by Hazel Kelly
"You'd do it for me."
She laughed.
"What so funny?”
"The thought of some girl throwing you around."
I smiled.
She sat back. "I would kill her though."
"I know," I said, my chest swelling at the fact that she seemed better already.
A moment later, her phone buzzed on the bed behind her.
We both glanced at it.
Mike's face was plastered across the screen.
Chapter 3: Andi
I stared at the phone, each ring causing a heartburn like stabbing in my chest.
It was only when the ringing stopped that I realized I'd been holding my breath… and that I had nine missed calls from the same number.
"Call him back."
I looked up at Shane and shook my head. "I have nothing to say to him."
"I couldn't agree more," he said. "But I think you should call him anyway."
I furrowed my brow. "And say what?"
"That you'll meet him at his place in a half hour to talk things over."
I squinted at him. He could be so hard to read with his steely, chiseled features. But he seemed so calm, so rational. I desperately wanted to believe there was a method to his madness.
Unfortunately, I knew exactly what would happen if I went over there. Mike would bury me in excuses, dismissing his behavior by saying he’d only snapped because of his intense feelings for me.
Then he would insist that he never meant to hurt me or scare me or shake my trust in him, and he wouldn’t stop insisting until I forgave him.
My phone started to buzz again.
"Tell him you'll come," Shane said. "And you can stay here while I go get your stuff."
My stuff. It was hard to think with Shane sitting so close to me. But I knew it was a bad idea for them to be in the same room, and I knew that such trickery would really piss Mike off.
On the other hand, I was confident that Shane could handle himself, especially in the company of someone he believed was a coward.
What’s more, pissing Mike off was a prospect that was becoming more appealing with every passing minute now that I knew I was safe, now that I’d told someone what happened.
I never did that the other times. I just carried the toxic feeling of betrayal around with me and tried to make sense of it in my own head.
But saying out loud what he'd put me through had given me new perspective. I knew his behavior was something I'd never want Izzy, for example, to tolerate.
"Andi."
I pursed my lips.
"Just do it. I'll get your stuff, and this will all be over."
Did he know this wasn't the first time something like this had happened?
I picked up the phone and took a deep breath. I knew I could do it. I lied to Mike all the time about where I was going and who I was with. I had to so he wouldn't flip, so I could see my friends.
Was that some kind of abuse in itself?
Shane reached over and pressed the call button on the screen before I was ready, but I wasn't annoyed with him. If anything, his support was the boost I needed.
"Baby where are you?" Mike said, all the vitriol gone from his voice. "I've been trying to call you like crazy."
"Sorry, I know," I said. "I was… at the library." It was ridiculous, but it would have to do. Who goes to the library after their boyfriend attacks them in a stairwell?
"Stay there. I'll come pick you up."
"No," I said, startled by the urgency in my voice.
"We have to talk, Andi. I owe you an apology."
"Yes you do." And I wanted it. I did. But maybe my willingness to hear him out was part of the problem, part of the vicious cycle we'd gotten sucked into. "But I'd rather talk in private."
"Cool. Then-"
"I'll meet you at your apartment in a half hour."
"Sounds good," he said. "I can't wait to make this up to you. I know I overreacted and-"
"I gotta go," I said. "We can talk when I get to yours."
I hung up the phone and double checked that I’d definitely ended the call.
Shane stood up and crossed the room, crushing the empty Coke can before tossing it in the garbage can.
"Are you sure about this?" I asked.
"I'm sure that I don't want you near this guy ever again."
"You know he's going to be angry when you show up instead of me."
He rolled his eyes. "He's always angry."
There was no point in arguing, no point in defending Mike's character. Not anymore. Despite the fact that I was still totally confused about my feelings for him, there was one thing I wasn't confused about.
And that was my feelings for Shane, my trust in him. Our friendship had suffered from my decision to go out with Mike, and I could see now that it hadn't been worth it.
I never wanted to turn my back on him again. He was one of the good guys, and I was lucky to call him a friend.
He sat on the edge of the bed and slipped his feet into his gym shoes. "What do you need me to get from Mike's place?"
I rolled my eyes up to the ceiling as my possessions flashed across my mind. I'd left my favorite blush on the desk in his room, and I had a leftover Club Lulu in the fridge, an extra toothbrush, and a white robe I got for free that time I stayed in the Abbott Hotel.
But none of that was important.
What mattered was that Shane made it back safely, and the less stuff he had to grab, the better.
"My leather jacket is on the hook behind the door," I said. "And my IPod and my leather boots are in the bedroom by the desk." I couldn't be sure, but I think he flinched when I said my leather boots were in the bedroom.
It just happened to be where I took them off. It wasn't anything kinky like that. But the fact that Shane might've imagined that side of me or even pictured me in just my boots made me feel strangely excited for a fleeting moment.
"Is that it?"
I thought hard about whether there was anything else I would miss, knowing it was vital to remove any excuse I might have to go back there.
"There's a book on the coffee table. It's all pictures of Bowie, and he signed it for me in New York-"
"I remember," he said. "When you were visiting your cousin."
I nodded. It was nice that I could count on him to remember stuff. It almost validated my existence in some way. "Anyway, if he hasn't already sold it on eBay to spite me, I would really like to have that back."
"Okay," Shane said. "Jacket, Boots, IPod, Bowie. Is that it?"
I nodded. "Those are the things I can't easily replace anyway."
"Right."
"Along with you," I said. "So please be careful."
"Sure thing."
"Oh- I almost forgot. He keeps a bat behind the front door."
Shane furrowed his brows.
"He plays for a club tea-"
He moved his legs shoulder width apart. "When were you going to tell me that?"
"I don't think he'll swing it at you. I just thought I'd mentioned it."
"Thanks,” he said, slipping his phone in the back pocket of his jeans. “Did you have dinner already?"
"No.”
"I'll add that to my list," he said, walking over and putting his hands on my shoulders. "Stay here."
"I will."
He went to the door, put his hand on the handle, and looked back over his shoulder. "And help yourself to whatever. What's mine is yours."
"I really appreciate you doing this, Shane."
"It's nothing," he said. "All for one, remember?"
I smiled, and the way my face stretched took me by surprise.
He left without another word.
Chapter 4: Shane
Mike threw the door open a few seconds after I knocked, his face twisted in a pained expression- as if he were poised to plead and apologize.
"What the fuck are you doing here?" he asked, his face hardening as his eyes darted down the hallway to see if I was alone.
<
br /> "I came to deliver a message from Andi."
His jaw clenched as he crossed his arms.
And while it hadn't been my initial plan, I went ahead and punched him in the face.
He stumbled back. “What the fuck, man?!"
I stuck my foot in the doorframe to keep him from shutting me out.
"I think you broke my fucking nose." His eyes grew wide as a trickle of dark blood pooled in his cupped hands.
I shrugged and walked inside. "Yeah, well, shitty stuff happens to cowards who raise their hands to women."
"I didn't raise my hand to- You can't come in here!"
I stood and faced him where he was standing against the wall, thinking this is what it must have been like for him to watch Andi cower before him, afraid of what he might do next.
"The punch was actually just a gift from me." I swung the front door shut with my foot.
His ugly mouth fell open.
"Andi’s message is that it's over, and she never wants to see or speak to you again."
He rolled his eyes. "Yeah, right. I'll believe that when I hear it from her."
"You'll believe it now," I said, planting my hand on the wall beside his head as he lifted the bottom of his shirt up under his nose. "Because if you ever so much as look at her or text her again, I'm going to come back here, and next time I won't be alone."
He scoffed. "Is that a threat?"
"Yeah, Mike. It's a threat."
He craned his neck back. "What are you going to do? Sick your lackey frat boys on me?"
I stared down my nose at him. "Why don't you clean yourself up before you make a mess," I said, moving farther into the apartment.
The first thing I saw was the Bowie book. It was on the low coffee table in front of the couch in a stack of other large hardbacks next to a little hair clip.
I thought of the last time I saw Andi with her hair down. It was the same night I saw her and Mike at the bar.
She only took it down for a second, but I remembered how shiny it looked as it fell around her shoulders in loose waves. Everything seemed to move in slow motion as she ran her fingers through it.
She clipped it back again right away, and I remember having this weird feeling that the moment wasn't enough, that I wanted more.
It was a feeling I'd had regularly around her since we were sixteen, and it was always at the strangest times. Like the first day I noticed her collarbone- like really noticed it.
Or the first time I saw what her toned legs looked like in heels. Or that New Year’s Eve in high school when a bunch of us squeezed into my buddy’s van to go to a different house party and she ended up half sitting in my lap.
I had to think about Jabba the Hut to keep from getting hard. If memory serves me, later that night was the first time I ever…
Mike cursed in the bathroom and turned the tap on, interrupting my train of thought.
I pulled a plastic bag from the back pocket of my jeans and slid the Bowie book and the clip inside. Then I looked to my right and saw his cracked bedroom door.
I pushed it open and tried not to look at the crumpled sheets where he'd probably put his hands on her, where they'd probably had make up sex dozens of times, where he'd probably buried his face in her silky hair and…
I swallowed and tried to focus on the task at hand, finding her boots by the desk a second later. They were tall and black, and regretfully, I'd never seen her in them before.
I folded them in half and shoved them in my bag.
Then I saw her iPod on the desk. The headphones were already wrapped tightly around it, and I didn’t waste any time adding it to my haul.
A moment later, the hair on my neck stood up, and I glanced in the mirror beside the desk.
Mike was standing behind me with the metal baseball bat, his knuckles white where he was clenching it. "I told you to get the fuck out."
"My bad," I said in my most cooperative tone. "I didn't catch that, but I was just leaving anyway." Please let her leather jacket be on the back of the door.
He angled his body ever so slightly, and I felt the air move in front of me as I jumped back a split second before he planted the bat in his own dry wall.
I raised my eyebrows. "Good luck getting your deposit back after that."
He started to pull it from the crumbling wall, but I stepped up beside it, put a hand over his pulsing wrists, and shook my head. "Don't swing that at me again," I said, fixing my eyes on him.
"Or what?" he asked, keeping his hands on the end of the bat despite the fact that I had it pinned against the wall. "You gonna fuck my girl? Isn't that what you plan to do anyway?"
I didn’t dare let my mind explore that possibility. "Look, Mike. I just want Andi to be safe and happy, and she can't be those things with you."
He huffed and let go of the bat.
It bounced on the floor beside my feet.
"Of course she can."
"No. You're going to have to find someone else to pick on."
"Why isn't she here?"
"Because she's afraid of you, Mike," I said, standing tall to make the most of the inches I had on him. "And if I ever suspect she has reason to be again, you're going to need a lot more than a bat to protect yourself."
"You're full of shit, Shane."
"Try me," I growled, pushing past him.
When I turned the corner, I could see the fringed elbow of her leather jacket in the hanging pile on the door.
I slipped it off the hook, replaced the other coats, and draped it over my arm.
"I'm calling Andi. This is fucking bullshit-"
I turned around and spiked the phone from his hand.
When he looked up to protest, I grabbed his throat. "Are you really this thick, Mike? I don't like having to repeat myself."
He pried at my vice grip in vain.
“If you ever contact her again in any way- a wave, a whistle, a text- I will personally see to it that every finger on your hands remains for purely decorative purposes."
He gagged.
"Do we have an understanding?"
"Yeah," he croaked.
"Say it's over."
"It's over," he wheezed, pulling at my wrists.
I released him then and let myself out, eager as hell to start forgetting his face.
Chapter 5: Andi
As I leaned towards the mirror in Shane's room to examine the split in my bottom lip, I realized I was lucky I hadn't chipped a tooth.
How would I have explained that to people? That it happened when I was running from my boyfriend? The person I supposedly loved most?
Not that I ever said it.
Mike did, though. A lot, especially when he was apologizing for his latest outburst, and it was always nice to hear. No one else had ever said it to me before.
But as I turned in front of the mirror to see if his fingertips had left bruises on the back of my arm, I began to think maybe it was meaningless.
Perhaps whatever we had wasn't love at all.
I thought of the people I knew who definitely loved each other. Shane and Izzy came to mind first. They were twins, of course, so it wasn't a romantic kind of love, but they would never do anything to hurt each other.
And while I could recall one time when Shane scared Izzy so bad she peed her pants a little, it was only for the sake of a Halloween prank, and he swore up and down he didn't mean to scare her that bad.
All he did was creep up to the window behind us wearing a scary mask… though it wasn't half as scary as Mike's face was an hour ago when he clamped his hand around my jaw.
I thought he was going to break it, that my bones and teeth were going to crumble in my mouth. I knew then- deep down- that I had to leave him.
Yet at the same time, I doubt I would’ve been able to completely swear off seeing him again if Shane hadn't made me promise.
I lifted Shane's aftershave off the dresser in front of me, sniffed the spray release on top, and hoped he would be back soon.