured I’d give her the chance to change her mind.
Chris was silent for a moment, m
aybe contemplating if she really wanted to have this conversation. I wouldn’t hold it against her if she bailed on it.
“I can’
t guarantee I’ll be unbiased. Still ain’t real happy with the face fucker, but I’ll listen and try my best.”
“Face fucker?”
“I’m running out of material here, OK. Just roll with it.”
And so over a bowl, I laid it out. I told her all about J’s visit, going into some pretty graphic detail. I expressed the myriad of emotions I had going on. I loved him. I hated him. I forgave him. I damned him. I wanted to be with him, but felt like a fool for still caring
about him. I was strong. I didn’t let men fuck my head or my heart up like this. It was what made me who I am, or was. There was this little voice though, who lived deep inside my head, that wouldn’t shut up. It kept saying I was miserable before J. That I was merely existing, not living. The voice told me that I was broken, damaged, shattered, and more. That I covered it up with ice and cuss words to avoid the fact that I didn’t know how to love because I was so terrified of it.
J changed everything for me. He shattered everything I thought I knew about myself. My life wasn’t boring before J, but it was just a series of motions I went through each day. I was content, but was I happy? I thought so. All I had to compare it to was my teen years, which were pretty sucky. I’d told J most of my
jacked up stories; the men I fucked for a place to sleep, all the drug deals gone wrong, battling my mother and her constant disapproval. Compared to that, when J found me, I was doing pretty good. I had my apartment, a job, I was in school, and I had Chris. What more could I need?
Love. I needed love. We all need love. We all
want
love. Whether it’s the love of a mother, best friend, or significant other, we all want someone to care about us. Someone who would miss us if we disappeared off the face of the earth. I had people like that: Chris, Larry, Aaron, Jesse, and maybe José. J took it to another level though. My friends loved me and would help me out of a jam anytime.
J’s love was fierce and extreme. It was passionate, sensual, and filled with meaning. He brought out the best in me. I was REAL with him, and he loved it. He loved
me
, and I matched that love. I may not have shown it to him enough, but my love for him burned though me like a raging California forest fire. When we were wrapped up in one another’s body, it was as if we melted into one being, a being that radiated love and light. He wasn’t a monster, he was my savior, taking me from existing to living.
A few bowls and a box of tissues lat
er, I’d spilled it all to Chris, including the sex, the emotionally charged yet hot as hell sex that I could only have with J.
“So are you gonna wait for him?”
“Well, that is the million dollar question I suppose. I want to, yet I feel like I shouldn’t.”
“It’s not like I don’t hate J anymore, but I guess I get it more
now than I did before. The fuck nugget still shot you, but damn, that was one hell of a story. His shit’s fucked up, man. And what is this plan of his exactly?”
“That’s just it. We promised no more lies, but then he won’t tell me the plan, claiming he wanted me to be able to say I don’t know anything. Who the fuck am I gonna have to say that to,
huh?” I threw my hands in the air. I’d worked myself into a frenzied state. “Shit, I gotta go home, girl.” Chris nodded.
I think she knew I was spent from all the talking. If we hadn’t fought... If we had talked about what we were feeling from the start... If we had just... something, I wouldn’t have had to spill this gigantic story all in one sitting. I told this to Chris.
“It is what it is, girl. You can’t change the past, all you can do is move forward. Some free advice, meaning you’re free to take it or leave it, go day by day. I’m not saying wait or don’t wait for him. You don’t gotta make that kind of sweeping decision today or tomorrow or even next week. Just take each day as it comes. When the time is right, when it's time to make a decision, you'll know it in your gut. Until then, one day at a time.”