I Know What Love Is

by Bianca, Whitney

  “What's the problem, Pritchard?” he whispered loudly.

  “I want to plead guilty,” the words came out before I even knew what I was saying. “I want a deal.” Williams shook his head , like he couldn't believe what I was saying. He turned and addressed the judge again.

  “I'd like to request a recess, your honor,” Williams said. “I need to confer with my client.”

  “Recess granted. We'll adjourn until tomorrow morning at eight.” The judge banged the gavel and my whole life changed in an instant.

  *****

  Elliot took a deal with the prosecutor the night after his piece-of-shit attorney tried to discredit me on the stand. Just like that, the trial was over.

  All Elliot asked for in his plea agreement was a sit-down with me.

  I refused.

  He had fucked me out of my moment. The trial was supposed to be my triumph. I was supposed to see Elliot beaten down and exposed and shamed. I wanted to see him thrown under the jail. I wanted to see his face when the jury found him guilty. That's all I wanted. I thought the trial would be the magical cure-all that would push me out of the rut I was in. Instead, it was just another letdown, another time when I was naïve and thought the universe was looking out for me.

  Instead I locked myself in my room and began my search. I didn't bother going to the sentencing. Elliot wouldn't get the satisfaction of seeing my face again. Basking in the blue light of my laptop, I figured out where I was going to go.

  I was going to start a new life. A life far from all the shit I'd been wallowing in for way too long.

  A life far from Texas.

  A life far from Elliot.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Rain beat against the leaded glass windows behind me, and I pulled my cashmere sweater tighter around my midsection. A fire roared across the room in a carved limestone fireplace, but I still got the chills on rainy days. My body wasn't used to temperatures below seventy degrees, but it was a welcome change of pace. After a year in Seattle, the cold was finally starting to grow on me.

  I sat in the fancy hotel lobby on a leather chair, light jazz playing in the background. A crystal chandelier glittered above my head and an expensive Persian rug was beneath my feet. I crossed my legs, my black pump bobbing up and down as I waited. I took a sip of my gin and tonic and licked my lips, the citrus zest prickly on my tongue. I was waiting for the man who gave me his number at the conference two days before. He was nice looking, about ten years older than me, and the complete opposite of the men I usually went for.

  I was making a lot of changes.

  The man was lean—from jogging, or the elliptical machine at the gym, I guessed—and looked good in a tailored suit. He didn't have a single tattoo, for crying out loud. He was a doctor, too. My mother would have jumped for joy, which was exactly why I didn't tell her. Not that I told her much of anything, most days.

  I was trying on a new life for size. A new life in Seattle, Washington. A glamorous new life where I had a job and went on dates and did hobbies on my days off. I had friends again. I had a purpose for living.

  Well, a purpose that didn't completely revolve around getting revenge on Elliot.

  I knew that prison was where he belonged, but it was hard to be so far away from his presence. After years of obsessing over him, it was hard not to think about him.

  Well, not just hard. Impossible.

  I felt a light touch on my shoulder, and glanced up with my practiced smile. My heart sped up, but my smile didn't waver. I was a pro, I'm telling you.

  "Rachel?" His voice was low and soft as he called me by my newest alias.

  "Mitch?" I raised my eyebrows, and I knew that my eyes probably caught the light of the chandelier above in a pretty way. He got that look—the look nice men get when they're in the presence of a woman they want to impress. I let my gaze roam down the front of him, taking in his slightly rumpled suit. He didn't look haggard, though. He looked fashionably rumpled. Even his hair was rumpled, from his fingers running through it, no doubt. He'd had a long day at work. He wanted to unwind.

  He was a sure thing.

  So was I.

  "Thanks for waiting," he said, folding himself into the chair beside me.

  "Oh, I was just catching up on work emails," I lied smoothly.

  "So hard to get away from the office," he said blandly.

  "We're officially off the clock," I said with a knowing glint in my eye, dropping my phone back in my bag. He was preoccupied with my legs anyway, so I did the Sharon Stone-leg-cross, turning to the side a bit so he could only guess if I was wearing panties or not. He chuckled and shook his head, his ears turned red.

  We were off to the races.

  At the front desk, he handed over his black credit card and got us a nice room on a high floor, like a real gentleman.

  He ordered a bottle of champagne for us and poured my glass, like a real gentleman.

  He even fucked like a real gentleman.

  I held onto the headboard as he rolled his hips against mine. The room was fancy, decorated in whites and grays and thick, sumptuous fabrics. The bed was soft and the sheets were high-thread count. Everything was so... gentle. It was too nice. Which was crazy. I went to one of the nicest hotels in Seattle for a hookup, I don't know why I was shocked that it was luxurious.

  I opened my thighs wider, wanting him deeper. Harder. With a light moan, he sunk into me, quickening his pace. I knew he was getting close, so I moved with him, egging him on. With every thrust, I thought about Elliot and how much I hated him. I thought about how he was laying on a hard cot in a prison cell and I was on thousand thread count sheets in a room that cost more for one night than he used to make in a week.

  It had been over a year since the trial.

  Well, 391 days, to be exact.

  I knew where he was, but he didn't know where I was.

  As it should be, or so I thought at the time.

  I glanced over at the nightstand and saw my phone sitting there. I don't know what came over me, but I reached for it.

  Before Mitch realized what I was doing, I took a picture. I picture of where we were joined, a little memento of my brand new life. He slowed on top of me, the muscles in his neck and arms straining with restraint.

  “What are you doing?” he said.

  “It was so fucking sexy, I had to take a picture,” I purred, bowing my back.

  “A picture?” he breathed, already thrusting into me again.

  “No faces, just bodies,” I whispered, turning the phone so he can see. He moaned, thrusting into me harder than he had all night.

  “You're a bad girl, aren't you?” he murmured, dipping his head to kiss me. I tossed my phone on the pillow and wrapped my arms around his waist. A thrill went through me. I liked the title.

  I was a bad girl. I was just beginning to realize how bad I could be.

  *****

  I don't know where the idea came from. I was laying in bed on a lazy Sunday morning, half-watching a cooking show and half-dozing. My phone began vibrating on the pillow next to me and I lifted it to glance at it, my eyes blurry with sleep. It was a reminder I'd set, to mark our anniversary.

  It was the anniversary of the day I first met Elliot in a dark hallway in a crowded bar and my life changed forever. For the first time in four years, I had forgotten it. I might have gone the whole day without remembering, if not for my own pesky thought to set a digital reminder. I tossed my phone across the bed and stared at the ceiling. The black anger swirled through me like a raging tornado, sweeping up all the good, normal thoughts and leaving only destruction in its wake.

  Although Elliot was locked up, I wondered if he was being punished enough. Did he think about me everyday and wonder what I was doing? Did he remember our anniversary, or had he forgotten? The thought that he might have the luxury of forgetting had me sitting upright in bed, furious.

  My phone vibrated again, the buzzing burrowing deep inside of my brain. I crawled to the end of the bed and
grabbed it, turning off the alarm. I stared down at the screen, breathing hard. I don't know why, but I started looking through my pictures. I swiped through picture after picture. Some were with Mitch, the doctor; others were with Ryan, the personal trainer, and a few with Bart, the owner of a restaurant downtown. With every picture, I felt better. I had physical proof that I didn't need Elliot. Proof that I was moving on with my life.

  Then it dawned on me.

  I was out of bed like a shot, throwing on clothes and tossing my hair into a quick ponytail. I rushed down the stairs to the living room and threw on my jacket. I was on my way to the local superstore in twenty minutes flat. I bought a printer, photo paper, and ink. I was a woman on a mission. I couldn't stop smiling the whole time. I felt better than I had in a long time, truth be told. The stationary aisle caught my eye as I passed and I turned my buggy into it. There were rows of brightly colored stationary, like jewels, all lined up just for me. I ran my hand across the packages, trying to decide which one to choose.

  Which one would Elliot like the best?

  My hand stopped on a package of ruby red stationary, complete with envelopes. I bet that's the color he would have chosen. I kept going, finally deciding on a lovely peacock blue. I grabbed two packages without thinking, tossing them in the buggy. I hummed a mindless tune to myself as I made my way to the check out.

  That afternoon, I printed out the first picture. It was a quick shot of Mitch's hand on my bare thigh as he fucked me. Almost artistic, I thought. I scribbled a quick note on the stationary and slipped the glossy photograph inside the blue envelope. I addressed it to Elliot Pritchard, prison number 0923875, care of Huntsville State Penitentiary, Huntsville Texas.

  I sealed it with a kiss.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Another day, another blue letter.

  I thought I knew what was coming.

  I still had the first one she ever sent, a plain blue envelope with a feminine scrawl in black pen on the front. In the almost two years since I'd been in prison, no one ever wrote to me, so it was a surprise. I had a friend in the mail room, Lassiter, and he smuggled it to me unopened. I took it back to my bunk, waited until lights out and then opened it, careful not to tear the colorful paper too much. It was a present, like Christmas had come early, and I wanted to savor it.

  As soon as I opened the envelope, I could smell her. I pressed the paper to my nose like a junkie trying to get a fix. Her scent was all over the crisp folded stationary, and for a long time, I didn't even unfold the letter. I just lay on my bunk with my eyes closed, the pain in my chest almost unbearable.

  I missed her.

  As the days passed in my new gray existence, I felt like I was losing her bit by bit. Memories became distorted and warped. The facts and colors were fading, leaving me with just the longing. As I held her letter in my hands that night, I longed for her. Prison was a living nightmare. I was tough and nobody fucked with me, but everyday was a race to the finish line.

  I still had twenty-five years before I would even catch a glimpse of freedom.

  When I couldn't stand waiting anymore, I finally opened her letter. A picture fell out, and I held it up to the light. For a second, I couldn't even register what I was seeing. A hand. A thigh. A cock.

  Then the shit hit me.

  My Joanie was having sex with another man. I couldn't see the faces of the people in the photo, but I knew her body as well as I knew my own. I could see the two familiar moles on her thigh. I could see the thatch of dark hair at the apex of her thighs, trimmed in the way she always kept it. I could see the dip above her bellybutton that my fingers and tongue had memorized. I could see all of her soft skin bared for someone else. Some other motherfucker was sticking his cock in my woman, and there wasn't a damn thing I could do about it.

  She'd documented the occasion just for me.

  “Happy Anniversary,” she wrote, her pen marks sharp in black ink.

  She might as well have stabbed me in the heart.

  My vision blacked out for a moment and it was all I could do not to scream out at the pain that shot through me. She knew what it would do to me. She knew that it would destroy me. She knew that it would make me mad enough to kill. At that moment, I hated her with my total being. It was a black, all-consuming hatred, and I pounded my fist against the wall again and again, until my blood stained the concrete.

  My Joanie knew how to hurt me. The first letter almost killed me. I didn't think I could take any more, but the letters didn't stop coming. Once every couple of weeks, Lassiter would hand me another blue envelope and I would hurry back to my bunk and rip it open. I was a junkie for her, through and through—I was hooked on the anger and I needed my fix. She sent me over twenty pictures, never any faces, but I always knew it was her. On her knees, on her back, on her stomach. Never the same picture. Always a new image to torture me, a new image to haunt my brain and make it impossible to sleep.

  The rage swallowed me whole and everyday I fell deeper into the abyss. On bad days, I fantasized about wrapping my hands around her pretty neck and squeezing until I felt the bones crush. On good days, I dreamed of shooting the motherfucker that touched her in the head and then fucking her hard in the pool of his blood. I fantasized about fucking her until she screamed, fucking her until she admitted that I was the only one she loved, fucking her until she never wanted any other man.

  I hated her so goddamn much it consumed me, but I loved her, too. The hate and the love mingled within me and, for a long time, I didn't know where one ended and the other began. She wouldn't ever stop, I knew. She would keep torturing me until she was satisfied I'd suffered enough. And the sad thing was, I didn't want her to stop. Every blue envelope was a sign that she hadn't forgotten me. Every blue envelope was a sign that I consumed her thoughts as much as she consumed mine.

  I was fucked, but so was she.

  We were in deep, but we were in it together.

  As I sat on my bunk, a new, unopened envelope in my hands, that knowledge was my only source of comfort. I didn't know that she was about to change everything. I had no idea the tides were about to turn in my favor.

  Shit, I still can't believe it to this day. The impossible became possible, with just one blue envelope.

  Joanie came back to me.

  *****

  The thrill was gone, so to speak.

  The high I got from putting a blue envelope into the mailbox slowly reduced to a mere buzz over time and then dropped down to a slight hum. It was still fun to think about his reaction to the different pictures I sent. I wondered which picture was his favorite. Maybe the one where I was bent over with my ass in the air, my hair covering my face? That was one of my favorites. But then again, I didn't know if he even looked at them. Maybe after the first one, or maybe the first few, he started tossing them in the trash. Maybe he didn't give a shit who I fucked or how I often.

  As I lay awake night after night, I thought about it.

  I wanted to know. I needed to know.

  So I came up with yet another a crazy plan.

  Everyday after work, I had to walk past a sketchy cellphone store on my way to the parking garage. It was a no-name place run by two Russians, and it oozed skeeviness, from the neon sign to the questionable merchandise that was behind the glass in the front. One day as I passed, the idea came to me out of nowhere, like a bolt of lightning on a bright sunny day. I stepped inside the small store, knowing exactly what I was looking for. The little store delivered, and my plan was ready to be implemented.

  I walked out with a burner phone that worked on refillable calling cards. It had an untraceable number. As I drove home, I couldn't stop from smiling, the high making me giddy. I liked the feel of the secret phone in my hands. I liked the fact that it made me feel like I was outside of society and up to no good. I was treading in dangerous waters, and I liked it.

  I printed out a new picture and scribbled the burner phone number on the back. Before I could talk myself out of it, I stuck the photo i
n a blue envelope and walked down to the mailbox on the corner. I knew that what I was doing was stupid. I knew that it was probably a mistake, but I couldn't stop myself. I dropped it in the mailbox and then I waited.

  It took over a month.

  Just when I was sure that nothing was going to come my latest plot, I was at the local organic grocery store wandering aimlessly through the aisles when I heard an unfamiliar ring tone. At first, I thought it was someone else's phone but then I realized the sound was coming from my bag. My heart froze in my chest and I stopped dead in the middle of the frozen food section. I dug around at the bottom of my bag and found the phone. The area code on the caller ID was unfamiliar to me. It wasn't a Texas number.

  I felt my shoulders droop at the realization that it wasn't Elliot. It was most likely a wrong number, I thought. I stared down at the phone as it rang and rang, debating on whether or not to answer it. Finally, it stopped. My heart was racing as I threw the phone back in my bag. I was pissed. I didn't know what I wanted, quite honestly. The thought of hearing his voice again was suddenly something I desired. After two years of working on making a new life, I was slowly reverting back to my old habits. If I wasn't careful, I would slip up and make another mistake. A mistake at that stage in the game could have cost me my new life, and I knew that. But I didn't care.

  A light rain was falling as I left the store and I jogged across the parking lot to my car. By the time I slid in the front seat, my hair was plastered to my face and my mascara was blurry under my eyes. I swept it up into a loose bun, mentally yelling at myself for forgetting my umbrella again. In Seattle, there's no excuse for not having an umbrella. I wondered when I would stop being a Texas girl. How many years would it take before the old Joan Vasquez was completely gone? I placed my hands on the steering wheel and stared out at the drops of rain hitting the windshield, wondering what I was going to do next.