Lifers

by Jane Harvey-Berrick

  I wasn’t going to put money on it though.

  I’d just finished my second mug of coffee for breakfast when I heard his truck crunch into the driveway. I felt as giddy as a 13-year-old on her first date, but without the glitter eye shadow.

  I was clambering into his truck before he’d even had a chance to turn off the engine.

  “Hi,” I said, leaning in for a kiss.

  A huge grin stretched across his face.

  “Hi,” he said, cupping my neck with his hand and kissing me back.

  His lips pressed against mine, softly at first, then more firmly.

  I was very tempted to sit there making out for the rest of the morning, but he pulled back, his eyes glowing.

  “Hi,” he said, again.

  “We already did that bit,” I snickered.

  “Reckon we did. I kinda lose track around you.”

  He linked his fingers through mine and placed my hand on his knee, before winking at me and putting his truck in drive.

  “So, where are we going on this magical mystery tour?”

  “Hush now,” he said. “I’m thinkin’.”

  “About what?”

  “Where to take you.”

  “You haven’t freakin’ worked out where you’re taking me, you ass!” I snapped, snatching my hand back.

  He smiled, apparently pleased with himself.

  “Throttle back, firecracker, I’m just joshin’ wit ya.”

  He reached for my hand again, and rather reluctantly I let him take it.

  “I have got somethin’ planned, but I’m kinda worried you’ll think it’s lame.”

  “That’s entirely possible,” I said, waspishly.

  His bright smile fell a little, and I felt like a complete bitch.

  “Jordan, whatever it is, I’m sure it’s fine.”

  He was silent for a moment.

  “If I could, I’d take you somewhere real upscale. There’d be a starched white cloth on the table, napkins folded into fancy shapes, and candles all around us. I’d order champagne and the best food on the menu. We’d eat and laugh and talk, and I’d take you dancin’ till dawn. Then I’d lay you down on soft sheets and love you till the sun was high in the sky.”

  My mouth dropped open.

  “Jordan … that’s … that’s…”

  “But I cain’t,” he said, flatly. “I’m an ex-con on parole who hasn’t got two nickels to rub together, a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of. I cain’t even take you somewhere you can have a beer, or leave the fuckin’ town without gettin’ arrested and my ass thrown back in prison.”

  His expression was bitter.

  “Jordan, don’t,” I said quietly but insistently, kicking myself that I’d started this downward spiral. “I couldn’t care less where we go. Just sitting on my mom’s back porch drinking coffee with you has been the highlight of each day since I landed in this town.”

  He threw me a skeptical look.

  “It’s true. And besides, I’m not the kind of girl who needs swanky restaurants and fancy food. I like you.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know why.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Because you’ve got a fuck-hot body and a dick that touches parts no dick has ever touched. Give me a break on the pity party!”

  A reluctant smile crossed his face and he chuckled quietly.

  “You got a dirty mouth, Miss Delaney.”

  “Why, yes I do, Mr. Kane. You got a problem with that?”

  He grinned and squeezed my fingers. “No, ma’am. Not at all.”

  I turned on the radio and we drove along listening to Linkin Park’s ‘Breaking the Habit’ which seemed oddly apt.

  “Mikey always liked this song,” he said, his voice aching, lost in the past again.

  “Tell me something else about him—something nobody else knows.”

  Jordan looked thoughtful, and then he suddenly smiled.

  “He got his cherry popped when he was 13—on a church picnic.”

  I laughed out loud. “You’re kidding me!”

  “I swear it’s true! Miss Morgan the Sunday School teacher thought he’d been drinkin’ spiked punch because he couldn’t stop his grin. But when we got home he told me what had happened. A mother of one of the other kids from another church. She was like thirty!”

  “Are you sure he wasn’t playing you?”

  “Nope. He had lipstick on the inside of his t-shirt and hickeys all over him.”

  “That’s awesome! What a great story! And nobody ever found out?”

  Jordan shook his head, still grinning.

  “And there was this one time he got so high, he swore he could fly. I was pretty wasted, too, so I told him to prove it. Mikey, he climbed to the top of this ole oak tree just outside the school yard, fell out of it and broke his arm. He was so stoned, it didn’t even hurt ‘til the next day. We told everyone that I’d tossed a Frisbee up there and he was just gettin’ it down.”

  I laughed as he told me story after story of the scrapes he and Mikey had gotten into. But after a while, I started to feel uneasy as a distinctive pattern emerged. I paid close attention—this didn’t sound like the Saint Michael that Mom had told me about, or the guy that everyone seemed to have looked up to.

  “What about his girlfriend?”

  Jordan laughed. “Which one? He was a bigger player than I was! Hell, he taught me all the moves. Um, okay that sounded weird. I just meant he wasn’t the kind of guy who wanted to get tied down any time soon.”

  That was really odd. I definitely remembered Mom telling me that Mikey had a steady girlfriend that he was planning on marrying. Someone had fed my mom a load of bull.

  Listening to Jordan’s stories, it became clear that each time it was Mikey that led them into some sort of trouble, but Jordan who’d taken the blame, while his big brother came out of it smelling of roses.

  I was still pondering what it meant when Jordan announced that we’d arrived.

  For the last five minutes, we’d been bumping along a dirt road, and now we’d stopped at the edge of a pretty part of the bay.

  Maybe his plan was to recreate our picnic. I wouldn’t have minded, although I was a little disappointed he hadn’t thought of something more original.

  I clambered out of the truck while he reached for something in back.

  He looked nervous as he approached me. I realized he was holding a pair of fishing poles.

  “Fishing? We’re going fishing?”

  I was nonplussed. I’d never been fishing in my life, and I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted to start now.

  “We don’t have to,” he said, his expression wary. “I just thought maybe we could catch ourselves some sea trout and cook them over a fire.” He looked so earnest I didn’t have the heart to tell him that the thought of fish-guts made me want to hurl. “And, um, I’ve brought a couple of potatoes. We could put them under a fire while we’re fishin’ then dig them out when they’re cooked.”

  “Sounds fun,” I said, mustering as much fake enthusiasm as could reasonably be expected.

  “We can do somethin’ else…” he began, worry creasing his forehead.

  “Hell, no! Fishing! Lead me to it, but I’m telling you, gutting these poor suckers is your job, and if I don’t catch anything, I’ll get grumpy if you don’t feed me.”

  “I consider myself warned,” he said, relaxing instantly and throwing me a huge smile.

  I sat on the same blanket, the one he’d borrowed from my car before, watching while he dug a small pit in the sand and placed the potatoes wrapped in tin foil at the bottom. Then he built a fire over the top from pieces of twig and driftwood.

  “A couple of hours, give or take, and we’ll have ourselves some baked potatoes,” he said, happily. “Mikey and me used to come out here and do this, drink some beer, smoke some weed. It was kind of our place.” He raised his eyebrows at me. “No chicks allowed.”

  “So right now you’re breaking some sort of guy-code.”

>   He shrugged and looked down, but didn’t answer.

  It seemed as if with every other sentence I was trampling over sensitive subjects, but it was preferable to walking around on eggshells all the time. Besides, he’d said he liked that I was the only one who asked him real questions. Guess I should just go on doing what I was doing.

  I picked up the thermos of coffee and two mugs, while Jordan carried the fishing stuff. He led me to an old log at the side of the saltwater lake, and set up the pole for me with some icky looking bait and a bobber thingy so I’d know when a fish had gotten interested. Then we sat side by side, watching the water lap at the sand beneath our feet.

  I emptied the thermos between the two mugs and passed one to Jordan.

  “It’s peaceful here,” I said.

  “Yup.”

  We sat for several more minutes in silence, drinking our coffee, before I felt his eyes on me.

  “What?”

  “I was just wonderin’,” he said. “You didn’t leave some guy back in Boston? When you were workin’ there?”

  “Yes, no. I mean … there was a guy.” Uh-oh, time to tell the truth. I hope he isn’t going to think I was a giant slut, or an idiot, both of which would be kind of true. “Well, I had this thing with a guy at work…”

  He studied me thoughtfully but didn’t speak.

  “He was my boss. And engaged—to someone else. And, uh, when he broke it off with me … well, it wasn’t so great. Truth is, he treated me like shit after … so I quit my job and came here.”

  He cleared his throat several times, and I waited for him to work himself up to his next question. I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear it but fair was fair: he’d answered my questions.

  “You, um, you still care about him?” he asked quietly, not meeting my eyes.

  I laughed bitterly.

  “Hell, no! Guy was an asshole. I’m just so mad at myself that I didn’t see it before. Anyway, let’s just say I got him out of my system.”

  Jordan looked relieved at the first part of my answer, but then his anxious look was back.

  “You mean you … dated … a lot?”

  I threw him a look to say that I knew exactly where this conversation was going.

  “It depends on your definition of ‘dated’ and ‘a lot’. I dated one guy when I was a freshman in college—Jem—for about seven months. Then he dumped me. Well, I assumed that’s what it meant when I found him in bed with my roommate. Seems it had been going on a while and I was the last to know.”

  Jordan winced.

  “Want me to find him and make him apologize? Him and your roommate?” Jordan asked.

  It sounded like he was serious.

  “Ha, thanks, but no. Besides, if there’s any violence to be done, I’d rather do it myself.”

  “He hurt you bad, didn’t he?”

  I looked across at him, seeing only sympathy and sadness in his beautiful eyes.

  “Yes, you could definitely say that. I find … found … I find it hard to trust people—men. But not just men. My roommate—that betrayal was almost worse. So … after that … I decided: nothing serious. I was just going to have fun. And I pretty much stuck to that for the rest of college and when I started working, too. But then I met Craig, and it kind of backfired on me.”

  “The asshole you worked for?”

  “Yes. But it was my own fault. I mean I knew he was engaged but I didn’t care. I just figured it was up to her to look out for herself. I know that sounds pretty bad, but that was how I felt. It was exciting. He took me to expensive restaurants and fancy clubs…”

  I saw Jordan look down.

  “But it wasn’t supposed to mean anything. And it didn’t—to either of us. But when he got tired of me, well, he was a complete bastard. He made it intolerable at work, giving me the shittiest jobs, yelling at me in front of the other paralegals. Well, you can imagine. I wasn’t going to put up with that shit, and everyone knew about us, so if I’d tried to sue him for harassment, I wouldn’t have had a hope in hell of winning a case. I thought about telling his fiancée, letting her know what a prize asshole he was, but in the end, well, I’d just had enough. So I left.”

  “And came here?”

  “Yeah, well, after that disaster I thought I’d give up on dating for a while. Instead, I just looked for hook ups, nothing too serious. And no, before you ask, I don’t consider you a hook up.”

  He nodded slowly.

  “What, um, what do you consider … us?”

  Ooh, so hoping he wasn’t going to ask that question.

  “Honestly?” I sighed. “I don’t know. I mean, strictly speaking, this is our first date, and like I said, I don’t do dates in general. So I suppose it’s progress. Does that answer your question?”

  He didn’t reply to that but answered my question with one of his own.

  “That woman on Friday night at the coffee shop, Bev, she asked you if I was your boyfriend. You said you were thinkin’ about it.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Well, did you think about it anymore?”

  “You have to know something about me, Jordan. I’m not great with the whole ‘boyfriend’ thing. That’s probably why I get treated like shit all the time. All I can tell you is that I enjoy spending time with you, but I’m not planning to be here in town forever. When I’ve got some money together, I’ll be gone. And if you’re as smart as I think you are, you’ll do the same.”

  He sighed and ran one hand through his hair, pushing a stray curl out of his eyes.

  “I would never treat you like those other guys, Torrey, I promise. But yeah, okay, I get it.”

  I knew he was disappointed by my answer, but I was trying to be as honest as possible. The expression on his face told me it wasn’t what he’d wanted to hear.

  I tried to think of something to say to distract him.

  “So, tell me about the tats,” I said, running a finger along a design of barbed wire that trailed from under the sleeve of his t-shirt, down to his elbow. “They offer classes on them in prison, or what?”

  He gave me a look that said he knew what I was doing, followed by a wry smile.

  “Not exactly. It’s illegal, for a start. You get caught, and they add 180 days to your sentence for each infraction. I guess that wouldn’t make much difference when I was facing an attempted murder charge, but they sure kept it on my record when I was sent from juvie to prison.” He shook his head. “One of the things they kept on my record,” he repeated, quietly.

  His expression darkened, and I could sense a further dive in his mood.

  “So, you were a bit of a rule breaker even in juvie?” I asked, hoping to lighten the suddenly dark atmosphere.

  He twitched a shoulder.

  “Guess so. I did this one myself.”

  He held out his left arm and I saw again the word ‘love’ tattooed on the back of his wrist. I remembered seeing it the first day I met him.

  “Seems like an odd sort of word to have gotten while you were in prison,” I said, nudging his shoulder. “Unless you’re telling me you were in love with a 300 pound biker called Graham.”

  He tried to smile. “No, no bikers. I did this one for my brother. I loved Mikey. I mean, he was my big brother, but you don’t love people just because they’re your family.”

  I felt certain he was thinking of his parents at that moment.

  “Mikey was the world to me—best guy you’d ever meet. Everyone loved Mikey.”

  He sighed, and I watched the dark descend again.

  “He was easy to love. Not like me. So the tattoo was to remind me that no matter how angry I was at myself, at everyone, that Mikey was always full of love. I don’t know—somethin’ like that. My head was kind of fucked at the time. Still is,” he whispered.

  “The first time I saw that tat, I thought you probably had ‘hate’ tattooed on your other wrist or behind your knee or something. You know, like that scary preacher in Night of the Hunter.”

  I coul
d see him making the effort to lift his mood to match the one I was trying to create for us.

  “Hey! I remember that film,” he nodded. “Yeah, that was freakin’ scary when I was a kid—Robert Mitchum gave me nightmares.” He threw me a teasing look. “Hey, you think your momma has tats in interestin’ places?”

  I slapped his arm hard.

  “You cannot be thinking about my mom in the nude when I had your dick inside me just a few nights ago!” I half shouted.

  I saw his cheeks flush immediately.

  “Hell, no!” he snorted. “I never … I mean I didn’t think … no!”

  I couldn’t help laughing at the look of horror on his face.

  “Teasing! Boy, you’re so easy.”

  He growled at me and pinned my wrists together with one hand, sending our coffee mugs tumbling onto the sand.

  “You’ll pay for that, woman!”

  And then he started tickling me until tears were pouring from my eyes, and I was begging for him to stop. But he was relentless, and it was only a lucky kick to his nuts that got him off.

  “Oh, God, you’ve finished me,” he groaned, holding his sack with both hands, his thighs pressed together defensively.

  “You deserved that!” I coughed out, wiping the tears from my eyes.

  He might have had some tears of his own at that point. Served him right.

  Eventually, we calmed down enough to sit peacefully again.

  He stared disconsolately at his empty coffee cup, but I was too comfortable to move. He’d have to wait for a refill.

  “You were telling me about the tats?”

  “I wasn’t good at much in school,” he admitted, at last. “But I was good at drawin’ and pictures. There was this kid in juvie whose older brother was a tattoo artist and he knew some stuff. So I did the sketches and he taught me how to do the ink. It was pretty risky…”

  “Why?”

  “Well, like I said, it’s illegal, but the other thing is, you cain’t exactly order the equipment in, so we had to make it. First of all, Styx just used a sewin’ needle and a magic marker pen. It wasn’t exactly sterile and there was a lot of Hep C goin’ around. Then he started usin’ old guitar strings, lead from pencils and sometimes ash from burned paper.”