by S. Ann Cole
I glared, but he didn’t seem to notice this. He just ran up to us like a kid on Christmas morning.
“Ian!” Jacob shouted when he spotted Davian. Yanking my hair, he pointed at his father. “Ian pay’t me.”
In the time I’ve spent away from Jacob, he’d learned quite a few new words. It was things like that made me feel like a horrible, horrible mother. To have missed so much, and for what reason? Relationships that turned out to be shit?
Obviously, Jacob remembered Davian from when he visited him that one time. Made sense now why he didn’t understand the name, Davi. He’d already dubbed him a name of his own. Ian.
Davian came with outstretched arms, and Jacob went willingly, patting his father’s chest and poking him in the eye.
Dodging Jacob’s assault, Davian leaned in to kiss me on the lips. In time, I realized his aim and quickly turned my face so his kiss met my cheek instead.
Eyebrows drawn down, he studied me.
Through gritted teeth, I hissed low, “I’m not playing this game with you, Davi.”
He looked a little hurt by this, eyelashes grouping together.
Mel materialized and relieved me of my luggage, and I walked off, leaving him and his father and following Mel through the crowd straight to the Range, blocking out all the questions hurled at me about Xavier. Just hearing his name alone hurt sometimes.
From time to time, I chatted on the phone with Xena about a whole bunch of nothing. She never mentioned Xavier, and I never ask about him. He was off limits.
I hadn’t told her what I witnessed with Tex and that groupie. Mainly because she never mentioned Tex, either. Maybe she figured out on her own that he was a piece of shit and came to her senses.
The Range door opened. Davian climbed into the back with me and strapped Jacob into the car seat I’d had Mel install for him, seeing as she seemed to be double-agenting with Davian these days.
Eyes on his son, Davian focused on his task while Jacob flailed around spewing crap. I could see his discontent. “I don’t get why it’s a big deal if you’re not with him anymore.”
“It doesn’t matter that I’m not with him. We talked about this. Give me a goddamn heads-up before you use me to make yourself look good!”
“Go’dan!” Jacob shouted and then giggled.
Dave, who climbed into the front with Mel, gruffed into the confinements of the car without turning his head, “I would appreciate it if you both refrained from swearing in front of my grandson.”
My eyes flicked up to the rear-view mirror and found his weary blue ones staring back at me.
I rolled mine.
“I’m not using you,” Davian defended, yanking my attention back to him.
“Then what do you call all this?!” I waved my hand indicating the paparazzi outside. “You knew what you were doing when you followed me home drunk that night. You knew what you were doing when you held me in the lobby. You knew what you were doing when you showed up outside the bank at the same time I did, even though we agreed on different times. And you know what you’re doing right now, tipping off the paparazzi so they could get photos of you picking me and your son up from the airport.”
He shook his head at me. “You refuse to take me back, Ally. You ever think that maybe I just like the idea of us doing all these things together? You ever think maybe I just want it to be real so bad that I would go out of my way to get people talking, so you’d realize how good we could be together?”
Mel drove off.
I gripped my head, hoping that would make it all stop. I was going insane. He was driving me insane. With a growl, I punched my fist into the back of Mel’s headrest. Repeatedly.
Mel was used to me losing it by now, so she kept driving as if nothing out of the norm was happening.
“You had two chances to choose me!” I yelled, shifting to face him. A quieted and confused Jacob sat between us, staring. “Two, Davi. Two. In none of those instances did you choose me. You never chose me.”
Davian’s eyes went glacial, nostrils flaring as he watched me as if I’d sprouted horns. “I left my fiancée for you! I. Left. Her. Like you asked me to. And then you turned your—” His voice broke, his expression crumpling. As though resolving not to be weak in this, he squeezed his fists and tightened his jaw. “You turned your back on me. You chose him. And where is he now, huh? Where is your king?”
Shaking his head, he laughed derisively, mocking me. “He chose her, didn’t he? Jess. Jessica Stucco. The same woman I left for you. He chose his precious Jess because she was free and he saw that he could have her. Just like I thought he would.” He laughed again. “I warned you.”
As his words munched and nibbled away at my soul, swallowing my soundless screams, I turned from him and gazed out the window at the city flying by.
I had no retort. Because he did warn me. He did choose me over Jess. Even if it took him forever to do so, in the end, he chose me, and I rejected him. Turned my back on a man I was one-hundred percent sure loved me, and entrusted my heart to someone I hoped would love me more than he did. In the end, I lost. I was the loser here.
After a long, long moment of silence, even from Jacob, I heard Davian say, his voice soft and without fight, “He was the one ‘using’ you, Ally. Not me.” A pause. “He used all of us.”
By the time we got to Davian’s new house, the only person talking was Jacob. Everyone else was silent. Tense. Just going through the mechanics of unloading from the vehicle.
Unbuckling Jacob from his car seat, I transferred him to my lap and remained where I was. I wrapped my arms around him. Hugged him tight. This was where I said goodbye. Davian agreed I could have him whichever two days of the week I chose.
I would be judged for this. Temporarily relinquishing Jacob to Davian. I would be accused of taking the easy way out. Running from the responsibilities of motherhood, all too happy to cast it all upon Davian.
Whatever. I was doing this because, regardless of what I felt for Xavier, I still loved Davian. I believe me—and my crazy cousin—have hurt him enough. Considering he missed some of the most precious moments of his son’s life because of my lies, what he asked of me wasn’t unreasonable. How fair would it be to withhold this one request from him?
Growing fussy, Jacob wriggled and jerked in my arms. I knew that gripe. Already tired of being in one place too long. The back of the car was boring him now.
Releasing my boa-constricting arms from around him, I set his chubby little body to stand on my lap. He immediately began poking my face, letting out short bursts of laughter each time I dodged a poke. Clearly, hurting people gave him pleasure. Let’s hope he doesn’t grow up to be a psychopath.
Seizing one of his poking hands, I told him, “Mommy loves you, okay?”
He continued assaulting me with his free hand. “Aweayda a wuvu kay?”
I had no idea what that was, but I smiled and reassured him again. Just in case Davian ever tried painting an ugly picture of me. “Yes. I, me, your mommy, loves you endlessly. I mess up sometimes. I think of myself instead you sometimes. I leave you sometimes. Hand you over to others sometimes. None of it means I don’t love you. Okay? I never, ever regretted giving birth to you. Ever. You’re the best thing that has ever happened to me.”
His free hand kept poking relentlessly, so I grabbed it to keep him still and stared into his bright blue eyes. “No matter what anyone tells you about me, always remember that you are mine, and I love you. I am not a bad person. I’m just misunderstood.”
Jacob’s smooth brown eyebrows drew in, eyes darting all about my face. “A wuvu?”
I laughed. This time tears came with it. I crushed him to me again, wishing I could crawl inside of him and start life all over again. “Yes, I do.”
At the sudden jerk of car door opening, I lowered my head and tried to wipe my tears in Jacob’s cotton shirt, but the sucker leaped, attempting to escape my crushing hug, shouting, “Ian! Ian pay’t me!”
Loosening my grip on him,
I quickly wiped my tears with the back of my hand instead, keeping my head dipped as his father took him from me.
Jacob babbled on, but Davian was silent, still lingering by the door.
I didn’t know what he was waiting for. I didn’t ask. I didn’t look.
“You’re not coming in?” he asked after a while. “Help Dad get settled?”
“No,” I told my lap. “He’s your father, not mine.”
Long silence. Then, “Ally, I’m—”
“Don’t, Davi. I don’t need your apology.” Because everything you said was true.
I heard a sigh, some movements, and some jingle. A bunch of keys dropped in my lap.
I stared at the keys and then forced myself to look up at him. Before I could ask the question, he answered, “Spare keys to the house; reassurance that I’m not stealing him from you. You can come here whenever you want to see your son. Stay as long as you want. He’s not your son, and he’s not my son. He’s our son.”
He closed the door, and I watched him walk up the steps to his mansion.
With our son.
I opted to do a power-walk home after a cross-fit session with my trainer. From the gym to my apartment the distance wasn’t long, so most mornings instead of using Mel, I walked, using the time to clear my head.
Having about six hundred dollars’ worth of coffee left from that thousand dollars’ worth of free coffee Xavier had hooked up at Starbucks for me, I dropped in during my walk back and got a Frappuccino. Sweet, sweet reward after a grueling workout.
People stared at me a lot these days. After all, I was the center of a love square with a baby thrown into the mix. I wasn’t half as famous as the other three, though, so I walked on the streets wherever I felt like it without ducking. No way would I let paparazzi dictate how I live.
As I ambled down the street enjoying the unhurriedness of the morning, cautiously keeping my mind off all things Davian-Xavier-Jessica related, I sipped and savored my coffee, and smiled and waved at strangers. Trying out the whole nice, unselfish thing.
It was nice.
Only it didn’t last long, as I stopped in my tracks by the glimpse of a magazine cover through a store window. It looked like him. Same height, same build, same hair color, and length…except I didn’t want to believe it was him.
I didn’t want to believe it was him because this person had long, familiar fingers curled around the long, frosted neck of a half-empty Greygoose bottle, and the crook of that arm was hooked around the neck of a tall skinny blonde, her bony, glittery nail-polished fingers pressed to his chest.
My chest.
Eyes hooded, smile lazy but cocky, his hair, uncontained, spilled around his face and shoulders, and he had an actual goatee. He looked reckless, careless, as if he couldn’t give a shit about anything. I’d never seen him like that before.
The cover read: L.A.’s Bad Boy Rocker is Back!
To the left of the blonde’s head was a circle frame with a picture of me in it. No idea when that photo of me was taken, but my facial expression was of utter disgust, worse than a sneer. A caption bubble was drawn from my mouth with the words, “That’s what he replaced me with? Ew.”
Despite myself, I giggled. Whoever published that had to be a fan of mine. After contemplating for a good five minutes on going inside to purchase the magazine and read the article, I decided against it and walked on.
I didn’t want to know what the article said. Xavier had obviously relapsed and that’s all that was bugging me. It troubled me more than I imagined it would. I loved him. I cared about him. Enough to be damn near devastated by this fact.
I mean, how could Jessica let this happen? Knowing she was a freak of the utmost that got pleasure from including other women in her relationships, I didn’t have to wonder why Xavier was with another woman on the cover. More than likely, the blonde was a sex-related friend of hers and they all had a jolly threesome that night.
On the rest of the walk home, Xavier was all I thought about. I couldn’t shake the unsettling feeling in my stomach, the need to reach out.
If I had my shit together, I would. Reach out, that is. Talk to him. Shake him. Slap him and ask him what the hell he was thinking. How could he do that to himself? How could he relapse?
Unfortunately, I didn’t have my shit together. I, myself, needed someone to shake me, slap me. I had issues I needed to deal with. Issues within. So before I could attempt to fix someone else, I first had to fix myself.
CHAPTER NINE
“I’M SO BORED,” XENA WHINED ON the other end of the line. “Gosh, my life is so lonely and pathetic.”
With my phone on speaker and propped on a pillow, I chatted with Xena while painting my toenails.
Xena sang the same song every night; always whining about being bored and pathetic. Aside from Jess and me, she didn’t have many friends, and it was radio silence on her and Tex’s relationship.
Her life surrounded the band, so when she didn’t have work to do or the boys weren’t around for her to annoy, she was pretty much left to her own company.
Normally we would do stuff, like go out to eat, go shopping, or driving, but we hadn’t seen each other since my break-up with Xavier, and our relationship had somehow limited itself to phone chats.
“Then go bang on Jess’s door,” I muttered absently as I used the side of my thumb to clean a smudge of nail polish from my skin. “Or is she too busy hosting orgies with—” I caught myself in time, swallowing his name like a fat, bitter anti-depressant tablet. Of late, it had become some kind of unspoken rule between me and Xena to keep his name silent like the P in pfhucker during our chats.
Of course, I’d been extremely tempted to fire questions about him ever since I saw him on the front cover of that magazine a few weeks ago, but I always managed—just barely—not to.
He’d made the news a number of times since then, each update worse than the last. Either he was working to get me to notice him—Look at me, Chino! I don’t need you. I’m on top of the world. Good riddance, bitch!—or he was on a mission to self-destruction, because each time he made the news it was a different girl, a different fight, or a different charge.
“Los Angeles’ Bad Boy” was back indeed.
Despite all the noise surrounding her brother these days, we had conversation after conversation like normal, as though her brother wasn’t my ex.
Xena was quiet on the other end for such a long time that I had to prompt a “Xena?” to check if she was still there.
Almost a minute of silence passed, but then she chirped, “Let’s go clubbing!”
I groaned. Just hearing the word clubbing made me nauseous. Last time I went clubbing, I woke up the next morning with Davian in my apartment and my first taste of a hangover—which, let me say, has to be the most awful feeling the world. “I don’t think I wanna step foot in another club anytime soon.”
“Come onnnn, Alina,” she begged, “Please. I’m bored shitless.”
Closing the nail-polish bottle, I focused on our conversation. “Why do you want to go out with me all of a sudden? You’ve avoided being around me since I ended things with your brother. What’s changed?”
“Because…” Pausing, she sighed. “Because I think I love you, Alina. You’re the closest I’ve ever been to anyone that’s not blood, and I’m tired of putting everyone’s well-being above my own. I want to be like you and not stop to think about anyone’s feelings. I want to be selfish just for once. Because being selfless for the people I care about has done nothing so far but make me freaking miserable.”
This gutted me. That she felt this way. That she felt it was better to be selfish than selfless. Why on earth would she want to use me and my screwed up personality as a model to follow?
Was it safe to tell her I was, somewhat, not the girl I was a few months—heck a few weeks ago?
Chewing my bottom lip, I thought back on my session three days ago…
“How much do you value your friendship with his sister, X
ena?”
“Not much. I’m kinda hesitant, you know. Like I told you before, the last best friend I had—also the sister of an ex—let me down in a time when I was depending on her the most.”
“Have you spoken to that friend since then?”
“No.”
“Have you ever had any inclination to speak to her?”
“No.”
“So, you refuse to have anything at all to do with this friend because she lied to you only to protect her family—which I assume was hard for her to do—yet you continuously fight and make up with this Xena person, who threatens you, pushes all your buttons and just doesn’t seem like a nice person in general?”
“She’s nice,” I quickly defended.
“Not based on all you told me, she isn’t.”
“That’s because you don’t understand her. You have to understand her first. And then you will know her.”
“Do you believe you understand her?”
“I do.”
“And you believe she understands you?”
“She does… Our friendship is just a little, ah, unorthodox.”
“I am going to repeat my first question, and this time, I want you to think before you answer.”
“Okay.”
“How much do you value your friendship with Xena Xander?”
“I love her.”
“How hard was that for you to admit, Miss O’Hara?”
“Hard….Very hard.”
Yep. It took me a number of sessions to realize and admit how much I valued our weird, complicated friendship.
“I wish I could say I know what you mean,” I replied finally, opting to be the Alina she knew, not the Alina I was becoming, “but I have no idea what being selfish entails.”
Xena cackled, because, of course, that was something Alina the bitch would say. “So? Are we clubbing?”
“Not without Danni.”
Seeing as Xena was the one with social contacts and links abound, a welcome side effect of being PR, we left it up to her to choose the party spot of the night.