by J. A. Huss
“Why do you hate me?” I ask her. “Why have you always hated me so much?”
“I don’t—”
“You do. You said so the first night I came home. I’m the kind of guy who breaks hearts. Breaks families apart. I’m the kind of guy who runs people over. But I wasn’t that guy when we were kids, Melanie. I was never mean to you and all you did was fuck with me.”
She screws up her face. “What do you mean? I never—”
“Oh, fuck you. You never tricked me into kissing you?”
Her eyebrows furrow. “That time we were supposed to go dirt biking.”
“Go—” Jesus Christ, she’s delusional. “I never invited you, bitch. I invited Missy. And then you came outside dressed like her. Your hair all done up like her. Biting your fucking lip like her.”
“RK, listen to me. You’re misunderstanding things—”
I laugh so hard it hurts my throat. “I have a perfect grasp of the situation, thanks.”
She stares at me, letting her arms drop to her sides now that my perceived threat moment has passed. “I—” She stops. “I don’t know what to say to you.”
“Just tell me why you hate me so bad. That’s all. Tell me why you couldn’t let me be happy. Why, Melanie? Why were you so fucking jealous? I never treated you bad. I was nothing but good to you until you couldn’t accept the fact that I loved Missy, not you.”
“RK, listen to me. That’s not—”
“You tricked me over and over, Melanie. It got to the point where I couldn’t even trust Missy. I never knew who I was talking to. You fucked with me, Melanie. You fucked with me.”
“I have to go—”
I grab her wrist as she tries to get past me, pushing her up against the wall. She struggles, knocks me in the chest with her elbow, and then tries to bring a knee up between my legs. I press my hips against her so hard, she’s pinned.
“Let go,” she snarls.
“No,” I say calmly. “You got to have your say that night I came home. When I was on my fucking knees in so much pain I couldn’t think straight. Now I get to have mine.”
“Why are you so messed up, RK? Why do you have to make everything so difficult?”
“You want easy?” I laugh. “Fuck easy and fuck you too.”
Melanie stares at me. Bites her goddamned lip. I want to slap her. I want to slap the Missy right out of her. “I hate you,” I say. “I hate you so much more than you hate me. I’m so out of your league in the hate department, Melanie. You have no idea the amount of loathing that burns through my blood when I look at your face. You don’t deserve to live. She was the one who deserved to live.”
“RK—”
I stop her with a kiss. I have no idea why. Because that hate is real.
She kisses me back, her tongue twisting with mine in a way that feels so familiar, the ache in my heart might split me in half.
“If I close my eyes,” I say into her mouth. “I can pretend you’re her.”
“Close them,” she pants back, her breathing kicked up, her chest heaving. “I am her.”
I do close them, but it’s from the pain, and I pull away before it goes too far again. Why do I let her get to me this way? Why do I—
But Melanie places her hands on my hips before I can make my escape, tucking her thumbs into my jeans the way Missy used to. She places her head on my chest the way Missy used to. She sighs deeply the way Missy used to. I picture Missy and me the afternoon of prom. How happy she was. How excited she was. How fucking beautiful she was.
Melanie is none of those things, but her touch is real and Missy isn’t.
My hand goes looking for her breast, cupping around it, squeezing just enough to make Melanie hiss in a breath.
“RK,” she says.
All I hear is Missy.
“RK,” she says again.
I push her backward until she bumps into the bed and falls back. I reach for her shorts and pull them down her legs before I change my mind. Her fingers fumble at the button on my jeans, then the zipper. Her palm flattens against my cock, the warmth of her skin almost too much to bear.
A moment later I feel her breath. Her wet tongue licking my shaft. I reach down and pull her tank top up, twisting her nipple hard enough to make her cry out.
She sucks my tip, her tongue flattening out, and I want so badly to open my eyes, but I can’t. I can’t fucking look at her because if I see Melanie, I will die all over again. Just like I did out on that mountain on prom night. I will die.
If you do this, some unknown reasonable voice in my head declares, you will die anyway, Rock. Because this isn’t the girl you want her to be.
I step back and saliva pours out of Melanie’s mouth as my cock retreats. “What are you doing?” she asks, reaching for me again.
“No,” I say, shaking my head. “No.”
“No what?” Melanie asks, grabbing onto my jeans with a death grip. Like she’s got me now and I’m never getting away. “Don’t,” she begs. “Don’t—”
“I can’t do this. You’re not the one I love, Melanie. And even though I could give a fuck if I hurt you when I scream Missy’s name when I come down your throat, if there’s some kind of afterworld and Missy is looking down on me, I’d never want her to see this.” I reach down and pick up her clothes, just as she stands up to make her case. But I tune it out and shove her shorts and tank top into her bare chest. “Get out.”
“RK!” She’s pleading. “RK, listen to me!”
I grab her by the arm and turn her around, giving her a push on her back. “Go home, Melanie.”
“I’m not Melanie! RK, listen! I’m not Melanie! I’m Missy!”
I just stare at her. The balls on this woman. The fucking balls on this woman. I stare into her eyes as she repeats those words over and over again, and then I seethe. “I have never hit a woman in my life, but the next time you pull this on me, I’ll beat the fucking shit out of you.”
I yank her all the way down the hall, fling the front door open, and shove her outside, clutching her scant clothing to her naked body.
She screams it again. “I’m Missy! I’m Missy!”
It takes every ounce of willpower not to make good on my threat.
I slam the door, blocking out the tears and the pleading. Blocking out her face, her body, her eyes. Erasing her voice, and her hair, and her stolen mannerisms. And I walk to the back of the house, grab my phone and a pair of noise-canceling headphones, and play the fuck out of Son of a Jack.
I have more than a hundred recordings in my music library, and I start with number one and listen until the whole world goes silent.
Chapter Ten
Someone is kicking my front door. “Go the fuck away,” I whisper into the couch pillow. It took me hours to fall asleep last night. Hours of Melanie’s treachery running through my head. Hours of all the ways she fucked me over. All the little things she’s been doing since I got here to lead up to that insane declaration last night.
The lip-biting. The singing on stage. The leather jacket and the ripped jeans. Sleeping in my bed, her shit stuffed into corners and crevices.
Hell, I was so goddamned confused last night, it took me until dawn to remember she admitted to living here.
Living here.
In my house. As if that’s even legal. I’m so calling the sheriff today. I’m getting a restraining order for this bitch. I’ve had it. I’ve fucking had it.
The kicks to the front door are harder and come in quick succession.
I don’t even bother answering. I’d have to yell to make whoever it is hear me, and no. No way am I gonna fuck up my voice again over some overzealous FedEx guy. Or TJ coming to call me a piece of shit for the way I treated Melanie last night.
You know what? Why doesn’t TJ date her ass? Oh, I know why, she’s crazy with a capital C. Insane. Blow-your-mind kind of crazy. And not in any of the ways that girls have blown my mind before. It’s blow your mind like a nuclear test explosion out in the desert. Fake
houses, filled with fake families, go flying apart in all directions so Melanie Vetti can see how much damage she can do with one strike.
I’m done. I sit up as the door kicking continues. I think I can hear voices. TJ. Maybe someone else. Some loud girl with him. I’d say it was Melanie, but I know she’s not coming back over her to plead her case. I’d say it was Gretchen, but I can’t imagine in a million years that sweet, understanding, family-counseling Gretchen has it in her.
I rub the stubble on my face and decide I really need to start shaving again. It’s starting to itch. I get up, walk into the kitchen, the barn wood tiles warm on my feet because I turned the heat on last night and it radiates up from under the floor.
I was cold, man. It was only in the forties last night, but I couldn’t shake it. The kind of cold that seeps into your bones and no matter how many blankets you wrap yourself into, that shit will just not go away until you take a shower. Or turn the fucking heat on even though it’s almost June.
I wiggle my toes. Feels good right now.
The coffee pot is in the dishwasher, so I get it out and find a mug as I listen to the people outside my front door getting more and more pissed off.
My phone beeps an incoming text but it’s all the way across the room, so that shit can wait until I’ve got my joe.
It rings. I ignore. Pings another text. Then two more calls. All ignored.
The kicking at the front door gets so loud, I almost think it will come crashing open. Let it. I’ve got a gun around here somewhere. There’s probably a dozen of them down in the safe. I’ll get one out, I decide. Get one out and take care of biz.
And I know damn well I set the alarm last night. Motherfuckers will set that shit off and then I will press charges.
And the more I think about Melanie being in my house all these years the more pissed off I get. I’m totally pressing charges if she comes back here. One hundred percent sure about—
The coffee maker dings as another call comes through on my phone. I pour me a mug and then walk over to the couch, flipping on the remote as I sit. My phone is lost in the blankets, so it takes me a good thirty pissed-off seconds to find it, and then I read the messages.
Jayce: I’m outside, you asshole. Open the door right now or I’ll cut your balls off when I see you next.
Shit. I get up and set my coffee down on the bar as I half jog to the front of the house. I disarm the alarm and swing the door open. “Jayce! What the fuck are you doing here?”
I get a flat palm slapped to my bare chest as she pushes past me, all red-faced and angry. A vein sticks out of her temple. It pulsates to the beat of her heart.
“What the hell, Rock? Just what the hell?” She spins around and I realize she’s crying.
“What?” I ask. Jesus. Now what happened? “What’s wrong, Jayce?”
“I thought you were dead!” She screams it and the last bit comes out through a sob. “I thought you killed yourself. Overdosed—”
“Overdosed?” It hurts that she’d think I’d be back on the drugs.
“I’ve been texting you for hours! That little cunt! That little fucking cunt! I told her not to say a word to you unless I was here! But did she listen? No, Miss I-know-him-better-than-anyone had to go fuck things up. And I thought you were dead!”
I blink three times, then let out the breath I was holding. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“She said she told you!” Jayce is hysterical. I have seen her many ways. I have seen her threaten a fifty-year-old fat-cat music executive and make him sweat. I have seen her point a finger in the face of groupies and make them cower in fear as the band walked by to get in a limo. I have seen her negotiate contracts and appearances with smug determination and cunning. But I have never seen this woman hysterical. Jayce is the glue that holds my world together. She is calm, she is collected, she is tolerant of all the crazy things lead singers of rock bands do.
She is not this person standing in front of me.
“Jayce, what the hell is going on?”
“We need to talk,” TJ says from the front stoop.
I squint my eyes at him. Melanie stands down at the end of my driveway biting her nails. I point my finger past TJ to Melanie. “If it’s about her, fuck off. I’m done here, Teej. I have been patient with that psycho for as long as I can. I’m sure she’s still one of your good friends and all that bullshit, but I’m out, man. I’m fucking out. And if I find her in my house one more time, she’s going to jail.”
TJ looks over my shoulder at Jayce, and when I whirl around to see what’s going on with that, Jayce is in the middle of a shrug.
I get the feeling we’re not all on the same page here. “What did she tell you?” I flick my thumb out towards Melanie. “What the fuck did she say happened last night?”
I’m imagining rape, or bruises on her arm that she says came from me. Did I manhandle her last night? I don’t think I grabbed her that hard. Jesus Christ, she might say I hit her or something.
“Look, whatever she told you guys, it’s not true, OK?”
Jayce comes around from behind me and stands next to TJ. I’m getting a really bad feeling about this new partnership. Jayce is my friend, not his. I found her. She belongs to me, dammit. And if TJ thinks he’s gonna get her to gang up on me and take his side in whatever the fuck this is, well—
“Rock,” Jayce says, coming towards me and wrapping her arms around my middle.
She’s short and tiny and has big fucking tits for that little body. She squishes them up against my chest and it’s so ridiculous to be thinking about her tits, I laugh. “What are you doing?”
She backs off just enough to wipe the snot from her face and then she says, “Can you at least put a shirt on so I’m not distracted by your abs?”
TJ lets off a grunt but I smile big and roll my eyes. “You’ve seen my cock plenty of times, I’m sure you can handle some abs, midget.”
“Yeah, but you were pissing, or yanking yourself when you were stoned. I just need to focus, Rock. Shirt, please.”
“Fucking women,” I grumble, walking off to the back of the house to find yesterday’s t-shirt. I tug it on and by this time, TJ and Jayce have made their way to the kitchen bar. “Now what the fuck is the emergency?” A horrible thought occurs to me. “It’s not Kenner, is it?”
“No, no, no,” Jayce quickly says. “No. It’s…” Her gaze wanders to the front door, which is still standing open, and which still frames a view of Melanie Vetti standing at the end of my driveway.
“Don’t believe her, Jayce. She’s a pathological liar. She’s been that way her whole fucking life. You have no idea the things she used to lie to me about when we were kids.”
“RK,” TJ says. “What did she tell you last night?”
I squint my eyes at him. “What did she tell you?”
Just then a car comes screeching into the driveway. I walk to the front of the house again and Gretchen Linnie bolts out of her pea-green hybrid car and runs over to Melanie. They hug for a second, and then Gretchen holds her at arm’s length before looking over her shoulder.
“Gretchen?” I say as loud as I can without straining my voice.
She turns back to Melanie and nods her head a few times before whirling around and walking up the driveway towards the house.
“What the fuck is happening?” I turn, find Jayce and TJ behind me. “What the hell did Melanie tell you guys? Because whatever it was, it’s not true, man. I never touched her. I pushed her out of the house, but I never hurt her.”
Gretchen comes in the house before TJ or Jayce can answer, and then she closes the door softly and says, “I think you need to take a seat, RK. We have something we need to tell you.”
My heart starts racing with possibilities. What the hell is happening? “Nah,” I say, as calmly as I can manage. “I’m not taking a seat. I’m just fine standing. And you guys are freaking me out. I don’t like to be ambushed, you should know me better than that. So say whatever you hav
e to say or I’m calling the sheriff and having all of you thrown out of my house.”
“Please,” Jayce says, taking my hand and leading me over to the couch. “Just sit, Rock. It’s not as bad—” But she can’t even finish her sentence.
She pushes on my chest until I walk backwards and take a seat on the couch. I rest my elbows on my knees and hold my head in my hands, distracted again with the week-old stubble on my chin and how I really need to shave.
“Whatever it is, you guys. Just say it.” My words come out like a man defeated. I don’t know what’s going on, but it’s bad. It’s bad if Jayce is here. If TJ is here and he’s not calling me names and being a dick. If Gretchen, the family counselor, is here to make sure whatever it is they have to say to me goes over without violence or screaming.
“Melanie,” Jayce starts.
I look up at her and she frowns so big, she might start crying again. I hold my hand out to her and she takes it, sitting so close to me on the couch, we meld into each other. “Spit it out, Jayce. You’re killing me with this sadness, chick. You’re killing me.”
“Melanie was telling the truth last night, RK.” Gretchen is the one who says it.
“Which fucking part?” I ask, pissed off that all this is about that cunt.
“The part when she told you she was Missy,” TJ says.
Chapter Eleven
A tap on my truck window jolts me awake.
“Rock?”
I shake my head and open my eyes to pine trees.
“Rock?” the voice asks again. I look to my left and see Dr. Chancer squinting down at me, trying to shield his eyes from the sun. “Everything OK?”
I tab the window button and croak, “Yeah,” but my voice is raspy and the pain is back.
“Ah,” Chancer says. “Hurt it again, huh?”
Well, I’m assuming so. Since it hurts. But… I glance around and have no idea how I got to the parking lot again.
“Are early Monday morning visits going to be the norm for you?” Chancer chuckles. “Come on in. I have a full day today, and I got stuck on the highway from a rockslide they were clearing, but I can take a quick look. I’m betting you just strained it again.”