by Ashley Love
"Hey bitch, get back to work." My eyes meet Lex's as Kyle slinks back to his task, defeated, and Lex grins widely at me before throwing an arm around my shoulders. "Hey. You're freezing. You walked here?"
"Yeah. I just figured, you know..." I hesitate, realizing I haven't told him that after tonight I'm moving across town, selling the apartment. That I walked here because who knows when I'll ever do it again. I don't wanna start the day with some shit like that. "I just haven't done it in a while." I shrug before looking around abruptly, changing the subject. "Hey, what's going on? What the hell happened to your house? I didn't even notice it the other day." I survey the room to find it in a state of somewhat disarray and unfamiliarity, taking in the new coffee table and television, the furniture re-arranged, and as I look down the hall I see pictures missing from the walls, not to mention the gaping hole.
"It, uh...got trashed. I had to fix some shit. Replace some shit," Lex offers, dropping his arm from around my shoulders to run it over his head as his eyes dart away from mine.
"Oh my God, someone broke in?! Are you okay?" I grab his shoulders and turn his body to face me, looking him over frantically, but I stop short when I hear Kyle chuckling.
"Little Lex-boy lost his temper." He grins over at me, and Lex scowls.
"What?" I narrow my eyes as I look up into Lex's face, and he sighs, throwing a glare at Kyle.
"Don't fucking talk unless I tell you to," he growls Kyle into silence, pointing a finger menacingly before he sighs. "You're fucking doing it wrong." And he shuffles over to the wall where Kyle is standing, snatching the putty knife from his hand. "Like this," he instructs, smoothing spackle over the hole, and I remember Lex used to talk about working for his dad's construction company in the summers and full-time after he graduated high school.
"So you lost your temper, Lex?" I ask in a stern voice and he looks at me with a sigh, seeming nervous under my knowing eyes.
"I just..."
"Had an emotional outburst?" I cut him off with a disapproving gaze, knowing this isn't the first time Lex has been physically destructive in the face of enraging circumstances. He probably flipped his lid just like he did that day I answered his cell phone.
"No! It was a...man moment," he resigns with a cheeky grin as he puts Kyle back to work and crosses the room to stand next to me. I can't help but giggle at him.
"You mean a Lex moment?" I push at his chest with a wide grin spread across my lips, teasing him because he knows that if anyone is familiar with his fucking temper, it's me. "Aww, you were emotional."
"I was not. Shut up, stupid." He swats my hand away with a chuckle and I scowl at him, pushing him again defiantly.
"Hey, don't call me that!"
"I'll call you what I want, little girl." He smirks at me mischievously, gripping my wrists and wrapping my arms around his waist, playfully growling into my neck, but I push back on him. I just...
Ugh, he can't do this to me. I'm not supposed to be involved. Period. I can't emotionally or physically invest until I figure out who I am. And I know he won't like or understand that explanation so it's better to just...not go there.
"Stop, Lex. Where are we gonna go?" I sigh pitifully, pulling my hands from his grasp and crossing my arms over my chest. There's never been a lacking physical aspect between me and Lex before, but now...now physical doesn't just come for free. It's teamed with emotion. Emotion that he hasn't offered me or shown that he can comprehend or appreciate so again it's best to just not go there, as much as it kills me. As much as I love kissing him and touching him and...God, I can't even think about it. I can't.
He quirks an eyebrow at me but shrugs it off with a sigh, turning down the hall, throwing a glance over his shoulder, beckoning me to follow as he answers. "I dunno. I was gonna let you decide."
When Lex had called yesterday and said he wanted to "take me out" I had no fucking clue what to expect today. One, because he rarely, if ever, actually calls me and two, because the closest thing to "taking me out" or a date that we've ever been on was probably one of our munchie-induced post-midnight ventures to McDonalds, when he was so high he accidentally paid for me. So I figure either he has a fucked up situation to inform me about, or he's gonna tell me he's pregnant, or he's gonna propose. And because the second is medically impossible and I believe the third would only happen with the second-coming of Christ close on it's heels, I'm expecting the worst for now.
"Let's go down to the Pier," I offer, leaning in the doorway of his bedroom, watching as he pulls on a pair of Nikes.
"In Santa Monica?" He gives me a questioning look.
I shrug. "Yeah, why not."
"I dunno..." he grumbles weakly as he goes back to tying his shoes.
"If you didn't really want my opinion you shoulda said: 'Hey Leala, tell me where you wanna go tonight, but really I already have something in mind so I'm not gonna listen unless you say what I wanna hear.'"
"Your mom never smacked you in the mouth often enough, did she?" he chuckles, looking up at me, and I give him the finger. But I can't hide my grin because inside I'm elated. For just this moment we're...
We're us again. We're Lex and Leala. He's grinning at me because he's being a smartass and I'm grinning at him because I think it's cute, and we're grinning at each other because...because we know. We're Lex and Leala again. We know. It's not impossible.
I let my gesturing hand fall to my side with a laugh and I step into the room as he continues. "I really don't have anything planned, but why do you wanna go down to Santa Monica?"
"Let's just get out of L.A., just for a night." I sigh, almost pleading, because I wonder if maybe...maybe he'll see. If I can just get him away, just for a night, out of this place where he has to be this...this drug dealer, this bad boy...if I can get him away from all of that, maybe...just maybe...
"Why?" He stands up from the edge of the bed and starts to cross the room but I reach out and grab his arm, turning him to face me.
"Cause I just wanna hang with you, okay? Without all the bullshit. C'mon Lex, let's just get away for a while." I add the last part softly, not able to resist wrapping my arms around his waist, looking up into his face just hoping, praying, maybe...
Maybe he'll see.
"Okay, okay, shit. We'll go." He shrugs me off and takes a few long strides to the closet, pulling a jacket off of a hanger and tossing it on the bed before removing his T-shirt, replacing it with a fresh one.
"Right now?" I ask him excitedly, wanting to get out of this place as soon as we can.
"You wanna wait? I mean it's already five."
I glance at the clock, confirming the time. "No, no, we can go. I don't wanna be out too late."
"It's New Years Eve, Leala. We gotta at least stay out til midnight. I mean, you don't have a bedtime, do you?" He grins, reaching out to grip my chin playfully.
"That's not funny." I jerk my face out of his grasp, turning away from him. I hear him push out a laugh and grab my shoulder tight in his large hands, turning me back to him.
"Okay, okay. No more rehab jokes." His arms encircle me around my shoulders, pulling me to his chest, his blue eyes shining undauntedly in that charming please forgive me way and I can't help but smile.
"Thank you." My hands smooth up and down his back over his shirt and his grin melds to a smirk and a raised eyebrow, his face lingering dangerously close to mine, and with our bodies pressed together this way...
Shit, here I go again. I sigh when I feel his nose touch mine, turning my face to the side because he cannot kiss me right now or we'll never leave. He sighs dejectedly, sensing my reluctance, and he drops his arms from around my shoulders, giving me a long curious look before turning to grab his jacket off of the bed.
"Well, let's go then if we're gonna go...hey man, I'm gonna leave this shit here. You handle business for the night," Lex says in an instructing tone as he reaches the end of the hall with me on his heels. He drops his business phone, iPhone, and
Blackebrry on a small end table pushed up against the wall close to where Kyle is standing repairing the hole.
Kyle freezes, looking down at the three devices and then back at Lex with a disbelieving expression. "Lex, are you serious, man?"
"Does it look like I'm fucking kidding?" he retorts, furrowing his brow as he brushes past him into the living room.
Kyle gives me a confused look but I'm sure my own expression matches his exactly. What in the hell is going on with Lex?
Kyle's eyes quickly merge from questioning to knowing however as he looks back and forth between Lex and me, smirking slightly. "Alright, you two."
"I'm gonna take a piss before we go," Lex calls out down the hall before disappearing quickly.
"Thanks for sharing," I yell after him and I hear him mutter something in the distance before the snap of a closing door cuts his voice off. An awkward silence fills the hall as Kyle continues to spackle the hole and I stare down at Lex's portable network laid right there on the table.
"So...you and Lex are going on a date?" Kyle's voice interrupts my thoughts and I shake my head quickly, sighing as I lean back against the wall.
"It's not a date, Kyle. I don't think we've ever even been on a date." I pick at my fingernails absently, avoiding his gaze because I know he's still got that knowing smirk on his face, like he thinks he's so smart or something. Like he thinks he's got it all figured out.
"Well, maybe tonight is the start of something new." I can hear the fucking smile in his voice and I want to smack him.
"God, you're so sickeningly optimistic sometimes. How did you get stuck with a bunch of drags like these boys?" I chuckle at him, part of me pitying him.
He stops repairing the hole, his working hand falling to his side as he turns to me for a moment to answer. "They're my boys, Leala. You know that. And I got stuck with them the same way you did."
My eyes meet his and we just look at each other for a long moment, both knowing the painful truth in his words. The drugs. That's what got every last one of us into this mess.
More awkward silence. He turns back to his spackling. "Either way, it's good to see you two back together...back to normal," he continues and I scoff a bit. Normal?
"I don't think it's normal. I don't even know if we can be normal, if there is even such a thing," I mutter, slumping harder against the wall in impatience. What the fuck is taking Lex so long?
"C'mon Leala, just take it for what it is. He's taking you out. He's taking the step, you know. Just...go with it. Give it a chance." Kyle's green eyes don't move from his handiwork, but my head snaps to him quickly.
"Taking the step? Have you two been talking or something?" I answer back in astonishment because I have no fucking clue what he's talking about. Taking the step? What step?
"No. But I mean, you two have been together for how long? Think about it, Leala. That doesn't just...go away."
I shake my head, too confused about where this is coming from to hash this out with him, from Kyle especially. I sigh and let my head fall back against the wall, quickly changing the subject. "God, he's taking forever. What could he be doing in there?"
Bad move. More awkward silence, because it hits us both at the same time—we know exactly what he's doing. The tension in the hallway increases tenfold, and I huff out a sigh as I push myself from the wall and turn to brush past Kyle, muttering under my breath, "Stupid question, Leala."
I gasp when Kyle grabs me suddenly before I can pass him, spinning me around and seizing my arm, dropping his putty knife onto the plastic tray holding his repair materials. "He's trying, you know."
"No, Kyle, he's not trying," I snarl, ripping my arm away from him, staring at him coldly.
"At least he's not using in front of you," he reasons, still somewhat calm, but this is too sensitive a subject for me to keep my emotions at bay. I snap.
"No, he's going behind my back! He's hiding it, he wants me to think he's better, and I know he's not! He's worse, Kyle!"
"He's not lying to you! Fuck, he's protecting you! He cares about you!"
"If he cared about me—"
"Don't you fucking say it," he roars, and I gasp when he seizes both of my arms roughly. "You know that shit isn't true. Don't you even fucking say it, Leala," he growls lowly, shaking his head.
We're both silenced by the sound of an opening door and Kyle releases me quickly just before Lex appears again in the living room.
"What the fuck is going on?" Lex asks quietly, looking back and forth between the two of us. Silence. "Seriously. What the fuck—" His voice starts to rise, and I answer quickly before his temper flares.
"Let's just go, Lex." I brush past Kyle, shaking my head as I head for the door.
Lex grabs my elbow as I pass him, turning me to face him. "Are you mad?"
I sigh, seeing the confusion in his face and I don't even want to begin to explain how I feel, because honestly I don't even really know. I don't know where all of this is coming from. "No, okay? Let's just go."
3
Itch.
I live for it. And I don't mean the itch for drugs, although it's weird. I used to like the itch almost more than the high. It's just that anticipation, the want, the need. It sent me over the edge sometimes. But I'm talking about the itch of healing. Like when you get a cut or something, it starts to itch when it heals. "Don't scratch it, that means it's getting better," my mother always said while replacing another band-aid to keep my anxious fingers away.
That means it's getting better.
And after having my heart pretty much torn apart over and over for the past three months, the itch is a welcomed feeling as I stare over at him from the front seat of his truck. My heart itches. It's healing.
"God, it's so pretty down here." I sigh, looking out the window, which is where my attention has been for most of the drive thus far. We've been riding in silence except for the radio because, well, neither one of us has anything to say I suppose. It's just hard to bounce back from the last few times that Lex and I were together, one being our fight at Christmas, and the other being just a few days ago, which I would like to remove from my memories entirely. But I know that will never happen.
"Huh? Uh, yeah, it's nice." He shrugs a bit, his tone distant and removed, but he turns the radio down a little, signaling that he's welcoming the conversation. Lex is like that. He talks a hard talk but his actions usually call his bluff.
"I think it's so funny, people think this is what L.A. looks like..." I'm still gazing out the window, lost in it all, the concrete and construction giving way to the green of nature more and more as we near the coast. Sometimes I forget that such beauty exists anywhere near all of the chaos I have been enduring for years and years. I forget I used to love coming down here. I forget I had another life not so long before everything went up in a blaze, pun intended.
"Well, we both know that shit isn't true."
Understatement of the year.
It's all too true. We both know that while the "L.A." on TV might look something like this—palm trees swaying in the breeze, million dollar cars idling next to you at a red light—the L.A. that has been a reality for the two of us has been nothing of the sort. Dark alleys, abandoned houses, sirens at all hours of the night, gunshots. The sad thing is that it's the life we submit ourselves to, not the life that surrounds us. Lex lives in a nice neighborhood, with nice neighbors...he could just...
Ugh, it's almost too frustrating to think about how different things could be. How different they should be. "I'm not living in the fucking ghetto," he had said when he bought that house, but we still saw ourselves that way. We lived that life. It's a shame.
"You wanna go to Third and just walk around?"
"For what?" It's the first time that he's met my eyes with his on this entire ride so far, and I see the look that's there, as if I were absurd to ask such a thing of him.
Lex doesn't do things just to do them. That's too idealistic for him.
More and more, he has become a hardass, nose-to-the-stone business man. He deals with drugs and death. Nothing is for pleasure. He doesn't want to take walks outside just to smell the air, he wants to take walks outside to make a few dollars. And nothing or no one better get in the way of that. I try to give him a little more credit than that, but I know he lives his life that way...
And I know that I don't anymore.
"Well, I just...I mean, I figured we could just go. The sun's still up, it's not too chilly yet. It's just something to do. But it's fine." I try to reason with him, but I just give up. I know the battle is over before it begins because if there's another thing I know about Lex it's that he gets his way. If he doesn't want to do it, it usually doesn't happen unless I beg or throw a fucking fit, and I don't feel like doing either with him right now. Or ever again.
"No. No, uh...we'll go if you want to go. Yeah, we can go." He looks at me for a second and I don't blame him for turning his eyes right back to the road in an instant because I'm sure the look I'm giving him isn't one he wants to keep staring at. Shit, I can't even imagine the look on my face, but I'm sure it involves my eyes threatening to pop out of my skull and my mouth hanging wide open. I don't even think shock is the right emotion. Did he just...he really just...he fucking agreed with me. Not even agreed, he compromised. He let me have my way. Just like that.
I try to think back to the tone with which I last spoke and look for some trigger to this Jekyll and Hyde thing he just did. Perhaps I sounded a little more hurt or desperate than I had intended. And then I look at the dash clock to see the exact time and try to think of a memory technique to remember it until I can get home to write it down, along with the date that he actually consented to something I wanted to do without a fight.
I'm stunned beyond words, so I don't say anything, just stare at the floorboard. The truck starts to fill with a silence that goes from casual to awkward in record time, but we both sit through it, mostly because I don't have anything to say and he spoke last so it's societal practice that I should be next in the exchange. And, like I said, I'm refusing to take my turn because I don't have a damn thing to say.