I fucked up. I was an idiot to think I could have a woman like Mia. I would fuck her up like I do to everything. My touch is destructive, it ruins anything it lays itself upon.
If Mia were to know who I am, who I have become, what I did, it would destroy her. And she would hate me anyway. I’d rather her hate me now for leaving her than for knowing the truth about the monster that has been lurking in her bed.
I pull up to Jude’s townhouse. It looks like it’s time to break the silent battle we have fought these past few weeks.
A light drizzle begins to fall as I pound on her door.
Minutes later, she answers her door in a robe, her head wrapped in a towel.
“Jesus Tax! You scared the shit out of me.”
I push my way past her. “We need to talk.”
“What? Now you want to talk to me?”
“Jude, you walked out on me. You told me to go fuck myself, remember?”
She crosses her arms and sighs. “This better be you telling me your fucking master plan is finally coming to its grand finale.”
I pace back and forth, running my fingers through my damp hair. “She didn’t do it, Jude.”
She takes a moment to digest my words and then laughs in disbelief. “Huh. What? You’re fucking kidding me Tax. She’s really gotten into your head hasn’t she?”
“No...no. Jude will you just fucking listen? I know she didn’t do it.”
“Why, did she tell you that?” she asks, mockingly doe-eyed and innocent.
“Yes—no—yes. Not directly, but she told me about Sil. She never got the letter. It was all Tripp. It had to be.”
“Oh come on, do you think she would tell you she set up a couple of kids to be nearly beaten to death?”
“No, but it was the way she told me...she didn’t have to. I know she was telling the truth.”
Jude circles away, and paces, a mirror image of me. It’s freaky how sometimes we will have the same mannerisms and movements. Even I notice it.
“You’re believing what you want to believe,” she says, finally.
“No, Jude, you are.”
Jude begins to shift from detached disbelief to desperate anger. I watch her small body tighten, her dark eyes narrow. She still feels that night as if it happened days ago.
“This is bullshit, Tax. After all we have been through, and now you wanna back out?” she shouts, holding back tears.
“It’s not backing out! She isn’t guilty of anything but being my friend. Do you know she fed us because she knew we were hungry? Her dad told her about pops, how things were bad at home.”
“Oh so now we care what Sheriff Tibbett thinks?”
“For fuck’s sake Jude, you can’t even see the forest for the trees anymore. You just want to hurt people now. You don’t even care what the reason is any longer.”
“That’s right, I forgot, I am taking to Gandhi over here. You enjoyed every moment of getting back at all those pieces of shit.”
“Oh I did. I wish I could do it all over again. And if there was anyone left to pay, I would kill them with a smile on my face. But Mia is not one of those people.”
“Just because you are choosing to believe her recollection of events doesn’t mean I have to!” Jude shouts, stabbing a finger at me. All 100 pounds, five feet of her, never one to back down from an argument. “You know what Tripp said. She was part of it. How could he have even known about the fucking letter?”
“She said she lost it. Maybe he found it. I don’t know!”
“And the letter she wrote back?”
“There was a group of people in on it, someone must have faked the letter to get us there.”
“Oh come on! This sounds like bullshit. You sound like a conspiracy theorist. When you hear hoof prints—”
“I know, think horses, not zebras. That doesn’t mean zebras don’t exist.”
“No...you aren’t a reliable source anymore. She doesn’t get to have everything and then get to walk away from this. For once, her looks and charm are not going to allow her to do whatever she wants! This isn’t zebras. You know she betrayed you. This isn’t some fucking series of freakish coincidences. You and I have spent years fabricating ‘coincidences’ to kill people. And you know ‘freakish coincidences’ only come from meticulous planning.”
“I have seen crazier shit in my life and so have you.”
Jude paces, shaking her head in disbelief. “Nope. Sorry, she was in on it. I hate to break it to you. You’re falling for her bullshit again, just like you’re in high school all over again. You got me into this mess Tax the first time because you were gaga over her, you promised you would make them all pay!”
“I would dammit, but not her. Not if she didn’t do it. It’s over Jude, let it go.”
“Well, if you don’t have the guts to do it, I’ll do it myself.”
I know Jude well enough to know she means it. And though I abandoned Mia, I did it to protect her, and that uncontrollable need to protect her again erupts out of me. No one is going to fucking touch Mia, not even my sister.
I lunge at Jude and she gasps as I grab her by the neck, driving her against the wall of her foyer. A lamp tumbles over on her entry table as she flails her arms.
“Jude, if you fucking touch her. I will kill you. Do you understand? I will kill you. This is enough. Everyone got what they deserved. We are done. DONE.”
Jude and I look eye to eye, two halves, two allies, two fighters, always on the same team, and now we are torn, willing to alienate the only constant in our lives. She stares into my dark eyes with hers, and when she doesn’t relent, I squeeze my hand, slowly tightening my grip. I have always seen Jude as an equal, but feeling her tiny neck in my hand reminds me that is an illusion. Jude needs to feel the grip of death. She needs to understand this is not an idle threat. If she hurts Mia, Jude won’t be my sister any longer.
The lamp rolls to the edge of the table and shatters on the floor, breaking our standoff. We both look down and I let her go as she backs away several steps. Her robe is half off of her body, shamelessly exposing herself to me, the towel on her head lilts to the side.
Her red face, wet with tears looks at me with such anger and pity. How could this happen so fast? How could the only two women in my life who have ever mattered hate me? But Jude isn’t even there anymore. She’s like a cornered dog, and she snarls as the words collect in her mouth, almost as though she is tasting them before spitting out her poison.
“You love her? You love her! You fucking idiot Tax!” she screams. “She will never love you back! Even if she could accept the fact that you have killed Tripp and his dad, and Huck, and Tucker, and all of those assholes. She will never accept that you killed her father!”
Jude is not telling me anything I don’t already know. But hearing the words I have been avoiding, shot at me like gunshot pellets, they sting. What Jude is saying is right and it’s why I realized today that my whole plan was trying to fulfill Sil’s dreams, not Tax’s reality. If Mia ever found out I was the person who gave her father a heart attack with an injection of succinylcholine, she would spit on my grave, she would despise me. That’s why I had to go. Mia and I and our child, it was all a silly fantasy. Maybe I could only tell Mia a half truth, but I would know. I would know I took away the one person she relied upon in this world, the man who was there for her when her mother died and protected her, even at the expense of me and my sister. I understand. If someone killed Jude or Rex, I would never forgive them. There are just some debts that cannot be forgiven.
“You don’t care about anyone anymore, do you, Jude? It’s all about you. I exist so you can pile on your guilt. I’ll never do enough to make up for what happened. You don’t want me to move on. You want it to just be me, you and Rex forever. You can have Rex, but I’m not allowed to have someone, am I? The world has to revolve around you. You’ll keep finding ways to keep me to yourself.” I shake my head in disgust, at Jude and at myself. “You don’t have to worry though. I told
her it was over. She doesn’t deserve this shit. But don’t for a second think I don’t mean what I said. I won’t just kill you, I will paint my face with your blood if you hurt her. I don’t care who you are to me, because if you do it, then obviously neither do you.”
Jude does what she always does, goes from lashing out to acting like a wounded animal who needs help, taking advantage of my need to protect my sister, the sister I couldn’t protect when it mattered.
“Taxtaxtax...” she says in rapid succession, running to me and grabbing my arm. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. Come on, wombmate. We both say fucked up shit to each other. I won’t do it. Okay? I won’t hurt her. We can forget it. We can pack up and move to Tahiti or Malta. Remember all these plans we had?”
I look at her small hands clenching my forearm. “Jude, you don’t fucking get it. We need separate lives. Until we figure out who the fuck we are. We’re fucked up. We need to form our own lives in the real world. You’re not my fucking wife, Jude.”
“No, I’m not your wife. You can divorce your wife, but you can’t divorce your twin.” Jude softens her voice to almost a whisper. “Tax, we’ll never be normal,” she says through sad eyes, like she is diagnosing me with a terminal illness.
“Maybe not, but we can be better than this,” I say, pulling my arm away and heading back out to my car.
Gnarls Barkley – Crazy
“I’ll kill him!” Tiff says after I tell her Tax walked out on me. I kept it vague, but I said he was an asshole, that he said mean things to me. I let her think I was mourning our relationship, but it was so much more than that. I was mourning Tax as if he had died. I was mourning my former self, the person I was before I walked into the conference room in Alea and recognized the snakes slithering up a mysterious man’s neck. I was mourning my new sentence to a life of ordinary love, not the explosively violent passion that Tax and I shared.
It’s been almost a week since Tax walked out that door without even saying goodbye, and I have never hurt so much in my life. But I have put on my Mia Tibbett game face. No one knows about my silent and lonely agony. But with Tiff here, I can’t hold in the emotion any longer.
I love Tiff, and she could tell me anything without my judgment and I have always felt the same way about her. But what I have become a part of is so warped, I am afraid of her judging me this time, and I am ashamed to admit this, but of her judging Tax. He is my secret, he belongs to me. She doesn’t know him. Only I could judge him in my silent misery.
“I don’t understand, at the bar, he only had eyes for you...” she says. “The way he looked at you, was like you were the only fucking chick in the building.”
“Well, he was drunk and horny, I guess,” I say. But I know it’s not just that. He looked at me with fierce eyes full need and protection. I had never felt more needed.
“Shit. Why do men have to be such assholes! I am telling Rex about his fucking brother,” she says.
“No!” Shit, Rex.
“Please, that’ll only make me look pathetic. I can handle this on my own.”
“Okay...” she relents hesitantly.
“I mean it, Tiff. If you bitch to Rex, I will be so pissed. Nothing leaves this room. I just need you to listen to me bitch, I can handle the rest.”
“I just hate that someone would do that to you. You are the most generous, nonjudgmental, kind person I know. And you are successful, beautiful. What the hell is he thinking?” Her words, thrown out so casually, bring my tears to the surface again. Why wasn’t all that good enough for Tax? Why did he discard me?
“Nonono...don’t cry. I’m sorry!” she says.
“It’s not you...” I say. “I’m just bummed. I’ll be fine.” I wipe a few rogue tears with my sleeves.
“I hate seeing you like this. I have never seen you like this over a guy, ever. What was so special about him? I know he’s gorgeous and rich, but he’s just a guy, right? There are others out there like him.” She’s trying to reason and help me see this is not the end of the world, but all her statement does is amplify the difference between Tax and every other man I have ever been with.
There’s no one like Tax. No one.
“What about Blake? He wasn’t just another guy to you. Was he?”
“At the time, no. You know I thought I would never survive that breakup with that bastard, but the feelings do subside. He didn’t want to be with me and I deserved better than that; so do you. You deserve the world, Mia! You are a great person. You deserve someone who appreciates you and loves you. Someone who wouldn’t just walk out on you.” She adds some wine to her glass. “Do you want more?” she asks.
“No—Yes,” I say. It numbs the ache that pervades through my chest. It makes me forget his touch, his smell. Maybe I will stop seeing flashes of that smile he rarely shows. Maybe it’ll help me forget about the way I feel like an explosion when he holds me in his strong arms. How my world implodes around him when he is inside of me. I just want to forget he ever existed.
Several bitchfests and wine glasses later, there is a pause in the conversation as I begin to doze off.
“Mia, can I ask you something?”
“Yeah...” Tiff rarely asks if she can ask me a question, it’s not her style.
“Did you...you used the card I gave you. Didn’t you?”
“I, uh...why do you ask?”
“I booked another one, and my card was charged only half price.”
“Well didn’t you refer others?”
“I thought about doing it, but this stuff is too sensitive. I only gave you the card. Either it was a mistake on their end or it was you.”
My drowsiness evaporates from the heat of nervous energy.
“You did, huh? You don’t have to be embarrassed. I just wanted you to experience it. And, I wanted to talk to someone about it too. Not many people are like us, Mia. Not many people like it rough or painful. Or if they do, they never discuss it. We’re lucky to have each other to share this with.”
“I’m not embarrassed.” I say, knowing that lying to Tiff about booking with Happy Kitty will fail.
“You did! I knew it!” she says. “But when? It had to have been a while ago.”
I think about lying, telling her that the guy who came to me in the driveway fulfilled his duties. But, something breaks in me. The crying I had done earlier was subdued, it was a restrained version of the sadness I felt. Telling Tiff the modified story of Tax and me helped me almost believe it for a while: that we met for our first conference that Tuesday morning months ago, and we went out for breakfast and hit it off, and so began our whirlwind romance.
But this wedge of truth she has stuck into that tiny space between my fake version of Tax and the reality of the situation bursts me open. I begin to sob uncontrollably. It’s deep, from a place I haven’t cried since I lost my mother. A place of fear, confusion, heartache, and irreconcilable loneliness.
Tiffany’s eyes go wide with concern. In all the years I have known her, I have hardly ever cried, never over a guy, and never like this.
“Oh my god, Mia. What’s wrong? Did someone hurt you?” she asks, wrapping herself over my huddled body. “Did the escort hurt you?”
“No...” I choke out between shallow breaths. “Tiff, I fucked up. I don’t know what to do...”
“Hey...take some breaths. It’s gonna be okay.”
“I can’t...tell you.” My diaphragm rages out of control, making it hard to breathe.
“Mia, you really have me worried here.”
“I don’t want to get...you...mixed up in things. And I know you. You’ll...want to get involved, but you can’t.”
“You’re freaking me out.”
“No escort hurt me. If I tell you, you have to...promise, no one can know. You can’t...do...anything about it. I am trusting you with...this information.” My choppy speaking frustrates me, so I take a few slower breathes in an attempt to stifle the emotion.
“Sweetie, of course. I would never betray your trus
t. Tell me, you have nothing to be ashamed of.”
I take a few slow breaths, but my chest rebels with staccato sobs.
“I promise. I won’t tell anyone. This is between us.”
“It was Tax.”
“Tax was your attacker?”
“Wait...” I say, taking another deep breath so I can control my voice and tell the story clearly. “I went to the site. I paid for the service, but as soon as I did it, I thought it was a mistake. I was going to call it off as soon as the guy got to me. But then, on the first night, someone came, and I changed my mind. We had sex. I told myself I would say no, but when it happened, I wanted it. And it was unlike anything...and it scared me. How much I liked it. But then, days later, someone else came, and I panicked. I only paid for one service. I used the safeword. And he left. He told me it was impossible someone else could have arrived before him. I realized the first person I was with...”
“Oh my god.” Tiff is a wild child. She has seen a lot in her thirty years, but the look of shock and horror on her face is one I have never seen since meeting her nearly a decade ago.
“I freaked. I thought someone random came into my house and I let him, no, I encouraged him to be with me. He had on a mask, but there were things I remembered about him, he had a neck tattoo...”
“Oh fuck.” It’s something everyone remembers about Tax and Tiff instantly understands the connection.
“Alea got bought out around the same time, I got promoted, and then I had my first meeting with the new owner...early when no one else would be in the office...”
“Are you fucking shitting me!” she says. Her voice has a tone of disbelief, anger, with a hint of laughter. I get it, this whole thing is ridiculous.
“It was an ambush. He told me he recorded it, that if I didn’t do what he said, he would destroy me.”
“Wait, do what?”
I look down in shame.
“That sick son of a bitch. Mia, I think I’m going to kill him!” she says, rising to her feet.
“No. You promised you would keep this to yourself. And I mean not a soul!”
“Yes. I know. I’m just fucking emoting Mia. But you can’t let him get away with this. This is crazy. This whole thing is crazy. How did he find you? Why? Is he part of Happy Kitty?”
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