Debt, page 17
But I can’t wait. I can’t.
I need answers, and maybe it wasn’t a memory. Maybe it was just a combination of confusion and longing and desire for a mother that should have loved me, a parent who should have loved me and told me everything was OK when Matt shattered my heart (which, also since Logan, I have come to admit affected me deeply and maybe is indeed the reason I stopped believing in love.)
Maybe there’s no reason at all. Maybe I simply want to know. A daughter should know what happened to her mother. And her father should tell it to her.
I scroll up to D for Dad, write the text, a long text. I don’t even check it, just send it.
I regret it instantly. Not because it said anything bad, but because it’s opening things up I think I’ve held from myself. And if it really was a memory...then maybe I never looked at it before because I was too scared to face the truth of what happened.
Maybe.
The text said:
Dad. I love you. But we need to talk. We need to talk about things we’ve both held back for years. You’re my father. And I’m your daughter. And all we have is each other. I have questions, questions I’ve asked you before, but which were never answered. If you love me, if you truly love me, you’ll answer them honestly.
-2-
I didn’t notice the sexy guy approach me. I didn’t realize he was next to me until his body was so close to mine I felt claustrophobic.
His chest pressed against my shoulder.
I reacted.
I reacted instantly.
All those Krav Maga lessons Vera made me take because of Vince came into action.
Two things happened:
I thrust my knee up into his crotch.
And my phone fell over the railing to the first floor and smashed on the concrete.
The dude groaned and crumpled next to me.
My first thought was to say I was sorry, but hey, he did make an assumption there which he shouldn’t have. Hell, doesn’t he know I have a boyfriend!
Do I?
The thought makes me smile.
Yes, I do. Technically, yes. A crazy long-distance impossibility of a boyfriend but, hey, if he says he’ll be faithful, and I say I’ll be faithful, doesn’t that make it official?
I look down at the black-haired dude on his knees next to me.
He looks up at me, pain in his eyes. “You fucking bitch,” he says.
I smile.
Yes, I am. But I’m one man’s bitch, not yours.
I run down to grab my phone, and then I head into the room, lie down next to my friend on the floor. And I think about...my boyfriend.
-3-
We’re driving west on Route 400 which offers little in terms of scenery except flat green land on either side which goes on forever, and the occasional outdoor billboard advertising either FAMILY MARKET or JOEY’S HUNGRY ROUTE STEAKHOUSE.
We’re in Kansas, and I’ve been thinking of The Wizard of Oz and stupid jokes like, Say we’re not in Kansas anymore as soon as we crossed the state line. No doubt Vera’s thinking the same thing.
Six hundred miles to go, and I feel like a kid waiting for Christmas.
“So what are you gonna do?” I ask Vera.
“About?”
“Jake.”
She doesn’t immediately answer, which tells me she has no clue what to do. “Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“Yeah, nothing.”
“But you like him.”
“It’s over. It was the booze, the jewelry.” She looks at the new bracelet around her wrist. “It’s nothing.”
“It’s not nothing. You like him.”
“Just forget it, Ky. It was nothing.”
I stare out at the road, which is boring as shit right now. We can’t even find any good music on the radio. “Look, I’m willing to forget it, if you’re willing to forget it. But something tells me you aren’t.”
“It’ll never work. He travels, he’s almost thirty.”
“He’s almost thirty? That’s your excuse? Dude’s like eight years older than you, so what?”
Her grip tightens on the steering wheel. She sighs, looks out the window. “Just forget it, OK?” I think the steering wheel’s about to snap.
“Fine. OK. I’m just trying to help.”
She’s silent for a bit, a long bit, but then her shoulders sag. “It’s just that...I don’t trust him. Bigshot musician. You saw those Desperate Housewives at Gits, and the teeny boppers. I just...I’d like to keep my eye on him, and I can’t, and I don’t want to be made a fool of.”
I can totally understand her.
“I’m amazed you’re taking this risk on this Logan guy,” she says. “I don’t mean that in a bad way. I just... It’s not like you.”
“I know.”
She looks over at me. “But you trust him.”
“Yeah.” The answer is quick. And the little devil voice in my ear has been silent since I crushed that dude’s balls in Memphis.
“You see?” she says. “There’s no doubt in your voice. Which means he can be trusted. I can’t say the same about Jake. It’s...a gut feel.”
“A gut feel, or an irrational fear?”
Vera’s green eyes are bright and wide when she looks at me. “Well hello, miss expert.”
“Hey.”
“Hey you!” she laughs. “Damn.” She looks me over. “Damn, you’ve changed.”
“Have not.”
“Have too. Damn damn damn.”
“Stop it.”
She’s smiling now, which is always good on a road trip, especially when the scenery is so bad. My mind flicks again to the Wizard of Oz, and I imagine what a tornado might look like on this road. Nope. Bad idea. Bad idea.
“Well, is it?” I repeat.
“What?”
“A gut feel, or an irrational fear?”
“You think that shit exists?”
“What?”
“Irrational fears.”
“Sure. Y’know, shit from our pasts that affects how we think in the present.”
“Are we talking about me or you?”
“Both, maybe.”
“Aha.”
I say nothing.
“C’mon,” she says. “Spit it out.”
I look at the flat land next to me. “I don’t know. This thing with my mom. I always thought it was Matt, y’know. Actually, I didn’t even think it was him. I had completely occluded that pain. But Matt did hurt me. He did. But when I remembered...or sort of remembered that maybe something terrible happened to my mom... I just figured that was a deeper pain, something more fundamental that maybe explains...why I’m so afraid of...losing people. Or...” I bite a nail. “Or...getting close to them. But it’s irrational, isn’t it? I mean, the one has nothing to do with the other. And every time I got close to a guy, I’d get this fear, this little voice in my head saying Don’t do it. You’ll get hurt. You’ll lose him. Stay away. Don’t get close. I always thought it was a gut feel. Now I’m not so sure.”
“I think it was a gut feel,” she says. “Let’s face it, from what you tell me about Logan, he seems like a dream. Maybe it was a gut feel with all those other guys. They were pricks.”
“Maybe.”
“Well... I think it’s a gut feel with Jake. I just do. I mean, damn, he had his hand on your leg before he and I hit it off.”
“I’m sorry about that.”
“Please. We both know who’s hotter here, so you don’t need to apologize.” She means she’s hotter, which she is, we both know it. And my boobs look like saucers next to hers. “But for some reason he chose you first. And I don’t care that he did. But I want the guy I’m with to choose me first, y’know.”
I put my hand on her leg. “I know.”
“Hey, Ky, you hinting at something?”
I take my hand off, slap her shoulder.
“You know I’d do you, don’t you?” she says.
“Just drive, damn it.”
-4-
Even if I wanted to text Logan, I can’t. But he won’t find it strange, because we agreed that we wouldn’t talk until after his fight. The reason I haven’t gotten a new phone is because I’m a little afraid of the answers I might get to my drunken texts. Maybe Jake didn’t like Vera the way she liked him, and if he told me as much in a text, I’d be hiding something from her and she’d pick up on it, ruining the next few days of our trip. And then there was the message to dad. I was feeling brave when I sent it, but now not so much.
“I’m thirsty,” Vera says, which is actually Vera-Talk for I want to get drunk. I pull out the small list of spots Logan gave me that he usually frequents in Denver, not with any hopes of seeing him, but because I’ve never been to Denver and I’d rather go with a recommendation than finding something on Yelp. There’s only three names on the list, numbered one to three so I’m assuming the first one is his favorite, which probably means I’ll like it too. I type in Williams and Graham into the GPS.
When we arrive, the bar is dark and looks like an old-time saloon with black chairs and books on the shelves and black and white photographs on the walls. Part of me secretly hopes Logan will be here, but I doubt he will. He’s probably ‘psyching himself up’ for the fight to keep his head clear.
Vera orders a beer and I go with one of their in-house cocktails. The place is packed, and we struggle to find a place to sit.
Vera crashes on a chair and guzzles half the beer down in one shot. OK, maybe she was thirsty. I sip on my cocktail and look around the dim-lit room...when I see something that can’t be true. It can’t. It just fucking can’t. But...
My eyes squint to focus.
I’d recognize his back anywhere, anywhere, and the short hair.
And the ink on his arms.
I almost drop my cocktail glass.
Vera must see something in my eyes, and I’m sure my face is pale because it feels like I have no blood left anywhere in my body.
“What?” she says, and then she turns her head, and sees what I’m looking at.
The woman in a red dress, black tights, dark brown hair, looking hot, maybe early thirties, laughing, laughing madly. Laughing...like she knows him.
What Vera doesn’t see is what I saw a moment ago, his arm around the woman’s waist, as if they’ve known each other for years. And the way he was looking into her eyes, that smile he gave her... Damn it.
“Ky,” Vera says. “Ky, don’t jump to conclusions.” Vera gets up suddenly. “Fuck this, I’m gonna—”
I snap out of my chair, grab her wrist. My eyes tell her No!
“He needs to be told off, Ky. He needs to be—”
“No,” I whisper, fighting violently to keep the tears down. “No. Please. It’s...bad enough. I just...I just wanna go. Please, Vera. Please.”
Vera’s scowl could wither daisies.
“You need to let him know you’re here, Ky. You must. He can’t think he can get away with this shit.”
“He already has, Veer. He’s gotten away with it already.” And he doesn’t care about me. All of it was a lie. All of it. So why bother making myself feel worse when he wouldn’t even give a shit? “Take me home,” I say, not even realizing what I mean by home. “Just get me out of here, Vera.”
She hesitates a second, but only one second.
As we step out of the bar, I hear that bitch’s voice, hear her fucking laugh. That should be me laughing, me goddamnit, under his arm, being looked at the way he’s looking at her.
When we get outside, what I had been holding inside me shatters, and I can’t hold it in anymore.
The world falls apart. Tears dim my vision. I hear myself screaming and weeping, but worst, worst of all, I feel the pain, actual pain, deep, deep in my chest and it threatens to eat me whole, to swallow me up forever into a black chasm of empty hate and anger.
But none of the hate and betrayal and pain I feel can stop the watershed of tears pouring from my eyes and soaking Vera’s shirt.
“C’mon,” she says. “C’mon, I’m taking you home.”
I can’t move, can’t move at all.
So we stand there, that bitch’s laugh ringing like the toll of death in my head.
I am dead.
I am shattered.
I trusted again.
And I am dead for it.
-5-
I spend the rest of the night weeping in Vera’s arms, inside a cheap motel room. I think of Logan’s fight tomorrow, and how he probably arranged for the brunette slut not to be there so he could have his time with me instead, juggling between us. I should have known, damn it. A guy like him—urgh, what was I thinking!
And interspersed between thoughts of that horrific scene at the bar (for it was indeed horror that I felt when I saw him with her), are thoughts of my mother, my father, Christ—even thoughts of Dave, damn it. Thoughts of how he fucked me and how I let him do nothing but fuck me for months. What was I thinking? Had my self-esteem really dropped to such a low point after Matt that all I believed I could have with a man was a goddamn lay?
Yes. It had.
And what had Logan done with me? The same. But it’s worse. He warned me. He freaking warned me...and still I fell for it. Still I fell because I had new theories about ‘gut feels’ and ‘irrational fears.’
Bullshit.
It’s all bullshit.
Men are just fucking assholes.
Weeping, weeping, weeping, howling.
Fucking, painful, inconsiderate, bastard assholes...who we no less love.
I admit, again, that I loved him. That I love him. I believe he was being sincere when he told me all those things about me and him, about trying and seeing how it goes.
I believe he was.
And I believe he tried and failed. Men and their cocks.
How fast did he fail? Did he fuck her the moment he left Nashville? Did he pick her up on the side of the road and do her on the spare bed he keeps in the back of his truck and then brought her here because he’s such a Panty Dropping Fighter? Or is he together with her? Do they know each other for longer? They looked...intimate, close.
Fuck it. I need to stop thinking about Logan. I must stop thinking about Logan.
But I can’t.
I can’t.
I can’t.
When the sun comes up, I’m staring at the window but not seeing it. Vera fell asleep a few hours ago. I haven’t slept a wink. My eyes are swollen. My face hurts. My lips hurt.
But my tears are empty.
I won’t cry for him anymore.
I won’t.
I don’t know what I’ll do—but for him, I won’t weep again.
Even as I say it I feel the tear forming. But it doesn’t come out.
I am dry.
I am dead.
I need to see my dad.
As far as men go, my life might be shit, but I can have answers about my mother, about my family. I might not be able to solve men, but I can solve that. I want those answers and I won’t leave until I have them.
Vera will understand. She’ll take me to New York.
Vera always understands.
Why can’t I find a man like her?
~Eighteen~
Logan
-1-
Fight night.
“Where is she?” Jenny asks.
“She’ll be here.”
“Why don’t you call her?”
“She’ll be here.”
“You sound awfully sure of yourself.”
“I trust her.”
I look up at Jenny’s brown eyes. She’s dressed in her killer dress tonight. She called up an old friend who met us at Williams and Graham last night. He did a double-take when he saw me and her together. It’s not the first time people think we’re together, we’re just at ease in each other’s presence. Dude almost ran out the door when he saw me but Jenny called him back (Doctor Roland Vanquort) and I think he thought I was gonna take a pot shot at him. “I—I—I—” he stuttered.
I stuck my hand out to him (and ignored his flinch). “Logan Graves,” I said. “Old friend of Jenny’s.”
“Emphasis on friend,” she said, laughing. Doc Vanquort seemed unconvinced. “Oh, Roland, relax. Come, have a drink with us.”
We were light-hearted last night. I was thinking of Kyla. I’d told Jenny my ideas about the gym. I think she lost a few pounds from the relief I saw on her face. She doesn’t like me fighting. And she believes the gym will make money. “So, she really roped you in, hasn’t she?” she had said earlier.
“Yeah,” I confessed.
We pulled up some chairs and Jenny and me and the doc chatted for a few minutes. I drank my own drink fast. Jenny told me she was gonna ‘put herself out there’ a bit, see what came her way. She had withdrawn after the divorce six years ago, and she was looking for someone settled. She confessed, as well, that she had wanted me on a whim in Denver, and if I’d taken her offer, things would have become...complicated. “I was horny,” were her exact words. “And horny is never a good way to start a relationship.”
So she and I are even now. She kept me from making a mistake the first time she and I got together. And I kept her from making a mistake by trying to get with me again.
I left her and the doc alone for the rest of the night, and walked out the bar wondering if I’d run into Kyla. As if. What are the chances? Although I did give her a small list of my favorite bars. In the back of my mind I was hoping we’d bump into each other in one of them. Hell, I was even hoping we’d bump into each other at Williams and Graham. It was the first bloody name on the list.
But Kyla was gonna be here for the fight. They’d probably arrive tomorrow.
And yet... And yet... I had this feeling, this premonition about her presence.
I walked outside and got the strangest idea that she had been there. I’m slowly becoming a believer in these things.
I took a walk, clearing my head, looking forward to seeing her after the fight. But also before the fight. I told her only to see me after, but my mind was changing.
