Axle

by Trent Jordan

  With that, I departed, preferring to let Lane believe that whatever was affecting me, it wasn’t a big deal, and it would pass in time.

  Too bad I couldn’t say for sure if it actually would or not.

  Rose

  Two Days Later

  I stood before the mirror in my bathroom, evaluating the outfit that I chosen. It was a pink dress with a hint of a v-shaped opening at the top, but not nearly as revealing as I would have worn in my younger days. I thought it conveyed just the appropriate amount of sexiness without crossing the line and making someone think that I was trying to sleep with them.

  Of course, this wasn’t just “someone.” This was a date—no, not a date, just a meeting, I had to remind myself—with none other than LeCharles Williamson. I had finally gotten what I had hoped to achieve all this time.

  And now I was acting like a middle schooler going on her first date, and I had no idea how the hell to handle myself.

  I mean, I did know how to dress and act, I wasn’t a total idiot. But my emotions were running so high, and my mind was racing so much, that there was just no chance of me making any sense of what advice I needed to follow and which advice I needed to stay away from.

  “Can you believe it, Shiloh?” I said.

  My dog sat just outside the bathroom, dutifully watching me as I finished getting ready. It was very obvious what he wanted—a walk—but it was also very obvious, even to him, that he wasn’t going to get it, not tonight. I had more important things, and I knew that I could always take him for a walk later in the night, even if it wasn’t the safest part of town.

  “It’s actually happening, Shiloh,” I said. “Granted, we’re just going to a coffee shop. Nothing more. He made me promise no alcohol, but still! Who needs to be drunk when you’re this excited, right?”

  Calm down. You’re not going to accomplish anything if you’re not clearheaded. There was a reason it ended, and if you forget that reason...

  Me.

  How could I forget the reason was me?

  It was both of you. Stand up for yourself a little.

  But all of the thoughts, all of the logic, it wasn’t sticking. I just told myself to be present as best as I could. I finally finished getting ready, bent over to kiss Shiloh, and patted his head.

  “You be a good boy and watch this apartment, okay?” I said. “I’ve got to go make things right and atone for my past. I made some bad decisions before you were around. Let’s make sure no more terrible ones happen, okay?”

  Shiloh looked at me with love. It was all of the confidence-boosting I needed. With one more kiss, I hurried out the door, locked it as Shiloh acted like he was coming with me—maybe he would someday—and hurried down to my car. I pulled out of the parking lot of the apartment complex so fast, I nearly hit someone. The guy yelled at me and told me to watch the fuck where I was going. It was a rather inauspicious start to the night, but once I hit the road, I finally felt free.

  As I drove to the coffee shop on the west side of town, I couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like to ride a motorcycle to our destination. Perhaps that was a bit silly on my part, considering how obnoxious I found the damn things. And yet, if LeCharles liked them...

  I pulled up to the coffee shop, Joe’s Java. I took a deep breath and reminded myself that whatever I was feeling, he probably was too. I also needed to remind myself this was not a date, but a chance to apologize and try and make things right. If the feelings organically developed into something more, that would be one thing, but to come in assuming that something romantic would develop was far too presumptuous.

  I couldn’t see LeCharles from my vantage point in the car. I got out, walked to the window as slowly as I could, trying to see if I could catch sight of him beforehand. I probably should have gotten the hint he wasn’t there by the fact there were no motorcycles, but I didn’t notice it until I scanned the entire coffee shop.

  I wasn’t discouraged in the slightest, though. I went up to the counter, ordered a green tea, and sat down, fiddling with my phone. He was probably just caught in traffic. Traffic in a town this small? You mean he hit every red light instead of all the green lights?

  I ignored the voice in my head as the clock ticked forward ten minutes, fifteen minutes, twenty minutes...

  Thirty minutes…

  He’s not coming. He set this up to show you up.

  My initial reaction, as bad as it sounds, was to say that I deserved this. I’d treated him so poorly that karma all but dictated I suffer some consequences accordingly. Perhaps him showing up late—or not at all—was his way of saying, “See how you hurt me? This is how it felt. I hope you feel the same thing I felt.”

  I scolded myself a little bit, reminding myself that it was still just common courtesy and good manners for LeCharles to show up when he said he would.

  Finally, the distant rumble of a lone motorcycle reached my ears. I perked up as I saw the sole headlight of a motorcycle pass by Joe’s Java, park, and shut off. I sat up in my seat, arched my back, and put on a nervous smile. Although I was going to be apologetic, I hoped that this would at least be a pleasant experience for all sides.

  I stood up, hoping that I’d get a chance to hug him. When he walked in, he looked every part the sexy hunk that I remembered him. He was wearing the same cut that Brian had worn two days before, and he looked like he had grown his facial hair out a bit. He already looked like he was in his mid-thirties without facial hair, and now, he just looked even more rugged, grizzled, and wise.

  “Hey,” I said.

  “Sorry I’m late,” he said, but he didn’t sound particularly apologetic about it. “Club meeting ran late.”

  “Oh, that’s okay,” I said, even though it really wasn’t. “What did you all talk about?”

  He scoffed at me as he took a seat abruptly, giving me no chance to hug him or even touch him.

  “Club business stays in-house,” he said. “I wouldn’t tell you even if I liked you.”

  Ouch. Okay, fair.

  “Well, LeCharles, I know you have good reason to not like me.”

  I guess we should just get right to it.

  “But I just want you to know how sorry I am for everything that happened, especially at the end of our relationship.”

  LeCharles leaned back in his chair, folded his arms, and chewed some gum as he listened to me speak. I felt very much like I was being judged heavily, and I had to remind myself to be apologetic but not groveling. I’d screwed up, but he had to play his part and forgive me. Otherwise...

  If it comes to it, just walk away, wish him well, and don’t ever look back. You will have done everything you possibly could have to make it work.

  If only it were that easy, though.

  “I was under so much stress, but that is no excuse for what I did to you,” I said. “I was a bitch to you. I was terrible to you. I... yeah. I don’t know how else to say it. I’m sorry.”

  LeCharles unfolded his arms and put his hand on his thighs, looking at me for a long time. A part of me had the feeling that he didn’t want to be as distant as he was acting, that he actually wanted to let himself be close. He was probably afraid of what would happen if he did that, and who could blame him?

  “I appreciate the apology,” he said, though he didn’t look me in the eye when he said it, as if doing so would suddenly mean that he loved me. “But I want to know why you acted that way. Your apology doesn’t mean shit if I don’t know what, exactly, you’re apologizing for. Otherwise, you’re just placating me, not actually meaning anything.”

  LeCharles sounded torn, like he both wanted to hurt me and give me a chance to make things right. I did not envy his position, but I did want to fully bring out the side of him that wanted to make things right, even if it came at the cost of a lot of pain and heartache.

  “Well, at the time we were dating, I was trying to get into med school. You remember that, right?”

  “How could I forget,” he said, sounding more menacing tha
n empathizing.

  “The MCAT just... it crushed me, LeCharles. And I didn’t know how to handle it. I was getting frustrated with my practice tests. I felt like I wasn’t good enough, no matter what I did. And then, on top of that, I was dealing with the diagnosis of my father’s lung cancer. That was a real sucker punch, especially since I’d told him forever to quit smoking.”

  Recounting this story wasn’t the kind of thing that made me emotional, because it had happened so long ago, but it did remind me of how just alone I was feeling these days. Was it any small wonder that no matter how I told myself to stand strong before my ex, I found myself cowering and begging for his grace when there was literally no one else in this world to share my story with?

  “So what happened was when I saw you, I was an utter ball of stress. Things that I would normally let just slide under the table suddenly became difficult to figure out, and I reacted inappropriately. I recognize now that I was terrible at handling it, but I didn’t know any better back then. And... ”

  At some point, I was going to call him out for his role in the breakup. But it didn’t feel like I was quite at that point in the conversation.

  “It just became the sort of thing where neither of us was really listening to the other. And by the time we broke up, I think it had already been a good couple of months where I barely heard you. I’d hear you, but I had my own things to say. That’s not how good relationships work, I know. I know I screwed up.”

  But now’s the point where you have to call him out for his part. This wasn’t you being Satan and him being Jesus.

  And if he sees it that way, then he’s not the man you thought he was.

  “I... LeCharles, let me ask you something.”

  “Hmm,” he said, not changing expression.

  “Are you willing to take responsibility for your part in how things ended? I know I screwed up, but we both had our faults.”

  No matter what LeCharles said, I felt like an enormous weight had just been hoisted off my shoulders. By speaking those words, I had transitioned from being someone who blamed herself for everything to someone who could see all sides. The transition was only in my head, and I knew there would be plenty more times I’d have to prove it, but for right now, it seemed real.

  “I mean, did I do some things wrong? Sure, I guess. I’m not perfect.”

  He stewed for a few seconds. This wasn’t what I was hoping to hear him say.

  “I guess if you went back through and looked at the relationship we had, you could point to some things I did poorly, some things I could do better, yeah.”

  He’s beating around the bush.

  “But what does it matter?”

  Disappointing. There was no other way to describe it.

  “Look, I suppose at one time, the two of us could have been something, but life just didn’t allow it to go down. Shit happens.”

  For the briefest of moments, his expression had softened so much that I swore I saw sorrow on it. I swore that I saw regret on it. I really felt like I was seeing someone who, having gotten what he thought he’d never get, now began to wonder if there might be something more to it.

  That moment, however fleeting it was, was something I immediately knew would be embedded in my mind as long as LeCharles remained a part of my life. Even if we didn’t date, I knew I’d remember that face as the true face of LeCharles. Not the face of anger, the face of judgment, or the face of disgust. The face of empathy.

  But it was fleeting precisely because a moment later, he went back to being a rude guy trying to push me away.

  “Besides, I’m having too much fun right now. I get around too much.”

  In a weird way, I suppose the statement didn’t hurt as much as it could have, mostly because I knew what he was saying came not from a place of honesty or sincerity, but from a place of self-protection and fear.

  But that didn’t mean it hurt like hell.

  “Did you have to tell me that?” I said.

  “I’m just telling you the truth, I’m sorry if it hurts.”

  I glared at him. I could see on his face that even if it was true, it wasn’t what he really wanted. I knew LeCharles too well. I knew that he really wanted company and the one.

  He probably slept with all those girls because it gave him the physical presence of a woman without taking on the risk of heartache and pain. I knew he hadn’t had the greatest upbringing with his parents, and I knew that a lot of times, I almost was like a surrogate mother to him. It wasn’t lost on me that if he was sleeping around, it wasn’t to have “too much fun.” It was to avoid too much pain.

  “I don’t think it’s as fun for you as you say it is.”

  Admittedly, I’d let my temper get to me a little bit. I hadn’t meant to be so bold and blunt with him.

  But as soon as the words reached his ears, whatever softening up of him I had accomplished vanished. He became harder than even when we had started the... date, meeting, whatever you wanted to call it, and his glare looked like it wanted to cut my soul in half.

  “You don’t know me nearly as well as you think you do, Rose,” he said. “You think I’m the same guy I was ten years ago? Then you’re far dumber than I thought. Small wonder you wound up being a fucking nurse instead of a doctor.”

  You don’t know me as well as you think you do, either.

  “People can find fun in different things, you know. I’m sorry that you’re as desperate as you are for us to get back together again, but let me make it one hundred percent clear. Whatever underhanded games you thought you were going to pull off, whatever bullshit you thought you could sneak by me by seeing me tonight, it’s not going to work. You asked for a meeting, and you got one. I hope you’re satisfied with it. Because you’re not getting anything else.”

  He stood up with his last words. I didn’t dare utter his name and drive him away any further. I’d said what I had to.

  I watched him walk out to his bike, presuming that I would never see him again.

  What more could I do? What more was worth trying to do? What could I say?

  It wasn’t worth it anymore. I knew it would take time for that realization to sink in, and I knew it would take time for that to fully take hold, but for right now, yeah. This was it.

  But then something strange happened.

  LeCharles didn’t turn on his bike.

  He just sat on the motorcycle, seemingly lost in deep thought. I wasn’t sure if this was an invitation for me to come out and talk to him, but I wasn’t going to play that game anymore. Not after what had just happened. I’d played my part, and now he had to do something.

  Pride was playing a part, sure, but also just common sense.

  I sipped on my tea quietly. I checked my phone. No new messages, but that was fine. I just needed to kill time.

  When I looked up from my phone, LeCharles, much to my shock, was dismounting his bike and coming back inside. He came to my table and stood over me. It was like he was trying to tell himself to intimidate me, but he could no longer bring himself to do it.

  “Look, I know you’ve changed,” he said. “I can appreciate that. But please. Just... for both of our sakes. Don’t pursue me any further. Or... ”

  He shook his head.

  “I’ll have to make you not pursue me.”

  I didn’t react. LeCharles didn’t actually mean what he was saying. He still was trying to portray an image of a tough guy, but he wasn’t a tough guy. Well, he might have been to his biker friends, but he wasn’t to me.

  Here, he was just softening up. He just hadn’t softened up enough to tell the truth.

  LeCharles, a couple seconds later, walked back out, and this time, he really did get on his bike and leave. But by coming in to meet me and giving me a few final words, he had revealed something to me.

  Deep within him, underneath all the vitriol and toxicity that he had piled on to his memory of me and our relationship, a part of him still wanted to try and make something work.

  I
knew that if I wanted that side of him to emerge, I’d have to give him all the space he needed. Rushing him would be like trying to get through a door that had just unlocked but had not yet opened.

  I guess I’d just have to wait and see.

  Axle

  Two Days Later

  You’d think that after everything that happened Thursday night, that I would have no desire to see Rose again.

  You’d think that after my efforts to try and make sure we didn’t end with me ripping her to shreds, that I would have gotten my peace, and I could have moved forward.

  You’d think that I had given Rose what she wanted and that I did not want for anything.

  It wasn’t that easy.

  Because even though I had deliberately not told Rose in advance I would be late, even though I had come in intending to be an asshole to shove her away, even though I had dodged her question about personal responsibility in the relationship, she had done a remarkable job keeping her cool. And that was what I meant when I said she had changed in a way that I had not expected. I couldn’t speak for how she would be in a relationship.

  But I could say that the girl who would mock me, make fun of me, and make my life a living hell had not shown up in the very spot that she once would have.

  And that was so confounding to me it made me get off my bike and go up to her, trying to make sense of everything. Just what the hell did she really mean?

  It also didn’t help that she didn’t say a word to me after that. I was still of the belief that she would be texting me, begging me to meet again, trying to make sense of what I had done or said. Why wasn’t she? Was she...

  Was she stronger than I had anticipated?

  I had to laugh at the very thought. Not because it was absurd, but because it might have been right. It might have been the exact way to describe Rose now. Not the weak girl who yelled at anyone the moment things went bad. But a woman who was picking up the pieces of her life and making things better.